Article describing an approach to expand biocuration through crowdsourcing with undergraduates in the community-oriented wiki framework for GO annotation called the Gene Ontology Normal Usage Tracking System (GONUTS). This multiplies the number of high-quality annotations in international databases, enriches the coverage of the literature on normal gene function, and pushes the field in new directions.

This article is the fourth paper of the Special Issue Memory and Criticality. It bridges the the theoretical debate on the role of memory and criticality discussed in the three earlier manuscripts, with a review of key concepts in biology and focus on cell-to-cell communication in organismal development. The authors suggest that in conjunction with morphogenetic gradients, there exist gradients of information transfer creating cybernetic loops of stability and disorder, setting the stage for adaptive capability. Criticality, therefore, appears to be an important factor in the transmission, transfer and coding of information for complex adaptive system development.

Article says that the steric stability of inorganic colloidal particles in an apolar solvent is usually described in terms of the balance between three contributions: the van der Waals attraction, the free energy of mixing, and the ligand compression. The authors demonstrate that for sufficiently large nanoplatelets, solvation forces are proportional to the interacting facet area, and their strength is intrinsically tied to the softness of the ligand shell.

This article is a response to a comment on the authors' original article "Disentangling Orbital and Valley Hall Effects in Bilayers of Transition Metal Dichalcogenides." The authors' response concludes that they do not believe the main points of the original Letter are affected by the Comment.

This article shows that that the coordinated read-write activity of the epigenetic machinery extends to the cytoskeleton, with PBRM1 in the PBAF chromatin remodeling complex reading microtubule methyl marks written by the SETD2 histone methyltransferase. This article opens a previously unknown window into how chromatin remodeler defects can drive disease via both epigenetic and cytoskeletal dysfunction.

Article investigating ionization of atomic hydrogen by electron- and positron-impact. This article belongs to the Special Issue: Interactions of Positrons with Matter and Radiation.

This article finds a zero in the positronium formation scattering amplitude and a deep minimum in the logarithm of the corresponding differential cross section for positron–helium collisions for an energy just above the positronium formation threshold. Results show that there is a valley in the logarithm of the positronium formation differential cross section that includes the deep minimum and also a minimum in the forward direction.

Article discusses how Antarctica's response to climate change varies greatly both spatially and temporally. The authors used a 43-year record of Antarctic snow melt seasons from space-borne microwave radiometers with a machine-learning algorithm to show that both the onset and the end of the melt season are being delayed.

Article discusses how African American/Black communities comprise 12.2% of the U.S. population, with a COVID-19 infection rate of more than 18% and marginal access to healthcare services. This scoping review synthesizes the emerging evidence on healthcare accessibility among older African American adult communities with dementia and COVID-19, as well as the resource requirements for this population during the pandemic.

Article verifying a conjecture of Vershik by showing that Hall’s universal countable locally finite group can be embedded as a dense subgroup in the isometry group of the Urysohn space and in the automorphism group of the random graph. It shows the same for all automorphism groups of known infinite ultraextensive spaces.

Article discusses how a Cantor series expansion for a real number x with respect to a basic sequence Q=(q), where qi≥2, is a generalization of the base b expansion to an infinite sequence of bases. The authors show that for any basic sequence the set of distribution normal numbers is Π03-complete, and if Q is 1-divergent then the sets of normal and ratio normal numbers are Π03-complete.

Article detects the presence of a specific pancreatic cancer-derived miRNA (pre-miR-132) using the fluorescence properties of biocompatible nitrogen-doped graphene quantum dots (NGQDs) synthesized using a bottom-up approach from a single glucosamine precursor. This non-invasive approach allows cancer-specific miRNA detection to facilitate early diagnosis of various forms of cancer.

This article develops a spatial prioritization model based on accurate estimates of remotely-sensed data and maps of threats potentially affecting long-term species persistence to identify priority areas for the conservation of the Endangered Greek meadow viper Vipera graeca, a cold-adapted species inhabiting mountaintops in the Pindos Mountains of Greece and Albania.

This article is a simplified analysis of a convenient thulium fiber laser source with 3 W of output power operating at a wavelength of 2059 nm with a slope efficiency of 49% with respect to input pump power and 60% with respect to absorbed pump power. The laser was applied in an atomic helium spectroscopy experiment to quench ³He (2058.63 nm) and ⁴He (2058.69 nm) meta-stable singlets (2¹S0), allowing for further investigation of the helium fine structure.

This article demonstrates for the first time that Neutral Red (NR) can also serve as a CO2 sensor, because of NR’s unique optical properties, which change with dissolved carbon dioxide (dCO2) concentrations. In this article optical sensitivity of NR was quantified as a function of changes in absorption and emission spectra to dCO2 in a pH 7.3 buffer medium at eight dCO2 concentrations.

Article proposes a model in which, during C-lignin biosynthesis, caffeyl alcohol noncompetitively inhibits oxidation of coniferyl alcohol by cell wall laccases, a process that might limit movement of coniferyl alcohol to the apoplast.

Article indicating directions in which the field of Developmental Physiology might move. It suggests three categories of challenges: demonstrating broad relevance, promoting conceptual advances, and improving experimental approaches.

This article explores DNA methylation's role in the regulation of gene expression in reptiles. Results show that embryonic hypoxia programs DNA methylation and gene expression patterns and that these changes are associated with enhanced cardiac anoxia tolerance in snapping turtles later in life.

This article explores the connection between thyroid hormones (THs) and immune systems in fish. This article is noteworthy as disruption of the thyroid system during development, which can occur in response to chemicals present in the environment, may have lasting effects on immune function in adulthood for fish.

This article presents an accurate first-principles study of the electronic structure and absorption spectrum of six elemental metals (aluminium, gold, silver, copper, palladium, platinum) using density functional theory in an all-electron full-potential framework.

Article studying the king quail as an animal model to determine if chronic dietary exposure to crude oil in a parental population affects morpho-physiological phenotypic variables in their immediate offspring generation.

Article describes how many agricultural management tactics, such as reduced tillage, aim to promote biodiversity and ecosystem services. Authors assessed how soil tillage and landscape context affected arthropod biodiversity and crop yield in canola crop fields.

This article reviews the literature to argue the importance of the occurrence of crucial events in the dynamics of physiological processes. Crucial events are interpreted as short time intervals of turbulence, and the time distance between two consecutive crucial events is a waiting time distribution density with an inverse power law (IPL) index µ, with µ < 3 generating non-stationary behavior.

This article shows a connection between spin Hall effect and HOTIs using a combination of ab initio calculations and tight-binding modeling. The model demonstrates how a non-zero bulk midgap spin Hall conductivity (SHC) emerges within the HOTI phase. This work guides novel experimental and theoretical advances towards higher-order topological insulator realization and applications.