Nature Briefing in Pictures 3/17/2018 Get Nature Briefing in your inbox fr

The Nature Briefing

newsletter is an essential round-up of science news, opinion and analysis, free in your inbox every weekday.

"When we write

Nature Briefing

, we track down the best science journalism — from breaking news you need to know, to fresh perspectives you may have missed. Let us get you up to speed on the wider world of science in the time it takes to drink a coffee."

---Flora Graham, editor of Nature Briefing

Simpler tools (left) gaveway to smaller and more complex versions (right) in Kenya’s Olorgesailie Basin.(Human Origins Programme, Smithsonian)

Advances in human behaviour came surprisingly early

Stone tools found in Kenya suggest that early humans displayed complex behaviours such as trading and communicating ideas roughly 320,000 years ago, 100,000 years earlier than previously thought. These behaviours may have also coincided with — and even been driven by — major climate changes.

Image of the week

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The foothills of Mt. Sharp, as seen by the Mars Curiosity rover

An engineering student atthe University of California, Santa Barbara, displays an LGBTQ slogan. (Glenn Beltz/flickr/CC BY 2.0)

LGBQ students are leaving science degrees

Students who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or queer are being squeezed out of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) undergraduate degrees. A study of US university students reveals that LGBQ undergraduates are slightly more likely than heterosexual students to work in a laboratory or do fieldwork, but are 8% less likely to stay in their STEM degree by their senior year.

Quote of the week

“His passing has left an intellectual vacuum in his wake. But it’s not empty. Think of it as a kind of vacuum energy permeating the fabric of spacetime that defies measure.”

Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, pays homage to Stephen Hawking. (Twitter)

Physicist and icon Stephen Hawking dies aged 76

Stephen Hawking, one of the most influential physicists of the twentieth century and perhaps the most celebrated icon of contemporary science, died in the early hours of Wednesday morning at his home in Cambridge, England. Hawking had lived with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (motor neuron disease) since his early twenties.

? Get up-to-date with Hawking’s influential physics, his exceptional life story and what the future holds for experimental tests of some of his findings.

See collections of remembering Stephen Hawking

http://go.nature.com/2DCO2V1

? In Nature’s obituary, Martin Rees, the United Kingdom’s Astronomer Royal, lauds Hawking’s contribution to physics, his enlightening books and his achievement against all the odds.

Click and read Nature"s obituary (translation).

? “Those who knew Hawking would clearly appreciate the dominating presence of a real human being, with an enormous zest for life, great humour, and tremendous determination, yet with normal human weaknesses, as well as his more obvious strengths,” writes physicist Roger Penrose in his Guardian obituary of Hawking.

? Delve into Nature’s collection of news, research and books on the remarkable physicist. Our modest tribute to the man, and the legend.

Learn more about Hawking"s classic book, A Brief History of Time (translation)

Vladimir Putin shakes hands with a robot built mainly with Russian-made parts. (Alexei Druzhinin\TASS via Getty)

Russian science chases escape from mediocrity

With Vladimir Putin set to win another presidential term, researchers wonder whether his government will reverse decades of decline. Putin’s government has gradually increased public science spending, but Russian science still suffers from the after-effects of the break-up of the Soviet Union, excessive state bureaucracy and entrenched opposition to reform.

The experimental fusion reactor at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. (PPPL)

MIT collaboration aims to build better fusion reactor

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, together with a private company, plans to build a pilot fusion-energy plant within 15 years. Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a spin-off of MIT, aims to build smaller, cheaper reactors than current tokamak designs. The group will use commercially available superconductors to create strong electromagnets that can better confine a reactor"s hot plasma fuel.

Infographic of the week

Go to nature.com/news to read more about these stories or click

Read More

to get Nature Briefing in your inbox free every weekday.

Sign up for the daily Nature Briefing email newsletter. Stay up to date with what matters in science and why, handpicked from Nature and other publications worldwide.