NATURE BRIEFING 08 December 2021 Sign up for Nature Briefing
Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here. This virtual-reality arena for flies tests the insects’ reaction times.Credit: Matthew Isaacson
Remouldable hardware speeds up scienceField-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) consist of hundreds or even millions of unconfigured logic elements on a silicon chip that, like clay, can be ‘moulded’ — and even re-moulded. They can accelerate applications ranging from genomic alignment to image processing to deep learning. FPGA technology dates to the mid-1980s, but improvements in design software have made it increasingly accessible.Nature | 5 min read Omicron likely to weaken vaccine protectionEarly data hint that two shots of the Pfizer—BioNTech vaccine might offer less protection against the Omicron coronavirus variant than against other strains. Laboratory experiments showed that a booster dose could restore protection against Omicron, said the companies in a press release that has not been peer reviewed.’What else do you expect? This is a very mutated variant. We cannot expect it does nothing,’ says virologist Alex Sigal. A small preprint study by Sigal and his colleagues at the Africa Health Research Institute in South Africa also found a drop in virus-fighting antibodies against Omicron in serum samples from people who had received two doses of vaccine. Two other studies released in the past day have found similar results. ‘The positive message is that existing tools can actually deal with it,’ Sigal adds.Nature | 5 min readReferences: Pfizer–BioNTech press release & medRxiv preprint 1, preprint 2 & preprint 3 Worldwide mass vaccination against COVID-19 began on 8 December 2020, when 90-year-old Margaret Keenan received a shot of the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine in the United Kingdom. (BBC | 4 min read) Features & opinion‘Brazil’s water crisis is a world crisis’Brazil has the largest amount of fresh water in the world. About 20% of all global inland water flowing to the oceans is generated in Brazilian territory. Yet much of the nation now faces drought. Climate researchers Augusto Getirana, Renata Libonati and Marcio Cataldi explain the complex processes that have created the crisis and describe a plan for how the country can avoid the worst outcomes.Nature | 10 min read How to master scientific presentationsScience communicator Bruce Kirchoff outlines three ways to ensure that your presentations are engaging and convey the importance of your research to a wide audience. State your main finding in your title, use repeated problems and solutions to create a story, and use the word ‘but’ for dramatic effect, he says.Nature | 6 min read Image of the week Credit: NASA
This is among the first images collected by Landsat 9, an orbiting satellite run jointly by NASA and the US Geological Survey that launched in September. It shows part of the northwest coast of Australia, including clusters of dark-green mangrove swamps in protected inlets and bays. Fluffy cumulus clouds and wispy, high-altitude cirrus clouds hover above.See more of the month’s sharpest science shots, selected by Nature’s photo team. Wealthy nations’ failure to share vaccines with the world is delaying the end of the pandemic by years, says Andrea Taylor, a public-health policy analyst, in a Nature editorial. This newsletter is always evolving — tell us what you think! Please send your feedback to briefing@nature.com.Flora Graham, senior editor, Nature Briefing
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03689-8
