A paper by ICTP Senior Associate Edison Z. da Silva, "How Do Gold Nanowires Break?" was featured on the cover of the 17 December issue of Physical Review Letters. da Silva, professor of physics at Universidade Estadual de Campinas in Brazil, was appointed an ICTP Senior Associate in condensed matter physics in 1998. His main fields of research are electronic and structural properties of solids, molecular dynamics, superconductivity and thermodynamic fluctuations.