Nobel prize insiders and observers say timing and politics meant vaccine technology was an unlikely winner — but science’s most prestigious prize shouldn’t be far off. | Continue reading
Faculty members at the University of Tennessee Knoxville are demanding that nanotechnologist Anming Hu get his job back. | Continue reading
The rare example of a government research agency facing criminal charges after a natural disaster underlines the perils of communicating and managing risk. | Continue reading
The speed and efficiency of transportation and energy systems, including airplanes, ships, and wind turbines can be limited by skin-friction drag. The authors describe a pathway to drag reduction by controlling the large-scale turbulent eddies occurring away from the surface for … | Continue reading
The European and Japanese mission performed the first of six slingshot manoeuvres around the planet. It will ultimately insert two probes into orbit in 2025. | Continue reading
A free-swimming soft robot inspired by deep-sea creatures, with artificial muscle, power and control electronics spread across a polymer matrix, successfully adapts to high pressure and operates in the deep ocean. | Continue reading
People who receive two COVID-19 jabs and later contract the Delta variant are less likely to infect their close contacts than are unvaccinated people with Delta. | Continue reading
People who receive two COVID-19 jabs and later contract the Delta variant are less likely to infect their close contacts than are unvaccinated people with Delta. | Continue reading
Psychedelics have shown great promise in treating mental-health conditions, but their use is severely limited by legal obstacles, which could be overcome. | Continue reading
This case report describes a biomarker-driven closed-loop therapy for depression using implanted electrodes to continually sense brain activity and automatically trigger direct brain electrical stimulation in high-depression states. | Continue reading
A pan-cancer analysis finds that extrachromosomal DNA is pervasive and associated with oncogene amplification and poor patient outcomes. | Continue reading
Circadian-regulated autophagy contributes to the health benefits of intermittent time-restricted feeding in Drosophila. | Continue reading
A growing body of research suggests that prenatal exposure to paracetamol (APAP) might alter development and increase the risk of some reproductive, urogenital and neurodevelopmental disorders. This Consensus Statement calls for precautionary action, including a focused research … | Continue reading
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has seen a notable global reduction in influenza cases of both influenza A and B viruses. In particular, the B/Yamagata lineage has not been isolated from April 2020 to August 2021, suggesting that this influenza lineage may have become extinct, which may … | Continue reading
Healthy tissues from individuals with germline mutations in POLE or POLD1 show increased mutational burden, suggesting that normal cells are capable of tolerating high mutation rates. | Continue reading
A deep generative model using radar observations is used to create skilful precipitation predictions that are accurate and support real-world utility. | Continue reading
Physicists have imaged elusive ‘Wigner crystals’ for the first time. | Continue reading
News of a 1.3-MJ-output-energy experiment at the National Ignition Facility in the United States in August has raised hopes that laser-based fusion is back on track. | Continue reading
The mechanisms underlying how monozygotic (or identical) twins arise are yet to be determined. Here, the authors investigate this in an epigenome-wide association study, showing that monozygotic twinning has a characteristic DNA methylation signature in adult somatic tissues. | Continue reading
Strengthen markets, measures and definitions for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to fight climate change. | Continue reading
Using a closed-loop virtual reality system for fish, the authors show that zebrafish are capable of assigning rules to the scenery they see, and of generating a state prediction error by comparing reality with a prediction derived from an internal model. | Continue reading
Study aimed at collecting DNA from 10,000 people with autism and their families has drawn criticism for failing to consult the autism community. | Continue reading
Children left tracks in New Mexico around 22,500 years ago — thousands of years before most scientists thought humans settled in North America. | Continue reading
In this Review, the authors describe our latest understanding of the emergence and properties of SARS-CoV-2 genetic variants, particularly those designated as WHO (World Health Organization) ‘variants of concern’. They focus on the consequences of these variants for antibody-medi … | Continue reading
Grid cells produce exceptionally regular firing patterns as animals navigate in 2D spaces. Two new studies show that in flying and climbing animals, the activity patterns of these cells in 3D space are irregular. These results reveal an unexpected way in which the brain represent … | Continue reading
For objective careers advice, talk to those who left science as well as those who stayed. | Continue reading
This Perspective explores the potential of an approach to neuromorphic electronics in which the functional synaptic connectivity map of a mammalian neuronal network is copied using a silicon neuro-electronic interface and then pasted onto a high-density three-dimensional network … | Continue reading
With a design inspired by wind-dispersed seeds, a series of three-dimensional passive fliers at the macro-, meso- and microscale are realized that can bear active electronic payloads. | Continue reading
The COVID-19 pandemic led to school closures and distance learning that are likely to exacerbate social class academic disparities. This Review presents an agenda for future research and outlines recommendations to help parents, teachers and policymakers to limit the impact of sc … | Continue reading
Harmful algal and bacterial blooms are increasingly frequent in lakes and rivers. From the Sydney Basin, Australia, this study uses fossil, sedimentary and geochemical data to reveal bloom events following forest ecosystem collapse during the end-Permian event and that blooms hav … | Continue reading
Catalyst based on nickel and iron allows electrical current to be harvested from the breakdown of urea. | Continue reading
Studies of bats in China and Laos show southeast Asia is a hotspot for potentially dangerous viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2. | Continue reading
Studies of bats in China and Laos show southeast Asia is a hotspot for potentially dangerous viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2. | Continue reading
To make machine-learning analyses in the life sciences more computationally reproducible, we propose standards based on data, model and code publication, programming best practices and workflow automation. By meeting these standards, the community of researchers applying machine- … | Continue reading
Studies of bats in China and Laos show southeast Asia is a hotspot for potentially dangerous viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2. | Continue reading
Children left tracks in New Mexico around 22,500 years ago — thousands of years before most scientists thought humans settled in North America. | Continue reading
To make machine-learning analyses in the life sciences more computationally reproducible, we propose standards based on data, model and code publication, programming best practices and workflow automation. By meeting these standards, the community of researchers applying machine- … | Continue reading
Measurement(s) travel-related behavior • travel-related attitude Technology Type(s) Survey Factor Type(s) temporal interval Sample Characteristic - Organism Homo sapiens Sample Characteristic - Location United States of America Machine-accessible met … | Continue reading
The SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein is essential for viral infectivity and binds to the host receptor ACE2. Here, the authors present MD simulations of the Spike protein and its variants of concern and observe that the Spike protein is destabilised by moderate static electric fields, an … | Continue reading
Reservoir computers are artificial neural networks that can be trained on small data sets, but require large random matrices and numerous metaparameters. The authors propose an improved reservoir computer that overcomes these limitations and shows advantageous performance for com … | Continue reading
Deducing the full protein complement of individual cells has long played second fiddle to transcriptomics. That’s about to change. | Continue reading