Daily briefing: ChatGPT use makes a mockery of grant applications – Nature.com
Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.
Advertisement
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar
You have full access to this article via your institution.
Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here.
The Psyche spacecraft launched successfully from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on 13 October.Credit: Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty
On Friday, a NASA spacecraft successfully began its journey to a rare and mysterious asteroid called Psyche — the largest metallic object in the Solar System. Of the million-plus asteroids in our Solar System, only a few are made mostly of metal (the rest are rock, or rock and ice). Psyche could be the exposed core of an ancient protoplanet — so it might reveal some of the secrets of Earth’s similar iron-rich core.
Nature | 5 min read
More than 200 ecologists analysed the same data sets and got widely divergent results. The exercise shows that “we really can’t be relying on any individual result or any individual study to tell us the whole story”, says ecology meta researcher Hannah Fraser. None of the answers are wrong, Fraser points out — the spread of results reflects factors such as participants’ training and how they set sample sizes.
Nature | 5 min read
Reference: EcoEvoRxiv preprint (not peer reviewed)
Soaring numbers of feral horses — known as brumbies — are helping to drive vulnerable species to extinction in the Australian alps, concludes a government inquiry. The report recommends reversing a ban on aerial shooting to cull horses in New South Wales — the first time that the federal government has weighed in on the issue. But it doesn’t go as far as saying that the state should repeal legislation that grants the horses protections as part of Australia’s cultural heritage.
Nature | 7 min read
Reference: Australian parliamentary report
The American Museum of Natural History in New York City will remove all human bones on public display as part of a pledge to address the legacy of its collection of some 12,000 human remains. This includes the bodies of Indigenous and enslaved people taken from their graves, and the remains of hundreds of New Yorkers whose bodies were given to medical schools as recently as the 1940s.
The New York Times | 9 min read
Gastrointestinal problems are some of the side effects of the new hormone-mimicking anti-obesity drugs semaglutide (Ozempic and Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro). Outside the controlled conditions of clinical trials, semaglutide increased the risk of pancreas inflammation and gastroparesis (food moving from the stomach to the intestines slower than it should) compared with an older weight-loss medication. There are concerns that tirzepatide could occasionally lead to low skeletal muscle mass that results in muscle weakness.
Nature | 5 min read
“Uganda has, as a legacy of colonialism, built bits and pieces of a scientific system but it has not comprehensively linked results to socio-economic transformation,” says epidemiologist Monica Musenero. As Uganda’s science minister, she pushes for science that fixes local problems and creation of a supportive system for research, including industrial parks and national grants.
Nature | 6 min read
When robotics researcher Juan Manuel Parrilla used the artificial intelligence (AI) tool ChatGPT to write parts of a grant proposal, it cut the workload from three days to three hours. Some people might see this as cheating, Parrilla says, but it actually highlights a much bigger problem: “What is the point of asking scientists to write documents that can be easily created with AI?”
Nature | 5 min read
What is life and how did it arise? A recent paper grappled with these eternal questions using a method called ‘assembly theory’ — and kicked a hornet’s nest in the scientific community. Assembly theory is a framework for understanding how complexity and evolution emerge in nature, before biological building blocks arise. Its attempts to bridge physics and biology tap into “a longstanding tension” between the fields, writes science journalist Philip Ball. “There is an inglorious history of other scientists (physicists in particular) barging into biology only to contribute very little.”
Chemistry World | 6 min read
Get to grips with the new paper on assembly theory in the Nature News & Views article by physicist George Ellis (8 min read, Nature paywall) or read Philip Ball’s own survey of the idea in Quanta from May (11 min read).
Reference: Nature paper
An annular eclipse treated parts of the United States, Central America and South America to a ‘ring of fire’ as the Moon partially blocked the Sun’s light. Astronomy writer Jeff Kanipe captured this stunning image in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. (Jeff Kanipe)
Mathematician Jang-Mei Wu is one of the ‘miracle group’ of six eminent female mathematicians, all born around 1950, who grew up during a tumultuous period in Taiwan. (Celebratio Mathematica | 32 min read)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03254-5
Last week, Leif Penguinson was admiring the impressive roots of a pine tree in Oulanka National Park, Finland. Did you find the penguin? When you’re ready, here’s the answer.
Thanks for reading,
Flora Graham, senior editor, Nature Briefing
With contributions by Katrina Krämer and Dyani Lewis
We’ve recently launched two new e-mails you might like. They’re free, and of course you can unsubscribe at any time.
• Nature Briefing: Cancer — a new weekly newsletter written with cancer researchers in mind. Sign up here to receive the next one.
• Nature Briefing: Translational Research covers biotechnology, drug discovery and pharma. Sign up here to get it free in your inbox each week.
Daily briefing: Words detected inside ancient Roman scrolls sealed by Mount Vesuvius eruption
Daily briefing: Why obesity researchers want to move beyond BMI
Daily briefing: Human voices are the scariest sound in the savanna
Daily briefing: Mammals probably evolved same-sex behaviour several times
Memphis, Tennessee
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (St. Jude)
Houston, Texas (US)
Baylor College of Medicine (BCM)
Houston, Texas (US)
Baylor College of Medicine (BCM)
Human Technopole is looking for an experienced and highly motivated Head of Research Facilities and Services. Human Technopole (HT) is a new interd…
Milan (IT)
Human Technopole
Call for top experts and scholars in the field of science and technology.
Shenyang, Liaoning, China
Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University
You have full access to this article via your institution.
Daily briefing: Words detected inside ancient Roman scrolls sealed by Mount Vesuvius eruption
Daily briefing: Why obesity researchers want to move beyond BMI
Daily briefing: Human voices are the scariest sound in the savanna
Daily briefing: Mammals probably evolved same-sex behaviour several times
An essential round-up of science news, opinion and analysis, delivered to your inbox every weekday.
Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.
© 2023 Springer Nature Limited
