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The problem with sending pictures electronically is that they take up a huge amount of space. To get round this, Daedalus is developing the 'Videosketch', which prunes down visual detail to the bare essentials. He's doing this by employing a panel of cartoonists to make sketches of photographs that are then embodied in software by a team of programmers.

Unproven treatment results in mysterious masses.

Communicating climate science requires depicting uncertainty. This study shows that the tendency for COP21 policymakers to assign model forecasts less weight than their prior beliefs when making predictions is mitigated by presenting individual model forecasts with the statistical range.

The type III ribonuclease DCR-1 is essential for ERI endogenous RNAi and exogenous RNAi in Caenorhabditis elegans. A new study shows that DCR-1 forms exclusive complexes in each pathway, and characterization of the ERI complex implicates a tudor domain protein in tethering an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase to DCR-1 to potentiate endo-RNAi.

Mutations in the ATM tumor suppressor gene confer hypersensitivity to DNA-damaging chemotherapeutic agents. Here, the authors provide evidence that these hypersensitivities reflect a crucial role for ATM at damaged replication forks being to prevent toxic DNA end-joining leading to chromosome fusions and cell death.

Proximity effects enable superconductivity to leak into normal metals. In graphene, a Klein-like tunnelling of superconducting pairs from a high-temperature superconductor allows the proximity effects to be tuned by electric fields.

The first observational evidence of plasma heating through the dissipation of Alfvén-wave energy in tenuous regions of solar magnetism provides fresh insight into heating processes in the solar atmosphere, and in other magnetohydrodynamic systems.

Extended growing seasons due to climate warming might counter rises in CO₂ by increasing photosynthesis. However, in eastern North America, earlier springs over 30 years have reduced nitrogen availability to forest trees by increasing demand, limiting carbon sequestration.

Expression and activation of Heat shock factor 1 (HSF1) in cancer associated fibroblasts have been associated with protumorigenic functions. Here the authors show that, in a model of colitis-induced colorectal cancer, HSF1 is activated in stromal fibroblasts in the early stages of inflammation, leading to extracellular matrix remodelling that sustains tumor initiation and progression.

Electric polarization is induced in the binary rock salt layer of an ultrathin insulating heterostructure on a metal electrode, and its hysteretic reversal is demonstrated using a combination of atomically resolved scanning probe microscopies.

Power et al. catalogue the microbial biodiversity and physicochemistry of around 1000 hotsprings across New Zealand, providing insights into the ecological conditions that drive community assembly in these ecosystems.

High-harmonic generation in a solid turns out to be sensitive to the interatomic bonding — a very useful feature that could enable the all-optical imaging of the interatomic potential.

Computational simulations show that variations in the rate of fluvial erosion between tectonically active and inactive mountain ranges may relate to a bidirectional coupling between bedrock river incision and landslides.

Multiciliogenesis requires activation of transcriptional and protein assembly programs; however, the mechanisms that initiate the formation of these multiprotein complexes are unclear. Here the authors show that after inducing centriole biogenesis genes, the transcription factor E2f4 is required in the cytoplasm for assembly and nucleation of deuterosomes.

Ordinary baryonic particles account for only one-sixth of the total matter in the Universe, the rest being the mysterious 'dark matter'. This paper presents high-fidelity maps of the large-scale distribution of dark matter, resolved in both angle and depth. The results are consistent with predictions of gravitationally induced structure formation.

A class of conserved regions in the tetrapod genome is derived from a SINE retroposon family that was active as much as 400 million years ago, and has retained recent activity in the coelacanth.

Goel et al found similar deficits in visual discrimination in humans and in a mouse model of FXS. In mice, a robust decrease in PV cell activity mediated this impairment, suggesting that manipulating inhibition may improve sensory processing in FXS.

Whether the immune system aging differs between men and women is barely known. Here the authors characterize gene expression, chromatin state and immune subset composition in the blood of healthy humans 22 to 93 years of age, uncovering shared as well as sex-unique alterations, and create a web resource to interactively explore the data.

So-called photonic-crystal-excitonic-lattice polaritons can be observed by coupling excitons and Bloch waves in a periodic arrangement of GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells. The effect can be tuned by using an electric field. These hybrid states may allow slow-light-enhanced nonlinear effects and enable observation of macroscopic coherence phenomena in solid-state systems.

Photocurrent microscopy on suspended vanadium dioxide nanobeams reveals the thermal origin of the photoresponse in materials with strong electron–electron and electron–phonon correlations.

An alternative model for the homeostasis of adult epidermis posits posits only one type of stem cell undergoes both symmetric and asymmetric divisions to ensure epidermal homeostasis. A genetic approach of marking single cells in the adult mouse tail epidermis shows that the clones of labelled cells that arise from their inducible labelling approach are most likely to come from a single compartment of proliferating cells, which may undergo an unlimited number of divisions.

Excitonic valley quantum coherence is optically generated and detected by polarization-resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy in the monolayer semiconductor WSe₂.

Controlling complex properties of optical systems, like the output of nonlinear light sources, is increasingly important for applications. Here, Wetzel et al. use an actively-controlled photonic chip to prepare patterns of femtosecond laser pulses used for tailoring supercontinuum generation.

This versatile and scalable ‘patterned regrowth’ fabrication process produces one-atom-thick sheets containing lateral junctions between electrically conductive graphene and insulating hexagonal boron nitride, paving the way for flexible, transparent electronic device films.

The molecular mechanisms leading to heart failure in patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy are unclear. Here the authors show that NF-κB is activated in the heart of dystrophin-deficient mice and that its ablation rescues cardiac function through chromatin remodeling and activation of gene expression.

BAX and BAK are pro-apoptotic proteins whose activity is essential for the action of many anti-cancer drugs and to suppress tumorigenesis. Here, the authors perform a genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 screen and identify VDAC2 as a promoter of BAX-mediated apoptosis that is important for an efficient chemotherapeutic response and to suppress tumor formation.

The coherent manipulation of an individual electron spin qubit bound to a single phosphorus donor atom in natural silicon provides an excellent platform on which to build a scalable quantum computer.

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) shows a striking bias towards higher prevalence in females. Here, the authors perform fine-mapping of an SLE-associated locus at Xp21.2 and characterise a candidate gene, CXorf21, as IFN-responsive in immune cells that shows sexually dimorphic expression.

Patrick Chinnery, Nils-Goran Larsson and colleagues show that mitochondrial heteroplasmy levels are principally determined prenatally within the developing female germline in mice transmitting a heteroplasmic single base-pair deletion in the mitochondrial tRNA^Met gene.

The ATLAS Collaboration reports a measurement of the ratio of the decay rates of W bosons to τ leptons and muons, in agreement with universal lepton couplings as postulated in the standard model of particle physics.

Ten years after the discovery of the Higgs boson, the ATLAS  experiment at CERN probes its kinematic properties with a significantly larger dataset from 2015–2018 and provides further insights on its interaction with other known particles.

The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider reports a search for charged-lepton-flavour violation in decays of Z bosons into a τ lepton and an electron or muon of opposite charge.

Metagenomic analyses of European pig and poultry farms show differing resistome profiles and an association with country-level antibiotic use.

The spike protein of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 has a higher affinity for ACE2 than Delta, and a marked change in its antigenicity increases Omicron’s evasion of therapeutic and vaccine-elicited neutralizing antibodies.

Using the GTEx data and others, a comprehensive analysis of adenosine-to-inosine RNA editing in mammals is presented; targets of the various ADAR enzymes are identified, as are several potential regulators of editing, such as AIMP2.

No one died as a result of Japan's latest nuclear incident and environmental damage seem have been mostly avoided. But is this testimony to successful plant design or a warning of impending disaster?

While other Asian tigers are roaring ahead in biotechnology, Malaysia's BioValley is going nowhere fast. David Cyranoski asks what went wrong.

Moiré trions are observed in electrostatically gated WSe₂/MoSe₂ heterobilayers, where photoluminescence polarization switching reveals a competition between valley-flip and spin-flip relaxation pathways of photo-excited carriers during trion formation.