NATURE Decision-makers need researchers’ input on societal issues. Megan Evans got a crash course in science policy in 2011. As a research assistant at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, she joined a project helping the Australian government to develop a tool to compensate for the environmental effects of commercial land development and other activities. … More How your science can shape policy
NATURE How hobbies can boost scientists’ productivity and creativity. When Audrey Kelly isn’t catching toads and analysing their DNA to study how species hybridize, she makes bread. Kelly is a fifth-year PhD student at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and she learnt to bake from her father before she moved away for her … More Play time for researchers
NATURE CAREERS Creative minds are shrinking research’s big carbon footprint. In July 2015, Stephanie and Fraser Januchowski-Hartley left their home in Totnes, UK, and headed for the International Congress for Conservation Biology in Montpellier, France. Instead of catching a flight, they boarded a boat and then made their way across France by bicycle and train, … More A greener culture
NATURE CAREERS US science faces a political storm, and early-career researchers should prepare themselves. Read the full story at Nature.
NATURE Researchers look into the future of the far North for clues to save species and maybe even bring back sea ice. As the Arctic slipped into the half-darkness of autumn last year, it seemed to enter the Twilight Zone. In the span of a few months, all manner of strange things happened. The cap … More After the ice goes
Technology and practice can help shy and introverted researchers to succeed when reticence is risky. Generally speaking, scientists aren’t known as a gregarious bunch. Many identify as bookish, introverted, perhaps even a bit awkward. Yet those with more outgoing, extroverted traits might find it easier to thrive in today’s scientific culture. That’s because researchers in … More Find your voice
Falling in love with a single theory can cut off fruitful avenues of enquiry. Here’s how to keep your mind open. The clamour in a Panamanian rainforest is deafening to human ears: bugs shriek, birds sing and bats screech throughout the humid night. To avoid attracting predators, male katydids (Tettigoniidae) trill out short, infrequent mating … More A forest of hypotheses
As it pursues independence, Greenland seeks to develop its economy without ruining one of Earth’s last pristine places. The houses of Narsaq gleam in a cheerful riot of blues, reds and yellows. The crayon-coloured town spills across a hill that separates barren mountains from a fjord filled with icebergs. But up close, grimmer details come … More Cold truths at the top of the world
Scientists say the recent pause in rising global temperatures is probably due to increased heat uptake by the world’s oceans, particularly the Pacific. However, researchers have struggled to figure out exactly where this heat has accumulated. According to a new study, the ‘missing’ heat may have escaped into the Indian Ocean through the islands of … More Chasing the ocean’s ‘missing’ heat
