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NASA has been given an ambitious deadline for returning humans to the Moon: boots on the lunar ground by 2024. But the plan — dubbed Artemis, after Apollo’s twin sister — faces big challenges, including constructing a new heavy-lift rocket, developing a lunar lander for the first time since 1972 and wooing Congress for the money to make it happen. Meanwhile, China looks likely to land astronauts on the Moon by the mid-2030s.

Nature | 6 min read

Turning a blind eye to an international outcry, the Hungarian parliament has passed a law that gives the government control over 40 or so institutes belonging to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The government says that its aim is to make research more innovative. Critics say the takeover is unconstitutional and threatens academic freedom. The law, which still needs to be formally ratified by Hungary’s President János Áder, is set to come into effect next month.

Nature | 3 min read

The Philistines — the Iron Age people burdened in the Bible with a bad rep as enemies of the Israelites — probably came from southern Europe. The genomes of four infants who died around 3,000 years ago in the Philistine city of Ashkelon mark an influx of European-related DNA in the population compared with people who lived there in the centuries before and after. The results hint at a grain of truth in ancient histories that say the ‘Sea Peoples’, displaced by the Late Bronze Age collapse in southern Europe, resettled in the eastern Mediterranean.

Science | 5 min read

Reference: Science Advances paper

FEATURES & OPINION

The current system for crediting authors often leaves specialists such as programmers, data analysts and statisticians out in the cold. That dampens the motivation to develop skills that are essential for the practice of good science, argues cognitive scientist Alex Holcombe. A machine-readable classification system called CRediT (the Contributor Roles Taxonomy) offers a better way to document who does what in research — Holcombe urges more fields to use and develop it.

Nature | 4 min read

He was a herpetologist who enjoyed academia, she was an ecologist who preferred to apply her expertise to decision-making. Finding a job location to suit them both would be a challenge. Rachel Katz and Sean Sterrett turned to a structured decision-making process called PrOACT (short for: frame the problem, identify objectives, explore alternatives, predict consequences, evaluate trade-offs) to decide what they really wanted in life and how to achieve their goals.

Nature | 6 min read

Southern California’s endless beaches, Malibu mansions and coastal highways are legendary. Now sea level rise is eating away at them, leaving planners struggling to decide what to do next. The Los Angeles Times explores how the science of coastal erosion collides with people’s aversion to “managed retreat”.

Los Angeles Times | 30 min read plus an interactive game

QUIRKS OF NATURE