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Tectonics regulate CO2 release more strongly than chemical weathering in central Italy Nat. Geosci. (IF 18.3) Pub Date : 2024-04-22
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Global patterns in river water storage dependent on residence time Nat. Geosci. (IF 18.3) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 Elyssa L. Collins, Cédric H. David, Ryan Riggs, George H. Allen, Tamlin M. Pavelsky, Peirong Lin, Ming Pan, Dai Yamazaki, Ross K. Meentemeyer, Georgina M. Sanchez
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How ground glass might save crops from drought on a Caribbean island Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-22
In Grenada, public-health researcher Lindonne Telesford tests a soil additive made from recycled glass that could help farmers adapt to climate change.
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How to freeze a memory: putting worms on ice stops them forgetting Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-22
The model organism Caenorhabditis elegans is quick to forget a notable odour — unless it is chilled or given lithium.
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Will AI accelerate or delay the race to net-zero emissions? Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 Amy Luers, Jonathan Koomey, Eric Masanet, Owen Gaffney, Felix Creutzig, Juan Lavista Ferres, Eric Horvitz
As artificial intelligence transforms the global economy, researchers need to explore scenarios to assess how it can help, rather than harm, the climate.
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Do insects have an inner life? Animal consciousness needs a rethink Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-19
A declaration signed by dozens of scientists says there is “a realistic possibility” for elements of consciousness in reptiles, insects and molluscs.
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Developing transmissible vaccines for animal infections Science (IF 56.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Daniel G. Streicker, Megan E. Griffiths, Rustom Antia, Laura Bergner, Peter Bowman, Maria Vitoria dos Santos de Moraes, Kevin Esvelt, Mike Famulare, Amy Gilbert, Biao He, Michael A. Jarvis, David A. Kennedy, Jennifer Kuzma, Carolyne Nasimiyu Wanyonyi, Christopher Remien, Tonie Rocke, Kyle Rosenke, Courtney Schreiner, Justin Sheen, David Simons, Ivet A. Yordanova, James J. Bull, Scott L. Nuismer
Many emerging and reemerging pathogens originate from wildlife, but nearly all wild species are unreachable using conventional vaccination, which requires capture of and vaccine administration to individual animals. By enabling immunization at scales sufficient to interrupt pathogen transmission, transmissible vaccines (TVs) that spread themselves through wildlife populations by infectious processes
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Earth’s sinking surface Science (IF 56.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Robert J. Nicholls, Manoochehr Shirzaei
Subsidence, the lowering of Earth’s land surface, is a widespread and sometimes dramatic process. Potentially 19% of the global population is at high risk of being affected by this process (1). Such sinking is caused by a range of natural or anthropogenic factors, including human-induced underground fluid withdrawal, which is generally considered the most important driver. However, present understanding
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Sentinels of the airways Science (IF 56.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Ziai Zhu, Xin Sun
The respiratory tract is essential for breathing but is also important for detecting and responding to inhaled harmful (noxious) stimuli, such as pollutants, pathogens, water, and acid. Neuroendocrine cells (NECs)—rare epithelial cells that share characteristics with neurons—are an integral component of this sensory surveillance system (1). Although NECs have been proposed to act as airway sentinels
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Reprioritizing motivations in addiction Science (IF 56.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 E. Zayra Millan, Gavan P. McNally
Drug addictions are a leading global cause of health and economic burden, with opioids responsible for 80% of drug use–related deaths (1). Persistent drug use is accompanied by profound motivational reprioritization (2), with decision-making skewed toward drug use at the expense of other activities (3), often with little recognition of adverse consequences (4). These impacts owe, at least in part,
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Exposing belowground plant communication Science (IF 56.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Emilio Guerrieri, Sergio Rasmann
Plants communicate through chemical signals, which convey information about environmental threats and resource availability, or even trigger defense mechanisms, allowing plants to coordinate responses and optimize their survival strategies (1). Plant communication encompasses both aboveground and belowground interactions. Aboveground, plants emit volatile organic compounds that are detected by the
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Evidence of strong aerosol cooling implies great efficacy of marine cloud brightening Nat. Geosci. (IF 18.3) Pub Date : 2024-04-19
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Deep CO2 release and the carbon budget of the central Apennines modulated by geodynamics Nat. Geosci. (IF 18.3) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Erica Erlanger, Aaron Bufe, Guillaume Paris, Ilenia D’Angeli, Luca Pisani, Preston Cosslett Kemeny, Jessica Stammeier, Negar Haghipour, Niels Hovius
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Weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation abyssal limb in the North Atlantic Nat. Geosci. (IF 18.3) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Tiago Carrilho Biló, Renellys C. Perez, Shenfu Dong, William Johns, Torsten Kanzow
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Living on Mars would probably suck — here's why Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-19
Kelly and Zach Weinersmith talk to Nature about the hurdles facing humans living in outer space.
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Detectors deep in South Pole ice pin down elusive tau neutrino Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-19
Antarctic observatory gathers the first clear evidence of mysterious subatomic particles from space.
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Dogwhistles, drilling and the roots of Western civilization: Books in brief Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-19
Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.
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Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is ‘transforming’ from repeated coral bleaching Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-19
The coral reef is currently experiencing its worst mass bleaching event on record — warming waters brought on by climate change are to blame.
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Why queasiness kills hunger: brain circuit identified Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-18
Feelings of hunger, nausea and fullness seem to be governed by separate brain circuits, finds a study in mice.
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Nearly half of China’s major cities are sinking — some ‘rapidly’ Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-18
Tens of millions of people in the country’s coastal lands might find their homes below sea level by 2120 owing to sinking and sea-level rise.
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Daily briefing: Food is medicine Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
Evidence is growing that targeted dietary interventions can treat, delay and even prevent some illnesses. Plus, an AI model helps track the spread of metastatic cancers and how climate lawsuits push governments and companies to act.
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Daily briefing: AI now beats humans at basic reading and maths Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-16
Artificial intelligence systems can now nearly match — and sometimes exceed — human performance in basic tasks. Plus, NASA admits that plan to bring Mars rocks to Earth won’t work and three new species of extinct giant kangaroos discovered.
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SARAH-3 – satellite-based climate data records of surface solar radiation Earth Syst. Sci. Data (IF 11.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-18 Uwe Pfeifroth, Jaqueline Drücke, Steffen Kothe, Jörg Trentmann, Marc Schröder, Rainer Hollmann
Abstract. The amount of energy reaching the Earth’s surface from the sun is a quantity of high importance for the climate system and for renewable energy applications. SARAH-3 is a new edition of a satellite-based climate data record of surface solar radiation parameters. It is generated and distributed by the European Organisation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) Satellite Application Facility
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Time-modulated near-field radiative heat transfer Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Renwen Yu, Shanhui Fan
Near-field radiative heat transfer has recently attracted increasing interests for its applications in energy technologies, such as thermophotovoltaics. Existing works, however, are restricted to time-independent systems. Here, we explore near-field radiative heat transfer between two bodies under time modulation by developing a rigorous fluctuational electrodynamics formalism. We demonstrate that
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Quantization avoids saddle points in distributed optimization Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Yanan Bo, Yongqiang Wang
Distributed nonconvex optimization underpins key functionalities of numerous distributed systems, ranging from power systems, smart buildings, cooperative robots, vehicle networks to sensor networks. Recently, it has also merged as a promising solution to handle the enormous growth in data and model sizes in deep learning. A fundamental problem in distributed nonconvex optimization is avoiding convergence
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Observation of magnetic amplification using dark spins Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Min Jiang, Ying Huang, Chang Guo, Haowen Su, Yuanhong Wang, Xinhua Peng, Dmitry Budker
Quantum amplification enables the enhancement of weak signals and is of great importance for precision measurements, such as biomedical science and tests of fundamental symmetries. Here, we observe a previously unexplored magnetic amplification using dark noble-gas nuclear spins in the absence of pump light. Such dark spins exhibit remarkable coherence lasting up to 6 min and the resilience against
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Quantum network utility: A framework for benchmarking quantum networks Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Yuan Lee, Wenhan Dai, Don Towsley, Dirk Englund
The central aim of quantum networks is to facilitate user connectivity via quantum channels, but there is an open need for benchmarking metrics to compare diverse quantum networks. Here, we propose a general framework for quantifying the performance of a quantum network by estimating the value created by connecting users through quantum channels. In this framework, we define the quantum network utility
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AI model disgorgement: Methods and choices Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Alessandro Achille, Michael Kearns, Carson Klingenberg, Stefano Soatto
Over the past few years, machine learning models have significantly increased in size and complexity, especially in the area of generative AI such as large language models. These models require massive amounts of data and compute capacity to train, to the extent that concerns over the training data (such as protected or private content) cannot be practically addressed by retraining the model “from
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Developing a predictive science of the biosphere requires the integration of scientific cultures Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Brian J. Enquist, Christopher P. Kempes, Geoffrey B. West
Increasing the speed of scientific progress is urgently needed to address the many challenges associated with the biosphere in the Anthropocene. Consequently, the critical question becomes: How can science most rapidly progress to address large, complex global problems? We suggest that the lag in the development of a more predictive science of the biosphere is not only because the biosphere is so much
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PurA is the main target of aurodox, a type III secretion system inhibitor Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Yoshihiro Watanabe, Takeshi Haneda, Aoi Kimishima, Asaomi Kuwae, Takuya Suga, Takahiro Suzuki, Yoshiharu Iwabuchi, Masako Honsho, Sota Honma, Masato Iwatsuki, Hidehito Matsui, Hideaki Hanaki, Naoki Kanoh, Akio Abe, Yukihiro Asami, Satoshi Ōmura
Anti-microbial resistance (AMR) is one of the greatest threats to global health. The continual battle between the emergence of AMR and the development of drugs will be extremely difficult to stop as long as traditional anti-biotic approaches are taken. In order to overcome this impasse, we here focused on the type III secretion system (T3SS), which is highly conserved in many Gram-negative pathogenic
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Transient social–ecological dynamics reveal signals of decoupling in a highly disturbed Anthropocene landscape Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Qi Lin, Ke Zhang, Charline Giguet-Covex, Fabien Arnaud, Suzanne McGowan, Ludovic Gielly, Eric Capo, Shixin Huang, Gentile Francesco Ficetola, Ji Shen, John A. Dearing, Michael E. Meadows
Understanding the transient dynamics of interlinked social–ecological systems (SES) is imperative for assessing sustainability in the Anthropocene. However, how to identify critical transitions in real-world SES remains a formidable challenge. In this study, we present an evolutionary framework to characterize these dynamics over an extended historical timeline. Our approach leverages multidecadal
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Functional specialization of hippocampal somatostatin-expressing interneurons Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Simon Chamberland, Gariel Grant, Robert Machold, Erica R. Nebet, Guoling Tian, Joshua Stich, Monica Hanani, Klas Kullander, Richard W. Tsien
Hippocampal somatostatin-expressing ( Sst ) GABAergic interneurons (INs) exhibit considerable anatomical and functional heterogeneity. Recent single-cell transcriptome analyses have provided a comprehensive Sst -IN subpopulations census, a plausible molecular ground truth of neuronal identity whose links to specific functionality remain incomplete. Here, we designed an approach to identify and access
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Congruence modules in higher codimension and zeta lines in Galois cohomology Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Srikanth B. Iyengar, Chandrashekhar B. Khare, Jeffrey Manning, Eric Urban
This article builds on recent work of the first three authors where a notion of congruence modules in higher codimension is introduced. The main results are a criterion for detecting regularity of local rings in terms of congruence modules, and a more refined version of a result tracking the change of congruence modules under deformation. Number theoretic applications include the construction of canonical
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Londoners see what a scientist looks like up close in 50 photographs Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-18
Nature’s Where I Work images are being exhibited in the UK capital until June.
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Burnt remains of Maya royalty mark a dramatic power shift Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-18
Finds in pyramid at Guatemalan site suggest that remains were disinterred and desecrated in a public ritual.
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Violent volcanoes have wracked Jupiter’s moon Io for billions of years Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-18
Understanding the volcanic moon’s history could offer fresh insights into conditions on early Earth.
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Meet ‘goldene’: this gilded cousin of graphene is also one atom thick Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-18
Sheets of gold might find use as catalysts, or in light-sensing devices.
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AI’s keen diagnostic eye Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-18
Powered by deep-learning algorithms, artificial intelligence systems could replace agents such as chemicals currently used to augment medical scans.
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This water bottle purifies your drink with energy from your steps Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
Static electricity generated by the foot striking the ground can be captured to kill pathogens.
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Promiscuous G-protein activation by the calcium-sensing receptor Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17 Hao Zuo, Jinseo Park, Aurel Frangaj, Jianxiang Ye, Guanqi Lu, Jamie J. Manning, Wesley B. Asher, Zhengyuan Lu, Guo-bin Hu, Liguo Wang, Joshua Mendez, Edward Eng, Zhening Zhang, Xin Lin, Robert Grassucci, Wayne A. Hendrickson, Oliver B. Clarke, Jonathan A. Javitch, Arthur D. Conigrave, Qing R. Fan
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Control of neuronal excitation–inhibition balance by BMP–SMAD1 signalling Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17 Zeynep Okur, Nadia Schlauri, Vassilis Bitsikas, Myrto Panopoulou, Raul Ortiz, Michaela Schwaiger, Kajari Karmakar, Dietmar Schreiner, Peter Scheiffele
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Smoking bans are coming: what does the evidence say? Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
Countries are cracking down on tobacco use and vaping — the laws could save thousands of lives and billions of dollars, say scientists.
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Exploring the lung microbiome’s role in disease Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
Unusual microbial communities in a person’s lower airways could influence the onset and progression of lung cancer and other conditions, and might point the way to therapies.
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Dad always mows on summer Saturday mornings Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
A clear-cut success.
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Researchers want a ‘nutrition label’ for academic-paper facts Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
An ‘at a glance’ approach to publication details, such as journal acceptance rates and the number of peer reviewers, would promote transparency, scientists say.
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We must protect the global plastics treaty from corporate interference Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
A United Nations-backed agreement to end plastic pollution is within reach — but only if scientists, civil society and businesses unite against powerful vested interests.
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Deadly diseases and inflatable suits: how I found my niche in virology research Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
Virologist Hulda Jónsdóttir studies some of the world’s most pathogenic viruses at the Spiez Laboratory in Switzerland.
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Nanoparticle fix opens up tricky technique to forensic applications Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17 Peter J. Vikesland
A technique for measuring trace quantities of molecules in water.
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How young people benefit from Swiss apprenticeships Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
Computational biologist Jitao David Zhang says that the country’s vocational training programme teaches key work and life skills.
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Coupled neural activity controls working memory in humans Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17 Ziv Williams
Temporarily holding on to information depends on coordinated brain waves.
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CERN’s impact goes way beyond tiny particles Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
A global effort to uncover the nature of the Universe has had resounding effects on scientists and society.
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UN plastics treaty: don’t let lobbyists drown out researchers Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
Tackling plastic pollution needs scientists to be in the negotiating room at upcoming talks.
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Canadian science gets biggest boost to PhD and postdoc pay in 20 years Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
Government budget includes more money for basic research and notable increases to postgraduate stipends.
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Humans and their livestock have sheltered in this Saudi Arabian cave for 10,000 years Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
Saudi herders have travelled the same routes for millennia, cave discovery suggests.
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Keys, wallet, phone: the neuroscience behind working memory Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
Hear the biggest stories from the world of science | 17 April 2024
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I dive for fish in the longest freshwater lake in the world Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
Biologist Carolin Sommer-Trembo describes her fascination for fish and why she enjoys doing science in Switzerland.
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Bacteria deploy umbrella toxins against their competitors Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17 Sarah J. Coulthurst
Streptomyces bacteria make a previously unknown antibacterial agent.
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Surprise hybrid origins of a butterfly species Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17 Megan E. Frayer, Jenn M. Coughlan
Longwing butterfly species found to be a rare type of hybrid.
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An exploration of how the insect-wing hinge functions Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17 Tanvi Deora
Insights into control of the joints that connect fly wings to their body.
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AI traces mysterious metastatic cancers to their source Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
Algorithm examines images of metastatic cells to identify the location of the primary tumour.