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Memristive devices can offer dynamic behaviour, analogue programmability, and scaling and integration capabilities. As a result, they are of potential use in the development of information processing and storage devices for both conventional and unconventional computing paradigms. Their memristive switching processes originate mainly from the modulation of the number and position of structural defects or compositional impurities—what are commonly referred to as imperfections. While the underlying mechanisms and potential applications of memristors based on traditional bulk materials have been extensively studied, memristors based on van der Waals materials have only been considered more recently. Here we examine imperfection-enabled memristive switching in van der Waals materials. We explore how imperfections— together with the inherent physicochemical properties of the van der Waals materials—create different switching mechanisms, and thus provide a range of opportunities to engineer switching behaviour in memristive devices. We also discuss the challenges involved in terms of material selection, mechanism investigation and switching uniformity control, and consider the potential of van der Waals memristors in system-level implementations of efficient computing technologies. 

The budding yeast coevolution network captures cellular structure and function in the absence of functional data. 

Abstract Detection of a gravitational-wave signal of non-astrophysical origin would be a landmark discovery, potentially providing a significant clue to some of our most basic, big-picture scientific questions about the Universe. In this white paper, we survey the leading early-Universe mechanisms that may produce a detectable signal—including inflation, phase transitions, topological defects, as well as primordial black holes—and highlight the connections to fundamental physics. We review the complementarity with collider searches for new physics, and multimessenger probes of the large-scale structure of the Universe. 

Dark matter exists in our Universe, but its nature remains mysterious. The remarkable sensitivity of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) may be able to solve this mystery. A good dark matter candidate is the ultralight dark photon. Because of its interaction with ordinary matter, it induces displacements on LIGO mirrors that can lead to an observable signal. In a study that bridges gravitational wave science and particle physics, we perform a direct dark matter search using data from LIGO’s first (O1) data run, as opposed to an indirect search for dark matter via its production of gravitational waves. We demonstrate an achieved sensitivity on squared coupling as$$\sim\! 4\times 1{0}^{-45}$$$~4\times 10^{-45}$, in a$$U{(1)}_{{\rm{B}}}$$$U{\left(1\right)}_B$dark photon dark matter mass band around$${m}_{{\rm{A}}} \sim 4\,\times 1{0}^{-13}$$$m_A~4\times 10^{-13}$eV. Substantially improved search sensitivity is expected during the coming years of continued data taking by LIGO and other gravitational wave detectors in a growing global network.

 

The cardiac transcription factor (TF) gene NKX2-5 has been associated with electrocardiographic (EKG) traits through genome-wide association studies (GWASs), but the extent to which differential binding of NKX2-5 at common regulatory variants contributes to these traits has not yet been studied. We analyzed transcriptomic and epigenomic data from induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes from seven related individuals, and identified ~2,000 single-nucleotide variants associated with allele-specific effects (ASE-SNVs) on NKX2-5 binding. NKX2-5 ASE-SNVs were enriched for altered TF motifs, for heart-specific expression quantitative trait loci and for EKG GWAS signals. Using fine-mapping combined with epigenomic data from induced pluripotent stem cell–derived cardiomyocytes, we prioritized candidate causal variants for EKG traits, many of which were NKX2-5 ASE-SNVs. Experimentally characterizing two NKX2-5 ASE-SNVs (rs3807989 and rs590041) showed that they modulate the expression of target genes via differential protein binding in cardiac cells, indicating that they are functional variants underlying EKG GWAS signals. Our results show that differential NKX2-5 binding at numerous regulatory variants across the genome contributes to EKG phenotypes.