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Organisms use signals of quality to communicate information about aspects of their relative phenotypic and genetic constitution. Badges of status are a subset of signals of quality that reveal information about an individual's size and dominance. In general, signals of quality require high and differential costs to remain honest (that is, prevent low-quality cheaters from exploiting any fitness benefits associated with communicating high quality). The theoretically required costs for badges of status remain controversial because the development (or‘production’) of such signals often seems to be relatively cost-free. One important hypothesis is that such signals impose social (or‘maintenance’) costs incurred through repeated agonistic interactions with other individuals. However, convincing empirical evidence for social costs remains elusive. Here we report social costs in a previously undescribed badge of status: the highly variable black facial patterns of female paper wasps, Polistes dominulus. Facial patterns strongly predict body size and social dominance. Moreover, in staged contests between pairs of unfamiliar wasps, subordinate wasps with experimentally altered facial features (‘cheaters’) received considerably more aggression from the dominant than did sham controls, indicating that facial patterns are signals and that dishonest signalling imposes social costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies involving hundreds, even thousands, of scientists are on the rise, but how do such large groups coordinate their work? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Letter to the Editor [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A letter to the editor is presented in response to an article related to ranking of India's top institutions on the basis of number of research papers in the Scopus citation database over the past five years in a 2015 issue.

The confidential 124-page report from the University of Rochester, disclosed in a lawsuit, details the extent of Ranga Dias’s scientific misconduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Art conservator Jiro Ueda uses traditional techniques and natural solutions to repair priceless paintings and artefacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population isolates such as those in Finland benefit genetic research because deleterious alleles are often concentrated on a small number of low-frequency variants (0.1% ≤ minor allele frequency < 5%). These variants survived the founding bottleneck rather than being distributed over a large number of ultrarare variants. Although this effect is well established in Mendelian genetics, its value in common disease genetics is less explored1,2. FinnGen aims to study the genome and national health register data of 500,000 Finnish individuals. Given the relatively high median age of participants (63 years) and the substantial fraction of hospital-based recruitment, FinnGen is enriched for disease end points. Here we analyse data from 224,737 participants from FinnGen and study 15 diseases that have previously been investigated in large genome-wide association studies (GWASs). We also include meta-analyses of biobank data from Estonia and the United Kingdom. We identified 30 new associations, primarily low-frequency variants, enriched in the Finnish population. A GWAS of 1,932 diseases also identified 2,733 genome-wide significant associations (893 phenome-wide significant (PWS), P < 2.6 × 10–11) at 2,496 (771 PWS) independent loci with 807 (247 PWS) end points. Among these, fine-mapping implicated 148 (73 PWS) coding variants associated with 83 (42 PWS) end points. Moreover, 91 (47 PWS) had an allele frequency of <5% in non-Finnish European individuals, of which 62 (32 PWS) were enriched by more than twofold in Finland. These findings demonstrate the power of bottlenecked populations to find entry points into the biology of common diseases through low-frequency, high impact variants.Genome-wide association studies of individuals from an isolated population (data from the Finnish biobank study FinnGen) and consequent meta-analyses facilitate the identification of previously unknown coding variant associations for both rare and common diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a report that applies an evolutionary stable-strategy model to a three-morph mating system in the side-blotched lizard. Oscillations of morph frequency; Fitnesses of each morph; Cycling driven by selective forces within the population rather than by interactions among species; Possibly the first biological example of a rock-paper-scissors game.

A letter to editor is presented related to the article which presents the screening of false papers with the help of automatic ArXiv screens by Paul Ginsparg in a previous issue of the journal.

Focuses on a study which developed a non-transitive model community of the species of Escherichia coli to identify mechanisms in biodiversity. Competition among species and the ecological process of dispersal and interaction; Importance of localized processes to coexistence in natural communities.

By joining a collecting society, researchers can ensure they are paid when copyrighted book content and papers are reproduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities must declare all their retractions and launch investigations into misconduct cases; a Nature analysis reveals that since 2021 there have been more than 17,000 retractions with Chinese co-authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A world of AI-assisted writing and reviewing might transform the nature of the scientific paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ways in which researchers can artificially inflate their reference counts are growing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colicins are narrow-spectrum antibiotics produced by and active against Escherichia coli and its close relatives. Colicin-producing strains cannot coexist with sensitive or resistant strains in a well-mixed culture, yet all three phenotypes are recovered in natural populations. Recent in vitro results conclude that strain diversity can be promoted by colicin production in a spatially structured, non-transitive interaction, as in the classic non-transitive model rock-paper-scissors (RPS). In the colicin version of the RPS model, strains that produce colicins (C) kill sensitive (S) strains, which outcompete resistant (R) strains, which outcompete C strains. Pairwise in vitro competitions between these three strains are resolved in a predictable order (C beats S, S beats R, and R beats C), but the complete system of three strains presents the opportunity for dynamic equilibrium. Here we provide conclusive evidence of an in vivo antagonistic role for colicins and show that colicins (and potentially other bacteriocins) may promote, rather than eliminate, microbial diversity in the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Search engines that highlight key papers are keeping scientists up to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

But Cao Xuetao will be barred from applying for grants for a year after investigators found ‘misused images’ in his group’s papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Letter to the Editor [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Screening method detects Zika and chikungunya viruses using materials that fit onto easily transported paper test cards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A deep dive into the physical-science literature links the most original research with the most recently formed teams of co-authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ohio State University investigations identified misconduct by two scientists in lab of high-profile cancer researcher Carlo Croce. The university has cleared Croce of misconduct, but disciplined him over management problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intense shine of a wood-fibre polymer could make it useful for data encryption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a quantitative description of the shape, response and stability of conical dislocation in crumpling of paper. Results of deformation; Scaling laws for the size of the core; Characteristics of the geometry of the dislocation away from the core; Interaction between conical dislocations in a simple geometry.

The large language model does everything from reading the literature to writing and reviewing its own papers, but it has limited applicability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a huge collaborative effort, millions of cells in the mouse brain have been mapped in detail. Two scientists examine the resulting wealth of insights into gene regulation in brain cells, neuronal connections and how our own brains evolved.Transcriptomic and epigenomic data from millions of mouse brain cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the privilege access to publication in the house journal to members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS). It states that more than three-quarters of the papers published in the journal are direct submissions. It further discusses members can submit papers up to four to the body's high-profile journal per year, and the venerable Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Developers want to free scientists to focus on discovery and innovation by helping them to draw connections from a massive body of literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Too often, journal assessments of potentially unreliable research are superficial, opaque and prolonged. Changes to the guidance given by the Committee on Publication Ethics could tighten up the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reanalysis of landmark paper finds that eight genome sequences were mistakenly assigned to the wrong orangutans. The impacts on research are as-yet unclear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A retracted paper highlights chemistry’s history of trying to avoid the expensive, toxic — but necessary — catalyst. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faced with a deluge of papers, journal editors are struggling to find willing peer reviewers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A few publishers are using automated software to catch flaws in submitted papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study of review reports identifies dozens of adjectives that could indicate text written with the help of chatbots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of millions of papers shows that farflung collaborators produce fewer foundational discoveries than groups working together in person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large language model creates synopses of papers aimed at various reading levels to help scientists sift through the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific evidence regularly guides policy decisions1, with behavioural science increasingly part of this process2. In April 2020, an influential paper3 proposed 19 policy recommendations (‘claims’) detailing how evidence from behavioural science could contribute to efforts to reduce impacts and end the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we assess 747 pandemic-related research articles that empirically investigated those claims. We report the scale of evidence and whether evidence supports them to indicate applicability for policymaking. Two independent teams, involving 72 reviewers, found evidence for 18 of 19 claims, with both teams finding evidence supporting 16 (89%) of those 18 claims. The strongest evidence supported claims that anticipated culture, polarization and misinformation would be associated with policy effectiveness. Claims suggesting trusted leaders and positive social norms increased adherence to behavioural interventions also had strong empirical support, as did appealing to social consensus or bipartisan agreement. Targeted language in messaging yielded mixed effects and there were no effects for highlighting individual benefits or protecting others. No available evidence existed to assess any distinct differences in effects between using the terms ‘physical distancing’ and ‘social distancing’. Analysis of 463 papers containing data showed generally large samples; 418 involved human participants with a mean of 16,848 (median of 1,699). That statistical power underscored improved suitability of behavioural science research for informing policy decisions. Furthermore, by implementing a standardized approach to evidence selection and synthesis, we amplify broader implications for advancing scientific evidence in policy formulation and prioritization.Evaluation of evidence generated to test 19 proposed policy recommendations and guidance for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a research conducted by European Commission on online availability of research papers, which found that more than 50 percent research papers of 2011 are openly available online and 30 percent are available free. It reports that proportion of free online papers will increase in the next few years as from 2014 European Commission the results of all research funded by the Euro­pean Union must be open access.

The article reflects on the issue that has arise regarding a research paper published in the journal "Cell" that has mentioned three pairs of duplicated images related to creation of human embryonic stem-cell lines from cloned human skin cells. It mentions that leader of the study Shoukhrat Mitalipov has admitted the errors related to the three sets of duplicated images as published in the paper.

The article discusses the objections of scientists towards the experimental design and conclusions of the insecticidal toxins from the Bacillus thringiensis study conducted by Emma Rosi-Marshall and colleagues in 12 streams in Indiana. It mentions that after the study has released, complaints about the paper had rippled through the research community. It states that behind the attacks on Rosi-Marshall's paper are scientists who are determined to prevent papers they view to have scientific flaws from influencing policy makers.

The author presents several solutions to the problem regarding the replication of published scientific studies. One obvious solution is for journals to publish more papers that describe failures to replicate results. Scientific publishing's move online may be a big help, opening up new possibilities for sharing and commenting on papers and methods. Another possibility is to link to conversation happening elsewhere on the Web.

The article focuses on the failure to retract the research papers on dead children, which were found to be fundamentally flawed. It says that 10 studies based on dead children's body parts lacked permission from parents, as what was revealed in the January 2011 report. It states that despite of the findings, only one among the 10 papers was retracted. It adds that the lack of action reflects the hesitation of journals and institutions to retract studies when the authors fight for their results.

The article reports on the celebration made by the Linnean Society of London for the 150 years anniversary since the reading of the seminal evolution papers by British naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace at one of the meetings of the organization in England in 1858. According to the article, the reading of the papers marks the removal of humanity from the center of creation to promote the concept of evolution that theorizes that life came into being by a process of natural selection.

An unprecedented number of crystallography database entries are undergoing extra checks amid fears that they are based on fabricated data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces the standards for all research papers on cloning by "Nature." The periodical is asking the authors to provide nuclear and mitochondrial DNA fingerprints for all cloning papers submitted for publication. Nuclear DNA fingerprints of the lines should be presented for comparison with existing lines, in the case of papers disclosing new embryonic stem cell lines.

Researchers say the policy could intensify existing issues with research quality and misconduct. Researchers say the policy could intensify existing issues with research quality and misconduct.Some researchers fear that the proposed scheme could make it harder for Indian scientists who produce quality research to publish in international journals.Young man reading in a library in India [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]