[ad_1]
Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here
A new Japanese research effort will work on vaccines for infectious diseases, including coronaviruses, monkeypox and dengue virus.Credit: Eugene Hoshiko/AP/Shutterstock
After recognizing that Japan was slow to develop vaccines for COVID-19, its government has pledged to invest US$2 billion in a vaccine-research initiative to ensure that the country can respond promptly to future epidemics. The Strategic Center of Biomedical Advanced Vaccine Research and Development for Preparedness and Response (SCARDA) will initially invest in vaccine research for eight pathogens, including coronaviruses, monkeypox, dengue virus and Zika virus, using a range of vaccine-delivery options, such as mRNA technology, viral vectors and recombinant proteins. SCARDA’s aim will be to produce diagnostic tests, treatments and vaccines ready for large-scale production within the first 100 days of a pathogen with pandemic potential being identified.
A US judge has reversed three of the four convictions handed down to chemical engineer Feng ‘Franklin’ Tao by a jury in April. Tao was accused of hiding ties to China, and has been on unpaid leave from the University of Kansas. The reversal follows a string of failures by the US Department of Justice to bring strong convictions under the umbrella of the China Initiative — a controversial US government programme that ran from 2018 to 2022 and sought to protect US laboratories and businesses from economic espionage. “This will hopefully drive a final stake through the heart of these China Initiative cases,” says Peter Zeidenberg, one of Tao’s lawyers.
The genetic make-up of people in south and east England changed radically between the Iron Age and the early medieval period, suggesting that there was a huge influx of Anglo-Saxon settlers from northern Europe. Researchers did a genome-wide analysis of 460 people who lived between AD 200 and 1300 in what is now England, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. Early on, almost all the English people’s ancestors were from the British Isles. Later, they derived an average of 76% of their ancestry from continental northern Europeans.The finding overturns a favoured hypothesis that Anglo-Saxon culture promulgated in Britain thanks mostly to small incursions of elite warriors. “We’re a million miles away from an invasion hypothesis — it’s not a bunch of blokes getting in boats with weapons and conquering territory,” says archaeologist and co-author Duncan Sayer. “Actually, the North Sea was a highway, where people were coming and going,” says archaeologist Catherine Hills.
Features & opinion
Researchers have quantified, for the first time, how the species living on small-scale cacao farms influence the production of one of the world’s most beloved foods. They set up a plot of cacao trees (Theobroma cacao), which provide the raw material for chocolate, and selectively excluded birds, bats and flying insects. The presence of any of the creatures increased the total amount of cacao grown. Trees that were accessible to birds and bats had more than double the yield of trees that were not.
Nature Podcast | 20 min listen
Subscribe to the Nature Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or Spotify.
A spacefarer finds a new way to express her cultural traditions in the latest short story for Nature’s Futures series.
Researchers have mounted 3D printers onto drones with the aim of creating swarms of robots that could 3D print entire buildings. The wasp-inspired aerial vehicles were specially designed to be able to deposit a cement-like material with enough precision to build tall structures.
[ad_2]
Source link