Our editors' picks among the longer journalistic reports of the year.
The status of women in science, the nature of black holes and the role of cattle domestication in human prehistory were the topics of some of our favourite long-form pieces of 2013.
To track the fate of threatened species, a young scientist must follow the jungle path of a herpetologist who led a secret double life.
11 September 2013
By scanning blobs of brain activity, scientists may be able to decode people's thoughts, their dreams and even their intentions.
17 July 2013
Will an astronaut who falls into a black hole be crushed or burned to a crisp?
3 April 2013
Health officials are watching in horror as bacteria become resistant to powerful carbapenem antibiotics — one of the last drugs on the shelf.
24 July 2013
When a single genetic mutation first let ancient Europeans drink milk, it set the stage for a continental upheaval.
31 July 2013
Despite improvements, female scientists continue to face discrimination, unequal pay and funding disparities.
6 March 2013
A graphical tour through the history of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the science that underlies it.
18 September 2013
Graphene's dazzling properties promise a technological revolution, but Europe may have to spend €1 billion to overcome fundamental problems.
20 November 2013
More and more studies show that being overweight does not always shorten life — but some researchers would rather not talk about them.
22 May 2013
A cell strain extracted from an aborted fetus in 1962 remains a crucial, but controversial, source of cells more than 50 years later.
26 June 2013
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Best features of 2013. Nature (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2013.14369
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2013.14369