The shifting orbit of one of Saturn’s moons indicates that the satellite has a subsurface ocean, contradicting theories that its interior is entirely solid. The finding calls for a fresh take on what constitutes an ocean moon.

Nature Podcast: 14 February 2024

News and Views: Mimas’s surprise ocean prompts an update of the rule book for moons

Millions of tonnes of ‘red mud’, a hazardous waste of aluminium production, are generated annually. A potentially sustainable process for treating this mud shows that it could become a source of iron for making steel.

Nature Podcast: 24 Jan 2024

News and Views: Iron extracted from hazardous waste of aluminium production

A design principle for buildings incorporates components that can control the propagation of failure by isolating parts of the structure as they fail — offering a way to prevent a partial collapse snowballing into complete destruction.

Nature podcast: 15 May 2024

Nature video: Controlled failure: The building designed to limit catastrophe

News and Views: Strategic links save buildings from total collapse

RNA-guided recombinase enzymes have been discovered that herald a new chapter for genome editing — enabling the insertion, inversion or deletion of long DNA sequences at user-specified genome positions.

News and Views: Programmable RNA-guided enzymes for next-generation genome editing

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In the first of our annual festive songs celebrating the science of the past year, we pay homage to Ozempic, or Semaglutide, that's able to tackle obesity, diabetes and potentially a whole lot more.

We gather an all-star cast and see how well they can remember some of the big science stories from 2024 in our annual festive quiz.

In the second of our festive songs, we look at CAR-T cells. These engineered immune cells have shown great promise at tackling cancer, but these treatments are not without their drawbacks.

Every year, Nature’s 10 highlights some of the people who have helped shape science over the past 12 months. We hear about a few of the people who made the 2024 list, including an economist who now needs to run a country, a Russian science-sleuth, a researcher who’s been sounding the alarm on Mpox, and a PhD student who won a salary bump for researchers in Canada.

News Feature: Nature’s 10

Subscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.

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Categorizing things is central to science. And there are dozens of systems scientists have created to name everything from the trenches on the sea bed to the stars in the sky.

But names have consequences — unintended or otherwise. In our new series What’s in a name we’ll explore naming in science and how names impact the world — whether that’s how the names of storms impact public safety, how the names of diseases impact patient care, or even how the names of scientific concepts can drive the direction of research itself.

In this first episode we’re looking at species names. The modern system of species naming began in the 1700s and has played a vital role in standardizing academic communication, ensuring that scientists are on the same page when they talk about an organism. However, this system is not without its issues. For example, there has been much debate around whether species with names considered offensive — such as those named after historical racists — should be changed, and what rule changes need to be made to allow this to happen.

We speak to researchers about the history of this naming system, how it’s applied and how it might evolve in the face of growing pressures.

Sources

For a full list of sources, please visit https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-04200-9

Music credits

Premiumaudio/Pond5

Alon Marcus/Pond5

Groove Committee/Pond5

Opcono/Pond5

Erik Mcnerny/Pond5

Earless Pierre/Pond5

Richard Smithson/Triple Scoop Music/Getty Images

​​​​​​​Douglas Romayne/Triple Scoop Music/Getty Images

Sound effects via Pond5

Thick-billed Longspur/​​​​​​​Andrew Spencer via ​​​​​​​CC BY-NC-ND 2.5

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