A black hole’s perilous edge, anti-poaching warriors, whisky webs and more. | Continue reading
Intravenous injection increases the efficacy of an anti-tuberculosis vaccine. | Continue reading
An artificial intelligence (AI) system performs as well as or better than radiologists at detecting breast cancer from mammograms, and using a combination of AI and human inputs could help to improve screening efficiency. | Continue reading
Let 2020 be the year in which we value those who ensure that science is self-correcting. | Continue reading
Paints, plastics and even wood can be engineered to stay cool in direct sunlight — but their role in displacing power-hungry air conditioners remains unclear. | Continue reading
In one year, George Church’s group spun out 16 different startups. What explains the lab’s incredible output of entrepreneurs? | Continue reading
Highlights from News & Views published this year. | Continue reading
A network of protein fibres helps to prevent the all-important organelle from being bent out of shape. | Continue reading
Quantitative stable isotope probing and gene expression analyses in anoxic Namibian shelf sediments reveal that representatives of the Asgard candidate phylum Candidatus Lokiarchaeota are capable of homoacetogenesis, a metabolic strategy of high energetic efficiency that may expl … | Continue reading
Compact early fruiting tomato and groundcherry plants suitable for urban farming are produced using genome editing. | Continue reading
Taking ‘upon request’ out of data availability statements in papers. | Continue reading
Synthetic biology uses cells as its computing substrate, often based on the genetic circuit concept. In this Perspective, the authors argue that existing synthetic biology approaches based on classical models of computation limit the potential of biocomputing, and propose that li … | Continue reading
The complex patterns of activity in motor cortex that control movements such as reach and grasp are dependent on both upstream neuronal activity in the thalamus and the current state of the cortex. | Continue reading
The leg-enriched sensory appendage protein, SAP2, confers pyrethroid resistance to Anopheles gambiae, through high-affinity binding of pyrethroid insecticides; an observed selective sweep in field mosquitoes mirrors the increasing resistance reported in Africa. | Continue reading
Kvarven, Strømland and Johannesson compare meta-analyses to multiple-laboratory replication projects and find that meta-analyses overestimate effect sizes by a factor of almost three. Commonly used methods of adjusting for publication bias do not substantively improve results. | Continue reading
Under conditions such as hypoxia or starvation, an mTORC1-lipid signalling pathway initiates mitochondrial proteolysis by YME1L. | Continue reading
Springer Nature and Wiley have concerns about lack of consent in genetics and facial-recognition papers. | Continue reading
A new species of fossil synapsid from the Pennsylvanian (323–298 million years ago) of Canada represents the earliest known evidence of parental care in the form of a larger individual preserved with a small conspecific in close association, interpreted as denning. | Continue reading
Four single-photon states are generated and entangled on a single micrometre-scale silicon chip, and provide the basis for the demonstration of chip-to-chip quantum teleportation. | Continue reading
Birch pitch is thought to have been used in prehistoric times as hafting material or antiseptic and tooth imprints suggest that it was chewed. Here, the authors report a 5,700 year-old piece of chewed birch pitch from Denmark from which they successfully recovered a com … | Continue reading
The Apple Heart Study demonstrates that the Apple Watch can detect atrial fibrillation inferred from the smartwatch heart-rate sensor with a high positive predictive value. However, we must now contend with many clinically relevant unknowns that were not addressed by the study, s … | Continue reading
Genetic analysis of paternal sperm from families with a child affected by autism reveals that the recurrent risk for transmitting disease-associated de novo mutations to future offspring is near 0% for most couples but is substantially higher for a small fraction of couples. | Continue reading
The return is part of a groundbreaking approach that could inspire other institutions grappling with how to use historical samples ethically in research. | Continue reading
Single-cycle interferometric autocorrelation measurements of electrons tunnelling across the gap of a plasmonic bowtie antenna and quantitative models provide insight into the physical interactions that drive the electron transfer. | Continue reading
Protecting confidential data through fast and scalable cryptographic techniques remains a challenge. Here, the authors demonstrate a cryptographic system via correlated mixing of chaotic waves in irreversible time-varying silicon chips with key distributions in classical optical … | Continue reading
National initiative aims to develop practical technologies that could mine databases and create ultra-secure communication networks. | Continue reading
A swift increase in scientific productivity has outstripped the country’s ability to promote rigour and curb academic misconduct; it is time to seize solutions. | Continue reading
Aggregation of matter, common in stratified fluid systems, is essential to the carbon cycle and ocean ecology. Although the current understanding of aggregation involves only collision and adhesion, here Camassa et al. reveal a self-assembly phenomenon arising solely from diffusi … | Continue reading
Joelle Pineau is leading an effort to encourage artificial-intelligence researchers to open up their code. | Continue reading
A technology that delivers ultrasound images of living tissue without directly touching the target has undergone successful human testing for the first time. The need to contact a patient’s skin with conventional sound-sensitive piezoelectric devices can cause errors in ultrasoun … | Continue reading
The neural mechanisms that lead to a relative deficit in memory retrieval in the afternoon are unclear. Here, the authors show that the circadian - dependent transcription factor BMAL1 regulates retrieval through dopamine and glutamate receptor phosphorylation. | Continue reading
Theoretical modelling shows that elastic fluctuations can enable the tuning of metal-to-insulator transitions, potentially also explaining the dependence of the transition temperature on cation radius in perovskite transition-metal oxides. | Continue reading
Cryo-electron microscopy structures of the TniQ–Cascade complex encoded by the Vibrio cholerae Tn6677 transposon reveal the mechanistic basis of the functional association of CRISPR- and transposon-associated machineries. | Continue reading
Bayesian modelling of radiometric age estimates provides a robust chronology for Homo erectus at Ngandong (Java), confirming that this site currently represents the last known occurrence of this species. | Continue reading
Differences in MCT1 function among melanoma cells confer differences in oxidative stress resistance and metastatic potential. | Continue reading
Individual amino acids fused to a highly charged heptapeptide are discriminated in an aerolysin nanopore. | Continue reading