Science

SummaryIn fall 2020, researchers at the University of Rochester reported creating the first ever material that conducts electricity without resistance at room temperature. The material is known as a "hydride," a combination of hydrogen with…

SummaryAnimals have coevolved with complex communities of microorganisms living on barrier tissues, referred to as the microbiota or commensals. The microbiota controls immune function not only locally within barrier tissues but also…

SummarySymmetry and symmetry breaking are keys to much of the interesting phenomena in condensed matter physics. Conventional superconductivity, for example, requires both time reversal and inversion symmetry, and the removal of one of…

SummaryIncreasing evidence suggests that immune system development begins in utero and is heavily influenced by the maternal immune status during gestation (1). Pregnancy is associated with suppression of the maternal immune system to…

A fundamental question in developmental neuroscience is how different cell types wire together with exquisite specificity to ensure the formation of canonical neural circuits. Increasingly, non-neural cells have been implicated as being…

Macrocycles encompassing four pyrrole rings are common motifs in biochemical and synthetic light harvesting and catalysis. Inaba et al. report a strained, smaller analog with three pyrroles. Their route cyclized a linear hexaketone…

The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is the key electrocatalytic process in many electrochemical systems, including water splitting and metal–air batteries. Because of the acid-aggressive and strongly corrosive media, the development of…

Photodynamic bonds that are stable under dark conditions but break when photoexcited enable an array of materials applications where switching is desired. For cycloadditions and reversions of conjugated organic molecules or radical…

In a world barely nascent, scientists can create mirror images of the building blocks of life, including DNA, RNA, and protein, and use them to build a mirror image of life itself. This fantastic endeavor is not an easy task. A major…

Metastasis is when cancer becomes deadly. Unsuccessful searches for driver mutations of metastasis have led some to explore alternative epigenetic causes. Pierce et al. found that the protein kinase LKB1, better known for influencing cancer…

Parasitic flukes have highly complex life cycles circumscribing a definitive host's ecology. Parasites in wildlife are underappreciated, poorly recorded, and many species are endangered. Sitko and Heneberg collate reports of long-term…

Female Anopheles mosquitoes transmit malaria sporozoites to humans in the context of a blood meal. In malaria-endemic areas, most of the ensuing infections are asymptomatic. Some, however, progress to an uncomplicated illness (fever,…

A three-dimensional soft hydrogel structure (pictured above) bioprinted with the help of fluid supportPHOTO: BIOMATERIALS 276, 121034 (2021)" data-icon-position="" data-hide-link-title="0"> A three-dimensional…

Identifying functional genetic variation in humans requires sifting through hundreds of thousands of individual variants and linking them to the trait of interest. We often do not know whether a gene is functional in a tissue or specific…

Waters of high AsiaHow the rivers of the Himalaya-Karakoram region of Asia respond to climate change is critical for the billion-plus people who depend on the water that they provide. In a Review, Azam et al. discuss recent progress in…

Nestled in a state park, the wedding was a perfect opportunity to take a break from my Ph.D. and celebrate the union of my close friends. But my mind was somewhere else. Moments earlier, as my wife and I were waiting for the ceremony to…

About half of the planet's nitrogen fixation occurs out at sea by prokaryote diazotrophs, yet we still have a poor understanding of which ones do what. Karlusich et al. applied a combination of image capture and nitrogenase gene (nifH)…

Grain boundaries play an important role in determining the properties of ceramics and other materials. However, tracking the migration of grain boundaries is difficult. Wei et al. used atomic-resolution scanning transmission electron…

Castration prolongs the life of sheep by feminizing the epigenome to reduce androgen-regulated aging.PHOTO: ZOONAR GMBH/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO" data-icon-position="" data-hide-link-title="0"> Castration prolongs the…

Richard Charles “Dick” Lewontin died at age 92 on 4 July, 3 days after Mary Jane, his wife of 73 years. Arguably the most influential population geneticist of the second half of the 20th century, Lewontin laid the theoretical and…

Machine learning (ML) has advanced dramatically during the past decade and continues to achieve impressive human-level performance on nontrivial tasks in image, speech, and text recognition. It is increasingly powering many high-stake…

Anthropogenic nutrient enrichment of the global environment has been proceeding for many decades. Nitrogen deposition in particular leads to higher ecosystem productivity at the expense of biodiversity. In a global experiment spanning 45…

Therapeutic proteins such as vaccines, antibodies, hormones, and cytokines are generally produced in bacteria or eukaryotic systems, including chicken eggs and mammalian or insect cell cultures, with high production yield according to…

SummarySunny Shin's laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania was hit hard by the pandemic. Her team lost months of work, students missed graduations, and postdocs faced running out of funding. Shin herself was overwhelmed by child care…

A study of asthmatic children, most of them Black, shows how a common clinical trial design can expose vulnerable participants to serious risks.ILLUSTRATION: STEPHAN SCHMITZJuan Celedón, a respected pulmonary researcher at the University of…

The Hubbard model describes the physics of interacting particles on a lattice and is thought to contain elements essential to the superconductivity of the cuprates. Despite its apparent simplicity, solving the Hubbard model remains…

PHOTO: FRANCOIS MORI/AP/SHUTTERSTOCKWhen the United Nations released its World Ocean Assessment in 2015, it was clear that the oceans were seriously degraded, with stressors on these environments projected to increase. The 2021 Assessment,…

“Well, at least you have permanent job security,” my aunt casually remarked last summer, referring to my role in the federal government's COVID-19 response. I shuddered. Little did she know I had just learned the National Institutes of…

Vertebrate immune systems must be able to process and respond to myriad intrakingdom and interkingdom interactions by commensals and pathogens. Counterintuitively, Lima-Junior et al. found that colonization of mouse skin by the bacterium…

Advances in peripheral nervous system (PNS) interfacing present a promising alternative to traditional neuromodulation (1), particularly for individuals with upper-limb amputations (2–7). Implanted electrodes have been shown to diminish…