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Developers of the computer game Doom released the game’s code in 1997, allowing scientists to use it as part of their research.Credit: id Software via ArcadeImages/Alamy
The classic 1993 first-person shooter Doom has also spawned a subculture in which people port the game to devices never intended to play a videogame, from satellites to digital pregnancy tests. Last month, scientists taught neurons grown on a silicon chip to play the game. “Making something silly doesn’t take any less work than making something really technical,” says software developer and PhD candidate Mars Buttfield-Addison.
A genomic study of dozens of species and their close relatives suggests that all sharks might not be part of the same biological group, contrary to what studies using more-limited genetic data have suggested. When researchers looked at some ‘ultra-conserved’ parts of the genome, they found that a peculiar family of sharks called Hexanchiformes might be part of an evolutionary lineage that is distinct from the group that includes all other sharks, as well as skates and rays. Such hair-splitting doesn’t keep most scientists awake at night. But accurate family trees can help researchers to chart the evolution of key traits.
Reference: bioRxiv preprint (not peer reviewed)
Proposals are due today from institutions and private companies who want to take on pieces of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a world-leading weather and climate research lab housed in an iconic building in Colorado, that is being broken up by the administration of US President Donald Trump. Space-weather forecasting firm Lynker, which has a former NCAR deputy director on its leadership team, has bid for the High Altitude Observatory. “Our thinking here was that this is important and we need to save it,” says Lynker chief Scott Rayder. “These are critical functions … They need to be kept together.” US legislators could still wrangle protections for NCAR, but nothing is certain.
The New York Times | 6 min read
Features & opinion
As glaciers melt under global warming, people whose cultural practices are tied to these icy expanses are having to adapt. For example, in southern Peru, a traditional mountain pilgrimage involved taking sacred ice from the glacier Qulqipunku. Pilgrims “now refrain from collecting large chunks of ice, and choose to carry snowmelt water instead”, says anthropologist Constanza Ceruti. Elsewhere, the loss is eroding spiritual connections that once guided sustainable harvesting of natural resources.
Nature Climate Change | 19 min read
A refuge for many minds finds a way to re-divide in the latest short story for Nature’s Futures series.
Asexual species are often seen as evolutionary dead ends, doomed to extinction owing to the accumulation of bad mutations in their genomes. But the Amazon molly (Poecilia formosa) has shown researchers a way out: a mechanism called gene conversion that eliminates harmful mutations. This unusual species — which is thought to descend from a single hybridization between two mollies of different species 100,000 years ago — always has daughters that are genetically identical to their mothers, but seems to avoid the downsides of asexual reproduction.
Nature Podcast | 23 min listen
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