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Report on the state of the world’s ecosystems finds that human activities and climate change have significantly altered habitats such as coral reefs.Credit: The Ocean Agency/XL Catlin Seaview Survey

Human activity is destroying the ecosystems that we depend on for food, water and natural resources — and driving up to one million plant and animal species to extinction, many within decades. A groundbreaking United Nations-backed report is the first “single unified statement from the world’s governments that unambiguously makes clear the crisis we are facing for life on Earth”, says conservation scientist Thomas Brooks.

The positive moves we are making now are not enough — countries must make “transformative changes” to the way we produce food, in particular. The effects go hand in hand with climate change: agriculture is also a major carbon producer, and a warming world will make the extinction crisis worse. “We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide,” says atmospheric chemist Robert Watson, the chair of the panel, called IBPES, that produced the report.

Nature | 5 min read

Reference: Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IBPES) Global Assessment report summary (PDF file; the full report will be published later this year)

By the numbers 75% Land area on Earth that has been “significantly altered” by people, driven in large part by the production of food.

Facebook is giving social scientists unprecedented access to its data so that the researchers can investigate how social-media platforms can influence elections and alter democracies. The social network had no say in selecting the projects, which will be funded by eight charities. Researchers will have access to Facebook data such as the URLs that users have shared and demographic information, including gender and approximate age.

Nature | 4 min read

Britain’s outgoing chief medical officer, Sally Davies, says that there are still clear gaps in the fight against antimicrobial resistance. Davies spearheaded a United Nations report that called for countries to urgently phase out the use of antimicrobials in farming, invest in new technologies to combat resistance and strengthen regulation. Her biggest frustration? “A late recognition of the role of prevention, and of the importance of the environment we live in for promoting health,” she says.

Nature | 4 min read

Scientists studying cannabis in the United States must source it from a single facility — but the marijuana is genetically different to the stuff people are actually smoking. The finding suggests that research investigating the plant’s biological effects might not completely replicate the experience of people using commercially available strains ― something researchers have long suspected.

Nature | 4 min read

Reference: bioRxiv preprint

FEATURES & OPINION

Stress is a common denominator for students in medicine and science. Medical researchers Yoo Jung Kim and Erik Faber share what academia can learn from the medical community’s efforts to reduce burnout, including time away from the lab and exposure to non-academic job opportunities.

Nature | 6 min read

Every month since its launch a decade ago, Nature Chemistry has given each of the 118 known elements (plus the two rather special isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium and tritium) its moment in the Sun, in the form of its free-ranging, informative ‘In Your Element’ column. Today, the journal finished an epic Twitter thread of every single one (you can also find a collection of all of them online).

Nature Chemistry | 120 good reads

On the 60th anniversary of physicist, novelist and politician CP Snow’s “Two Cultures” lecture, economist Tim Harford revisits the idea of a gulf between science and the humanities. As an economist worried about Brexit, Harford says that he felt the “haunting sense of personal failure” that Snow describes when your expertise doesn’t sway policymakers. Nevertheless, scientists must collaborate — not dominate — in decision-making. “We don’t need a parliament full of chemists any more than we need one full of classicists,” says Harford. “We need a mix.”

The Financial Times | 8 min read