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Nature Briefing

Hello Nature readers,
Today we discover that medicinal knowledge is at risk of being lost along with threatened languages, ponder whether animals understand the concept of death and learn that Ebola can remain latent in human survivors.

Shaman of the Pataxó tribe, wearing feather headdress and smoking a pipe.
Pataxó people in Brazil speak Portuguese and a revitalized version of the Pataxó language, called Patxohã. (Cristiano Babini/Alamy)

Losing language means losing medicine

Threatened Indigenous languages convey unique knowledge of medicinal plants. Researchers analysed ethnobotanical datasets for North America, northwest Amazonia and New Guinea, which link more than 3,500 medicinal-plant species with 236 Indigenous languages. They found that 75% of the medicinal uses for these species are known in only one language. And those languages are the ones at greatest risk of being lost forever. “We found that those languages with unique knowledge are the ones at a higher risk of extinction,” says ecologist Jordi Bascompte. “There is a sort of a double-problem in terms of how knowledge will disappear.”

Mongabay | 7 min read
Reference: PNAS paper

How to understand the US pandemic now

Widespread vaccination will affect the immediate future of the pandemic in the United States — and it might diverge from what happens in other largely vaccinated countries. “The difference between the UK and the US isn’t just that fewer Americans are vaccinated. It’s that fewer of the most vulnerable Americans are vaccinated, and they tend to cluster together,” write three science writers in The Atlantic.

The Atlantic | 11 min read

675,400

The death toll of COVID-19 in the United States — overtaking the 1918 influenza pandemic as the deadliest disease event in US history. (STAT | 6 min read)

Features & opinion

Who is allowed to have physics’ wild ideas?

In Fear of a Black Universe, Black theoretical physicist Stephon Alexander asks: is the search for answers in modern physics hindered by an establishment that’s afraid to entertain the ideas of those it considers outsiders? An accomplished jazz musician, Alexander describes his narrative approach as an improvisation. It’s a dazzling, but challenging, approach for readers, writes reviewer Anil Ananthaswamy. For those who can keep up, the book makes a poignant case for why every scientist deserves equal opportunities to let their imagination soar.

Nature | 6 min read

‘Playing possum’ shows animals know death

The opossum’s death display, known as thanatosis, demonstrates that animals have some understanding of death, argues philosopher Susana Monsó. Not because opossums themselves necessarily have a concept of death, but because their predators must. “The distribution of thanatosis in the animal kingdom points to how extended the concept of death is likely to be in nature,” writes Monsó. “The concept of death should also be counted among those characteristics to which we can no longer resort to convince us of how very special we are.”

Aeon | 14 min read

An unsung pioneer of virology

During her lifetime, Marguerite Vogt did not receive a single major prize, but her work remains a gold standard in virology. Her painstaking, dangerous effort to grow the poliovirus in the laboratory was instrumental to the development of Albert Sabin’s oral polio vaccine. She was a musician and a mentor, but above all she was a scientist: at 14 she published her first paper, and her last at age 85.

Science News | 8 min read

News & views

Ebola can remain latent in human survivors

The genome of the Ebola virus that caused a 2021 outbreak in Guinea barely differs from that of the strain behind an epidemic nearly five years before, indicating that the virus remained dormant in survivors. “The unexpected observation that the virus can persist in the human body for such a long time has considerable implications for public health and care of survivors of Ebola,” writes virologist Robert Garry. Vaccines should be deployed strategically to ensure that the people most at risk of infection, such as health-care workers, are protected. Survivors, who face myriad personal and societal challenges, must not be further burdened with stigmatization on the basis of these findings. And researchers must determine whether vaccinating survivors can prevent the re-emergence of the disease.

Nature | 7 min read
This News & Views article is available to readers with subscriber access to Nature. Click here for help getting logged in with your institution’s subscription.
Reference: Nature paper
Graphic tracing host-host Ebola virus genome mutations accumulated during transmission between bats and humans.
The Ebola virus genome accumulates mutations with a relatively regular frequency as it replicates and passes from host to host, representing a molecular clock that tracks the history of the virus. An analysis of the genomes of the virus from an outbreak this year in Guinea showed a much smaller number of mutations between the outbreaks than would be expected if it had continued replicating and being transmitted between hosts during this period.

The stick-figure scientists drawn by the child of bioethicist Alison Bateman-House brilliantly capture ineffable experiences such as the horror of spilling something important and the fun of giving a nice long lecture.

Send me your favourite portrayal of a scientist — or any other feedback on this newsletter — to briefing@nature.com.

Flora Graham, senior editor, Nature Briefing

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