A new strategy to separate radioactive americium from lanthanides based on complexation with polyoxometalates and ultrafiltration technique is highly efficient and rapid, does not involve any organic components and requires minimal energy input.

A depolymerization method is described that uses electrified spatiotemporal heating to selectively generate monomers from the commodity plastics polypropylene and poly(ethylene terephthalate), allowing control over the pyrolysis of plastic waste and reducing the formation of side products.

Using single-molecule imaging, the authors show that Smc5/6 forms DNA loops by extrusion, which establishes DNA loop extrusion as a conserved mechanism among eukaryotic SMC complexes.

Using a quantum annealing processor to study three-dimensional spin glasses demonstrates an accurate large-scale quantum simulation of critical dynamics and a scaling advantage over analogous classical methods for energy optimization.