Updates on the respiratory illness that has infected tens of thousands of people. | Continue reading
Optical chiral induction and spontaneous gyrotropic electronic order are realized in the transition-metal chalcogenide 1T-TiSe2 by using illumination with mid-infrared circularly polarized light and simultaneous cooling below the critical temperature. | Continue reading
High-energy electron scattering that can isolate pairs of nucleons in high-momentum configurations reveals a transition to spin-independent scalar forces at small separation distances, supporting the use of point-like nucleon models to describe dense nuclear systems. | Continue reading
The transverse tarsal arch, acting through the inter-metatarsal tissues, is important for the longitudinal stiffness of the foot and its appearance is a key step in the evolution of human bipedalism. | Continue reading
Scientists say climate change, deforestation and fires could cause the world’s largest rainforest to dry out. The big question is how soon that might happen. | Continue reading
The transverse arch makes a major contribution to foot stiffness. | Continue reading
Pangolins are a prime suspect, but a slew of genetic analyses has yet to find conclusive proof. | Continue reading
Economics and natural-science disciplines are reuniting. It’s about time. | Continue reading
Nicolas Dussex et al. identify a 44,000–49,000 year old bird found in Siberian permafrost as a female horned lark using ancient DNA. This exceptionally well-preserved specimen illustrates the potential contribution to science of permafrost deposits, such as the study of ecology a … | Continue reading
Understanding the underlying mechanisms behind the successes of deep networks remains a challenge. Here, the author demonstrates an implicit regularization in training deep networks, showing that the control of complexity in the training is hidden within the optimization techniqu … | Continue reading
Animal-rights group’s campaign to end forced-swim tests comes amid debate over whether method is overused. | Continue reading
Machine learning spots molecules that work even against ‘untreatable’ strains of bacteria. | Continue reading
Isotopic evidence from ice cores indicates that preindustrial-era geological methane emissions were lower than previously thought, suggesting that present-day emissions of methane from fossil fuels are underestimated. | Continue reading
Designing molecular keys and combining advanced encryption standard cryptography with molecular steganography is a secure way for encoding messages. Here, the authors use the Ugi four-component reaction of perfluorinated acids to create a library of 500,000 molecular keys for enc … | Continue reading
AlphaFold predicts the distances between pairs of residues, is used to construct potentials of mean force that accurately describe the shape of a protein and can be optimized with gradient descent to predict protein structures. | Continue reading
After training, an artificial-intelligence program can distinguish between five types of knot with 99% accuracy. | Continue reading
Stochastic pulsing of gene expression can generate phenotypic diversity in a genetically identical population of cells. Here, the authors show that stochastic pulsing in the expression of a sigma factor enables the formation of spatial patterns in a multicellular system, Bacillus … | Continue reading
Precision measurements of the 1S–2P transition in antihydrogen that take into account the standard Zeeman and hyperfine effects confirm the predictions of quantum electrodynamics. | Continue reading
Intermittent fasting (IF) has been shown beneficial in reducing metabolic diseases. Here, using a multi-omics approach in a T2D mouse model, the authors report that IF alters the composition of the gut microbiota and improves metabolic phenotypes that correlate with cognitive beh … | Continue reading
High-precision spectroscopic measurements of antimatter. | Continue reading
The European Commission has published its first review of strict legislation designed to protect research animals. | Continue reading
Officials want to know but predictions vary wildly, from now to after hundreds of millions of people are infected. | Continue reading
A new type of energy-harvesting device, based on protein nanowires from the microbe Geobacter sulforreducens, can generate a sustained power output by producing a moisture gradient across the nanowire film using natural humidity. | Continue reading
As HIV drugs, stem cells and traditional Chinese medicines vie for a chance to prove their worth, the WHO attempts to bring order to the search. | Continue reading
High-quality genome assembly of diploid Rosa chinensis and resequencing of major genotypes highlights the origin of modern rose cultivars and provides insights into color biosynthesis and scent pathways. | Continue reading
Cheryl L Ames, Anna Klompen et al. describe cassiosomes, stinging cell structures in the mucus of the upside-down jellyfish Cassiopea xamachana. They show that these motile cell masses consist of an outer epithelial layer largely composed of nematocytes surrounding centralized cl … | Continue reading
Genomic analyses of major clades of huge phages sampled from across Earth’s ecosystems show that they have diverse genetic inventories, including a variety of CRISPR–Cas systems and translation-relevant genes. | Continue reading
Repositories like INA-Rxiv and IndiaRxiv boost regional science, but finding cash to run them is proving difficult. | Continue reading
Across the globe, drained peatlands are emitting billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. Scotland has emerged as a leader in efforts to restore bogs to health. | Continue reading
It has been suggested that lightning activity will increase with anthropogenic warming. However, the use of a physically based lightning parameterization—incorporating cloud ice fluxes—reveals global flash rates in 2100 may decrease by 15% under RCP8.5. | Continue reading
Quantum dots are often referred to as “artificial atoms” as they create zero-dimensional traps for electrons, with characteristic atom-like spectra. Leon et al. demonstrate that higher shell and orbital states of a multi-electron silicon quantum dot with better control fidelity t … | Continue reading
New laws that promote centuries-old herbal remedies are a backwards step for China. Only controlled clinical trials can satisfy concerns. | Continue reading
Debating digital-technology use and teenage mental health. | Continue reading
This Perspective describes the development and capabilities of SciPy 1.0, an open source scientific computing library for the Python programming language. | Continue reading
Ionization cooling, a technique that delivers high-brightness muon beams for the study of phenomena at energy scales beyond those of the Large Hadron Collider, is demonstrated by the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment. | Continue reading
Genetic sequences of viruses isolated from the scaly animals are 99% similar to that of the circulating virus — but the work is yet to be formally published. | Continue reading
The evolutionary history of life and the history of the planet itself are closely entwined. This Perspective looks at the sources of energy — geochemical, sunlight, oxygen, flesh and fire — that have shaped this inter-relationship and the course of evolution. | Continue reading
Femtosecond-laser processing of materials has many potential applications including high-efficiency incandescent lamps and solar-thermal receivers. A longstanding challenge is the ability to control the emerging properties of the treated surfaces. A research team at Chunlei Guo’s … | Continue reading
Genome dynamics allow cells to repair DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs), which are highly toxic DNA lesions. Here the authors reveal that in S. cerevisiae, Rad52 DNA repair proteins assemble in liquid droplets that work with dynamic nuclear microtubules to relocalize lesions to the … | Continue reading
The flagship paper of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Consortium describes the generation of the integrative analyses of 2,658 cancer whole genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types, the structures for international data sharing and stand … | Continue reading