AGING | ALL TOPICS

Cells Across the Body Talk to Each Other About Aging

By VIVIANE CALLIER

Biologists discovered that mitochondria in different tissues talk to each other to repair injured cells. When their signal fails, the biological clock starts winding down.

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INFORMATION THEORY

'Magical' Error Correction Scheme Proved Inefficient

By BEN BRUBAKER

Locally correctable codes need barely any information to fix errors, but they're extremely long. Now we know that the simplest versions can't get any shorter.

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Related:
Researchers Defeat Randomness
to Create Ideal Code
By Mordechai Rorvig (2021)

MATERIALS SCIENCE

New Kind of Magnetism Spotted in an Engineered Material

By MICHAEL GRESHKO

In an atomically thin stack of semiconductors, a mechanism unseen in any natural substance causes electrons' spins to align.

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Related:
Meet Strange Metals: Where Electricity
May Flow Without Electrons
By Charlie Wood (2023)

Q&A

The Theorist Who Sees Math in Art, Music and Writing

Interview by LEILA SLOMAN;
Video by CHRISTOPHER WEBB YOUNG
& EMILY BUDER

The links between math and art have been explored for millennia. Sarah Hart is now turning a mathematical eye to literature.

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QUANTA SCIENCE PODCAST

Even Synthetic Life Forms With a Tiny Genome Can Evolve

By YASEMIN SAPLAKOGLU;
Podcast hosted by SUSAN VALOT

By watching "minimal" cells regain the fitness they lost, researchers are testing whether a genome can be too simple to evolve.

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