‘Metalasers’ have been developed using metasurfaces comprising nanodisks, each with an off-centre hole. By changing the rotation angle of the nanodisks’ holes, the wavefront of the metalaser’s emission can be modified to generate arbitrarily shaped beam profiles, including focal spots, vortices and holograms, with notably low levels of ‘speckle’ noise.

Mars has had periods of potential habitability, seen in its geological record of surface water and shallow groundwater. Models that incorporate feedback between carbon sequestration, atmospheric pressure and temperature — backed by discoveries of carbonates by NASA’s Curiosity rover — suggest that this intermittent habitability could have arisen through self-regulating feedback loops on the planet’s surface.

A cellular atlas for a small, fast-reproducing primate could set the stage for scientists to use it as a model organism that has more human relevance than rodents.

Why do only certain molecules drive allergies? A feature now identified among some allergy-causing proteins is their ability to form pores in cells.