Researchers have developed an AI tool that can calculate a person’s risk of developing over 1,000 different diseases, sometimes years in advance. The system, called Delphi-2M, was trained to identify patterns of disease progression using 400,000 people's health records from data repository the UK Biobank. This training allowed it to predict someone’s future disease risks, based on their current medical record. While AI health prediction systems do exist, they typically only estimate risks for a single disease — the authors hope that their system could one day save healthcare professionals time and be used to calculate disease burdens at a population level.

Research Article: Shmatko et al.

News: What diseases will you have in 20 years? This AI makes predictions

Evidence that refugees hosted by local families integrate better into their adoptive country — plus, the squidgy shirt that can keep wearers cool.

Research Highlight: How to help refugees thrive: have local families host them

Research Highlight: Jelly-filled garment keeps wearers cool when heat and humidity soar

Using AI tools may make you more likely to cheat at tasks like tax reporting, according to a new study. Using a well-studied test of honesty, researchers looked to see if people were more likely to engage in unethical behaviour if given the option of delegating it to an AI. Including AIs seemed to increase the chance that someone would be dishonest, which raises concerns about the impacts of these tools on ethics.

Research Article: Köbis et al

News and Views: People are more likely to cheat when they delegate tasks to AI

Europe has a new supercomputer, JUPITER, that could boost its AI ambitions, and a catalogue of octopus movement.

Nature: World's most energy-efficient AI supercomputer comes online

New York Times: Building an Octopus Dictionary, One Arm Movement at a Time

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In 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) facilities in the US directly detected ripples in space-time, known as gravitational waves. These waves were produced by the final spiral of two orbiting black holes that smashed into each other, sending ripples across the Universe.

In this podcast, Benjamin Thompson speaks to Cole Miller from the University of Maryland about the quest to detect gravitational waves, which were first hypothesised by Albert Einstein back in 1916.

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Major energy producers increased the likelihood and intensity of heatwaves, according to research published in Nature. Using data from an international disaster database, a team developed a methodology to investigate how much anthropogenic climate change had influenced heatwaves. They conclude that many of these events would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change, and that nearly a quarter of the heatwaves recorded from 2000 to 2023 can be directly linked to the greenhouse-gas emissions from individual energy giants.

Research Article: Juvé et al.

News and Views Forum: Heatwaves linked to emissions of individual fossil-fuel and cement producers

News: Dozens of heatwaves linked to carbon emissions from specific companies

How shifting coastal tides may have spurred the rise of the world’s oldest civilization — plus, the liquid crystal lenses that can refocus in a flash.

Research Highlight: Changing tides ushered in the world’s first civilization

Research Highlight: Liquid-crystal specs refocus with the push of a button

Science in the United States is facing an increasing crisis, in the face of swinging cuts and President Donald Trump’s ongoing attack on anything with a connection to diversity, equity and inclusion. In the face of this crisis, many researchers are fighting back — we hear about some of their efforts, and what they think about their chances of success.

News Feature: Scientists take on Trump: the researchers fighting back

How CRISPR-edited pancreas cells could offer new hope for those with type 1 diabetes, and what brain scans reveal about how we process colour.

Nature: Hope for diabetes: CRISPR-edited cells pump out insulin in a person — and evade immune detection

Nature: My blue is your blue: different people’s brains process colours in the same way

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In 2016, Brian Wansink wrote a blog post that prompted scientific sleuths to investigate his work. They found evidence of data manipulation, and, after several news articles and two investigations by his institution, he would found to have committed misconduct, as defined by Cornell University. His work had been used to inform US policy around food, much of which has now been thrown into question.

Cases like this are rare, but science is not immune to misconduct. The rise in 'paper mills' — organisations that produce questionable or fake papers that they sell authorships on — has led some to worry that misconduct is on the rise and that a proportion of the scientific literature cannot be trusted.

In episode two of Self Correction, we explore how researchers are responding to the problem of research misconduct. We discuss how difficult it is to determine the prevalence of misconduct, and how sleuths, journalists and research integrity institutions are fighting back.

This episode was written and produced by Nick Petrić Howe. Dan Fox was the editor. The music was provided by Triple Scoop Music.

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Raising mosquitoes to tackle disease might sound like an odd concept, but that’s what a facility in Brazil is aiming to do. Millions of mosquitoes are produced there every week, but these insects carry harmless Wolbachia bacteria that curbs their ability to spread deadly human viruses. Nature reporter Mariana Lenharo visited the facility and told us all about her experience in this Podcast Extra.

News: This is the world’s largest ‘mosquito factory’: its goal is to stop dengue

Video: Inside a mosquito factory

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Researchers have made an unusual observation that appears at odds with biology: an ant, known as the Iberian Harvester Ant can produce offspring of two completely different species. Many ants need to mate with other species to produce workers that are a genetic mix of the two, known as hybrids. But in Sicily, a team found hybrid worker ants but no trace of the father. They suggest that the one species present, Messor ibericus, is able to lay its own eggs, but also eggs of another species, Messor structor. These offspring can then mate to produce the hybrid workers. This strategy conflicts with several conventional definitions of what a species is, which may prompt a rethink of these already blurry concepts.

Research Article: Juvé et al.

News and Views: Ant queens produce sons of two distinct species

News: ‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother

Humans are living longer but a life expectancy of a hundred appears out of reach — plus, how light pollution is making birds sing for longer.

Research Highlight: When will life expectancy reach 100? No time soon

Research Highlight: Bright city lights make birds around the world sing longer

Researchers have discovered that steel truss bridges possess a number of mechanisms that make them resilient to collapse, even after damage. Steel truss bridges are a common kind of bridge, but many are ageing and under increased pressure due to climate change and increased vehicle loads. To understand how damage affects these bridges a team of engineers built a scale replica of a bridge section and monitored how it coped when different sections were cut. They found six distinct resistance mechanisms that allowed the bridge to continue carrying heavy loads even with the damaged sections. They hope these data will help fortify existing bridges and inform the design of future bridges to help prevent catastrophic collapse.

Research Article: Reyes-Suárez et al.

The chemistry underlying why beer drinkers fall into two taste camps, and how a deep-sea worm uses arsenic to survive its toxic environment..

Nature: Beer lovers fall into two flavour camps — which one are you in?

Science: Deep-sea worms fight poison with poison to survive in hydrothermal vents

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The search for signs of consciousness has expanded, thanks to advanced neuroimaging techniques. These tools allow researchers to detect consciousness in unresponsive humans, and now researchers are looking to develop tests that work in animals and perhaps even artificial intelligence systems of the future.

This is an audio version of our Feature: How to detect consciousness in people, animals and maybe even AI

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In the late 1700s, rural France was beset with rapidly spreading rumours of aristocratic plots to suppress revolutionary ideas. But how, and why, these rumours were able to spread so quickly has puzzled historians. Now, using modern epidemiological modelling, a team suggests that a combination of high wheat prices, income and literacy level drove this period of French history known as the Great Fear.

Research Article: Zapperi et al.

News: An abiding mystery of the French Revolution is solved — by epidemiology

An unorthodox explanation for dark energy — plus, and how a tiny marsupial predator overcame near extinction.

Research Highlight: Does dark energy spawn from black holes? Could be a bright idea

Research Highlight: Tiny Australian predator defies drought to recover from near-extinction

Physicists differ widely in their interpretations of quantum mechanics, and so do Nature readers, according to our Cosmo-inspired quiz. The quantum world is notoriously difficult to explain, with interpretations of the mathematical foundations ranging from the epistemic, which only describes information, to the realist, where equations map onto the real world. The quiz suggests that many readers prefer the realist, even if that is difficult to mesh with the physics itself.

Feature: Physicists disagree wildly on what quantum mechanics says about reality, Nature survey show

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