Reviews & Analysis

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  • Numerical simulations and spacecraft observations elucidate how ultralow-frequency waves transmit through collisionless shocks, which could not only advance our understanding of shocks but also have implications for space weather modelling.

    • Hui Zhang
    • Terry Z. Liu
    News & Views
  • Epithelial tissues cover our organs and play an important role as physical barriers. The conditions leading to spontaneous hole formation in monolayer epithelia, which challenge epithelial integrity, have now been revealed.

    • Tatiana Merle
    • Magali Suzanne
    News & Views
  • A potential observation of low-energy antihelium-3 nuclei would have profound impacts on our understanding of the Galaxy. Experiments at particle colliders help us understand how cosmic antimatter travels over long distances before reaching Earth.

    • Aihong Tang
    News & Views
  • Recent experiments utilizing strain have shed light on the role of electronic nematicity in determining the properties of unconventional superconductors. This Perspective reviews these developments and discusses open questions.

    • Anna E. Böhmer
    • Jiun-Haw Chu
    • Ming Yi
    Perspective
  • Spin ices have magnetic moments arranged on a lattice with many possible ground-state configurations. Quantum effects can ‘melt’ the spin ice into a liquid that fails to form static order even at absolute zero despite strong interactions.

    • Vivien S. Zapf
    • Minseong Lee
    • Priscila F. S. Rosa
    News & Views
  • A clever experiment with a photonic circuit has realized three-dimensional non-Abelian quantum behaviour — introducing an experimental testbed for field and gauge theories.

    • Andrew G. White
    News & Views
  • Manipulating the chirality of electron vortices using attosecond metrology allows the clocking of continuum–continuum transitions, bringing the dream of time-resolved quantum physics a little closer.

    • Jean Marcel Ngoko Djiokap
    News & Views
  • Elasticity-driven synchronization in active solids has been predicted theoretically and was recently realized in a synthetic system. A biological realization is now demonstrated in a bacterial biofilm.

    • Japinder Nijjer
    • Tal Cohen
    • Jing Yan
    News & Views
  • The performance of computing devices is determined by the implementation of logical operations at the hardware level. A quantum AND gate designed using three energy levels of a superconducting circuit may speed up quantum computing algorithms.

    • Zhang Jiang
    News & Views
  • Organs in the human body have complex networks of fluid-filled tubes and loops with different geometries and topologies. By studying self-organized, synthetic tissues, the link between topological transitions and the emergence of tissue architecture was revealed.

    Research Briefing
  • In a burning plasma, fusion-born α particles are the dominant source of heating. In such conditions, the deuterium and tritium ion energy distribution deviates from the expected thermal Maxwellian distribution.

    • Stefano Atzeni
    News & Views
  • Superconductivity with an anisotropy is revealed in a layered material. This result points towards a version of superconductivity where spin–orbit interactions produce a material that is resilient to external magnetic fields.

    • Joseph Falson
    News & Views
  • Watching a single protein molecule fold for days reveals rare excursions into configurations that were previously hidden from observation by high energy barriers.

    • Krishna Neupane
    • Michael T. Woodside
    News & Views
  • Optical experiments reveal nematicity and broken time-reversal symmetry in the charge density waves in kagome metals.

    • Luyi Yang
    News & Views
  • The observation of quantized vortices in a rotating gas of magnetic atoms confirms a long-standing prediction and has far-reaching implications for the study of phenomena related to superfluidity.

    • Zoran Hadzibabic
    News & Views
  • Embryonic development is characterized by large cellular flows. The cells retain their positional information despite these flows thanks to an unjamming of cells that pull along jammed cells in a way that preserves initial tissue patterning.

    • Sham Tlili
    News & Views