Magazine

Latest articles

1. 1. Ecology
   2. Evolutionary Biology

   Pest Control: Hiding in plain smell

   Youngsung Joo, Meredith C Schuman

   A common rice pest can avoid its natural parasite by settling on plants that smell like they have been damaged by a species of caterpillar.
2. 1. Cell Biology
   2. Developmental Biology

   Science Forum: Imaging methods are vastly underreported in biomedical research

   Guillermo Marques et al.

3. Research Culture: Actionable recommendations from trainees to improve science training

   Stephanie M Davis et al.

   Early-career researchers propose seven actions that can be taken by research institutions and departments to improve science training.
4. 1. Genetics and Genomics

   Telomeres: Getting to grips with circular chromosomes

   Constance Nugent, Katsunori Sugimoto

   A strain of budding yeast that contains one large chromosome reveals how the telomere capping complex CST maintains linear but not circular chromosomes.
5. 1. Evolutionary Biology
   2. Neuroscience

   Evolution: Shining a light on the origin of fly species

   Hui Gong, Lucia Prieto-Godino

   Natural light gradients within a habitat may have helped form new fly species that have differing preferences for light.
6. 1. Ecology

   Ecosystems: The diversity of decay

   Emma J Sayer, Ralf Schäfer

   To predict how species loss will affect ecosystems, it is important to consider how biodiversity influences processes such as decomposition.
7. 1. Human Biology and Medicine
   2. Neuroscience

   Autism: Balancing excitation and inhibition in the autistic brain

   Charlotte M Pretzsch, Dorothea L Floris

   A metric called the Hurst exponent could be a useful biomarker for studies exploring brain differences between men and women with autism spectrum disorder.

8. Meta-Research: Large-scale language analysis of peer review reports

   Ivan Buljan et al.

   The linguistic characteristics of peer review reports are not influenced by research area, type of review or reviewer gender, which is evidence for the robustness of peer review.
9. 1. Computational and Systems Biology

   Meta-Research: International authorship and collaboration across bioRxiv preprints

   Richard J Abdill et al.

   An analysis of 67,885 preprints on bioRxiv finds evidence for disparities in international participation that are similar to the disparities found in conventional journals.

10. Meta-Research: The growth of acronyms in the scientific literature

    Adrian Barnett, Zoe Doubleday

    A study of 24 million articles has revealed that scientists have created more than 1 million acronyms since 1950, most of which have been used fewer than 10 times.