Cancer treatments are often more successful when the disease is detected early. We evaluated the feasibility and safety of multicancer blood testing coupled with positron emission tomography–computed tomography (PET-CT) imaging to detect cancer in a prospective, interventional study of 10,006 women not previously known to have cancer. Positive blood tests were independently confirmed by a diagnostic

Microbial communities are essential to fundamental processes on Earth. Underlying the compositions and functions of these communities are nutritional interdependencies among individual species. One class of nutrients, cobamides (the family of enzyme cofactors that includes vitamin B12), is widely used for a variety of microbial metabolic functions, but these structurally diverse cofactors are synthesized

During sexual transmission, the high genetic diversity of HIV-1 within an individual is frequently reduced to one founder variant that initiates infection. Understanding the drivers of this bottleneck is crucial to developing effective infection control strategies. Little is known about the importance of the source partner during this bottleneck. To test the hypothesis that the source partner affects

Longevity has been a long-standing concern for hybrid perovskite photovoltaics. We demonstrate high-resilience positive-intrinsic-negative perovskite solar cells by incorporating a piperidinium-based ionic compound into the formamidinium-cesium lead-trihalide perovskite absorber. With the bandgap tuned to be well suited for perovskite-on-silicon tandem cells, this piperidinium additive enhances the

Direct activation of gaseous hydrocarbons remains a major challenge for the chemistry community. Because of the intrinsic inertness of these compounds, harsh reaction conditions are typically required to enable C(sp3)–H bond cleavage, barring potential applications in synthetic organic chemistry. Here, we report a general and mild strategy to activate C(sp3)–H bonds in methane, ethane, propane, and

The role of reduced dimensionality in high-temperature superconductors is still under debate. Recently, ultracold atoms have emerged as an ideal model system to study such strongly correlated two-dimensional (2D) systems. Here, we report on the realization of a Josephson junction in an ultracold 2D Fermi gas. We measure the frequency of Josephson oscillations as a function of the phase difference across

The direct-current (dc) Josephson effect provides a phase-sensitive tool for investigating superfluid order parameters. We report on the observation of dc Josephson supercurrents in strongly interacting fermionic superfluids across a tunneling barrier in the absence of any applied potential difference. For sufficiently strong barriers, we observed a sinusoidal current-phase relation, in agreement with

Dielectric capacitors can store and release electric energy at ultrafast rates and are extensively studied for applications in electronics and electric power systems. Among various candidates, thin films based on relaxor ferroelectrics, a special kind of ferroelectric with nanometer-sized domains, have attracted special attention because of their high energy densities and efficiencies. We show that

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has resulted in an unprecedented public health crisis. Because of the novelty of the virus, there are currently no SARS-CoV-2–specific treatments or vaccines available. Therefore, rapid development of effective vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 are urgently needed. Here, we developed a

Bacterial biofilms represent a basic form of multicellular organization that confers survival advantages to constituent cells. The sequential stages of cell ordering during biofilm development have been studied in the pathogen and model biofilm-former Vibrio cholerae. It is unknown how spatial trajectories of individual cells and the collective motions of many cells drive biofilm expansion. We developed

Species’ vulnerability to climate change depends on the most temperature-sensitive life stages, but for major animal groups such as fish, life cycle bottlenecks are often not clearly defined. We used observational, experimental, and phylogenetic data to assess stage-specific thermal tolerance metrics for 694 marine and freshwater fish species from all climate zones. Our analysis shows that spawning

Eukaryotic histone H3-H4 tetramers contain a putative copper (Cu2+) binding site at the H3-H3′ dimerization interface with unknown function. The coincident emergence of eukaryotes with global oxygenation, which challenged cellular copper utilization, raised the possibility that histones may function in cellular copper homeostasis. We report that the recombinant Xenopus laevis H3-H4 tetramer is an oxidoreductase

The CRISPR RNA (crRNA)–guided nuclease Cas13 recognizes complementary viral transcripts to trigger the degradation of both host and viral RNA during the type VI CRISPR-Cas antiviral response. However, how viruses can counteract this immunity is not known. We describe a listeriaphage (ϕLS46) encoding an anti-CRISPR protein (AcrVIA1) that inactivates the type VI-A CRISPR system of Listeria seeligeri

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) can cause coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), an influenza-like disease that is primarily thought to infect the lungs with transmission through the respiratory route. However, clinical evidence suggests that the intestine may present another viral target organ. Indeed, the SARS-CoV-2 receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is highly

In Quantum Legacies: Dispatches from an Uncertain World, David Kaiser gives a witty and insightful overview of the development of modern physics. Through a series of previously published but carefully reedited essays, he explores how America's defense agenda has shaped physics research and education, from the ever-increasing size of research teams to the way we talk about quantum phenomena.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID- 19) pandemic has transformed our homes into schools, workplaces, recreational centers, and experimental kitchens, rendering us increasingly aware of the opportunities and constraints built into their design. In her new book, The Great Indoors, science journalist Emily Anthes helps us channel this awareness into an appreciation of how design alters our feelings and

Historically, scientific and engineering expertise has been key in shaping research and innovation (R&I) policies, with benefits presumed to accrue to society more broadly over time (1). But there is persistent and growing concern about whether and how ethical and societal values are integrated into R&I policies and governance, as we confront public disbelief in science and political suspicion toward

Physiological responses to temperature can provide a window into climate change vulnerability of species. How warm will it get relative to a species' ability to tolerate heat? One complication in answering this question is that an organism's temperature tolerance can change throughout its life span, and organisms in early life stages may be more sensitive to cold and heat extremes than adults (the

For organic chemists, synthesizing complex molecules in a few steps without waste and with minimal energy has been a long-standing challenge. In many cases, synthetic methodology now enables the design of straightforward syntheses of molecules with different degrees of structural complexity and even their large-scale production. The starting materials are often derived ultimately from hydrocarbons

Histone proteins are the ubiquitous organizers of all eukaryotic genomes (1). Two each of the histones H2A, H2B, H3, and H4 form a disk-shaped assembly around which 147 base pairs (bp) of DNA are tightly coiled. Hundreds of thousands of these connected nucleosomes wrap up further to form chromosomes. The substantial sequence conservation between eukaryotic histones and the presence of simple histones

Explorations of the evolutionary arms race between bacteria and bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria) have unearthed a variety of defense mechanisms that include CRISPR-Cas (CRISPR-associated nuclease) adaptive immune systems (1). Understanding the mechanisms of CRISPR-mediated immunity, involving DNA-encoded, RNA-guided, sequence-specific targeting of invasive nucleic acids (2, 3), has spawned

Born in 1881 on a farm in Pennsylvania, Alice C. Evans dedicated her life to studying bacteria in dairy products. Early in her career, Alice became convinced that most bacteria display multicellular behavior as part of their life cycles. At the time, the morphological changes observed in bacterial life cycles created confusion among scientists. In 1928, as the first female president of the American

Deep in Mexico's Chihuahuan Desert, the turquoise-blue pools of Cuatro Ciénegas host ancient microbes and provide a "window into early Earth." The waters of these pools, with a chemistry that resembles that of Earth's ancient seas, are home to unusual bacterial mats and formations called stromatolites. Some of the bacterial lineages in the pools date back to 680 million years ago. Valeria Souza Saldívar

In 2021, U.S. researchers will go to the frozen expanse of Greenland's northern ice sheet to pinpoint the last time it disappeared. The 5-year, $7 million campaign, awarded last month by the National Science Foundation, will mark the first large U.S. ice drilling program in Greenland in more than 25 years. But unlike past projects, the target is not the climate records held in the ice, but the rocks

Doxorubicin, an old chemotherapy drug known as "the red devil" because of its distinctive hue and toxicity, remains a key treatment for many cancer patients. But a new study reports the drug can be tweaked to reduce its most punishing side effect, cardiac damage, without blunting its ability to curb tumors. The work, from a team in the Netherlands, upends conventional thinking about doxorubicin and

Earlier this year, astronomers discovered an oddball asteroid inside the orbit of Venus—the first member of a predicted flock near the Sun, informally called Vatiras. No bigger than a small mountain, the asteroid has now gained another distinction: It appears to be rich in the mineral olivine, which makes up much of Earth's deep rock. Some astronomers think that is a clue to a larger set of "missing

When and if the world has a COVID-19 vaccine, who should get it first? That question came into sharp relief last week as the World Health Organization and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began to publicly discuss priority groups such as the elderly and health care workers. New data suggested how fraught any prioritization is likely to be: Pregnant women—normally the last to receive

In science news around the world, the world's second largest Ebola outbreak, in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is declared officially over. As the world battles the COVID-19 pandemic, an influenza virus strain widely circulating among pigs in China has the potential to spark another, researchers say. As part of a giant legal settlement, Bayer proposes to fund an independent

Discovery of robust yet reversibly switchable electric dipoles at reduced dimensions is critical in advancing nanoelectronics devices. Energy bands flat in momentum space generate robust localized states that are activated independently of each other. We determined flat bands exist and induce robust yet independently switchable dipoles exhibiting a unique ferroelectricity in HfO2. Flat polar phonon

Versatile chemical transformations of surface functional groups in 2D transition-metal carbides (MXenes) open up a new design space for this broad class of functional materials. We introduce a general strategy to install and remove surface groups by performing substitution and elimination reactions in molten inorganic salts. Successful synthesis of MXenes with O, NH, S, Cl, Se, Br, and Te surface terminations

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is caused by infection with the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has become a global pandemic. It currently remains unclear whether convalescing patients have a risk of reinfection. We generated a rhesus macaque model of SARS-CoV-2 infection that was characterized by interstitial pneumonia and systemic viral dissemination mainly

Catalyzing water dissociation (WD) into protons and hydroxide ions is important both for fabricating bipolar membranes (BPMs) that can couple different pH environments into a single electrochemical device, and for accelerating electrocatalytic reactions that consume protons in neutral-to-alkaline media. We designed a BPM electrolyzer to quantitatively measure WD kinetics and show that, for metal nanoparticles

Uromodulin is the most abundant protein in human urine and forms filaments that antagonize the adhesion of uropathogens; however, filament structure and mechanism of protection remain poorly understood. We used cryo-electron tomography to show that the uromodulin filament consists of a zigzag-shaped backbone with laterally protruding arms. N-glycosylation mapping and biophysical assays revealed that

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the strongest environmental risk factor for the accelerated development of neurodegenerative diseases. There are currently no therapeutics to address this due to lack of insight into mechanisms of injury progression, which are challenging to study in mammalian models. Here, we have developed and extensively characterized a head-specific approach to TBI in Drosophila

Declining ejaculate performance with male age is taxonomically widespread and has broad fitness consequences. Ejaculate success requires fully functional germline (sperm) and soma (seminal fluid) components. However, some aging theories predict that resources should be preferentially diverted to the germline at the expense of the soma, suggesting differential impacts of aging on sperm and seminal fluid

Understanding to what extent stem cell potential is a cell-intrinsic property or an emergent behavior coming from global tissue dynamics and geometry is a key outstanding question of systems and stem cell biology. Here, we propose a theory of stem cell dynamics as a stochastic competition for access to a spatially localized niche, giving rise to a stochastic conveyor-belt model. Cell divisions produce

DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) trigger transient pausing of nearby transcription, an emerging ATM-dependent response that suppresses chromosomal instability. We screened a chemical library designed to target the human kinome for new activities that mediate gene silencing on DSB-flanking chromatin, and have uncovered the DYRK1B kinase as an early respondent to DNA damage. We showed that DYRK1B is swiftly

Understanding deformation mechanisms in silicon is critical for reliable design of miniaturized devices operating at high temperatures. Bulk silicon is brittle, but it becomes ductile at about 540 °C. It creeps (deforms plastically with time) at high temperatures (∼800 °C). However, the effect of small size on ductility and creep of silicon remains elusive. Here, we report that silicon at small scales

Ancient people named the planet Jupiter well. Both its brilliance and its slow, regal movement across the sky evoked a king among gods. Today we know much more about the influence of Jupiter, a planet boasting more than twice as much mass as the solar system’s other planets put together. Jupiter’s tremendous gravity stunted the growth of newborn Mars, sculpts the asteroid belt today, and may even help

Semi-invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells are self-reactive lymphocytes, yet how this lineage attains self-tolerance remains unknown. iNKT cells constitutively express high levels of Nr4a1-encoded Nur77, a transcription factor that integrates signal strength downstream of the T cell receptor (TCR) within activated thymocytes and peripheral T cells. The function of Nur77 in iNKT cells is unknown

The bacterial second messenger cyclic diguanylate (c-di-GMP) regulates a wide range of cellular functions from biofilm formation to growth and survival. Targeting a second-messenger network is challenging because the system involves a multitude of components with often overlapping functions. Here, we present a strategy to intercept c-di-GMP signaling pathways by directly targeting the second messenger

The difficulty of achieving robust functional expression of insect nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) has hampered our understanding of these important molecular targets of globally deployed neonicotinoid insecticides at a time when concerns have grown regarding the toxicity of this chemotype to insect pollinators. We show that thioredoxin-related transmembrane protein 3 (TMX3) is essential

Mammalian nervous systems, as natural ionic circuitries, stand out in environmental perception and sophisticated information transmission, relying on protein ionic channels and additional necessary structures. Prosperously emerged ionic regulated biomimetic nanochannels exhibit great potentialities in various application scenarios, especially signal transduction. Most reported direct current systems

Three decades ago an expression for the maximum acceleration of elementary particles was derived using quantum theory. There is no experimental confirmation of this so far. In this paper we study the phenomenon of acceleration of elementary particles by the surface gravity of primordial black holes (PBH) formed in the early universe and the associated Hawking-Unruh effect. From a heuristic theory we

A lot of data in time domain were obtained by the Kepler mission, including many contact binaries. Long-term observation lets us obtain more information about the short time scale variation in their light curves or in their orbital periods. Unfortunately, the exposure time is too long (most of them are 30 minutes). Hence, many variations in light curves are smoothed. To avoid this problem, we analyzed

Using six years collecting of electron density (Ne ) data from the Swarm A satellite, this study portrays comprehensive maps of the occurrence of medium‐scale traveling ionospheric disturbance (MSTID) at middle latitudes, which is characterized by the in‐situ absolute Ne fluctuations above a certain threshold. Two interesting spatial preference on the occurrence of MSTID as well as their dependence

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Divers found stone tools belonging to people that lived more than 7,000 years ago. Plus: an image dataset tagged with offensive labels has been pulled offline, and a fire has destroyed valuable specimens at a museum in Brazil.

A research institute that appointed Pier Paolo Pandolfi as its scientific director has reversed its decision after internal protests.

Hear the biggest stories from the world of science | 02 July 2020

Chemokines and their receptors mediate cell migration, which influences multiple fundamental biological processes and disease conditions, such as inflammation and cancer1. Although ample efforts have been invested into the structural investigation of the chemokine receptors and receptor–chemokine recognition2–4, less is known about endogenous chemokine-induced receptor activation and G protein coupling

Emissions of sulfur hexafluoride soared over the 40 years to 2018, despite some countries’ efforts to curb its use.

Conservation scientist Claudine Loisel is spellbound by the stained-glass splendours that survived a devastating fire at Paris’s famous cathedral.

A recent fire at a natural history museum in Minas Gerais is forcing some researchers to relive the pain of losing priceless specimens and artefacts.

Time to prepare for another mission.

Gravitational-wave detector goes quantum to overcome the limits of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Plus: why it’s so hard to know when we will reach herd immunity to COVID-19, and how flying snakes glide through the air.

Indirect imaging of potential-energy landscapes in materials.

When waves propagate through a weak disordered potential with correlation length larger than the wavelength, they form channels (branches) of enhanced intensity that keep dividing as the waves propagate1. This fundamental wave phenomenon is known as branched flow. It was first observed for electrons1,2,3,4,5,6 and for microwave cavities7,8, and it is generally expected for waves with vastly different