The peer review process in scientific publishing has reached a critical point where there are too many manuscript submissions and not enough peer reviewers. UW News asked Carl Bergstrom, University of Washington professor of biology, and Kevin Gross, North Carolina State University professor of statistics, to describe this self-perpetuating cycle and potential interventions.

A research team led by the University of Waterloo is developing a novel tool to treat cancer by engineering hungry bacteria to literally eat tumours from the inside out. Bacteria spores enter the tumour, finding an environment where there are lots of nutrients and no oxygen, which this organism prefers, and so it starts eating those nutrients and growing in size.

Self-isolating when infected may be a natural survival strategy, says new University of Warwick led study - and policymakers can harness it for future epidemics

Several studies have predicted that not all geomagnetic reversals have been discovered, but it was unknown in which periods they might be hidden. The researchers led by the National Institute of Polar Research used a statistical method called adaptive kernel density estimation to model the frequency of geomagnetic reversals at high temporal resolution. Based on the model, they proposed that undiscovered reversals may be hidden in four periods after the Cretaceous Normal Superchron.

Qubits combine two states at the same time - but quantum physics allows much more: A new experiment now shows how photons with four quantum states can be entangled and processed reliably, opening a path to more compact and efficient photonic quantum technologies.

Researchers at Beijing Institute of Technology have experimentally demonstrated quantized soliton pumping governed by higher-dimensional Chern invariants. Using a time-modulated lattice and its corresponding topolectrical-circuit platform, they observe two-dimensional soliton pumping whose per-cycle displacement is determined by the first and second Chern numbers. Published in National Science Review, this work reveals that, by tuning the nonlinear strength and the linear band structure, the pumping can transition among integer, fractional, trapped, and anisotropic integer–fractional regimes.

Researchers led by physicists at the University of Bath in the UK have found that adding a twist during the fabrication of optical fibres creates a more robust pathway for light, minimising the effects of manufacturing flaws that can cause signals to be lost.