Water has extraordinary electrical properties when trapped in tiny channels — a finding that calls for a re-think about key processes in biology, climate and nanotechnology.

Synthetic DNA circuits and neural networks have previously been developed to process molecular information while consuming energy stored in kinetic traps. Now they have been re-engineered to take in energy from heat when the temperature increases, and to recharge themselves by restoring kinetic traps for subsequent computation.

Hand bones from a human relative, found in Kenya, reveal features similar to those of living gorillas, complicating the evolutionary history of hand and tool manipulation.

Almost-complete genomes of more than 1,000 strains of the single-celled yeast species Saccharomyces cerevisiae have been assembled and integrated with phenotypic (trait) measures of growth and of RNA and protein expression. The analysis shows how large genomic variations called structural variants disproportionately shape traits.