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
Genomes of ancient peoples in the far north. | Continue reading
Traditional therapies have been included in a global diagnostic compendium. That comes with risks. | Continue reading
The British Journal of Anaesthesia’s unusual experiment is designed to broaden replicability efforts beyond just methods and results. | Continue reading
Cases have doubled in just over two months in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. | Continue reading
Once a water-rich Eden, the hellish planet could reveal how to find habitable worlds around distant stars. | Continue reading
An interlayer Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction is observed in a synthetic antiferromagnet, with implications for achieving chiral spin textures in multilayered thin films. | Continue reading
Radionuclides are of great importance for fields such as nuclear medicine and waste recycling, but their efficient purification remains a challenge. Here the authors show that an octadentate hydroxypyridinone chelator enables efficient and robust separation processes for isotopes … | Continue reading
Thousands of people march against government proposal to take control of nation’s leading research institutes. | Continue reading
Can the human brain successfully control additional body parts beyond the ones we normally possess? Here, the authors study two polydactyly individuals (with an additional finger on each hand) and show that they can carry out more complex movements, performing with only one hand … | Continue reading
For most actors sustained productivity defines success. Here the authors study the careers of actors and identify a "rich-get-richer" mechanism with respect to productivity, the emergence of hot streaks and the presence of gender bias, and are able to predict whether the most pro … | Continue reading
Chandra X-ray Observatory spectral observations of the active star HR 9024 provide evidence of plasma motions that indicate a stellar flare and subsequent coronal mass ejection. This event provides critical information on non-solar coronal mass ejections and a point of comparison … | Continue reading
Clostridium difficile toxin A utilizes host sulfated glycosaminoglycans and low-density lipoprotein receptor for host cell entry and intoxication. | Continue reading
A global warming hiatus occurred during 1998 and 2012 but its effects on phenology are unclear. Here the authors examine the trends in spring and autumn phenology in the northern hemisphere and the effects of the warming hiatus and show that phenology change rate in the northern … | Continue reading
Christopher Howe delights in a new book on the planet’s most powerful organisms — algae. | Continue reading
Study of almost half a million people links mutation that protects against HIV infection to an earlier death. | Continue reading
Government concerns are also posing difficulties for US academia at large. | Continue reading
Experiment overturns Bohr’s view of quantum jumps, demonstrating that they possess a degree of predictability and when completed are continuous, coherent and even deterministic. | Continue reading
All researchers should strive to improve the quality, relevance and reliability of their work. | Continue reading
Eutectic Ga-In droplets can be functionalized with various polymers and co-polymers using atom transfer radical polymerization. The droplets are ready for direct solution processing to form liquid-metal nanocomposites for potential applications in soft robotics. | Continue reading
A systematic change in Jupiter’s magnetic field can be detected by collating all data obtained in the last 45 years by multiple spacecraft, from Pioneer 10 to Juno. Such variation can be attributed to the zonal winds, which advect the magnetic field from the deep atmospheric laye … | Continue reading
The dream of microbiome-based medicine requires a fresh approach — an ecological and evolutionary understanding of host-microbe interactions — argues Lita Proctor. | Continue reading
The spectrum of Hawking radiation is measured in an analogue black hole composed of rubidium atoms, confirming Hawking’s prediction that Hawking radiation is thermal with a temperature given by the surface gravity. | Continue reading
Sanger’s decision prompts questions among some scientists, who fear the UK centre could fall behind. | Continue reading
The origin of viruses is an unsolved, controversial question. In this Opinion article, Krupovic, Dolja and Koonin propose a new scenario for the origin of viruses based on primordial, selfish replicators acquiring structural proteins from cells, enabling them to form virions. | Continue reading
Over ten years, the Human Microbiome Project has provided resources for studying the microbiome and its relationship to disease; this Perspective summarizes the key achievements and findings of the project and its relationship to the broader field. | Continue reading
Funders behind the policy tweak rules after major consultation. | Continue reading
The dispersionless nature of Aharonov-Bohm effect is still debated. Here, the authors show an asymmetry in the diffraction pattern of an electron beam induced and controlled by an inaccessible magnetic flux, which means electrons behave “as if” an Aharonov-Bohm “force” was p … | Continue reading
The unique valley and spin texture of atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) allows the observation of the valley Zeeman effect for neutral and charged excitons. Here, the authors unveil the underlying physics of the magneto-optical response and valley Zeeman spl … | Continue reading