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Quantum drum device

The tiny aluminium membranes used by Kotler’s team to demonstrate quantum entanglement.Credit: Florent Lecoq and Shlomi Kotler/NIST

Tiny drums push quantum limits

By playing two tiny drums, physicists have provided the most direct demonstration yet of quantum entanglement on larger scales. The aluminium drums are each around 10 micrometres long — barely visible to the naked eye, but enormous by quantum standards. Physicists hit the drums with microwave photons and observed that the membranes moved with such a high degree of correlation that they could no longer be described separately: they were in a quantum-entangled state. In another tiny drum experiment, physicists linked the drums’ properties — although not in perfect sync — to get around some of the measurement restrictions defined by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The findings provide evidence that quantum laws still apply in the big world and open the door to future technology built with entangled macroscopic parts.

Nature | 5 min read

Reference: Science paper 1 & Science paper 2

Scientists OK Fukushima water release

Japan’s proposal to discharge more than one million tonnes of contaminated water from the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station into the ocean off its east coast has been strongly opposed by the country’s neighbours, including China and South Korea. But scientists say the risks are likely to be minimal if the release is carried out as planned. Radiation levels in the treated waste water will be very low, and the water will be released gradually over several years to minimize any risk.

Nature | 5 min read

COVID-19 coronavirus update

News

Pfizer–BioNTech protects against variants

Data from Qatar’s second wave of COVID-19 have provided the strongest evidence yet that vaccines can stop the worrying B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 variants. Clinical trials in South Africa — where B.1.351 was first identified — had suggested that the strain would pose a threat to immunization efforts. But this study offers a fuller picture of what countries battling such variants can expect. People in Qatar who received two doses of the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine were 90% less likely to develop an infection caused by B.1.1.7 than were unvaccinated people. They were 75% less likely to develop one caused by B.1.351, and had near-total protection from severe disease caused by that strain. It’s “extremely good news”, says infectious-disease epidemiologist Laith Jamal Abu-Raddad. “Things have been going extremely well, the numbers are going down very, very rapidly.”

Nature | 5 min read

Opinion

The human cost of sidelining science

By sidelining their scientists, the governments of Brazil and India have missed out on a crucial opportunity to reduce the loss of life, argues a Nature editorial.

Nature | 4 min read

Features & opinion

How Navy money changed sea science

Historian of science Naomi Oreskes’s new book explores how storied research centres, such as the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, were once funded almost entirely by the US Navy. What difference did that make to what science they did or did not do? “The short answer,” writes Oreskes, “is: a lot.” The result is a readable and enlightening history, writes reviewer Ann Finkbeiner — but one that doesn’t resolve whether that influence was laudible or malign.

Nature | 5 min read

The rise and rise of monoclonal antibodies

US regulators have just approved their 100th therapeutic antibody; in 2019, antibodies accounted for 9 of the 20 top therapeutics by sales in the United States. This boom has been driven by the wide-ranging abilities of monoclonal antibodies, designer versions of disease-fighting molecules from the immune system. Take a deep dive into the secrets of their success, especially for treating cancer.

Nature Reviews Drug Discovery | 15 min read

Futures: What friends are for

When the robots rise up to overthrow their human creators, will we get any sympathy from the ones designed to be our friends? A little boy and his digital pet try to make it through the apocalypse in the latest short story for Nature’s Futures series.

Nature | 6 min read

Podcast: Earliest known burial in Africa

The discovery of the burial of a young child in a cave in Kenya around 78,000 years ago sheds light on the role of symbolism in the treatment of the dead during the Middle Stone Age. Plus, a metal-free rechargeable battery and the Arctic bird that maintains a circadian rhythm despite living in 24-hour sunlight.

Nature Podcast | 20 min listen

Reference: Nature paper

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Quote of the day

“We will all experience crises in our careers; we need organizational and community resilience if any of us hope to ‘bounce forward’.”

Academia needs to radically rethink how it supports parents and carers — and the results will help everyone in academia, argue seven researchers in a bluntly titled article in Communication, Culture and Critique.