COVER: Humanity’s actions have committed us to a warming climate and limited our options for mitigation. Although there is no turning back, some paths are still open to avoid catastrophic climate change and reduce its impacts. We must act now to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and change our approaches to growing food, consuming products, and managing ecosystems to avoid a dire future. See page 1392.
To study inequality is to confront a world of contrasts: excessive wealth next to palpable poverty; sickness abutting health. The COVID pandemic has exposed and worsened many such disparities. This week, Nature presents a special collection of articles focusing on the researchers trying to quantify and reduce inequality. Whether they are measuring the effects of the pandemic or testing interventions to lift people out of poverty, the message is simple: gathering the right information will help to mitigate the harm caused by inequality.
“Roughly two and a half years into the pandemic, White House officials and health experts have reached a pivotal conclusion about Covid-19 vaccines: The current approach of offering booster shots every few months isn’t sustainable.
Though most vaccines take years to develop, the Covid shots now in use were created in record time—in a matter of months. For health authorities and a public desperate for tools to deal with the pandemic, their speedy arrival provided a huge lift, preventing hospitalizations and deaths while helping people to escape lockdowns and return to work, school and many other aspects of pre-Covid life.”
A previously unidentified population of polar bears documented on the southeast coast of Greenland uses glacier ice to survive despite limited access to sea ice.
The cover image shows plants growing at altitude on Altar Volcano in Chimborazo, Ecuador. Extreme altitudes pose challenges for most forms of life, and flowering plants are no exception. But flowering plants have been found growing as high as 6,400 metres above sea level. In this week’s issue, Michael Holdsworth and his colleagues reveal a molecular mechanism that helps plants to adapt to the extremes of altitude. The researchers studied a range of plants, representing four diverse clades of flowering plants — thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana), tomato, poppy and the grass
Brachypodium distachyon. They found that plants use genetic adaptations to adjust their sensitivity to atmospheric oxygen, whose partial pressure decreases with altitude. By decoding the ambient oxygen level, the plants are able to sense the altitude at which they grow and optimize internal biochemical processes.
A headbashing relative gives insights into giraffe evolution – How the giraffe got its long neck is a longstanding question in science. One possibility is that giraffes evolved longer necks for sexual competition, with males engaging in violent neck-swinging fights.
Now, a team have described fossils of an ancient giraffoid species with a thick headpiece adapted for fighting, which could add weight to this hypothesis.
05:18 A wave of resignations signals discontent in academia
Around the world, the ‘great resignation’ has seen huge numbers of workers re-evaluating their careers and lifestyles and choosing to leave their jobs following the pandemic. Academia is no exception, with many scientists deciding to leave the sector in the face of increased workloads, systemic biases and pressure to publish.
Earlier this year, NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft, which has been orbiting Mars since 2014, developed some serious equipment issues that prevented it from keeping its correct orientation in space. In a race against time, a team on Earth fixed the problem by developing a system that allowed the spacecraft to navigate by the stars.
14:28 The Perseverance rovers continues its rock collection
NASA’s Perseverance rover has arrived at an ancient Martian river delta where it will spend the next few months exploring, while scientists assess where to drill and extract rock samples. It’s thought that rocks from this region have the best chance of containing evidence of Martian life, and plans are being developed to return them to Earth in the future.
Boomers Daily 