Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here.
A man surveys the damage done to his house by Hurricane Helene, which left a path of destruction from Florida to Virginia. Credit: Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty
Warming supercharges hurricane winds
Climate change is sharply intensifying the wind speed of hurricanes that arise in the Atlantic north of the equator, according to a modelling study. A companion report, based on the same methodology, suggests that climate change strengthened all 11 hurricanes in the North Atlantic this year. The effect on people and livelihoods is enormous: Hurricane Helene killed more than 200 people in August and inflicted the most costly damage in US history. It also delayed this very report: the National Centers for Environmental Information in North Carolina was flooded by Helene, affecting its supercomputers and the release of its data.
Reference: Environmental Research: Climate paper & Climate Central report
Scandal-hit superconductivity researcher out
Physicist Ranga Dias is no longer employed by the University of Rochester — although it declines to say whether he was fired. In 2020, Dias published the first of two high-profile papers which claimed that he had discovered the first room-temperature superconductor — a material that would not require any cooling to conduct electricity with zero resistance. Both papers were eventually retracted, and an investigation commissioned by his university found that Dias committed data fabrication, falsification and plagiarism. “Did the system work?” asks condensed-matter physicist Peter Armitage. “Yes, eventually, but many institutions failed us along the way.”
Driving rats hint at the source of joy
In 2020, scientists taught rats to drive tiny cars, and the animals loved it. (There is an amazing video.) Now the researchers have extended their work to show how the anticipation of a good time can ramp up rats’ capacity for joy. Preliminary results suggest that animals who learnt to wait for their turn behind the wheel tested as more ‘optimistic’ in their thinking, performed better on cognitive tasks and were bolder in their problem-solving strategies. “Rather than pushing buttons for instant rewards, they remind us that planning, anticipating and enjoying the ride may be key to a healthy brain,” says behavioural neuroscientist Kelly Lambert, who led the research. “That’s a lesson my lab rats have taught me well.”
Read Kelly Lambert’s first-hand explanation of her findings in The Conversation. (7 min read)
Features & opinion
Can lay therapists fill mental-health gaps?
In Africa, organizations are finding innovative solutions to a global problem: there are not enough psychiatrists and psychologists to help the people who need them. Non-profit mental-health organizations such as The Shamiri Institute in Kenya and Friendship Bench in Zimbabwe are training recent secondary-school graduates and grandmothers as lay therapists. Following their success, layperson-led mental-health programmes are being piloted around the world. But funding remains an issue: this relatively inexpensive approach offers little opportunity for profit — and thus attracts limited investment.
Should I stay or go (into management)?
Reflect on your skills, working style and values, think about the dynamic between the people you’ll be working with and consider the responsibility of leading a team, say three scientists offering their advice to a chemical engineer struggling to decide whether to stay in a technical role or transition into management. Whatever the decision, “careers are rarely linear”, says biologist Roni Wright. “Lives change, circumstances change, we change and, if we want to be both successful and happy, our careers change with us.”
Displaced people’s health is neglected crisis
Roughly 68 million people were displaced within their own country by the end of 2023, but international aid for health care for internally displaced people is still scarce compared to that for cross-border refugees, say a neuroscientist, a health systems researcher and the founder of the Refugee Law Initiative. The international community must build on the momentum of established initiatives to address this imbalance, they argue, and ensure that more resources are directed to meet the health needs of internally displaced people.