Featured
-
-
Editorial |
Want a sustainable future? Then look to the world’s cities
In a rapidly urbanizing world, what happens in cities matters — and sustainability success stories show what can be achieved when researchers and policymakers work together.
-
Comment |
Weak links in finance and supply chains are easily weaponized
Russian sanctions highlight how network analysis is urgently needed to find and protect vulnerable parts of the global economy.
- Henry Farrell
- & Abraham L. Newman
-
News & Views |
Trip frequency is key ingredient in new law of human travel
An analysis of mobile-phone tracking data has revealed a universal pattern that describes the interplay between the distances travelled by humans on trips and the frequency with which those trips are made.
- Laura Alessandretti
- & Sune Lehmann
-
News & Views |
Strategies for combating online hate
An analysis of the dynamics of online hate groups on social-media platforms reveals why current methods to ban hate content are ineffective, and provides the basis for four potential strategies to combat online hate.
- Noemi Derzsy
-
News |
Murray Gell-Mann, father of quarks, dies
US physicist was one of the chief architects of the standard model of particle physics.
- Davide Castelvecchi
-
Books & Arts |
The new physics needed to probe the origins of life
Stuart Kauffman’s provocative take on emergence and evolution energizes Sara Imari Walker.
- Sara Imari Walker
-
News Feature |
How secret conversations inside cells are transforming biology
Organelles — the cell’s workhorses — mingle far more than scientists ever appreciated.
- Elie Dolgin
-
News & Views Forum |
Cell parts to complex processes, from the bottom up
Engineering approaches allow biological structures and behaviours to be reconstituted in vitro. A biologist and a physicist discuss the potential and limitations of this bottom-up philosophy in providing insights into complex biological processes.
- Matthew Good
- & Xavier Trepat
-
News |
African and Asian researchers are hampered by visa problems
Researchers from these continents are three to four times more likely to experience visa problems when travelling for work than are Europeans and Americans.
- Maina Waruru
-
Books & Arts |
How poets and filmmakers construe complexity at the Crick Institute
Philip Ball tours a cross-disciplinary exhibition exploring patterns in bioscience.
- Philip Ball
-
Letter |
Selective silencing of euchromatic L1s revealed by genome-wide screens for L1 regulators
The retrotransposition of L1 is controlled by functionally diverse genes at the transcriptional or post-transcriptional levels, and its silencing can lead to the downregulation of host gene expression.
- Nian Liu
- , Cameron H. Lee
- & Joanna Wysocka
-
Outlook |
Policy: Urban physics
Cities are complex environments. Planning interventions that borrow principles from theoretical physics could help to improve peoples' lives.
- Kevin Pollock
-
Books & Arts |
Books in brief
Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week's best science picks.
- Barbara Kiser
-
Outlook |
Deep phenotyping: The details of disease
Precision medicine demands precise matching of deep genomic and phenotypic models — and the deeper you go, the more you know.
- Cathryn M. Delude
-
News Q&A |
The mathematics behind Internet virality
Computational social scientist Sharad Goel studies the spread of memes such as #TheDress.
- Davide Castelvecchi
-
News & Views |
A ratchet for protein complexity
Molecular machines containing related protein subunits are common in cells. Reconstruction of ancient proteins suggests that this type of complexity can evolve in the absence of any initial selective advantage. See Letter p.360
- W. Ford Doolittle
-
News & Views |
Foreseeing tipping points
Theory suggests that the risk of critical transitions in complex systems can be revealed by generic indicators. A lab study of extinction in plankton populations provides experimental support for that principle. See Letter p. 456
- Marten Scheffer
Cities matter to the world’s future — science must serve them better