Delegating tasks to artificial intelligence (AI) systems can save time, improve productivity and aid decision-making — but it comes with ethical risks. In this week’s issue, Nils Köbis, Zoe Rahwan and ...

Nova explosions occur when a runaway thermonuclear reaction is triggered in a white dwarf that is accreting hydrogen from a companion star. The massive amount of energy released ultimately creates the ...

The cover image shows a view of the Milky Way captured at Nambung National Park in Western Australia. To understand how the Galaxy formed requires precision age dating of the stars that it contains.

Inscriptions provide an invaluable insight into the ancient world. But over the centuries, many inscriptions have been damaged and exist in fragmented or semi-legible forms, making the job of reading ...

Biaryl compounds, which contain two connected aromatic rings, are common throughout chemistry, medicine and materials science. Joining together the individual molecular components to form these ...

Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts that Earth’s gravity will sufficiently distort space-time so that clocks at different distances from the planet will tick at different rates — an ...

Many potential applications for artificial intelligence require making real-time decisions. Car racing, in which drivers must undertake complex tactical manoeuvres while controlling their vehicle at ...

The cover shows heavy storms over Ostfriesland in Germany. In general, economic assessments of the effects of climate change do not include daily rainfall. In this week’s issue, Leonie Wenz and her ...

Pure mathematics involves the discovery of patterns between mathematical objects and using these connections to formulate conjectures. Mathematicians have deployed computers since the 1960s to help ...

Tunicates, such as sea squirts, are the closest relatives to vertebrates. Most of these marine organisms become sessile — unable to move themselves – when their free-swimming larvae turn into ...

The protein tau is believed to stabilize the skeleton that shapes nerve cells, but in neurodegenerative diseases known as tauopathies, tau misfolds and stacks together to form filaments. In this ...

Launched four years ago, the BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network (BICCN) aims to identify and catalogue the diverse cells types found in mammalian brains. Across 17 papers in this week’s issue, the ...