Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Scientists typically look at the skies or take to the laboratory to probe the neutrino’s properties. But neutrinos produced in Earth’s atmosphere could reveal this long-sought information — and the experiments are already well under way.
The risk of catching COVID-19 as calculated by a smartphone app scales with the probability of subsequently testing positive for the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, showing that digital contact tracing is a useful tool for fighting future pandemics.
A transistor made from atomically thin materials mimics the way in which connections between neurons are strengthened by activity. Two perspectives reveal why physicists and neuroscientists share equal enthusiasm for this feat of engineering.
To counter misinformation, people are often advised to check the truth of claims by searching online. Five experiments show that this can actually increase people’s belief that false or misleading articles are true, an effect that might be driven by low-quality search results.
Automation of chemistry research has focused on developing robots to execute jobs. Artificial-intelligence technology has now been used not only to control robots, but also to plan their tasks on the basis of simple human prompts.
An artificial-intelligence graph neural network was trained on experimental data and used to identify chemical substructures that underlie selective antibiotic activity in more than 12 million compounds. This led to the discovery of a class of antibiotics with in vitro and in vivo activity against Gram-positive bacteria, including Staphylococcus aureus.
Medium- and high-entropy alloys are hugely promising materials in metallurgy and catalysis, but their atomic-scale structure — and how that relates to their properties — is not well understood. A powerful method is beginning to reveal their secrets, with hopes for engineering better materials in the future.
Neurons with a role in navigation fire sequentially in mice, forming patterns that repeat every minute or so — but which are neither spatially organized, nor related to any visible behaviour.
Thin cellular protrusions called cytonemes can transport ligand–receptor complexes from a signal-producing cell to a receiving cell in the developing zebrafish embryo. Even cells lacking the receptor can be activated by this signalling system.
Progression into the final phase of the cell cycle is driven mainly by protein phosphorylation, although it also requires the inhibition of phosphatase proteins, such as the PP2A:B55 complex. The structures reveal how PP2A:B55 binds to two of its inhibitors.
Bacteria use diverse defences against viral predators called bacteriophages. A method to identify antibacterial counter-defences in viral genomes has revealed striking modes of defence inhibition.
The strength of the biological carbon pump was estimated using direct measurements of nutrients collected over decades. The findings indicate that ocean waters can capture and store larger amounts of carbon dioxide than previously estimated. This might have implications for climate-change models.
A suppressive type of immune cell called a regulatory T cell has a key role in helping muscles to adapt to exercise — guarding muscle mitochondrial organelles against damage mediated by proinflammatory factors generated during physical activity.
Researchers have made a key breakthrough in how light is used to control time signals from the world’s most precise clocks. The technique marks a crucial step in bringing this technology into everyday life.
Modified components of messenger RNA can cause the protein-production machinery to stall during the process of translation. This might change the protein being made, a finding with implications for vaccines or therapies.