Letter to the Editor

Letter to the Editor

A technique for blending into green foliage arose independently in many lineages of tree frogs.

Letter to the Editor

Letter to the Editor

As the current pandemic makes us ponder the future of cities, a book examines past rises and falls.

The pandemic has set back efforts to achieve the original 2015 targets. The need for change to make them more attainable is stronger than ever.

After two decades of improvements, the current human reference genome (GRCh38) is the most accurate and complete vertebrate genome ever produced. However, no one chromosome has been finished end to end, and hundreds of unresolved gaps persist1,2. Here we present a de novo human genome assembly that surpasses the continuity of GRCh382, along with the first gapless, telomere-to-telomere assembly of a

As institutions scale back in-person learning in response to COVID-19, a federal directive requires students from abroad to take on-campus classes or return home.

Unusual method could increase the supply of lungs available for transplantation.

Africa CDC announces that new coronavirus cases were up 24% on the continent in the past week. Plus, US universities sue the government in support of international foreign students, and the four pillars of a successful science spin-off.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is characterized by distinct patterns of disease progression suggesting diverse host immune responses. We performed an integrated immune analysis on a cohort of 50 COVID-19 patients with various disease severity. A unique phenotype was observed in severe and critical patients, consisting of a highly impaired interferon (IFN) type I response (characterized by no IFN-β

Molecular understanding of neutralizing antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 could accelerate vaccine design and drug discovery. We analyzed 294 anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and found that IGHV3-53 is the most frequently used IGHV gene for targeting the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein. Co-crystal structures of two IGHV3-53 neutralizing antibodies with RBD, with or without Fab CR3022, at

Double-beta processes play a key role in the exploration of neutrino and weak interaction properties, and in the searches for effects beyond the Standard Model. During the last half century many attempts were undertaken to search for double-beta decay with emission of two electrons, especially for its neutrinoless mode (0ν2β−), the latter being still not observed. Double-electron capture (2EC) was

First-principles methods are employed to understand the existence of magnetic-domain-wall-induced electric polarization observed in rare-earth iron garnets. In contrast with previous beliefs, it is found that the occurrence of such polarization neither requires the local magnetic moments of the rare-earth ions nor non-collinear magnetism. It can rather be understood as originating from a magnetoelectric

Van der Waals heterostructures of atomically thin layers with rotational misalignments, such as twisted bilayer graphene, feature interesting structural moir superlattices. Due to the quantum coupling between the twisted atomic layers, light-matter interaction is inherently chiral; as such, they provide a promising platform for chiral plasmons in the extreme nanoscale. However, while the interlayer

We show that induced dipole-dipole interactions allow for photon blockade in subwavelength ensembles of two-level, ground-state neutral atoms. Our protocol relies on the energy shift of the single-excitation, superradiant state of N atoms, which can be engineered to yield an effective two-level system. A coherent pump induces Rabi oscillation between the ground state and a collective bright state,

When a liquid film drains on a vertical plate, the film becomes nonuniform near the vertical} edge. Here we experimentally report the three-dimensional (3D) self-similar shape of this film. Based on the well-known 2D self-similar solution of a draining film far from the edge, we identify a new 3D self-similar scaling, which converts the PDE for the film thickness with three independent variables into

The large-scale circulation (LSC) of fluid is one of the main concepts in turbulent thermal convection as it is known to be important in global heat and mass transport in the system. In turbulent Rayleigh–B'enard convection (RBC) in slender containers, the LSC is formed of several dynamically changing convective rolls that are stacked on top of each other. The present study reveals the following two

We reveal the universal effect of gauge fields on the existence, evolution, and stability of solitons in the spinor multidimensional nonlinear Schr"{o}dinger equation. Focusing on the two-dimensional case, we show that when gauge field can be split in a pure gauge and a generating , the roles of these components in soliton dynamics are different: the of emerging states are determined by the curvature

Strongly correlated Fermi systems with pairing interactions become superfluid below a critical temperature Tc. The extent to which such pairing correlations alter the behavior of the liquid at temperatures T>Tc is a subtle issue that remains an area of debate, in particular regarding the appearance of the so-called pseudogap in the BCS{}BEC crossover of unpolarized spin-1/2 nonrelativistic matter.

Classical rotations of asymmetric rigid bodies are unstable around the axis of intermediate moment of inertia, causing a flipping of rotor orientation. This effect, known as the tennis racket effect, quickly averages to zero in classical ensembles since the flipping period varies significantly upon approaching the separatrix. Here, we explore the quantum rotations of rapidly spinning thermal asymmetric

Programmable valves and actuators are widely used in man-made systems to provide sophisticated control of fluid flows. In nature, however, this process is frequently achieved using passive soft materials. Here we study how elastic deformations of cylindrical pores embedded in a flexible membrane enable passive flow control. We develop biomimetic valves with variable pore radius, membrane radius, and

We achieve current-induced switching in collinear insulating antiferromagnetic CoO/Pt with fourfold in-plane magnetic anisotropy. This is measured electrically by spin Hall magnetoresistance and confirmed by the magnetic field-induced spin-flop transition of the CoO layer By applying current pulses and magnetic fields, we quantify the efficiency of the acting current-induced torques and estimate a

We study the connection between the charging power of quantum batteries and the fluctuations of the work. We prove that in order to have a non-zero rate of change of the extractable work, the state ρ𝒲 of the battery cannot be an eigenstate of a `’, defined by ℱ≡H𝒲+β−1log(ρ𝒲), where H𝒲 is the Hamiltonian of the battery and β is the inverse temperature of a reference thermal bath with respect to

Weyl semimetals in three-dimensional crystals provide the paradigm example of topologically protected band nodes. It is usually taken for granted that a pair of colliding Weyl points annihilate whenever they carry opposite chiral charge. In stark contrast, here we report that Weyl points in systems that are symmetric under the composition of time reversal with a π rotation are characterized by a non-Abelian

In addition to enhancing confinement, restricting optical systems to two dimensions gives rise to new photonic states, modified transport and distinct nonlinear effects. Here we explore these properties in combination and experimentally demonstrate a Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless phase transition in a nonlinear photonic lattice. In this topological transition, vortices are created in pairs and then

The availability of high-energy pulses with durations shorter than the period of their carrier frequency (sub-cycle) will reveal new regimes of strong-field light–matter interactions. Parametric waveform synthesis (that is, the coherent combination of carrier-envelope-phase-stable pulses that emerge from different optical parametric amplifiers) is a promising technology for the realization of tailored

The possibility of antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) of disease is a general concern for the development of vaccines and antibody therapies because the mechanisms that underlie antibody protection have the theoretical potential to amplify viral infections or trigger immunopathology. Observations relevant to the risks of ADE of disease require careful review at this critical point in the SARS-CoV-2

Hector Aguilar-Carreno is working from home to direct his team’s promising work on a COVID-19 vaccine.

Want to get ahead in business? Entrepreneurs need to be resilient, patient and strong team players, says Barbara Domayne-Hayman.

The month’s sharpest science shots, selected by Nature’s photo team.

As conference cancellations cut revenue, some scholarly organizations are fighting to stay afloat.

Accurate and predictive computations of the quantum-mechanical behavior of many interacting electrons in realistic atomic environments are critical for the theoretical design of materials with desired properties, and require solving the grand-challenge problem of the many-electron Schr"{o}dinger equation. An infinite chain of equispaced hydrogen atoms is perhaps the simplest realistic model for a bulk

We report a probable observation of the DC Josephson effect in mesoscopic junctions of three and four superconductors. The devices are fabricated in a top-down fashion from a hybrid semiconductor/superconductor InAs/Al epitaxial heterostructure. In general, the critical current of a N-terminal junction is a (N−1)-dimensional hypersurface in the space of bias currents, which can be reduced to a set

We measure the electrical resistivity of hcp-iron up to ~ 170 GPa and ~ 3,000 K using a four-probe van der Pauw method coupled with homogeneous flat-top laser-heating in a DAC, and compute its electrical and thermal conductivity by first-principles molecular dynamics including electron-phonon and electron-electron scattering. We find that the measured resistivity of hcp-iron increases almost linearly

We compute three-loop corrections to the relation between the heavy quark masses defined in the pole and kinetic schemes. Using known relations between the pole and ${\rm MS}$ quark masses we can establish precise relations between the kinetic and ${\rm MS}$ charm and bottom masses. As compared to two loops, the precision is improved by a factor two to three. Our results constitute important ingredients

The emergence of a compressible insulator phase, known as the Bose glass, is characteristic of the interplay of interactions and disorder in correlated Bose fluids. While widely studied in tight-binding models, its observation remains elusive owing to stringent temperature effects. Here we show that this issue may be overcome by using Lieb-Liniger bosons in shallow quasiperiodic potentials. A Bose

We investigate the role of partonic degrees of freedom in high multiplicity p-Pb collisions at sNN= 5.02 TeV carried out at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) by studying the production and collective flow of identified hadrons at intermediate pT via the coalescence of soft partons from the viscous hydrodynamics ({VISH2+1}) and hard partons from the energy loss model ({LBT}). We find that combining these