Faster, smaller, smarter and more energy-efficient chips for everything from consumer electronics to big data to brain-inspired computing could soon be on the way after engineers created the smallest memory device yet.

Trapping and controlling electrons in bilayer graphene quantum dots yields a promising platform for quantum information technologies. Researchers have now achieved the first direct visualization of quantum dots in bilayer graphene, revealing the shape of the quantum wave function of the trapped electrons.

Machine learning has delivered amazing results, but there also have been failures, ranging from the harmless to potentially deadly. New work suggests that common assumptions about the cause behind these supposed malfunctions may be mistaken, information that is crucial for evaluating the reliability of these networks.

For more than a decade, scientists studying epigenetics have used a powerful method called ChIP-seq to map changes in proteins and other critical regulatory factors across the genome. While ChIP-seq provides invaluable insights into the underpinnings of health and disease, it also faces a frustrating challenge: its results are often viewed as qualitative rather than quantitative, making interpretation difficult. But, it turns out, ChIP-seq may have been quantitative all along.

Physicists have introduced a new method that allows biological pattern-forming systems to be systematically characterized with the aid of mathematical analysis. The trick lies in the use of geometry to characterize the dynamics.