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Close of a researchers hands holding a graphene device grown on a silicon carbide substrate chip.

Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology in the US and Tianjin University in China collaborated to create the world’s first functional semiconductor made from graphene.Credit: Georgia Inst. Technol.

China’s scientific collaboration with other countries has declined since the pandemic because of geopolitical tensions, according to an analysis of internationally co-authored papers. Most of the drop comes from papers published with US researchers. Scientists say that the shrivelling of collaboration will hold back research on priorities such as global warming, pandemics and food security. “Given the increasing global disasters and uncertainties, humanity cannot afford to waste time on nationalistic rivalries,” says science and innovation policy researcher Tang Li.

Nature | 5 min read

RESEARCH POWERHOUSE. Chart compares the number of research papers by Chinese authors with those co-authored with international peers.

A method astronomers use to survey light from distant galaxies can help reveal whether an image is AI-generated. By looking for inconsistencies in the reflection of light sources in a person’s eyes it can correctly predict whether an image is fake about 70% of the time. “However, if you can calculate a metric that quantifies how realistic a deep fake image may appear, you can also train the AI model to produce even better deep fakes by optimizing that metric,” warns astrophysicist Brant Robertson.

Nature | 4 min read

Seeking attention from their owners or being attracted to the lanolin in plastic and wool could be why some pet cats ‘steal’ and bring home hundreds of random items including children’s toys, gloves and socks. “Something blowing in the wind might trigger hunting behaviour,” says veterinarian Daniel Mills. “Having ‘caught’ some weird items, cats may well decide to bring them back. I don’t think they’re thinking of them as gifts.” Animal behaviour researcher Jemma Forman adds: “When it comes to cats, normally the explanation is they’re doing it for themselves.”

The Guardian | 4 min read

US president Joe Biden pulled out of the race for re-election yesterday and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, as his successor. If she ends up as her party’s nominee, she will run on a strong record on climate change and the environment. As a senator, Harris co-sponsored a clean-energy measure known as the Green New Deal and as vice president, she helped to pass the suite of climate investments bundled as the Inflation Reduction Act. “The urgency of this moment is clear,” she said at last year’s United Nations climate summit. “The clock is no longer just ticking, it is banging. And we must make up for lost time”.

The New York Times | 5 min read

Features & opinion

Instead of running on the grant-application treadmill, health-services professor Brandon Brown runs a hobby farm, manages various programmes on and off campus and makes time for real life. “I’ve managed to build a career by collecting scientific and professional recognition in other ways,” he writes, “such as performing services on my campus that were deemed important to academic leaders; working closely with community partners on HIV prevention and care; identifying and studying significant gaps in public-health research as a whole; and mentoring and funding many stellar students.”

Nature | 7 min read

Companies are attempting to make science fiction a reality with AI models that can sift through, prioritise and analyse data — in response to a simple question. Some of these data chatbots are fine-tuned versions of generalist large language models (LLMs). Someone could ask, “give me all the results for this particular assay, at this particular time, for this strain”, says Stephen Ra from Genentech, a company building a drug-discovery LLM. Vetting the AI models’ outputs remains important: just because they provide an answer doesn’t mean they are correct.

Nature | 8 min read

Where I work

Shiva Shirani puts a sample of cement in a synchrotron to discover its properties.

Shiva Shirani is a postdoctoral student in materials science and X-ray imaging at the University of Malaga in Spain.Credit: Guillermo Gutierrez Carrascal for Nature

Mixing a paste of water and cement powder, materials scientist Shiva Shirani prepares a sample for the synchrotron. “This provides us with an unprecedented look, at the nanoscale, at how Portland cement hardens as it dries — faster than do low-carbon alternatives,” says Shirani. “The goal of my PhD is to determine how this cement forms so that we might be able to develop materials with a lower carbon footprint.” (Nature | 3 min read)

QUOTE OF THE DAY

As a 22-year-old PhD student, Rosemary Brown first spotted traces of ‘tau’, a subatomic particle that helped blow apart the idea that the laws of nature adhered to a fundamental symmetry. Brown left physics, without completing her PhD, to care for her family. Now 98 and known by her married name of Fowler, she was last week awarded an honorary doctorate by the university where she did her groundbreaking work. (The Guardian | 4 min read)

Read more: How a forgotten physicist’s discovery broke the symmetry of the Universe (Nature | 9 min read, from January, Nature paywall)

Reference: Nature paper 1 & paper 2, The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science paper

On Friday, our penguin-seeking game featured the dramatic rock formations in Köprülü Canyon in Turkey. Did you find Leif Penguinson? When you’re ready, here’s the answer.

Thanks for reading,

Flora Graham, senior editor, Nature Briefing

With contributions by Gemma Conroy and Katrina Krämer

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