Comment

Open and adaptable artificial-intelligence models are crucial for scientific progress, but robust safeguards against their misuse are still nascent.

Scientists, research institutions, funders, libraries and publishers must all improve software practices.

Media technologies shape individuals’ sensitivity to the world around them. But are algorithms promoting what’s best for people?

Creating international viral biosafety guidelines are key to clearing up confusion, regaining trust and ensuring that essential research continues.

Societies are evolving, and so must higher education. Researchers describe initiatives that can help to create stimulating and nurturing environments fit for today’s learning landscape.

What and who universities are for has changed considerably since the Second World War, leaving long-standing institutions ill-equipped to cope with current financial and political challenges.

With crucial infrastructure increasingly dependent on accurate, resilient clocks, outages in the dominant system for global positioning highlight the need for other ways of distributing time information.

Amid growing debates about the benefits and risks of studying looking-glass versions of life’s building blocks, there is an urgent need to bridge divergent views.

Researchers, funders, universities and governments must work together to build scientific collaborations that are resilient to rapidly evolving international sanctions.

Hoarding of health data is common across Africa, owing to well-founded concerns about exploitation and misuse of biomedical information. A charter that guarantees responsible data stewardship would help to allay such fears.

Small electric aeroplanes flying at low altitude will need energy sources that can withstand crashes and deliver power reliably. Standards need to be decided now.

Australia’s Online Safety Amendment Act provides the chance for researchers to analyse the complex relationship between social-media use and mental health in adolescents, but results should be interpreted with caution.

Annual updates to ‘climate forcing’ data sets would allow simulations to keep pace as global warming accelerates.

Without artificial-intelligence technologies, balancing human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions with carbon removals by 2050 is out of reach. Action in five areas is needed to keep this goal alive.

Policies incentivizing electrified transport don’t seem to be working. Here’s what we need to do.

To keep Earth habitable, humanity must recognize the value of Antarctica and seek to save it from irreversible damage.

Indigenous scholars set out eight steps to stop marginalization in academia and to enable a shared Indigenous agenda in science.

Far from being relics of the past, atomic bombs must be managed as the embodiments of human-made catastrophe that they are.

The deployment of capable AI agents raises fresh questions about safety, human–machine relationships and social coordination.

Strategies for heat-health preparedness should concentrate on cooling people, not just the air.