An interdisciplinary investigation of the Dallol polyextreme environment reveals two physicochemical barriers to life in the presence of surface liquid water: high chaotropicity–low water activity and hyperacidity–salt combinations. | Continue reading
The 20-day-old monkey embryos could reopen the debate about how long the human variety should be allowed to grow in a dish. | Continue reading
A new strong, biocompatible and biodegradable double-sided tape can adhere to wet tissues and devices through a mechanism involving rapid water removal from the surface, swift hydrogen and electrostatic interactions, and covalent bonding. | Continue reading
Using mouse lines in which subsets of neurons are genetically labelled, the authors provide generalized anatomical rules for connections within and between the cortex and thalamus. | Continue reading
Results from tests of unvaccinated children and monkeys come as measles cases spike around the world. | Continue reading
Long-term standardized monitoring reveals the scale of biodiversity losses. | Continue reading
A high temperature allows fast charging of the lithium batteries used in electric and hybrid vehicles. | Continue reading
DeepMind’s AlphaStar beat all but the very best humans at the fast-paced sci-fi video game. | Continue reading
Abdellaoui et al. examine the geographic distribution of human DNA differences in Great Britain, finding that the geographic distribution of polygenic scores for educational attainment and other complex traits resembles the geographic distribution of economic differences. | Continue reading
Researchers question official figures showing a sharp rise in the tiger population, and the country’s plans to protect the species. | Continue reading
A model demonstrates that people who eventually succeed and those who do not may initially appear similar, but are characterized by fundamentally distinct failure dynamics in terms of the efficiency and quality of each subsequent attempt to succeed. | Continue reading
Debate highlights broader concerns about tools that use the results of direct-to-consumer genetic testing. | Continue reading
Accurate estimates of global mean sea-level rise are important. Here the authors employ a new digital elevation model (DEM) utilizing neural networks and show that the new DEM more than triples the NASA SRTM-based estimates of current global population occupying land below projec … | Continue reading
Ahead of this year’s award announcements, Göran Hansson speaks about measures to address the imbalance in gender and ethnicity among winners. | Continue reading
A deep network is best understood in terms of components used to design it—objective functions, architecture and learning rules—rather than unit-by-unit computation. Richards et al. argue that this inspires fruitful approaches to systems neuroscience. | Continue reading
A phylogenetically diverse dataset of birds reveals that eggshell pigmentation may have been shaped by thermoregulatory needs, with birds in colder habitats having darker eggs. | Continue reading
The discovery of a remarkable cage-like carbon molecule. | Continue reading
The week in science: 11–17 October 2019. | Continue reading
The collaborators will take advantage of recent advances in cancer genetics and imaging. | Continue reading
Cells trigger an unfolded protein response (UPR) in the endoplasmic reticulum, but its regulation by mitochondria is unclear. Here, the authors report a 54-residue microprotein PIGBOS that participates in inter-organelle contact between the endoplasmic reticulum and the mitochond … | Continue reading
Lynsey Bunnefeld and her spouse took advantage of shared parental leave following their son’s birth, and this is what it taught them. | Continue reading
Lactylation is a newly discovered epigenetic modification. | Continue reading
Fossils shed light on how aquatic vertebrates evolved into land dwellers. | Continue reading
Karishma Kaushik thinks that learning to share details of her personal life at work has made her a better academic mentor. | Continue reading
Finding novel ways of harvesting energy is of fundamental importance in an energy-hungry world. The authors propose a “spin engine” with the potential experimental ability to generate electrical power at room temperature by harvesting the thermal energy of paramagnetic centers us … | Continue reading
Designing electronically asymmetric environment across monolayer graphene enhances the photo-thermoelectric effect and enables efficient infrared photodetection. Here, the authors report a photodetector based on CVD grown nano-patterned graphene with high responsivity of ~2900 V/ … | Continue reading
Nanoscale biological assemblies play crucial roles in all living systems and display a variety of chemical functionalities. Here the authors show that it is possible to replicate some of the biochemical functions in similarly-sized assemblies made from inorganic nanoparticles. | Continue reading
An analysis of sound waves from Mount Etna showcases a method that could aid volcano monitoring worldwide. | Continue reading
While the crisis of statistics has made it to the headlines, that of mathematical modelling hasn’t. Something can be learned comparing the two, and looking at other instances of production of numbers.Sociology of quantification and post-normal science can help. | Continue reading
While the crisis of statistics has made it to the headlines, that of mathematical modelling hasn’t. Something can be learned comparing the two, and looking at other instances of production of numbers.Sociology of quantification and post-normal science can help. | Continue reading
Spin-polarized tunnelling data show that the breakdown of antiferromagnetic order and the collapse of the spectral gap are not correlated in Sr2IrO4. This indicates that short-range magnetic correlations are not behind the emergence of the pseudogap. | Continue reading
Trivedi et al. find that phase separation of the chromosome passenger complex is essential for its localization and function at the inner centromere during mitosis. | Continue reading
Study reveals rampant racism in decision-making software used by US hospitals — and highlights ways to correct it. | Continue reading
Volcanoes that typically erupt effusively can generate highly explosive eruptions of basaltic lava under specific temperature and viscosity conditions, suggest crystallization experiments combined with numerical models of magma fragmentation. | Continue reading
The company says that its quantum computer is the first to perform a calculation that would be practically impossible for a classical machine. | Continue reading
A six-coordinate transition-metal complex with a hexagonal planar geometry is isolated and characterized. | Continue reading
An explosion of fossil finds reveals that ancient mammals evolved a wide variety of adaptations allowing them to exploit the skies, rivers and underground lairs. | Continue reading
A diverse intestinal microbiota is required for mice to undergo extinction-related neuronal plasticity and normal fear extinction learning. | Continue reading
The gut microbiota controls fear extinction in mice. | Continue reading
A 53-qubit processor demonstrates quantum supremacy. | Continue reading
In offspring exposed to THC in utero, molecular, synaptic and circuit reorganizations lead to a hyperdopaminergic phenotype and behavioral susceptibility. The neurosteroid pregnenolone restores both dopamine function and abnormal behavior. | Continue reading
Using billions of words of digitized historical text, Hills et al. develop and validate a measure of national subjective wellbeing, the National Valence Index, going back 200 years. | Continue reading
The strange circumstances surrounding the invention of the world’s first PC are probed by a new book — Sharon Weinberger reviews. | Continue reading
Quantum computing will suffer if supremacy is overhyped. Everyday quantum computers are still decades away. | Continue reading