Hello Nature readers,
Today we hear that a US judge has ordered the NIH to restore hundreds of grants, learn that industrial slag can turn to rock within decades and see the first ever artificial solar eclipse.

NIH cuts must be restored, rules judge

A US judge has ruled that the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) must restore funding to hundreds of research projects that were cancelled because they touched on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), sexual and gender minorities (LGBT+) and COVID-19. The order covers only the scientists named in the lawsuits and in the 16 states that sued the government — about one-third of 2,400 projects that have been cut at the NIH. The judge took time after the ruling to make clear his opinion on what drove the cuts. “This represents racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community,” said Judge William Young, who was appointed by former Republican president Ronald Reagan. “I would be blind not to call it out.”

Healthy mice, with a dash of human cells

By injecting human cells into the amniotic fluid of pregnant mice, researchers have grown mice with a sprinkling of human cells in their intestines, liver and brain. “It’s a crazy experiment,” says biomedical engineer Xiling Shen. The injection “didn’t even break the embryonic wall”, he added. The simple technique could be “game changing” for the field, says stem-cell biologist Hideki Masaki. But researchers say that, for the technique to be useful, more work needs to be done to increase the proportion of human cells that grow in the organs.

Israel–Iran conflict damages science labs

Scientists are among those people who have been killed and harmed in the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. On 13 June, Israeli strikes targeting Iran’s nuclear-weapon capabilities killed several nuclear scientists. Retaliatory attacks launched by Iran reportedly caused substantial damage to the prestigious Weizmann Institute in Israel, which is considered by Iran to be a military target. For Iranians, the effects are compounded by years of sanctions and lack of freedoms within their country.

Waste can turn to rock within decades

Industrial waste is turning into solid rock in as little as 35 years. Researchers analysed a cliff made up of millions of cubic metres of slag produced by now-defunct iron and steel foundries along a stretch of the English coast. A coin from 1934 and an aluminium can tab manufactured after 1989 were embedded in the material, showing that it had lithified — essentially turning into rock — within that period. “All the activity we’re undertaking at the Earth’s surface will eventually end up in the geological record as rock, but this process is happening with remarkable, unprecedented speed,” said study co-author John MacDonald.

Freeze frame: cracking molecular motion

When it comes to protein motion, it’s not a case of ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ — it’s ‘blink and you’ll miss it a few hundred times’. Working on that timescale has long stymied biologists, but the rapid evolution of time-resolved cryo-electron microscopy (TR cryo-EM) over the past several years has made it possible to reconstruct dynamic processes with near-atomic detail. But the technique is niche: TR cryo-EM requires considerable expertise and specialized equipment, and researchers are still working out how to interpret the resulting data. “Nature is under no obligation to be simple,” cautions biochemist Radoslav Enchev.

How complexity can revitalize mindfulness

Mindfulness has been shown to have positive impacts, but has also been criticized as a one-size-fits-all approach to complex issues. Part of the problem might stem from how a web of interwoven Buddhist practices was simplified for a secular Western audience, argues complexity scientist Pavel Chvykov. He outlines how his field — which focuses on the emergent properties of systems with many interconnected parts — can help to recover the lost depths of this modern technique.