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Volume 546 Issue 7659, 22 June 2017

The cover shows an artist’s impression of the Jupiter-like gas giant KELT-9b (bottom) in orbit around the massive star KELT-9. In this issue, Scott Gaudi, Keivan Stassun and their colleagues report the discovery of KELT-9b and reveal it to be one of the hottest exoplanets so far identified. Its dayside surface temperature is about 4,600 K — hotter than most stars, and hot enough to vaporize its atmosphere and to dissociate any molecules into their constituent atoms. The planet is nearly three times more massive than Jupiter but only half as dense. It takes roughly 1.5 days to orbit its host star, and, because it is constantly being blasted with high levels of ultraviolet radiation, it may be shedding a tail of material much like a comet. The rate of ablation may be sufficient for KELT-9b to evaporate completely before its host star reaches the end of its life — assuming that the star doesn’t grow and engulf the planet first. As only the seventh ‘hot Jupiter’ to be found orbiting a hot A-type star, KELT-9b should help deepen understanding of planetary systems around massive stars, the authors say. Cover image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

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  • Monitor deforming electrodes to speed development of renewable-energy storage, write Liqiang Mai, Mengyu Yan and Yunlong Zhao.

    • Liqiang Mai
    • Mengyu Yan
    • Yunlong Zhao
    Comment
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  • Measurements of the activity of neurons called direction-selective ganglion cells in the mouse retina explain how visual motion encoded by the eye maps onto body movements such as walking. See Article p.492

    • Jonathan B. Demb
    • Damon A. Clark
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  • The strong force binds the constituents of nuclei together. Differences between the force's fundamental interactions and their mirror images were thought to have been observed in heavy-ion collisions, but new data challenge this picture.

    • Alexandru Florin Dobrin
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  • Pili are filamentous bacterial structures that promote adhesion to host cells. It emerges that a small molecule that inhibits this adhesion can prevent colonization of the mouse gut by a pathogenic bacterium. See Letter p.528

    • Hea-Jin Jung
    • Eric G. Pamer
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  • A combination of leading-edge techniques has enabled interaction-induced magnetic motion to be observed for pairs of ultracold atoms — a breakthrough in the development of models of complex quantum behaviour. See Letter p.519

    • Lindsay J. LeBlanc
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  • Lupus is an autoimmune disease that can cause brain dysfunction. Studies in mouse models of lupus find that interferon proteins can cause the brain's immune cells to trim the synaptic connections between neurons. See Letter p.539

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    • David Hunt
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  • The extent to which aerosols affect climate is highly uncertain. Observations of clouds interacting with aerosols from a volcanic eruption suggest that the effect is much smaller than was once feared. See Article p.485

    • Bjorn Stevens
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  • Investigations of an Icelandic volcanic eruption confirm that sulfate aerosols caused a discernible yet transient brightening effect, as predicted, but their effect on the liquid water path was unexpectedly negligible.

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    • Jim M. Haywood
    • Thorvaldur Thordarson
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  • Global mapping shows that mouse retinal neurons prefer visual motion produced when the animal moves along two behaviourally relevant axes, allowing the encoding of the animal’s every translation and rotation.

    • Shai Sabbah
    • John A. Gemmer
    • David M. Berson
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  • The structure of human ABCG2 bound to an inhibitory antibody using cryo-electron microscopy, representing the first high-resolution structural data of a human multidrug transporter.

    • Nicholas M. I. Taylor
    • Ioannis Manolaridis
    • Kaspar P. Locher
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