Traditionally, a catalyst functions by direct interaction with reactants. In a new noncontact catalytic system (NCCS), an intermediate produced by one catalytic reaction serves as an intermediary to enable an independent reaction to proceed. An example is the selective oxidation … | Continue reading
Closed-form, interpretable mathematical models have been instrumental for advancing our understanding of the world; with the data revolution, we may now be in a position to uncover new such models for many systems from physics to the social sciences. However, to deal with increas … | Continue reading
The subset sum problem (SSP) is a typical nondeterministic-polynomial-time (NP)–complete problem that is hard to solve efficiently in time with conventional computers. Photons have the unique features of high propagation speed, strong robustness, and low detectable energy level a … | Continue reading
Turbulent flows are not only everywhere, but every turbulent flow is the same at small scales. The extraordinary simplification engendered by this “small-scale universality” is a hallmark of turbulence theory. However, on the basis of the restrictive assumptions invoked by A. N. … | Continue reading
Boron carbide suffers from a loss of strength and toughness when subjected to high shear stresses due to amorphization. Here, we report that a small amount of Si doping (~1 atomic %) leads to a substantial decrease in stress-induced amorphization due to a noticeable change of the … | Continue reading
Artificial electronic skins (e-skins) comprise an integrated matrix of flexible devices arranged on a soft, reconfigurable surface. These sensors must perceive physical interaction spaces between external objects and robots or humans. Among various types of sensors, flexible magn … | Continue reading
Triggerable materials capable of being degraded by selective stimuli stand to transform our capacity to precisely control biomedical device activity and performance while reducing the need for invasive interventions. Here, we describe the development of a modular and tunable ligh … | Continue reading
As individuals specialize in specific knowledge areas, a society’s know-how becomes distributed across different workers. To use this distributed know-how, workers must be coordinated into teams that, collectively, can cover a wide range of expertise. This paper studies the inter … | Continue reading
Our nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri, hosts a temperate terrestrial planet. We detected in radial velocities evidence of a possible second planet with minimum mass m c sin i c = 5.8 ± 1.9 M ⊕ and orbital period Pc=5.21−0.22+0.26 years. The analysis of photometric data and spect … | Continue reading
With the textbook view of chromatin folding based on the 30-nm fiber being challenged, it has been proposed that interphase DNA has an irregular 10-nm nucleosome polymer structure whose folding philosophy is unknown. Nevertheless, experimental advances suggest that this irregular … | Continue reading
The free-standing Au20 cluster has a unique tetrahedral shape and a large HOMO-LUMO (highest occupied molecular orbital–lowest unoccupied molecular orbital) gap of around 1.8 electron volts. The “magic” Au20 has been intensively used as a model system for understanding the cataly … | Continue reading
Development of renewable energy is essential to mitigating the fossil fuel shortage and climate change issues. Here, we propose to produce a new type of energy, bio-coal, via a fast pyrolysis coupled with atmospheric distillation process. The high heating values of the as-prepare … | Continue reading
Supraphysiologic doses of bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) are used clinically to promote bone formation in fracture nonunions, large bone defects, and spinal fusion. However, abnormal bone formation (i.e., heterotopic ossification) caused by rapid BMP-2 release from conventi … | Continue reading
To a large extent, the performance of imaging systems is determined by their objectives, which affect properties as varied as collection efficiency, resolving power, and image distortions. Such limitations can be addressed by so-called aperture synthesis, a technique used, for in … | Continue reading
Recent advances in smart contact lenses are essential to the realization of medical applications and vision imaging for augmented reality through wireless communication systems. However, previous research on smart contact lenses has been driven by a wired system or wireless power … | Continue reading
Engineering the grain boundaries of crystalline materials represents an enduring challenge, particularly in the case of soft materials. Grain boundaries, however, can provide preferential sites for chemical reactions, adsorption processes, nucleation of phase transitions, and mec … | Continue reading
In data science, determining proximity between observations is critical to many downstream analyses such as clustering, classification, and prediction. However, when the data’s underlying probability distribution is unclear, the function used to compute similarity between data po … | Continue reading
Sleep disruption is associated with cognitive decline and dementia in older adults; however, the underlying mechanisms are unclear. In rodents, sleep disruption causes microglial activation, inhibition of which improves cognition. However, data from humans are lacking. We studied … | Continue reading
Subnanometric metal clusters exhibit anomalous catalytic activity, suggesting innovative applications as next-generation materials, although identifying and characterizing these subnanomaterials in atomic detail remains a substantial challenge because of the severely weak signal … | Continue reading
Computer imaging techniques are commonly used to preserve and share readable manuscripts, but capturing writing locked away in ancient, deteriorated documents poses an entirely different challenge. This software pipeline—referred to as “virtual unwrapping”—allows textual artifact … | Continue reading
Efforts to decipher chronic lung disease and to reconstitute functional lung tissue through regenerative medicine have been hampered by an incomplete understanding of cell-cell interactions governing tissue homeostasis. Because the structure of mammalian lungs is highly conserved … | Continue reading
We undertook a functional dissection of chromatin remodeler BAZ1B in neural crest (NC) stem cells (NCSCs) from a uniquely informative cohort of typical and atypical patients harboring 7q11.23 copy number variants. Our results reveal a key contribution of BAZ1B to NCSC in vitro in … | Continue reading
As for Shakespeare, a hard-fought debate has emerged about Molière, a supposedly uneducated actor who, according to some, could not have written the masterpieces attributed to him. In the past decades, the century-old thesis according to which Pierre Corneille would be their actu … | Continue reading
The past few years have witnessed rapid advances in the synthesis of high-quality perovskite nanocrystals (PNCs). However, despite the impressive developments, the stability of PNCs remains a substantial challenge. The ability to reliably improve stability of PNCs while retaining … | Continue reading
To make decisions in a social context, humans have to predict the behavior of others, an ability that is thought to rely on having a model of other minds known as “theory of mind.” Such a model becomes especially complex when the number of people one simultaneously interacts with … | Continue reading
While many bacterial pathogens are restricted to single host species, some have the capacity to undergo host switches, leading to the emergence of new clones that are a threat to human and animal health. However, the bacterial traits that underpin a multihost ecology are not well … | Continue reading
Modeling many-body quantum systems with strong interactions is one of the core challenges of modern physics. A range of methods has been developed to approach this task, each with its own idiosyncrasies, approximations, and realm of applicability. However, there remain many probl … | Continue reading
Carbonaceous chondrites are meteorites believed to preserve our planet’s source materials, but the precise nature of these materials still remains uncertain. To uncover pristine planetary materials, we performed synchrotron radiation–based x-ray computed nanotomography of a primi … | Continue reading
Skin-like sensory devices should be stretchable and self-healable to meet the demands for future electronic skin applications. Despite recent notable advances in skin-inspired electronic materials, it remains challenging to confer these desired functionalities to an active semico … | Continue reading
The scientific method relies on facts, established through repeated measurements and agreed upon universally, independently of who observed them. In quantum mechanics the objectivity of observations is not so clear, most markedly exposed in Wigner’s eponymous thought experiment w … | Continue reading
Traditionally, electronics have been designed with static form factors to serve designated purposes. This approach has been an optimal direction for maintaining the overall device performance and reliability for targeted applications. However, electronics capable of changing thei … | Continue reading
Recent progress in passive radiative cooling technologies has substantially improved cooling performance under direct sunlight. Yet, experimental demonstrations of daytime radiative cooling still severely underperform in comparison with the theoretical potential due to considerab … | Continue reading
Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), one of the leading causes of childhood-onset blindness, is caused by autosomal recessive mutations in several genes including RPE65 . In this study, we performed CRISPR-Cas9–mediated therapeutic correction of a disease-associated nonsense mutatio … | Continue reading
Magnetic damping is a key metric for emerging technologies based on magnetic nanoparticles, such as spin torque memory and high-resolution biomagnetic imaging. Despite its importance, understanding of magnetic dissipation in nanoscale ferromagnets remains elusive, and the damping … | Continue reading
Breaking waves produce bubble plumes that burst at the sea surface, injecting primary marine aerosol (PMA) highly enriched with marine organic carbon (OC) into the atmosphere. It is widely assumed that this OC is modern, produced by present-day biological activity, even though ne … | Continue reading
Harnessing the unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution capability of light to detect electrophysiological signals has been the goal of scientists for nearly 50 years. Yet, progress toward that goal remains elusive due to lack of electro-optic translators that can efficiently conv … | Continue reading
In five preregistered studies, we assess people’s tendency to believe “kids these days” are deficient relative to those of previous generations. Across three traits, American adults ( N =3,458; M age = 33-51 years) believe today’s youth are in decline; however, these perceptions … | Continue reading
Measurements of the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) solar spectral irradiance (SSI) are essential for understanding drivers of space weather effects, such as radio blackouts, and aerodynamic drag on satellites during periods of enhanced solar activity. In this paper, we show how to lea … | Continue reading
Integration of dissimilar two-dimensional (2D) materials is essential for nanoelectronic applications. Compared to vertical stacking, covalent lateral stitching requires bottom-up synthesis, resulting in rare realizations of 2D lateral heterostructures. Because of its polymorphis … | Continue reading
Bone marrow and grease constitute an important source of nutrition and have attracted the attention of human groups since prehistoric times. Marrow consumption has been linked to immediate consumption following the procurement and removal of soft tissues. Here, we present the ear … | Continue reading
Unlike highly regenerative animals, such as axolotls, humans are believed to be unable to counteract cumulative damage, such as repetitive joint use and injury that lead to the breakdown of cartilage and the development of osteoarthritis. Turnover of insoluble collagen has been s … | Continue reading
Controlling the propagation of optical fields in three dimensions using arrays of discrete dielectric scatterers is an active area of research. These arrays can create optical elements with functionalities unrealizable in conventional optics. Here, we present an inverse design me … | Continue reading
The emergence of flat bands and correlated behaviors in “magic angle” twisted bilayer graphene (tBLG) has sparked tremendous interest, though its many aspects are under intense debate. Here we report observation of both superconductivity and the Mott-like insulating state in a tB … | Continue reading
The precise measurement of the spectrum of protons, the most abundant component of the cosmic radiation, is necessary to understand the source and acceleration of cosmic rays in the Milky Way. This work reports the measurement of the cosmic ray proton fluxes with kinetic energies … | Continue reading
Formulations and devices for precision medicine applications must be tunable and multiresponsive to treat heterogeneous patient populations in a calibrated and individual manner. We engineered modular poly(acrylamide-co-methacrylic acid) copolymers, cross-linked into multirespons … | Continue reading
Ceramic materials have been widely used for structural applications. However, most ceramics have rather limited plasticity at low temperatures and fracture well before the onset of plastic yielding. The brittle nature of ceramics arises from the lack of dislocation activity and t … | Continue reading
How does prioritizing time or money shape major life decisions and subsequent well-being? In a preregistered longitudinal study of approximately 1000 graduating university students, respondents who valued time over money chose more intrinsically rewarding activities and were happ … | Continue reading
Nucleation and growth of crystalline phases play an important role in a variety of physical phenomena, ranging from freezing of liquids to assembly of colloidal particles. Understanding these processes in the context of colloidal crystallization is of great importance for predict … | Continue reading