Featured
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Nature Podcast |
Our podcast highlights of 2020
The Nature Podcast team select some of their favourite stories from the past 12 months.
- Benjamin Thompson
- , Dan Fox
- & Nick Howe
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News Round-Up |
Asteroid treasure, COVID vaccine and public peer review
The latest science news, in brief.
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Obituary |
Jack Steinberger (1921–2020)
Particle physicist who shared Nobel for discovering muon neutrinos.
- Christine Sutton
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News & Views |
High-resolution 3D printing in seconds
A 3D-printing technique has been developed that can produce millimetre- to centimetre-scale objects with micrometre-scale features. It relies on chemical reactions triggered by the intersection of two light beams.
- Cameron Darkes-Burkey
- & Robert F. Shepherd
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Article |
Superconducting qubit to optical photon transduction
A chip-scale platform is developed for the conversion of a single microwave excitation of a superconducting qubit into optical photons, with potential uses in quantum computer networks.
- Mohammad Mirhosseini
- , Alp Sipahigil
- & Oskar Painter
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Article |
Xolography for linear volumetric 3D printing
By combining the use of photoswitchable photoinitators and intersecting light beams, objects and complex systems can be produced rapidly with higher definition than is possible using state-of-the art macroscopic volumetric methods.
- Martin Regehly
- , Yves Garmshausen
- & Stefan Hecht
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Article |
Plasmonic topological quasiparticle on the nanometre and femtosecond scales
Topological plasmonic spin textures are excited by shining light on a structured silver film, and imaging defines how these quasiparticle field and spin textures evolve on the nanometre and femtosecond scales.
- Yanan Dai
- , Zhikang Zhou
- & Hrvoje Petek
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Matters Arising |
The effect of interventions on COVID-19
- Kristian Soltesz
- , Fredrik Gustafsson
- & Bo Bernhardsson
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Article |
Mastering Atari, Go, chess and shogi by planning with a learned model
A reinforcement-learning algorithm that combines a tree-based search with a learned model achieves superhuman performance in high-performance planning and visually complex domains, without any knowledge of their underlying dynamics.
- Julian Schrittwieser
- , Ioannis Antonoglou
- & David Silver
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Article |
Underdetection of cases of COVID-19 in France threatens epidemic control
Analyses of virological and surveillance data in France show that a substantial proportion of symptomatic cases of COVID-19 have remained undetected and that easily accessible and efficient testing is required to control the pandemic.
- Giulia Pullano
- , Laura Di Domenico
- & Vittoria Colizza
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World View |
Arecibo Observatory: another great lost in 2020
Amid all the year’s losses, I grieve what was once the world’s biggest radio telescope, where I got my scientific start.
- Abel Méndez
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News |
Biden’s pick to head US environment agency heartens scientists
Veteran environmental regulator Michael Regan will lead the Environmental Protection Agency, joining a team of experienced climate appointees.
- Jeff Tollefson
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News & Views |
Targeted wetland restoration could greatly reduce nitrogen pollution
Wetlands remove nitrate pollution from water effectively. An analysis shows that this effect is constrained in the United States by the distribution of wetlands, and could be increased by targeting wetland restoration to nitrate sources.
- Jacques C. Finlay
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Research Highlight |
Chemists tie an ‘endless’ knot — one of the most complex ever made
Long atomic strings that are woven together create a structure with symbolic power for adherents of Buddhism.
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News & Views |
Quantum engineering for optical clocks
Atomic clocks known as optical clocks are more accurate and stable than current timekeepers. Two quantum-engineering approaches could improve the performance of optical clocks even further and extend their applications.
- Christian Lisdat
- & Carsten Klempt
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Article |
Entanglement on an optical atomic-clock transition
A many-atom state of trapped 171Yb atoms that are entangled on an optical atomic-clock transition overcomes the standard quantum limit, providing a proof-of-principle demonstration towards entanglement-based optical atomic clocks.
- Edwin Pedrozo-Peñafiel
- , Simone Colombo
- & Vladan Vuletić
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Article |
Self-assembly of a layered two-dimensional molecularly woven fabric
An anion and metal ion template is used to form woven polymer patches that are joined together by polymerization into a fully woven, two-dimensional, molecular patchwork.
- David P. August
- , Robert A. W. Dryfe
- & Robert J. Young
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Article |
Tuning the Chern number in quantum anomalous Hall insulators
The number of edge channels in quantum anomalous Hall insulators is controlled by varying either the magnetic dopant concentration or the interior spacer layer thickness, yielding Chern numbers up to 5.
- Yi-Fan Zhao
- , Ruoxi Zhang
- & Cui-Zu Chang
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Article |
Half-minute-scale atomic coherence and high relative stability in a tweezer clock
A tweezer clock containing about 150 88Sr atoms achieves trapping and optical excited-state lifetimes exceeding 40 seconds, and shows relative fractional frequency stability similar to that of leading atomic clocks.
- Aaron W. Young
- , William J. Eckner
- & Adam M. Kaufman
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Article |
Topological superconductivity in a van der Waals heterostructure
A van der Waals structure based on a two-dimensional magnet and layered superconductor offers a potential system in which topological superconductivity could be easily tuned and integrated into devices.
- Shawulienu Kezilebieke
- , Md Nurul Huda
- & Peter Liljeroth
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Article |
Spin transport in a tunable Heisenberg model realized with ultracold atoms
Spin transport far from equilibrium is studied in a Heisenberg model with adjustable anisotropy realized with coupled ultracold 7Li atoms, and different dynamical regimes are found for positive and negative anisotropies.
- Paul Niklas Jepsen
- , Jesse Amato-Grill
- & Wolfgang Ketterle
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News |
Asteroid dust recovered from Japan’s daring Hayabusa2 mission
Scientists hope the dark grains from asteroid Ryugu will improve their understanding of the Solar System’s formation.
- Smriti Mallapaty
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News |
2020 beyond COVID: the other science events that shaped the year
Mars missions, record-breaking wildfires and a room-temperature superconductor are among this year’s top non-COVID stories.
- Davide Castelvecchi
- , Jeff Tollefson
- & Alexandra Witze
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News & Views |
Viruses, microscopy and fast radio bursts: 10 remarkable discoveries from 2020
Highlights from News & Views published this year.
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Article |
Strongly correlated Chern insulators in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene
Strong electron–electron interactions in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene can fundamentally change the topology of the system’s flat bands, producing a hierarchy of strongly correlated topological insulators in modest magnetic fields.
- Kevin P. Nuckolls
- , Myungchul Oh
- & Ali Yazdani
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News Round-Up |
COVID vaccine allocation and a dramatic telescope collapse
The latest science news, in brief.
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News & Views |
Proton collisions probe the final frontier of the standard model of particle physics
The nuclear forces that act on short-lived subatomic particles have been hard to study. This problem has now been solved by smashing high-energy protons together and measuring the momenta of the unstable particles produced.
- Manuel Lorenz
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Nature Index |
AI will change the world, so it’s time to change AI
To ensure that AI meets its potential as a transformative tool, it must be developed by a truly representative research community, say Tess Posner and Li Fei-Fei.
- Tess Posner
- & Li Fei-Fei
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Nature Index |
Network effect: visualizing AI connections in the natural sciences
Collaborations on AI-related papers in journals tracked by the Nature Index reveal country strengths.
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Nature Index |
Sliced, diced and digested: AI-generated science ready in minutes
AI can decide which papers are worth reading, and condenses them to make the literature more accessible.
- Chris Woolston
- & Jeffrey M. Perkel
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Nature Index |
Artificial-intelligence research escalates amid calls for caution
A look at one of the most rapidly advancing and controversial topics in scientific research.
- Bec Crew
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Nature Index |
Six researchers who are shaping the future of artificial intelligence
From radio galaxies to robots, these trailblazers are at the forefront of AI advances.
- Gemma Conroy
- , Hepeng Jia
- & Andy Tay
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Nature Index |
The race to the top among the world’s leaders in artificial intelligence
As revenues and research output soar in the field of AI, global competition between the United States, China and Europe heats up.
- Neil Savage
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Nature Index |
Auto articles: an experiment in AI-generated content
AI-generated summaries of three articles selected from a data set of 175 Springer Nature publications.
- Catherine Armitage
- & Markus Kaindl
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Nature Index |
Samsung’s head researcher wants human–AI interactions to be a multisensory experience
Sebastian Seung outlines his quest for convenient and natural interaction with machines.
- Leigh Dayton
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Article |
Capillary condensation under atomic-scale confinement
In the tiniest of capillaries, barely larger than a water molecule, condensation is surprisingly predictable from the macroscopic Kelvin condensation equation, a coincidence partially owing to elastic deformation of the capillary walls.
- Qian Yang
- , P. Z. Sun
- & A. K. Geim
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News Feature |
How the first life on Earth survived its biggest threat — water
Living things depend on water, but it breaks down DNA and other key molecules. So how did the earliest cells deal with the water paradox?
- Michael Marshall
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Article |
Dipolar evaporation of reactive molecules to below the Fermi temperature
A strongly interacting gas of polar molecules is created by combining an electric field with two-dimensional optical confinement, enabling evaporative cooling and opening up the exploration of low-entropy many-body phases.
- Giacomo Valtolina
- , Kyle Matsuda
- & Jun Ye
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Article
| Open AccessUnveiling the strong interaction among hadrons at the LHC
Correlations in momentum space between hadrons created by ultrarelativistic proton–proton collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider provide insights into the strong interaction, particularly the short-range dynamics of hyperons—baryons that contain strange quarks.
- S. Acharya
- , D. Adamová
- & N. Zurlo
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Article |
Detection of large-scale X-ray bubbles in the Milky Way halo
Observations from the eROSITA telescope reveal soft-X-ray-emitting bubbles extending above and below the Galactic plane, which arose from energy injected into the Galactic halo from past activity in the Galactic centre.
- P. Predehl
- , R. A. Sunyaev
- & J. Wilms
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Article |
A non-hallucinogenic psychedelic analogue with therapeutic potential
Psychedelic alkaloids served as lead structures for the development of tabernanthalog, a non-hallucinogenic and non-toxic analogue that reduces alcohol- and heroin-seeking behaviour and produces antidepressant-like effects in rodents.
- Lindsay P. Cameron
- , Robert J. Tombari
- & David E. Olson
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Article |
Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass
Estimates of global total biomass (the mass of all living things) and anthopogenic mass (the mass embedded in inanimate objects made by humans) over time show that we are roughly at the timepoint when anthropogenic mass exceeds total biomass.
- Emily Elhacham
- , Liad Ben-Uri
- & Ron Milo
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Article |
Operation of an optical atomic clock with a Brillouin laser subsystem
By using a stimulated Brillouin scattering laser in a strontium-ion optical clock instead of the usual bulk-cavity-stabilized laser, the need for vacuum is removed and resonator volume is substantially reduced.
- William Loh
- , Jules Stuart
- & Robert McConnell
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Research Highlight |
How salt water on Mars could give astronauts a breather
Water locked away in Martian sediments could be split into the gases needed by humans and their machines.
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Research Highlight |
Presto chango: tiny particles get a chemical makeover but keep their shape
Self-assembling particles exhibit a mind-boggling array of structure and composition.
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News |
Physicists in China challenge Google’s ‘quantum advantage’
Photon-based quantum computer does a calculation that ordinary computers might never be able to do.
- Philip Ball
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News |
Best map of Milky Way reveals a billion stars in motion
Data haul from Gaia space observatory offers a glimpse of what Earth’s night sky will look like for 1.6 million years to come.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Nature Podcast |
Cellular ageing: turning back the clock restores vision in mice
A trio of genes may be key to making cells young again, and ultra precise measurement of a fundamental physics constant.
- Noah Baker
- & Nick Howe
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News & Views |
Standard model of particle physics tested by the fine-structure constant
A highly precise measurement of a physical constant known as the fine-structure constant provides a stringent test of the standard model of particle physics, and sets strong limits on the existence of speculative particles.
- Holger Müller