This week’s cover shows the findings from NASA’s Grail Mission which revealed ancient tectonics on the lunar nearside. Nature’s Art Director Kelly Krause talks us through the inspiration behind the cover.

Caption:

The Procellarum is a broad feature on the nearside of the Moon, characterized by low elevations and thin crust, and largely covered by dark basalts that can be seen from Earth with the unaided eye. The red colours on the cover image show gravity anomalies bordering the Procellarum region, calculated with data from the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission. The background globe represents the topography of the Moon as measured by the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA). Andrews-Hanna et al. interpret the observed gravity anomalies as evidence of ancient lava-flooded rift zones buried beneath the volcanic plains (or maria) on the nearside of the Moon. Cover: NASA/ Colorado School of Mines/ Goddard Space Flight Center/ Scientific Visualization Studio

NASA’s GRAIL mission reveals ancient tectonics on the lunar nearside.

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This week’s cover shows the three ancestral populations for modern Europeans in an informative and beautifully crafted sketch. Nature’s Art Director Kelly Krause talks us through the inspiration behind the cover.

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By sequencing and comparing the genomes of nine ancient Europeans that bridge the transition to agriculture in Europe between 8,000 and 7,000 years ago, David Reich and colleagues show that most present-day Europeans derive from at least three highly differentiated populations — west European hunter-gatherers, ancient north Eurasians (related to Upper Palaeolithic Siberians) and early European farmers of mainly Near Eastern origin. They further propose that early European farmers had about 44% ancestry from a ‘basal Eurasian’ population that split before the diversification of other non-African lineages. These results raise interesting new questions, for instance that of where and when the Near Eastern farmers mixed with European hunter-gatherers to produce the early European farmers. Cover: Leonardo Gonzalez.

Three Ancestral Populations For Modern Europeans

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This week’s incredible image has been masterly put together by artist Mark A. Garlick and the Nature Art Team. Nature’s Art Director Kelly Krause talks us through the design process of the cover, which focuses on the Laniakea supercluster.

Caption:

A slice through the Laniakea supercluster — home: velocity flow streams within our supercluster are shown white, external flows dark blue. The Milky Way is a member of the Local Group of galaxies. The Milky Way is a member of the Local Group of galaxies. Now have sufficient data on the distances and motions of galaxies to be able to describe a much larger level of organization in our corner of the Universe — a supercluster 160 megaparsecs across and containing 10¹⁷ solar masses. Brent Tully et al. use a new catalogue of ‘peculiar velocities’, line-of-sight departures from cosmic expansion caused by gravitational perturbation, to develop a map representing the distribution of matter. They identify a ‘home’ supercluster that they name Laniakea — from the Hawaiian lani and akea (‘heaven’ and ‘spacious’). It includes the Virgo cluster, the Norma, Hydra and Centaurus clusters (also known as the Great Attractor), the Pavo-Indus filament and a number of voids. Cover art: Mark A. Garlick / Source: Daniel Pomarede.

The Galaxy Supercluster That Includes The Milky Way

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This week’s blog sees a thoroughly creative and conceptual image used to illustrate new patterns of neural activity in the brain generated through learning. Nature’s Art Director Kelly Krause and author Aaron Batista talk us through the selective process and cover design.

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In a study of the extent to which new patterns of neural activity can be generated through learning, Aaron Batista and colleagues examine neuronal network reorganization in Rhesus macaques learning to control a computer cursor using different patterns of activity in motor cortex. Some new neural activity patterns were more easily generated than others — corresponding to more easily learned tasks — and these could be predicted mathematically from the network topology at the beginning of the experiment. The authors speculate that the results provide a basis for a neural explanation for the balance between adaptability and persistence in action and thought. Cover: Jasiek Krzysztofiak/Nature

Learning to generate neural activity patterns in the brain

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This week’s blog sees a stunning painting from John Sibbick imagining the Early Jurassic basal mammals,  Morganucodon and Kuehneotherium, hunting their prey. Nature’s Art Director Kelly Krause talks us through the front cover choice with a little help from some rather Jurassic themed cake.

Caption:

John Sibbick’s painting imagines the iconic Early Jurassic basal mammals, Morganucodon and Kuehneotherium, hunting their favoured prey on the small island that they shared in what is now Glamorgan, southern Wales. The very earliest mammals, living in the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic around 200 million years ago, were small and are often presumed to have been generalized insectivores. Now a close study of Morganucodon and Kuehneotherium shows that niche partitioning and dietary specialization were well under way even at that early date. Analysis of tooth wear and jaw biomechanics shows that whereas Morganucodon had powerful jaws, capable of crushing hard prey such as beetles,Kuehneotherium was adapted for snapping at softer prey, such as the scorpion flies illustrated here. Cover: www.johnsibbick.com

Dietary specialization among the earliest stem mammals.

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