Protein transport across the nuclear membrane is regulated by the nuclear pore complex. Experiments now show that the rates of nuclear transport rely on the presence of locally mechanically soft regions of the transported proteins.
nature.com/articles/s4156…

Laser-driven proton acceleration experiments achieve energies of up to 150 MeV with particle yields that are relevant for applications such as radiobiology.
nature.com/articles/s4156…

Cells can form a rotating doublet. This rotation is driven by the symmetry breaking of myosin polarization in the cortices of the two cells.
nature.com/articles/s4156…

A Dirac quantum spin liquid phase is predicted to have a continuum of fractionalized spinon excitations with a Dirac cone dispersion. A spin continuum consistent with this picture has now been observed in neutron scattering measurements.
nature.com/articles/s4156…

The symmetry of the superconducting order parameter in UTe₂ is still debated. Now ultrasound experiments suggest that the order parameter can only have one component.
nature.com/articles/s4156…

Some magnetic phase transitions can be understood as Bose–Einstein condensation of magnons. Close to a quantum critical point, YbCl₃ now provides a realization of a Bose–Einstein condensate that is dominated by two-dimensional physical behaviour.
nature.com/articles/s4156…

The hybrid architecture of Andreev spin qubits made using semiconductor–superconductor nanowires means that supercurrents can be used to inductively couple qubits over long distances.
nature.com/articles/s4156…

A successful silicon spin qubit design should be rapidly scalable by benefiting from industrial transistor technology. This investigation of exchange interactions between two FinFET qubits provides a guide to implementing two-qubit gates for hole spins.
nature.com/articles/s4156…

Frequency combs, which are important for applications in precision spectroscopy, depend on material nonlinearities for their function, which can be hard to engineer. Now an approach combining magnons and exceptional points is shown to be effective.
nature.com/articles/s4156…

Quantum low-density parity-check codes are highly efficient in principle but challenging to implement in practice. This proposal shows that these codes could be implemented in the near term using recently demonstrated neutral-atom arrays.
nature.com/articles/s4156…

Spatial dynamics can obscure epidemic trends from surveillance data, biasing reproduction ratio estimates over long periods. A spectral correction reweights incidence data to remove this bias, thus improving monitoring to inform response strategies.
nature.com/articles/s4156…

Controlling orbital magnetic moments for applications can be difficult. Now local probes of a kagome material, TbV₆Sn₆, demonstrate how the spin Berry curvature can produce a large orbital Zeeman effect that can be tuned with a magnetic field.
nature.com/articles/s4156…

Manipulation of the quantum-metric structure to produce topological phenomena has rarely been studied. Now, flexible control of the quantum-metric structure is demonstrated in a topological chiral antiferromagnet at room temperature.
nature.com/articles/s4156…

Connecting two superfluid reservoirs leads to both particle and entropy flow between the systems. Now, a direct measurement of the entropy current and production in ultracold quantum gases reveals how superfluidity enhances entropy transport.
go.nature.com/4bzesHt

New issue out!

This month, we look at how glassy materials age, review the prospects for drug design on quantum computers, and examine the links between flat bands and strange metals.

Check it out: go.nature.com/Apr24

As amorphous solids, glasses and gels are similar, but the origins of their different elastic properties are unclear. Simulations now suggest differing free-energy-minimizing pathways: structural ordering for glasses and interface reduction for gels.
nature.com/articles/s4156…

Controlling phase transitions in solids is crucial for many applications. Ultrafast laser pulses have now been shown to enable the energy-efficient generation of structural fluctuations in VO₂ by harnessing the correlated disorder in the material.
nature.com/articles/s4156…

Linear topological systems can be characterized using invariants such as the Chern number. This concept can be extended to the nonlinear regime, giving rise to nonlinearity-induced topological phase transitions.
nature.com/articles/s4156…