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AI HAS made staggering progress in mathematics in recent months, unearthing solutions to thorny puzzles that had evaded humans for decades. Key to technology firms being able to announce these complex new findings, confident in their correctness, is a niche field called formalisation. But recently, the developers behind formalisation tools have realised that the AI models have the potential to cheat their way to success. Now, the battle is on to tighten up the tools and prevent that from happening. Formalising mathematical theorems essentially turns them into code that allows computers to grapple with them, methodically working through the logic and exposing any flaws. The process is so thorough that if a theorem comes through intact, it is considered to have been proved beyond all reasonable doubt. The leading software…

AVOIDING sugary foods while taking a course of antibiotics might help protect the diversity of your gut microbiome. The array of bacteria in the gut plays a crucial role in supporting our digestion and our physical and mental health. But this diverse community can be disrupted by antibiotics, leading to digestive problems, fatigue and flare-ups of skin conditions. Stopping such disruption is particularly important for people with cancer, because greater gut microbiome diversity has been linked to better survival rates. To dig into this issue, Jonathan Peled at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and his colleagues studied 158 people with blood cancers. The participants were hospitalised for several weeks as they had chemotherapy to knock out their immune systems before an infusion of stem cells. To…

A RARE collection of early-medieval coins found in Rome has provided a window into a time when English travellers and expats had special rights in the city and thrived in their own Anglo-Saxon quarter. Historical records show that the English had their own area within the city, known as the Schola Saxonum. The newly uncovered hoard of coins, along with the remains of craft items such as leather, bone and metal, is the first material proof that the Anglo-Saxon quarter truly existed. It also suggests that the English, unlike other foreign nationals, had the right to use their own currency in parts of Rome. "The English quarter in Rome really was an interesting and vibrant place," says Rory Naismith at the University of Cambridge. "It might be compared with districts…

Animal behaviour ELEPHANTS appear to harmonise their vocal rumbles when they join together to form choruses, tuning their voices to sound more alike as the chorus unfolds. The findings could offer new insights into how elephants communicate and navigate life within their complex societies, says Sara Keen at Earth Species Project, a US non-profit organisation that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to attempt to decode non-human animal communication. "It's like what humans do in conversation, where you start to adopt speaking patterns" "It's sort of like what humans do in conversation, where you almost start to adopt the speaking patterns or accents of whoever you're interacting with," says Keen. Elephants communicate using a rich repertoire of body language, but also a wide range of sounds, including trumpet calls and…

THE strongest of the drugs currently approved for inducing weight loss has an even greater effect when combined with another hormone-targeting drug. The findings suggest combining the drugs could lead to more effective weight-loss therapies, an approach that could become available for wider use in the next few years. "It's a pretty astonishing degree of weight loss," says David Preiss at the University of Oxford, who wasn't involved in the latest research. Tirzepatide, sold under the brand names Mounjaro and Zepbound, is the most potent approved weight-loss drug. Throughout the world, it is used to treat adults who have type 2 diabetes or obesity, or who are overweight and have at least one weight-related condition, such as high blood pressure. The drug is administered through weekly injections and mimics two…

BABIES who have a strong immune reaction in the first week of life appear to have triple the risk of developing an allergy or eczema by age 1, compared with those who don't. But the long-term impact of this early immune response, now defined for the first time, seems to be modulated by the microbiome and how babies are fed. "If you ask 100 immunologists, they would say that immune development begins at birth and continuously develops over time, without discrete phases," says Petter Brodin at Imperial College London. But at a talk at an immune conference in London last month, Brodin challenged this idea. He revealed that he and his colleagues have found that if a baby has a strong immune response in the first week of life, this…

Neuroscience FIRMLY pressing down on shin bones for just a few minutes every day drastically improved movement and cognition in mice and pigs one week after they had a traumatic brain injury. The intervention stimulates bone cells that are sensitive to physical force, causing them to release substances that promote good brain health. "This is big news to me, as it reveals a previously underappreciated bone-brain communication system, and could potentially lead to new therapeutic approaches in the future," says Kristian Franze at the Max Planck Center for Physics and Medicine in Germany, who wasn't involved in the work. Traumatic brain injuries are usually caused by a forceful bump, blow or jolt to the head or body, such as during a fall. No approved drug restores lost brain function after…

Fieldnotes Kew Gardens, London IT IS an unseasonably warm day in September, at the end of a very long, very hot summer. Kevin Martin is sitting in the passenger seat of a golf buggy, staring at a stand of withering beech trees in the middle of Kew Gardens in south-west London. Where there should be a show of dancing green leaves, there are only wisps of brown curls amid bare branches. Martin is responsible for tending and curating the 11,000-strong tree collection at Kew. But successive heatwaves and a severe drought have been catastrophic for his wards this summer. Across Kew, branches stand bare against clear blue sky and leaves crunch under the feet of visitors, as the stressed trees shed their leaves early in an effort to survive the…

SATELLITE operators are facing a launch crisis as the number of available rockets diminishes, a situation that could last years and prevent new satellites reaching space. Last year, wait times for a rocket launch were 12 months or so, says Anatolii Papulov, founder and CEO of UK space-tech firm NewOrbit, but the situation has now changed dramatically. "The lead times to launch right now are basically 30 to 36 months," he says. "This will definitely impact a lot of start-ups." There “absolutely is a launch crisis at the moment”, says Caleb Henry, a senior analyst for US company Quilty Space, which is being caused by a number of factors. The first is that Elon Musk’s firm SpaceX is said to be sunsetting one of the most widely used rockets in…