A dedicated home for computational science
This guest blog comes from Fernando Chirigati, Chief Editor of Nature Computational Science. Read more
This guest blog comes from Fernando Chirigati, Chief Editor of Nature Computational Science. Read more
We are pleased to share results from a pilot with 13 journals testing the Materials Design Analysis Reporting (MDAR) checklist, a minimum standards reporting checklist for life sciences. Read more
To the Editor: We, the undersigned, are biotechnology executives, entrepreneurs, academic leaders and investors. We are gravely concerned about trends in the United States that are undermining our news media, such that more than 300 news publications across the country recently found it necessary to run coordinated editorials in defense of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press. Read more
On August 10, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the first RNA interference (RNAi) therapeutic, a treatment for polyneuropathy caused by transthyretin (TTR) amyloidosis from Alnylam Therapeutics. The go-ahead for Onpattro (patisiran) sees the RNAi field clear an approval hurdle considered unlikely as recently as six years ago, when pharma exited the RNAi field en masse. The US approval, with Europe expected to follow by early September, is “a major milestone,” says Anastasia Khvorova, an RNAi researcher at the University of Massachusetts in Worcester. Onpattro has an excellent safety record, but there are lingering concerns about potential long-term toxicity from newer, more potent RNAi therapeutics. And the field as a whole still faces investor skepticism in the wake of a decade of clinical trial failures. Read more
“Exciting new line of attack for aggressive breast cancer” … Read more
But questions remain about the plan’s actual intent and its potential impact on US universities’ current and future policies around existing faculty members. Read more
Caroline Weinberg, an organizer for the upcoming march in Washington DC, expects smaller crowds than last year, although she admits her prediction may again be off the mark. “Last we expected 40,000 people, and we got around 100,000,” she says. She adds that most of the marchers in the nation’s capital city were concerned citizens, not practicing researchers. Read more
It’s not the first time we’ve taken this approach. In September 2017, Roberta Kwok discovered how old photos, logbooks and papers are a goldmine for fields such as ecology and climatology. This short video provided a taster: … Read more
Female candidates’ – but not male candidates’ — relationship status was a primary consideration in hiring committees’ discussions and decisions, according to study co-author Lauren Rivera, an associate professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She found that committee members assumed that heterosexual female candidates whose partners or husbands held academic or high-status jobs could not relocate for the job, and excluded them from offers when the committee had viable male or unpartnered female options. Yet, she says, committees — whose members included women — rarely discussed male applicants’ relationship status and assumed that those candidates’ partners or wives would be able to move for the position if an offer were made. Read more
Our readers are constantly telling us that they need to keep up to date not just with papers in their field, but also the broader scientific news, including critical science policy matters and important research outside their immediate interests. Read more