Nature

Stress impairs your brain’s ability to link memories — dampening insight

Imaging suggests why the ability to make inferences declines after an episode of acute stress, such as a job interview.

Ebola outbreak: the data that show why researchers are so alarmed

The size of the outbreak in its initial days is worrying researchers. The next few weeks will determine how large it grows, they say.

Ewen Callaway
Mariana Lenharo
Lauren Wolf
News Explainer21 May 2026
See the clouds streaming and vanishing around this planet — 690 light years away

James Webb Space Telescope reveals weather patterns from how planet WASP-94 A b filters the light of its parent star.

Davide Castelvecchi
News21 May 2026
Genetic analysis of circulating metabolic traits in 619,372 individuals

A genome-wide association study combining data from the Estonian Biobank and the UK Biobank identifies many common and low-frequency locus–metabolic trait associations, enabling the identification of putative causal links with disease outcomes.

Ralf Tambets
Mihkel Jesse
Priit Palta
ArticleOpen Access20 May 2026
Daily briefing: Wearable robot could help kids with neuromuscular disease stand

A robotic device helps children with spinal muscular atrophy build up strength in their knees. Plus, a tough peer-review process could lead to a more-cited paper and chemists’ mission to replace ‘forever chemicals’.

Jacob Smith
Nature Briefing21 May 2026
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Current Issue21 May 2026

News & Comment

Vanishing tongues and life on Mars: Books in brief

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

Andrew Robinson

Book Review22 May 2026
AI cracks 80-year-old mathematics challenge — researchers are astonished
Davide Castelvecchi

News22 May 2026
Stress impairs your brain’s ability to link memories — dampening insight
Simon Spichak

News22 May 2026
Should I get a dog? What to know about pet ownership as a scientist
Hannah Docter-Loeb

Career Feature21 May 2026
See the clouds streaming and vanishing around this planet — 690 light years away
Davide Castelvecchi

News21 May 2026
The brain’s code seems to be in constant flux. Neuroscientists are baffled
Diana Kwon

News Feature20 May 2026
Tough peer-review process? Your paper might end up being more highly cited
Mariana Lenharo

News20 May 2026

Latest Reviews & Analysis

- Monkeys that ‘draw’ reveal a neuronal population that encodes combinable actions
  
  When faced with unfamiliar problems, humans and other animals must plan and execute action sequences that they might not have used before. In macaque monkeys, this ability is supported by a population of neurons in the brain’s frontal cortex that encode recombinable action units or ‘action symbols’.
  
  Research Briefing20 May 2026
- Becoming a mother leaves long-lasting molecular memories
  
  In mice, motherhood induces transcriptional changes in the brain that endure beyond short-term hormonal shifts. Postpartum stress disrupts these patterns.
  
  Frances A. Champagne
  
  News & Views20 May 2026
- Cities affect small and large storms differently
  
  Analysis of a 23-year record of Texan storms reveals how urban landscapes affect storm rainfall — painting a more complex picture than had been realized.
  
  Wei Zhang
  
  News & Views20 May 2026
- Too little or too much sleep is linked to faster ageing throughout the body
  
  A multimodal analysis reveals a ‘U-shaped’ association between sleep duration and biological ageing across various organ systems, with too much or not enough sleep being linked with accelerated organ ageing. The study also shows that biological ageing differentially mediates the relationship between extremes in sleep duration and late-life depression.
  
  Research Briefing20 May 2026
- Quantum light source boosts attosecond science
  
  Ionization experiment shows that quantum light can behave like a conventional laser that has a higher intensity.
  
  Jan Marcus Dahlström
  
  News & Views20 May 2026
- On the right track in the design of an early typewriter
  
  News & Views19 May 2026
- DNA-folding changes block production of self-directed antibodies
  
  Zeqian Gao
  Joan Boyes
  
  News & Views19 May 2026
- Fast and furious: the gaseous outflows of quasars in the early Universe were extreme
  
  Research Briefing13 May 2026
- Growth charts reveal how the brain’s ‘communication highways’ change throughout life
  
  Research Briefing13 May 2026

Latest Research articles

De novo design of miniproteins targeting GPCRs

Edin Muratspahić
David Feldman
David Baker
Article21 May 2026
Spinal neuromotor rehabilitation using a portable isokinetic training robot

Yuebing Li
Jiaxin Ren
Yanggang Feng
Article20 May 2026
Cusp-singularity-enhanced Coriolis effect for sensitive chip-scale gyroscopes

By using singularity physics to enable cubic-root scaling of frequency and phase modulations induced by the Coriolis effect to enhance the performance of chip-scale Coriolis vibratory gyroscopes, substantial improvements in signal-to-noise ratio and precision are demonstrated.

Sen Zhang
Dingbang Xiao
Xin Zhou
ArticleOpen Access20 May 2026
A pathogen lncRNA secreted into rice sequesters a host miRNA for virulence

A fungal long non-coding RNA from Magnaporthe oryzae translocates into rice cells to sequester a host microRNA that normally represses PKR1, a negative immunity regulator, thereby facilitating infection and revealing a widespread RNA-based pathogen–host interaction mechanism.

Min He
Jia Su
Xuewei Chen
ArticleOpen Access20 May 2026
De novo design of quasisymmetric two-component protein cages

Researchers designed two-component proteins forming quasisymmetric cages via geometric frustration, enabling tunable virus-like assemblies for cargo delivery, cellular uptake and studying intracellular diffusion and protein localization.

Shunzhi Wang
Ying Xie
David Baker
Article20 May 2026

Collections

An illustration of a cannon shooting out bacteria to defeat a larger bacteria.

Antimicrobial resistance

Pathogens are becoming resistant to antibiotics. Scientists are working to slow the process and replenish the medicinal armoury.

Nature Outlook 13 May 2026

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Global Talent Recruitment Announcement of the College of Engineering, HZAU

Join HZAU's global faculty team to advance research with competitive benefits.

Wuhan, Hubei (CN)

Huazhong Agricultural University (HZAU)
Associate or Senior Editor, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology and Nature Communications

Job Title: Associate or Senior Editor, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology and Nature Communications Organisation: Nature Portfolio Location: Sh...

Shanghai, Beijing, Milan or Pune – hybrid working model

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The Rowland Institute at Harvard seeks outstanding early-career experimentalists in all fields of science and engineering.

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Rowland Institute at Harvard
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Shanghai, Beijing or Milan, Hybrid Working Model

Springer Nature Ltd

Stress impairs your brain’s ability to link memories — dampening insight

Ebola outbreak: the data that show why researchers are so alarmed

See the clouds streaming and vanishing around this planet — 690 light years away

Genetic analysis of circulating metabolic traits in 619,372 individuals

Daily briefing: Wearable robot could help kids with neuromuscular disease stand

News & Comment

Vanishing tongues and life on Mars: Books in brief

AI cracks 80-year-old mathematics challenge — researchers are astonished

Stress impairs your brain’s ability to link memories — dampening insight

Should I get a dog? What to know about pet ownership as a scientist

See the clouds streaming and vanishing around this planet — 690 light years away

The brain’s code seems to be in constant flux. Neuroscientists are baffled

Tough peer-review process? Your paper might end up being more highly cited

Latest Reviews & Analysis

Monkeys that ‘draw’ reveal a neuronal population that encodes combinable actions

Becoming a mother leaves long-lasting molecular memories

Cities affect small and large storms differently

Too little or too much sleep is linked to faster ageing throughout the body

Quantum light source boosts attosecond science

On the right track in the design of an early typewriter

DNA-folding changes block production of self-directed antibodies

Fast and furious: the gaseous outflows of quasars in the early Universe were extreme

Growth charts reveal how the brain’s ‘communication highways’ change throughout life

Latest Research articles

De novo design of miniproteins targeting GPCRs

Spinal neuromotor rehabilitation using a portable isokinetic training robot

Cusp-singularity-enhanced Coriolis effect for sensitive chip-scale gyroscopes

A pathogen lncRNA secreted into rice sequesters a host miRNA for virulence

De novo design of quasisymmetric two-component protein cages

Collections

Antimicrobial resistance

Trending - Altmetric

Science jobs

Global Talent Recruitment Announcement of the College of Engineering, HZAU

Associate or Senior Editor, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology and Nature Communications

Associate or Senior Editor, Nature Physics

Rowland Fellowship

Chief Editor, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology

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At last, a pill that can prevent COVID after exposure to infected people

Sleep chart of biological ageing clocks in middle and late life

A deep-learning framework reveals whole-body perturbations at cell level

A multi-agent system for automating scientific discovery

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