Scientific community and society articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Better understanding of the determinants of residential water demand is important for Tropical Asian countries. Here the author studied how Singapore household electricity use from appliances modify weather-induced water demand and found that residential water and electricity demand respond differently to heat across different income groups.

    • Alberto Salvo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Credibility of long-term projection in quantitative models is continuously under debate and they rely on validation to prove projection accuracy. Here the authors investigated the views on the validation approaches and they show that empirical data plays an important role in the validation practice in all main areas of sustainability science.

    • Sibel Eker
    • , Elena Rovenskaya
    •  & Simon Langan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nutritional experience can have phenotypic consequences in subsequent generations, as is evident from studies in animals and plants. Here, Vågerö et al. find in a large three-generation cohort that access to food in the paternal grandfather associates with all-cause and cancer mortality in male grandchildren.

    • Denny Vågerö
    • , Pia R. Pinger
    •  & Gerard J. van den Berg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Permafrost thaw poses a serious threat to the sustainable development of Arctic communities. Here the authors show that most fundamental Arctic infrastructure and population will be at high hazard risk, even if the Paris Agreement target is achieved.

    • Jan Hjort
    • , Olli Karjalainen
    •  & Miska Luoto

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Solar steam generation is limited by fouling of solar converters, and the steam temperature is usually pinned to 100 °C. Here, both limitations are overcome in a system utilizing a solar absorber and light down-converter to achieve radiative heating, which does not require physical contact between absorber and water.

    • Thomas A. Cooper
    • , Seyed H. Zandavi
    •  & Gang Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biomedical image analysis challenges have increased in the last ten years, but common practices have not been established yet. Here the authors analyze 150 recent challenges and demonstrate that outcome varies based on the metrics used and that limited information reporting hampers reproducibility.

    • Lena Maier-Hein
    • , Matthias Eisenmann
    •  & Annette Kopp-Schneider

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Diversity is believed to raise effectiveness and performance but it contains many aspects. Here the authors studied the relationship between research impact and five classes of diversity and found that ethnic diversity had the strongest correlation with scientific impact.

    • Bedoor K. AlShebli
    • , Talal Rahwan
    •  & Wei Lee Woon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While successful mentors tend to train successful students in academic career, it’s unclear how mentorship determines chances of a success in a trainee. Here, Liénard and colleagues analyze approximately 20 K mentor/trainee relationships in life sciences, and find that success of trainees is associated with an intellectual synthesis between their mentors’ research.

    • Jean F. Liénard
    • , Titipat Achakulvisut
    •  & Stephen V. David

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Local air quality co-benefits can provide convincing support for climate action. Here the authors revisited air quality co-benefits of climate action in the context of NDCs and found that 71–99 thousand premature deaths can be avoided each year by 2030, offsetting the climate mitigation costs on a global level.

    • Toon Vandyck
    • , Kimon Keramidas
    •  & Bert Saveyn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Online misinformation is a threat to a well-informed electorate and undermines democracy. Here, the authors analyse the spread of articles on Twitter, find that bots play a major role in the spread of low-credibility content and suggest control measures for limiting the spread of misinformation.

    • Chengcheng Shao
    • , Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia
    •  & Filippo Menczer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Early childhood educational intervention has positive outcomes in adulthood, including higher education attainment, economic status, and overall health. This study shows that adults who underwent such intervention have greater enforcement of equality norm during social decision-making, potentially motivated by future planning.

    • Yi Luo
    • , Sébastien Hétu
    •  & Craig Ramey

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Paris Agreement includes bottom-up pledges and top-down warming threshold. Under this setting where countries effectively choose their own fairness principle, this article assesses the global warming implied by each Nationally Determined Contribution to inform the future ratcheting-up process.

    • Yann Robiou du Pont
    •  & Malte Meinshausen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The sense of ownership – of which objects belong to us and which to others - is an important part of our lives, but how the brain keeps track of ownership is poorly understood. Here, the authors show that specific brain areas are involved in ownership acquisition for the self, friends, and strangers.

    • Patricia L. Lockwood
    • , Marco K. Wittmann
    •  & Matthew F. S. Rushworth

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Complex networks can be a useful tool to investigate problems in social science. Here the authors use game theory to establish a network model and then use a machine learning approach to characterize the role of nodes within a social network.

    • Yuan Yuan
    • , Ahmad Alabdulkareem
    •  & Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There have been growing concerns about the exploitation of workers in the fisheries sectors. Here, Tickler et al. use a country-level metric of slavery to determine the risk of fisheries-level slavery across 20 countries, and find it rises as unreported catch increases and mean value of catch decreases.

    • David Tickler
    • , Jessica J. Meeuwig
    •  & Dirk Zeller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Humans infer the trustworthiness of others based on subtle facial features such as the facial width-to-height ratio, but it is not known whether other primates are sensitive to these cues. Here, the authors show that macaque monkeys prefer to look at human faces which appear trustworthy to humans.

    • Manuela Costa
    • , Alice Gomez
    •  & Angela Sirigu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Carbon budget is diminishing to comply with the target under 2 °C scenario. Facing the limited capacity to improve energy efficiency, the authors show that steelmaking with inherent decarbonisation process can potentially help achieve 2050 emission reduction targets under 2 °C scenario before 2030.

    • Sicong Tian
    • , Jianguo Jiang
    •  & Vasilije Manovic

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Investment in watershed services programs is growing, however the factors that contribute to sustainability of such programs are unclear. Here the authors use a large database of cities around the world to show that payment schemes are more likely to be present in watersheds with more agricultural land and less protected areas.

    • Chelsie L. Romulo
    • , Stephen Posner
    •  & Robert I. McDonald

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Men are often more willing to compete compared to women, which may contribute to gender differences in wages and career advancement. Here, the authors show that ‘power priming’ - encouraging people to imagine themselves in a situation of power - can close the gender gap in competitiveness.

    • Loukas Balafoutas
    • , Helena Fornwagner
    •  & Matthias Sutter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The decision when to stop an intervention is a critical component of parasite elimination programmes, but reliance on surveillance data alone can be inaccurate. Here, Michael et al. combine parasite transmission model predictions with disease survey data to more reliably determine when interventions can be stopped.

    • Edwin Michael
    • , Morgan E. Smith
    •  & Frank O. Richards

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Drivers of crop yield variability require quantification, and historical records can help in improving understanding. Here, Webber et al. report that drought stress will remain a key driver of yield losses in wheat and maize across Europe, and benefits from CO2 will be limited in low-yielding years.

    • Heidi Webber
    • , Frank Ewert
    •  & Daniel Wallach

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Rising demand for ruminant meat and dairy products in developing nations drives increasing GHG and ammonia emissions from livestock. Authors show here that only long-term adoption of global best-practice in sustainable intensification buffered by a short-term coping strategy of green-source trading can offer a way forward.

    • Yuanyuan Du
    • , Ying Ge
    •  & Raphael K. Didham

  • Article
    | Open Access

    An individual’s social network—their friends, family, and acquaintances—is important for their health, but existing tools for assessing social networks have limitations. Here, the authors introduce a quantitative social network assessment tool on a secure open-source web platform and show its utility in a nation-wide study.

    • Amar Dhand
    • , Charles C. White
    •  & Philip L. De Jager

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reinjection of saltwater, co-produced with oil, has the potential to trigger damaging earthquakes. Here, using Oklahoma and Kansas as an example, the authors present a new physics-based methodology to forecast future probabilities of potentially damaging induced-earthquakes in space and time.

    • Cornelius Langenbruch
    • , Matthew Weingarten
    •  & Mark D. Zoback

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the source of malaria outbreaks in low-transmission areas is important for controlling the disease. Here, the authors use mobile phone data to map malaria transmission in Madagascar, and are able to show that primary sources of infection in the capital city are found along populated coastal areas.

    • Felana Angella Ihantamalala
    • , Vincent Herbreteau
    •  & Amy Wesolowski

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Longobards invaded and conquered much of Italy after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Here, the authors sequence and analyze ancient genomic DNA from 63 samples from two cemeteries associated with the Longobards and identify kinship networks and two distinct genetic and cultural groups in each.

    • Carlos Eduardo G. Amorim
    • , Stefania Vai
    •  & Krishna R. Veeramah

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Yields vary between different cropping systems, though their temporal stability has not been quantified. Here, Knapp and van der Heijden present a meta-analysis showing that yields in organic agriculture have, per unit food produced, a lower temporal stability.

    • Samuel Knapp
    •  & Marcel G. A. van der Heijden

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The presence of opposite horizontal motion in the two eyes is a cue for perceiving motion-in-depth, but also leads to suppressed motion sensitivity. Here, the authors address this paradox and show that spatial and interocular integration mechanisms, distinct from the extraction of motion-in-depth, drive suppression.

    • Peter J. Kohler
    • , Wesley J. Meredith
    •  & Anthony M. Norcia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Digital traces of our lives have the potential to allow insights into collective behaviors. Here, the authors cluster consumers by their credit card purchase sequences and discover five distinct groups, within which individuals also share similar mobility and demographic attributes.

    • Riccardo Di Clemente
    • , Miguel Luengo-Oroz
    •  & Marta C. González

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Degradation—the loss of carbon stored in intact woodland—is very difficult to measure over large areas. Here, the authors show that carbon emissions from degradation in African woodlands greatly exceed those from deforestation, but are happening alongside widespread increases in biomass in remote areas.

    • Iain M. McNicol
    • , Casey M. Ryan
    •  & Edward T. A. Mitchard

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    Indigenous peoples are still underrepresented in genetic research. Here, the authors propose an ethical framework consisting of six major principles that encourages researchers and Indigenous communities to build strong and equal partnerships to increase trust, engagement and diversity in genomic studies.

    • Katrina G. Claw
    • , Matthew Z. Anderson
    •  & Joseph M. Yracheta

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    Synthetic biology often views the organism as a chassis into which a circuit can be inserted. Here the authors explore the idea of the organism as a core aspect of design, aiding researchers in navigating the genetic space opened up by SCRaMbLE.

    • Erika Szymanski
    •  & Jane Calvert

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Paraquat is a widely used herbicide that is highly toxic to humans upon acute ingestion or chronic exposure. Here, the authors generate a photosensitive formulation that releases paraquat upon exposure to UV light or sunlight, which shows an improved safety profile in zebrafish and mouse models, while maintaining substantial herbicidal activity.

    • Cheng Gao
    • , Qiaoxian Huang
    •  & Ruibing Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The decoy effect refers to the fact that the presence of a third option can shift people’s preferences between two other options even though the third option is inferior to both. Here, the authors show how the decoy effect can enhance cooperation in a social dilemma, the repeated prisoner’s dilemma.

    • Zhen Wang
    • , Marko Jusup
    •  & Stefano Boccaletti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Economists have observed that many people seem unwilling to save for the future. Here, the authors show that earning and saving are subject to a basic asymmetry in attentional choice, such that cues that are associated with saving are perceived as occurring later than cues associated with earning.

    • Kesong Hu
    • , Eve De Rosa
    •  & Adam K. Anderson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Data sharing is recognized as a way to promote scientific collaboration and reproducibility, but some are concerned over whether research based on shared data can achieve high impact. Here, the authors show that neuroimaging papers using shared data are no less likely to appear in top-ranked journals.

    • Michael P. Milham
    • , R. Cameron Craddock
    •  & Arno Klein

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quantifying burden on hydropower units for balancing variable renewable energy sources has been uncertain and difficult. Herein Yang et al. propose a framework and characterize the burden, performance and compensation of hydropower regulation of renewable power systems.

    • Weijia Yang
    • , Per Norrlund
    •  & Urban Lundin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reducing the adverse effects of climate change triggered by human activity requires cooperation on a global scale. Modelling this challenge as an evolutionary game shows that the emerging contributions of selfish players depend strongly on the risk scenario at stake.

    • Maria Abou Chakra
    • , Silke Bumann
    •  & Arne Traulsen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The effects of battery degradation on the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from electric vehicles are unknown. Here the authors show that the lifetime of a typical battery is between 5.2 and 13.3 years across the U.S., with an 11.5–16.2% increase in energy consumption and CO2 emissions.

    • Fan Yang
    • , Yuanyuan Xie
    •  & Chris Yuan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Strong positive and strong negative reciprocators reward cooperation and punish defection, respectively, regardless of future benefits. Here, Weber and colleagues demonstrate that dispositions towards strong positive and strong negative reciprocity are not correlated within individuals.

    • Till O. Weber
    • , Ori Weisel
    •  & Simon Gächter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The cumulative development of culture has proven difficult to study in the laboratory. Here, the authors examine entries to a series of large programming contests to show that successful entries are usually ‘tweaks’ of existing solutions, but occasional ‘leaps’ can bring larger benefits.

    • Elena Miu
    • , Ned Gulley
    •  & Luke Rendell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ambiguous uncertainty refers to situations where the likelihood of specific outcomes are not known. Here, the authors show that people tolerant to ambiguous uncertainty are more likely to make costly decisions to cooperate with or trust others.

    • Marc-Lluís Vives
    •  & Oriel FeldmanHall

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