Journal Nature Research Articles

Ideological and explanatory uses of the COVID-19 as a war metaphor in science

Abstract This paper proposes to investigate the varying implications of the war metaphor in scientific publications discussing the COVID-19 pandemic. The corpus under study is composed of articles retrieved from the international scientific journal Nature, the weekly magazine New Scientist, and the international agency World Health Organisation. With a focus on three main characteristics of the pandemic – body health, medical solutions, and global impact of the virus – the present study asks to what extent the use of the war metaphor can vary to offer different viewpoints on the pandemic. The particular view on the virus – through metaphorical use – depends on the readers each publication targets, the pressure to find solutions, the editorial requirements, and the aim of the publication. We conclude that the war metaphor may not systematically be associated with disputable interpretations (as reported in literature), it also serves an explanatory function.

Der Marine Drive in Mumbai: ein bald versunkenes Kulturerbe?

Abstract From the 1930s to the 1940s, Mumbai was a city of modern architecture marked by international influences, but also the birthplace of a modern Indian architectural style that became fully expressed after 1947. This heritage has rarely been considered by international research, despite its recent inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List (2018) and the very active involvement of local groups. A report published in the journal Nature in 2019 highlighted the consequences of climate change and rising water levels on the city of Mumbai, built on an artificial peninsula. Hence the urgent need to complete the task of researching, locating and digitizing sources on the modern architecture of Mumbai, a heritage doubly threatened by the effects of global warming and excessive urban development.

A practical guide to understanding and validating complex models using data simulations

Abstract Biologists routinely fit novel and complex statistical models to push the limits of our understanding. Examples include, but are not limited to, flexible Bayesian approaches (e.g. BUGS, stan), frequentist and likelihood‐based approaches (e.g. packages lme4) and machine learning methods. These software and programs afford the user greater control and flexibility in tailoring complex hierarchical models. However, this level of control and flexibility places a higher degree of responsibility on the user to evaluate the robustness of their statistical inference. To determine how often biologists are running model diagnostics on hierarchical models, we reviewed 50 recently published papers in 2021 in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, and we found that the majority of published papers did not report any validation of their hierarchical models, making it difficult for the reader to assess the robustness of their inference. This lack of reporting likely stems from a lack of standardized guidance for best practices and standard methods. Here, we provide a guide to understanding and validating complex models using data simulations. To determine how often biologists use data simulation techniques, we also reviewed 50 recently published papers in 2021 in the journal Methods Ecology & Evolution. We found that 78% of the papers that proposed a new estimation technique, package or model used simulations or generated data in some capacity (18 of 23 papers); but very few of those papers (5 of 23 papers) included either a demonstration that the code could recover realistic estimates for a dataset with known parameters or a demonstration of the statistical properties of the approach. To distil the variety of simulations techniques and their uses, we provide a taxonomy of simulation studies based on the intended inference. We also encourage authors to include a basic validation study whenever novel statistical models are used, which in general, is easy to implement. Simulating data helps a researcher gain a deeper understanding of the models and their assumptions and establish the reliability of their estimation approaches. Wider adoption of data simulations by biologists can improve statistical inference, reliability and open science practices.

Probiotics, could be functional foods?

Research on functional food (FF) began in the 1980s in Japan, although the term appeared in the journal Nature in 1993. Functional foods can be natural or FF are created via the addition or removal of certain ingredients in technological processes. These treatments are aimed at obtaining food products that have health-promoting effects, including anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects. The best representative example of functional food is probiotic food. According to World Health Organization (WHO) probiotics are live micro-organisms that, in adequate amounts, provide health benefits to the host. This has the effect of inhibiting the pathogenic bacterium Escherichia coli and E. coli translocation in the gastrointestinal tract.. In addition, it can also influence the repair of the damaged intestinal barrier. Probiotics can also improve the host immune system via strong adherence and colonisation of the gut. This results in the secretion of cytokines and chemokines, which are involved in immune processes. More than that, probiotics have the ability to produce peptides directed against microorganisms. These include lantibiotics, bacteriolysins and peptide bacteriocins. The review presented shows that probiotics as functional foods have an important role in human health. Their intake has many benefits and their appropriate use can significantly improve the comfort of a person's life.

First search for magnetic monopoles through the Schwinger mechanism

Magnetic monopoles are hypothetical fundamental particles predicted in several theories beyond the standard model, however they have never been experimentally detected. The Schwinger mechanism predicts that an extremely strong magnetic field would produce isolated magnetic charges, if they exist. Looking for the existence of magnetic monopoles via the Schwinger mechanism had not been attempted before, but it is advantageous, owing to the possibility of calculating its rate through semi-classical techniques without perturbation theory. This paper focuses on the first search for magnetic monopoles produced by the Schwinger mechanism in heavy-ion collisions. It was carried out by the MoEDAL experiment, whose trapping detectors were exposed to 0.235 nb−1 of Pb-Pb collisions with 5.02 TeV energy per collision at the LHC, that provided the strongest known magnetic fields in the universe. A superconducting quantum interference device magnetometer scanned these detectors for the presence of magnetic charge. Magnetic monopoles with 1, 2 and 3 Dirac charges and masses up to 75 GeV were excluded by the analysis. This analysis, which has been published in the journal Nature, provided a lower mass limit for finite-size magnetic monopoles from a collider search and greatly extended previous mass bounds.

The basis of cell cryopreservation

Cryopreservation (banking) techniques have been known to nature for centuries. Many species of insects, amphibians, fish and even reptiles use natural cryopreservation methods to survive the harsh conditions of winter or to live in extremely cold temperatures. Cryopreservation and dreams of immortality have intrigued humanity for years. The first reports of observing the effects of freezing sperm (stored in snow) date back to 1776. In 1866, Montegazza was the first to suggest a vision completely unimaginable for the time: "a man dying on the battlefield can conceive an heir from sperm frozen and stored at home". The first, at that time still unsuccessful, reports of laboratory freezing of human sperm date back to the 1930s [1]. Finally, mankind "learned" cryopreservation in the middle of the twentieth century, when on October 15, 1949, the article "Revival of spermatozoa after vitrification and dehydration at low temperatures" appeared in print in the Nature journal, summarising the pioneering research of scientists from the National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London [2]. This concerned the freezing of fowl sperm in the presence of glycerol, ethylene glycol and propylene glycol in such a way that after thawing it was able to fertilise eggs effectively. The subsequent use of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) revolutionised modern cryobiology [3-5]. Thus began the era of cryopreservation, without which today it is difficult to imagine the work of cell biology laboratories, modern animal breeding, or the development of modern medicine.

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Breastfeeding Support Services and Women's Experiences of Breastfeeding: A Review.

ObjectiveThe aim of this systematic review was to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on breastfeeding support services and continuation rates.MethodsElectronic searches were undertaken in seven databases: Academic Search Complete, Springer Nature Journals, CINAHL Medline, Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition, Masterfile premier, and SocINDEX. Publications following the COVID-19 pandemic between January 2020 and March 2022 were searched for using the following keywords: impact or effect or influence and breastfeeding support and breastfeeding continuation and COVID-19 or coronavirus. Fifteen studies were included for investigation and extracted to identify seven themes related to breastfeeding support during COVID-19.ResultsFactors which impacted breastfeeding support during the COVID-19 pandemic included separation, lack of skin-to-skin contact, insufficient support, online breastfeeding support, the impact of the pandemic on breastfeeding rates and experiences, fears of the pandemic, and the need for additional support. The pandemic mostly influenced breastfeeding support negatively, with a small exception occurring where some mothers experienced lockdown as positive since it protected the mother-infant dyad from unwanted visitors. Virtual breastfeeding support was introduced in many contexts; however, practitioners and mothers reported that this could not replace the need for face-to-face support.ConclusionBreastfeeding is a lifesaving intervention, especially in the face of a disruption such as a pandemic. This work highlights the need for clear, consistent, and evidence-based information about risks, and for key practices to be maintained including not separating mothers and infants, promoting skin-to-skin contact, and ensuring availability of high-quality breastfeeding support.

Vernacular biotechnologies

“Biotechnology” is defined by the reputed journal Nature Biotech as “[the] technology/methodology of relevance to the biological, biomedical, agricultural and environmental sciences”. Most often, what are defined as biotechnologies are based on the utilisation of cellular or molecular mechanisms for industrial applications, i.e., specific to the recent developments of Western science and livelihoods defined in the capitalist context. However, societies have been using their understanding of biological organisms and systems (biotechnology) to meet various hierarchies of needs (livelihoods) long before western scientists have shaped the understanding of molecular mechanisms. This question invites a wide range of research contributions in which we identify, evaluate and speculate on “what are we missing” in the (western) mainstream definition of biotechnology and design? We invite contributions in “vernacular biotechnologies” that challenge the paradigm that biotechnology and design is a modern discipline practiced by engineers in a laboratory. Vernacular biotechnologies can be common objects that are designed to interface with a living component of everyday life or the environment, and can include work shaped by traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), and/or performed by persons who do not identify as engineers, and/or taking place in non-lab locations such as the kitchen or the field. We also invite critiques of colonial practices in biotechnologies such as biomining or synthetic biology, and their applications.

Association between SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Neuropsychiatric Manifestations

Coronaviruses are neurotropic viruses capable of entering the brain through various mechanisms and generating an important inflammatory response that is capable of triggering neuropsychiatric manifestations. Several reports describe the appearance of different conditions, such as sleep problems, anxiety and depression disorders, acute psychotic disorders, encephalitis, and delirium, among others, associated with COVID-19 infection. We performed a literature review in PubMed, Springer, Nature, MDPI, and other scientific journals on the relationship between COVID-19 infection with the development and aggravation of neuropsychiatric manifestations explained by molecular changes secondary to SARS-CoV-2 where it was found that there is a relationship between the virus and the development of these manifestations. Prospective neuropsychiatric follow-up of people exposed to SARS-CoV-2 at different points in their lives, as well as their neuroimmunological status, is necessary to fully understand the long-term impact of COVID-19 on mental health. It is required to identify the risk of developing neuropsychiatric problems due to COVID-19 infection to provide better medical care from a multidisciplinary team and improve the prognosis of these patients as well as the treatment of long-term sequelae.

Insufficient yet improving involvement of the global south in top sustainability science publications.

The creation of global research partnerships is critical to produce shared knowledge for the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Sustainability science promotes the coproduction of inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge, with the expectation that studies will be carried out through groups and truly collaborative networks. As a consequence, sustainability research, in particular that published in high impact journals, should lead the way in terms of ethical partnership in scientific collaboration. Here, we examined this issue through a quantitative analysis of the articles published in Nature Sustainability (300 papers by 2135 authors) and Nature (2994 papers by 46,817 authors) from January 2018 to February 2021. Focusing on these journals allowed us to test whether research published under the banner of sustainability science favoured a more equitable involvement of authors from countries belonging to different income categories, by using the journal Nature as a control. While the findings provide evidence of still insufficient involvement of Low-and-Low-Middle-Income-Countries (LLMICs) in Nature Sustainability publications, they also point to promising improvements in the involvement of such authors. Proportionally, there were 4.6 times more authors from LLMICs in Nature Sustainability than in Nature articles, and 68.8-100% of local Global South studies were conducted with host country scientists (reflecting the discouragement of parachute research practices), with local scientists participating in key research steps. We therefore provide evidence of the promising, yet still insufficient, involvement of low-income countries in top sustainability science publications and discuss ongoing initiatives to improve this.

Putting African science in the dictionary

For South African science journalist Sibusiso Biyela, writing about a new dinosaur discovery in his home language Zulu should have been an easy task. But when he sat down to write the piece, as he told the British journal Nature’s podcast, he found that he “didn’t have the words for relatively simple scientific terms like ‘fossil’ or even ’dinosaur’.” Biyela remembers being extremely discouraged.

Cover papers of top journals are reliable source for emerging topics detection: a machine learning based prediction framework.

The detection of emerging trends is of great interest to many stakeholders such as government and industry. Previous research focused on the machine learning, network analysis and time series analysis based on the bibliometrics data and made a promising progress. However, these approaches inevitably have time delay problems. For the reason that leader papers of “emerging topics” share the similar characters with the “cover papers”, this study present a novel approach to translate the “emerging topics” detection to “cover paper” prediction. By using “AdaBoost model” and topic model, we construct a machine learning framework to imitate the top journal (chief) editor’s judgement to select cover paper from material science. The results of our prediction were validated by consulting with field experts. This approach was also suitable for the Nature, Science, and Cell journals.

Relationship between number of downloads and three journal-based metrics of 11 subject categories among 1575 Springer Nature journals

The number of downloads (NOD) is a measure of the number of accesses to (or downloads of) published articles and a subset of altmetrics. In this study, we assessed the correlation between the journal impact factor (JIF) and NOD for 11 subject categories on Springer Nature’s Springerlink to determine if there were differences in NOD among Google Scholar, Scopus (CiteScore) and Clarivate’s JIF across these subject categories, and attempted to predict NOD using JIF. From a total of 1575 journals, 1155 (73.3%) were grouped under JIF, 275 (17.5%) under CiteScore, and 145 (9.2%) under Google Scholar. Among the 1155 JIF journals, 1007 (87.2%) were subscription or hybrid journals while 148 (12.8%) were open access journals. Except for “environment”, there was a significant positive correlation between NOD and JIF for all remaining subject categories. Correlations changed slightly even after open access was removed from all categories. The Kruskal Wallis test showed significant differences in median NOD for journals with a CiteScore, Google Scholar and JIF, and this was fortified by a posthoc test (Conover p-values without adjustment). After aggregating the data of all subject categories into two sub-categories (NOD and JIF) of the 1155 journals with a JIF, finally, Adaptive Boosting performed best among eight machine learning models to predict NOD using JIF (RMSE = 84139.1; R2 = 0.9669). This research extends researchers’ understanding of the relationship between altmetrics and citations with journal metrics that are typically obtained using citations. Knowledge of a JIF can predict NOD with some permissible error.

Knowledge in the labyrinths of power: Europe and the (inter)nationalization of science in the first half of the twentieth century

The first half of the twentieth century was marked globally by a nationalist shift, which also affected science. The initiatives to block some "national science" (especially from Germany) and the discussions that flooded Western public space are hallmarks of the radical transformations that knowledge and power underwent at the time. Based on historical literature from the time, the article explores the growing polarization of scientific discourse in the first half of the twentieth century. Special attention is given to the interwar period, the (re)founding (after 1918) of international scientific organisms based in Europe (like the International Research Council), and the prohibition of the journal Nature in Nazi Germany in 1937.

EcoGothic: An Interview with Elizabeth Parker and Michelle Poland

Elizabeth Parker is the author of the monograph The Forest and the EcoGothic: The Deep Dark Woods in the Popular Imagination, published by Palgrave Gothic in March 2020. She is the founding editor of the open-access journal Gothic Nature: New Directions in Ecohorror and the EcoGothicand television editor for The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies. She has co-organised several conferences on space, place, and the relationship between the Gothic and the more-than-human, has published her work in various titles such as Plant Horror!: Approaches to the Monstrous Vegetal in Fiction and Film and Transecology: Transgender Perspectives on the Environment, and is co-editor of Landscapes of Liminality: Between Space and Place. She has taught English Literature and courses on Popular Culture at a number of universities across the UK and Ireland, and currently works in Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion at St Mary’s University Twickenham.
 
 Michelle Poland is the Research Impact Manager at Nottingham Trent University, a role which involves supporting researchers across the institution to identify ways than can enable their research to make a meaningful difference in the world. Michelle is a passionate advocate for the role research plays in enhancing our prosperity, health, and quality of life and is currently working towards developing impact from her own research on the Gothic, ecocriticism, and the Anthropocene. She received her PhD in English from the University of Lincoln in 2019, is Co-Editor of the open-access peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal Gothic Nature, and has published work in Critical Survey and Green Letters.

A bibliometric analysis of highly cited insulin resistance publications in Science Citation Index Expanded

Bibliometrics methods are commonly used to analyse and compare scientific performance. At present there are no bibliometric analyses on insulin resistance (IR) publications. In this study, we analysed highly-cited IR publications. The analysis presented is based on Web of Science (WoS): Science Citation Index Expanded. Total citations (TC), citation in latest year, citation per publication, number of authors, and collaborations were analysed. Most productive institutes and authors were also identified. Our search identified 103,742 documents including 72,909 articles related to IR. A total of 167 highly-cited documents (0.016% of 103,742 documents) with TC 2019 of≥1,000 in IR research were identified inclusive of 124 highly-cited articles, which were all written in English. These highly-cited documents were mainly published in the journal Nature and for most of them, the WoS category was “multidisciplinary-sciences”. United States of America was the country which has published most number of the highly-cited publications. Harvard University held the highest rank with the most number of highly-cited papers. Collaborative multidisciplinary research were common in the field of IR. Majority of the publications were arising from developed countries and highly-ranked institutions. More research should be encouraged in developing countries where IR remains a significant issue. • Collaborative multidisciplinary research were common in the field of insulin resistance. • Common research fields of insulin resistance publications identified focused on identification and molecular mechanisms. • Publications on its role in the pathogenesis of a plethora of metabolic diseases were also common. • Majority of the publications were arising from developed countries and highly-ranked institutions.

Walter Bruno Gratzer (1932–2021): In his own words, as far as possible

Miranda Robertson commemorates the life, remarkable times and witty and erudite writing of protein chemist and biophysicist Walter Gratzer.

Cover effects on citations uncovered: Evidence from Nature

We study the effects of an article featured on the cover of the journal Nature on citations to all articles published by its authors. Based on 30 years of bibliometric data, we find that cover articles are cited significantly more than non-cover articles, with this difference being long-lasting. However, when considering all articles (past and future) by Nature authors, we find that the publication of a cover article causes citations to previous articles by its authors to decline relative to citations to articles by non-cover authors.

Rethinking nature journaling in the Kindergarten Program action research in learning and teaching

This qualitative action research study in a Canadian urban public elementary school proposes teachers and early childhood education integrate different types of nature journaling into the Kindergarten Program. In this study, analysis of data collected from weekly classroom lessons and student work samples through two action research cycles led to the identification of three types of nature journaling: 1) observation-focused nature journaling, which may encourage sensory engagement; 2) relationship-built nature journaling, which may help to foster a sense of connection with the natural environment; and 3) curriculum-connected nature journaling, which may contextualize nature journaling as an interdisciplinary pedagogical strategy. These three types of nature journaling are interrelated within the framework of ecological systems theory that guides this study. This study values whole child development and experiential learning. It emphasizes the pedagogical values and curriculum connections nature journaling can bring to the Kindergarten Program, especially when used as a way for students to explore environmental and nature education. Based on its findings, this study recommends that educators organize curriculum and foster students’ interdependence in the context of real-world experiences through a nature journaling approach.

Genetic markers of domestication (some features of interpretation of laboratory data of paleogenetic researches)

The paper reviews the findings of two research groups, published in the journal Nature, that focus on the genetic aspects of horses domestication in the Bronze Age. Creating coherence and overcoming the contradictions between the data of paleogenetics and archeology through meta-description, which is based on the prevalence of selection, turns into the some controversial conclusions, including: extrapolation caused by the transfer of anthropomorphic characteristics to the physiological characteristics of the horse and the reduction of actors of social processes to genetic markers. In the context of articles on medical genetics and sociology of science, it is proposed to overcome controversies through a change in the optics of analysis of genetic data in the problem of domestication: rejection of the meta-description of the researching phenomena and the actualization of the logic of meeting social needs and mutational variability preceding domestication. In addition, the paper deals with the problem of interpreting the genetic data of horse domestication only as a hypothesis. The problem is that there is a significant chronological gap of 500-700 years between genetic ancestors and genuine domestic horses (Dom-2). This period includes such significant archaeological cultures as Abashevskaya, post-Poltavka Volga-Ural and others.