Urban digital twins hold immense promise as live computational models of cities, synthesizing diverse knowledge, streaming data, and supporting decisions towards more inclusive planning and policy. The size, heterogeneity, and open-ended character of cities, however, pose many difficult questions, at the frontiers of what is currently possible in computational science. Overcoming these challenges provides pathways…

When you think about it, it is amazing that something as tiny as a living cell is capable of behaviour so complex. Consider the single-cell creature, the amoeba. It can sense its environment, move around, obtain its food, maintain its structure, and multiply. How does a cell know how to do all of this? Biology…

When you think about it, it is amazing that something as tiny as a living cell is capable of behaviour so complex. Consider the single-cell creature, the amoeba. It can sense its environment, move around, obtain its food, maintain its structure, and multiply. How does a cell know how to do all of this? Biology…

Abstract Digital twins, which are considered an effective approach to realize the fusion between virtual and physical spaces, have attracted a substantial amount of attention in the past decade. With their rapid development in recent years, digital twins have been applied in various fields, particularly in industry. However, there are still some gaps to be…

Digital twins hold immense promise in accelerating scientific discovery, but the publicity currently outweighs the evidence base of success. We summarize key research opportunities in the computational sciences to enable digital twin technologies, as identified by a recent National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine consensus study report. Download PDF The National Academies of Sciences,…

Digital twins hold immense promise in accelerating scientific discovery, but the publicity currently outweighs the evidence base of success. We summarize key research opportunities in the computational sciences to enable digital twin technologies, as identified by a recent National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine consensus study report. Download PDF The National Academies of Sciences,…

This issue of Nature Computational Science includes a Focus that highlights recent advancements, challenges, and opportunities in the development and use of digital twins across different domains. More than 50 years ago, as part of the Apollo 13 mission, NASA used high-fidelity simulators controlled by a network of digital computers to train astronauts and mission…

Abstract Digital twins bring value to mechanical and aerospace systems by speeding up development, reducing risk, predicting issues and reducing sustainment costs. Realizing these benefits at scale requires a structured and intentional approach to digital twin conception, design, development, operation and sustainment. To bring maximal value, a digital twin does not need to be an…

Plagiarism is never acceptable, but when is it appropriate for scholars to reuse their own words in published papers? Plagiarism has long been recognized as a form of scholarly misconduct. Charges of intellectual misappropriation were being made 2,000 years ago1 and, more recently, accusations of plagiarism formed part of the criticism that led to the…

Plagiarism is never acceptable, but when is it appropriate for scholars to reuse their own words in published papers? Plagiarism has long been recognized as a form of scholarly misconduct. Charges of intellectual misappropriation were being made 2,000 years ago1 and, more recently, accusations of plagiarism formed part of the criticism that led to the…