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Hello _Nature_ readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here . AFRICA’S FIRST HEALTH EMERGENCY DECLARED A concerning strain of the monkeypox virus
has spread rapidly across central Africa in the past few months. The outbreak prompted the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to declare its first-ever public-health emergency
on 13 August and the World Health Organization (WHO) is meeting as I write to consider a global declaration. The moves reflect scientists’ deep concern that the outbreak of mpox, the
disease caused by the monkeypox virus, could evolve into an epidemic that spreads across the continent — and possibly beyond. Nature | 6 min read YOUR PAPERS ARE TRAINING AI MODELS
Artificial-intelligence developers are buying access to valuable data sets that contain research papers — raising uncomfortable questions about copyright. Anything that is available to read
online — whether in an open-access repository or not — is “pretty likely” to have been fed into an LLM already, says AI researcher Lucy Lu Wang. “And if a paper has already been used as
training data in a model, there’s no way to remove [it].” Nature | 6 min read THE HOTTEST SURVIVABLE TEMPERATURE Researchers are using state-of-the-art climate chambers to explore when
blistering conditions threaten life — and the limit is lower than we thought. “If you look at heat advisories from well-respected organizations like the US Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, the World Health Organization, they’re fraught with errors when it comes to human physiology,” says physiologist Larry Kenney. Many are based on a theoretical model that gives a
‘wet-bulb temperature’ (which accounts for the effects of heat and humidity) of 35 °C as the limit at which a young, healthy person would die after six hours. In a 2021 study based on data
from real people, Kenney and his colleagues found a survival limit of around 31 °C, and it is likely to be even lower depending on the conditions. Nature | 9 min read SIGNS OF LIQUID WATER
DEEP WITHIN MARS Reservoirs 11.5 to 20 kilometres below the surface of Mars might hold liquid water. If so, it would be the first found on the planet. The evidence comes from data gathered
by NASA’s InSight lander, which retired in 2022. InSight monitored seismic waves created by Marsquakes, which suggest that the planet has a layer of fractured rocks saturated with liquid
water deep underground. BBC | 3 min read Reference: _PNAS_ paper FEATURES & OPINION HOW TO FIGHT ANTIBIOTIC-RESISTANT PATHOGENS Natural products made by bacteria, small molecules
discovered with the help of AI and immune-boosting drugs are just some of the strategies researchers are investigating as new ways to fight bacteria that are increasingly resistant to
existing antibiotics . Most conventional antibiotics approved in recent years are simply variants of a known class and can be used for just a few years before resistance emerges. Scientists
are turning to new strategies to head off what some are warning could be pandemic caused by once-treatable infections. “We have to run in order to stay in place,” says microbiologist Kim
Lewis. Nature | 10 min read INDIA’S BIOLOGISTS PUSH BACK ON HARASSMENT The issue of sexual harassment among conservation biologists in India became more prominent last year, when women
started described their experiences on an Instagram account called Women of the Wild India. _Nature_ interviewed 12 female researchers who say they were harassed while working at Indian
conservation biology organizations. The stories point to a broader pattern of misconduct and verbal abuse by some high-ranking researchers towards younger women in their charge . In theory,
the country has a powerful sexual-harassment law to protect women, but it doesn’t always work in practice. “Unfortunately, courts don’t treat sexual harassment with much seriousness,” says
lawyer Vrinda Grover. Nature | 10 min read THE INSIDE STORY OF RNA “Folding into origami-like shapes, it can pull off wild stunts that make its genetic parent, DNA, look like a one-trick
pony,” writes chemist Thomas Cech. In _The Catalyst_ , Cech tells the behind-the-scenes story of the discoveries that led to RNA stealing the limelight from DNA . Cech’s own
Nobel-prizewinning discovery of RNA behaving like an enzyme supports the idea that life might have started with RNA. Today, RNA shines in medicine, whether its mRNA vaccines to fight viruses
like COVID, or CRISPR RNA — taken from bacteria — for gene editing. In just over a decade, the use of CRISPR for gene editing has become so ubiquitous that, Cech says, “it’s become a verb,
like ‘google’”. Nature | 6 min read IMAGE OF THE WEEK In this view through the window of the SpaceX spacecraft docked to the International Space Station, Boeing's Starliner spacecraft
is shown docked nearby. Beset by teething troubles, the Starliner was not able to return with astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams as planned on 13 June. Their stay could end up
lasting many months — meanwhile, they’re running short on clean clothes and Wilmore is camping out in a sleeping bag. ( Time | 5 min read ) QUOTE OF THE DAY “THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS
SHARK-INFESTED WATERS, IN THE SAME WAY THAT THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A CHILD-INFESTED SCHOOL. YOU CANNOT INFEST YOUR OWN HOME.” Author Katherine Rundell decries the demonization of sharks
in a review essay that includes marine biologist Jasmin Graham’s new book, _Sharks don’t sink_ . ( The New Yorker | 11 min read )