Papers need to include fewer claims and more proof to make the scientific literature more reliable, warns William G. Kaelin Jr. | Continue reading
Seven researchers discuss the challenges posed by science’s embrace of one global language. | Continue reading
This article explores the effect of ideological polarization on team performance. By analysing millions of edits to Wikipedia, the authors reveal that politically diverse editor teams produce higher-quality articles than homogeneous or moderate teams, and they identify the mechan … | Continue reading
Compared to nearby rural areas, mega-cities can produce an atmosphere that is, paradoxically, drier yet persistently more cloudy. Cities are known to create an “urban heat island”, but a multi-institution team led by Natalie Theeuwes from the University of Reading now shows that … | Continue reading
Manufacturers are ditching equation editors in word-processing software in favour of the LaTeX typesetting language. Here’s how to get started. | Continue reading
We presented the novel concept of a hybrid-seawater fuel cell, comprising a closed-negative electrode, a NASICON solid electrolyte, and an open-seawater positive electrode. Hard carbon and a Sn-C nanocomposite were successfully applied as alternative anode materials for this hybr … | Continue reading
Observations of 12 X-ray binaries that contain black holes within the central parsec of the Galaxy suggest the existence of hundreds more, and even more isolated black holes. | Continue reading
A chromatin-focused chemical screen identified CBP/EP300 bromodomain inhibitors as enhancers of reprogramming. These inhibitors decrease histone H3 lysine 27 acetylation, chromatin accessibility and expression of somatic-specific genes. | Continue reading
A new law formalizes restrictions on the collection and use of people's genetic data. | Continue reading
Machine learning is helping experts to figure out who painted what, a modified PET scanner can produce 3D images of the whole body in seconds and the world’s most powerful superconducting magnet. | Continue reading
Magnet generates an unprecedented 45.5-tesla field. | Continue reading
Norman-Haignere et al. report that humans but not macaque monkeys possess cortical regions with a strong preference for harmonic tones compared to noise. This species difference may be driven by the demands of speech and music perception in humans. | Continue reading
The CRISPR–Cas9-mediated generation of germline-transmissible mutations of SHANK3 in cynomolgus macaques (Macaca fascicularis) forms the basis of a non-human-primate model of autism spectrum disorder and Phelan–McDermid syndrome. | Continue reading
The modified scanner also requires less radioactive exposure, vastly broadening its applications. | Continue reading
A new constraint on atmospheric levels of ozone. | Continue reading
Hunting styles and flight morphologies of aerial predators are adapted to their habitat structure and prey behaviour. Here, the authors reconstruct flight trajectories of Harris’ Hawks Parabuteo unicinctus and find that these follow a mixed guidance law that is not thrown off by … | Continue reading
Photon collection from quantum emitters is difficult, and their scale requires the use of free-space optical measurement setups which prevent packaging of quantum devices. Here, the authors design and fabricate a metasurface that acts as an immersion lens to collect and collimate … | Continue reading
Funders should award competitive grants directly to journals to underwrite the costs of open access, urges Adriano Aguzzi. | Continue reading
A French court has ordered the return of 45 dinosaur and animal fossils to Brazil, and will soon rule on the fate of a spectacular pterosaur skeleto | Continue reading
A two-step sequential broadband nanofocusing technique offers an external efficiency of ~50% over nearly all the visible range on a fibre-coupled plasmonic nanowire probe. Its integration with a scanning tunnelling microscope realizes lens-free tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy wit … | Continue reading
The velocity gradient technique is used to measure the magnetic field orientations and magnetization of five low-mass star-forming molecular clouds, also finding that collapsing regions constitute a small fraction of the volume in these clouds. | Continue reading
Reducing the radiation dose for medical CT scans can provide a less invasive imaging method, but requires a method for reconstructing an image up to the image quality from a full-dose scan. In this article, Wang and colleagues show that the deep learning approach, combined with t … | Continue reading
In individual tungsten diselenide nanodisks, excitonic and anapole modes can strongly couple to form a polariton. | Continue reading
Another researcher has announced controversial plans to gene edit babies. The scientific community must intervene. | Continue reading
Magnetic resonance imaging is widely used for the diagnosis of many ailments and efforts to continuously improve image resolution and decrease acquisition time are strongly sought after. The authors demonstrate that the application of specially designed metamaterials could help i … | Continue reading
Sharon Weinberger commends a book on how a film inspired the United States to develop technology to capture everyone’s every move. | Continue reading
Strain-induced phase change in MoTe2 enables reversible channel conductivity switching in a field-effect transistor geometry. | Continue reading
Since 1900, nearly 3 species of seed-bearing plants have disappeared per year ― 500 times faster than they would naturally. | Continue reading
Functional metagenomic screening identified a pair of enzymes from the gut bacterium Flavonifractor plautii that can efficiently convert A antigen to the H antigen of universal O type blood. | Continue reading
Ultra-high-resolution models of a black hole confirm a hypothesis proposed more than 40 years ago. | Continue reading
Thousands of varieties of wine grapes have been recorded and described in historical accounts, some going back as far as the Middle Ages, but genetic relationships between ancient and modern varieties were unknown. Genomic sequencing of 28 seeds, dating back as far as the Iron Ag … | Continue reading
The proposal follows a Chinese scientist who claimed to have created twins from edited embryos last year. | Continue reading
Monolayers of perovskite oxides fabricated and imaged. | Continue reading
Survey finds that ‘normal’ human tissues are riddled with mutations. | Continue reading
Banded iron formations could not have formed by postdepositional oxidation, according to four million hydrogeological box model iterations that failed to reproduce secondary oxidation on reasonable timescales. | Continue reading
Analyses of 34 ancient genomes from northeastern Siberia, dating to between 31,000 and 600 years ago, reveal at least three major migration events in the late Pleistocene population history of the region. | Continue reading
Emission from the 1.3-millimetre hydrogen recombination line reveals a rotating disk of cool gas 0.004 parsecs in radius around the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Galaxy. | Continue reading
Palaeoproteomics offers an opportunity to resolve molecular phylogenies especially in contexts where ancient DNA does not preserve. Here collagen sequences resolve sloth phylogenies differently from morphology-based estimates, illuminating the utility of proteomics in systematics … | Continue reading
Recombination of excitons to produce molecular light emission is made more efficient by controlling electron spin within the molecule to produce spin-triplet excitons only, without the usual accompanying spin-singlet excitons. | Continue reading
An explanation for the advent and evolution of plate tectonics on Earth. | Continue reading
Synchrotron Mössbauer source spectroscopy is used to reveal that haematite remains magnetic in cold subducting slabs at the depth of the transition zone in the Earth’s mantle, with implications for the locations of magnetic poles during inversions of the Earth’s magnetic field. | Continue reading