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A CRISPR chip turns RNA detection into a visible dam break, with no readout instrument
After loading, a molecular barrier changes wettability and releases a visible flow: 10 aM in 2 min for laboratory-prepared N RNA and 100 aM in 5 min for two viral fragments. The article reports complete agreement for the samples tested but contains an ambiguous internal RT-PCR metric; the ex vivo workflow adds 10 min of lysis.
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Paracrystalline graphite combines hardness, plasticity and weakly temperature-dependent conduction
Made from C60 at 13 GPa and 900 °C, this carbon reaches a hardness of 33.7 ± 1.1 GPa, 12 % plastic strain in 2 µm micropillars and conductivity that varies by less than 12 % between 4 and 450 K. The combination is new, but it has only been demonstrated on millimeter-scale samples and has not undergone industrial qualification.
Codebook: 130 missing words in the language that switches our genes on
By combining five assays and 4,804 experiments on 332 poorly characterized transcription factors and 61 controls, Codebook obtains motifs for 177 of the 332 candidates and expands the known human lexicon by at least 15%.
The Inouye telescope catches Kelvin–Helmholtz turbulence on the Sun's surface
The first sequences of the solar photosphere obtained with a 4 m-class telescope reveal, at a resolution of about 19 km, Kelvin–Helmholtz vortices along the edges of magnetic concentrations.