Struggle for independence
The faculty of the Scripps Research Institute is bucking a national trend with its refusal to merge with the University of Southern California.
Within reach
A redoubling of efforts should swiftly eradicate polio from its last strongholds.
Food for thought
Researchers investigating different farming practices should not have to pick sides.
World View
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Misjudgements will drive social trials underground
A Facebook study that manipulated news feeds was not definitively unethical and offered valuable insight into social behaviour, says Michelle Meyer.
Research Highlights
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Agriculture: Global warming could hurt crops
Planetary science: Titan's sea is super salty
Cancer: Roving tumour cells tracked down
Ecology: Ocean reserves miss key target
Neurodegeneration: Antibodies fight Parkinson's
Applied physics: Phone powers electronic label
Vision: Prism of the eye guides light
Virology: What makes HIV fit to spread
Cognition: Chimp intelligence partly inherited
The week in science: Smallpox found in fridge; HIV-rebound dashes hope of ‘cure’; and scandal over faked peer review.
News in Focus
Quantum-hub finalists picked
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UK government considers eight proposals for up to six research centres.
Katia Moskvitch
Landslide risks rise up agenda
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Forum on deadly natural phenomena discusses use of simulation and hazard-mapping technologies.
Jane Qiu
Scripps merger fiasco highlights US funding woes
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Other independent biomedical research institutions have turned to private benefactors.
Erika Check Hayden
Charity begins at CERN
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Particle-physics lab sets up fund for ‘extras’ as other big institutes mull similar move.
Elizabeth Gibney
Correction
Features
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Physics: Wave of the future
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After two decades and more than half a billion dollars, LIGO, the world's largest gravitational-wave observatory, is on the verge of a detection. Maybe.
Alexandra Witze
Weight-loss surgery: A gut-wrenching question
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Gastric-bypass surgery can curb obesity as well as diabetes and a slew of other problems. Researchers are now trying to find out how it works.
Virginia Hughes
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Infectious disease: Polio eradication hinges on child health in Pakistan
Boosting basic medical services and routine immunizations — not travel vaccinations — is the key to ending polio worldwide, says Zulfiqar Ahmed Bhutta.
Psychological treatments: A call for mental-health science
Clinicians and neuroscientists must work together to understand and improve psychological treatments, urge Emily A. Holmes, Michelle G. Craske and Ann M. Graybiel.
Books and Arts
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History of medicine: Typhus and tyranny
Tilli Tansey ponders a turbulent history of vaccine research in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Review of The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl: How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus and Sabotaged the Nazis
Arthur Allen
research
News & Views
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High-pressure physics: Piling on the pressure
Chris J. Pickard &
Richard J. Needs
Ecology: Pesticides linked to bird declines
Dave Goulson
Astrophysics: Survival of the largest
Haley Gomez
Neurobiology: Keeping a lid on it
Gina Turrigiano
Cancer: Sugar-coated cell signalling
Andrew J. Ewald &
Mikala Egeblad
Materials science: A superelastic organic crystal
Tomiki Ikeda &
Toru Ube
50 & 100 Years Ago
Stem cells: Reprogramming finds its niche
Daniel Lucas &
Paul S. Frenette
Analysis
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A deep crust–mantle boundary in the asteroid 4 Vesta
Harold Clenet,
Martin Jutzi,
Jean-Alix Barrat,
Erik I. Asphaug,
Willy Benz
+ et al.
Data on Vesta’s surface material provided by the Dawn probe and impacts modelling reveals that Vesta’s crust–mantle boundary must be deeper than 80 kilometres below the surface.
Articles
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Genetics of ecological divergence during speciation
Matthew E. Arnegard,
Matthew D. McGee,
Blake Matthews,
Kerry B. Marchinko,
Gina L. Conte
+ et al.
Traits responsible for recent niche divergence between sympatric threespine stickleback species are subjected to forward genetic analysis; additive variation at several loci across the genome accounts for most of the genetic basis of ecological divergence, with a further role for epistatic interactions that disadvantage hybrids.
Reprogramming human endothelial cells to haematopoietic cells requires vascular induction
Vladislav M. Sandler,
Raphael Lis,
Ying Liu,
Alon Kedem,
Daylon James
+ et al.
This study describes the conversion of human fetal and adult vascular endothelial cells into engraftable haematopoietic progenitors by transduction with some transcription factors and then culture on a vascular niche feeder layer; the haematopoietic progenitors may be useful for the generation of engraftable healthy and long-lasting haematopoietic cells for treatment of inherited and acquired blood disorders.
The cancer glycocalyx mechanically primes integrin-mediated growth and survival
Matthew J. Paszek,
Christopher C. DuFort,
Olivier Rossier,
Russell Bainer,
Janna K. Mouw
+ et al.
Metastatic cancer cells are shown to have a tendency towards forming a bulky glycocalyx owing to the production of large glycoproteins, and this cancer-associated glycocalyx has a mechanical effect on the spatial organization of integrins — by funnelling integrins into adhesions, integrin clustering and signalling is promoted, which leads to enhanced cell survival and proliferation.
Rapid formation of large dust grains in the luminous supernova 2010jl
Christa Gall,
Jens Hjorth,
Darach Watson,
Eli Dwek,
Justyn R. Maund
+ et al.
The formation of dust in the dense circumstellar medium of the bright supernova 2010jl is at first rapid and produces very large grains, which resist destruction, whereas later the dust production rate increases, meaning its source is ejecta; this links early and late dust mass evolution in supernovae with dense circumstellar media.
See also
News & Views by Gomez
Ramp compression of diamond to five terapascals
R. F. Smith,
J. H. Eggert,
R. Jeanloz,
T. S. Duffy,
D. G. Braun
+ et al.
New laboratory techniques for applying enormous pressures allow diamond to be compressed to 50 million atmospheres, providing insight into the interiors of planets and theoretical implications.
See also
News & Views by Pickard & Needs
A low-cost non-toxic post-growth activation step for CdTe solar cells
J. D. Major,
R. E. Treharne,
L. J. Phillips &
K. Durose
MgCl2 is shown to be a cheap and non-toxic replacement for the costly and environmentally unfriendly salt CdCl2 that has long been used as the ‘activation’ step in the production of cadmium telluride solar cells.
Pathway from subducting slab to surface for melt and fluids beneath Mount Rainier
R. Shane McGary,
Rob L. Evans,
Philip E. Wannamaker,
Jimmy Elsenbeck &
Stéphane Rondenay
Magnetotelluric data from the state of Washington, USA, are used to image the fluid–melt phase of volcanic subduction in Mt Rainier, revealing fluid release at or near the top of the slab, and its migration into the overlying mantle.
Declines in insectivorous birds are associated with high neonicotinoid concentrations
Caspar A. Hallmann,
Ruud P. B. Foppen,
Chris A. M. van Turnhout,
Hans de Kroon &
Eelke Jongejans
The water concentrations of imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid pesticide, correlate with declines in farmland bird populations in the Netherlands.
See also
News & Views by Goulson
Genome sequencing identifies major causes of severe intellectual disability
Christian Gilissen,
Jayne Y. Hehir-Kwa,
Djie Tjwan Thung,
Maartje van de Vorst,
Bregje W. M. van Bon
+ et al.
Whole-genome sequencing is used to identify genetic alterations in patients with severe intellectual disability for whom all other tests, including array and exome sequencing, returned negative results; de novo single-nucleotide and copy number variations affecting the coding region seem to be a major cause of this disorder.
Engineering a memory with LTD and LTP
Sadegh Nabavi,
Rocky Fox,
Christophe D. Proulx,
John Y. Lin,
Roger Y. Tsien
+ et al.
A rodent study using optogenetics to induce long-term potentiation and long-term depression provides a causal link between synaptic plasticity and memory.
ABCB5 is a limbal stem cell gene required for corneal development and repair
Bruce R. Ksander,
Paraskevi E. Kolovou,
Brian J. Wilson,
Karim R. Saab,
Qin Guo
+ et al.
The loss of limbal stem cells (LSCs) due to injury or disease is one of the leading causes of blindness; here, the ABCB5 protein is identified as a marker of LSCs in mouse and human eye, and shown to be functionally required for LSC maintenance, corneal development and repair.
WNT7A and PAX6 define corneal epithelium homeostasis and pathogenesis
Hong Ouyang,
Yuanchao Xue,
Ying Lin,
Xiaohui Zhang,
Lei Xi
+ et al.
p63 and PAX6 act to specify limbal stem or progenitor cells (LSCs), and WNT7A controls corneal epithelium differentiation through PAX6; loss of WNT7A or PAX6 induces LSCs into epithelium, and transduction of PAX6 in skin epithelial stem cells converts them to LSC-like cells and transplantation in a rabbit corneal injury model can replenish corneal epithelial cells and repair damaged corneal surface.
BRCA2 prevents R-loop accumulation and associates with TREX-2 mRNA export factor PCID2
Vaibhav Bhatia,
Sonia I. Barroso,
María L. García-Rubio,
Emanuela Tumini,
Emilia Herrera-Moyano
+ et al.
BRCA2, the breast cancer susceptibility gene factor, interacts with TREX-2, a protein complex involved in the biogenesis and export of messenger ribonucleoprotein, to process DNA–RNA hybrid structures called R-loops that can trigger genome instability; these may be a central cause of the stress occurring in early cancer cells that drives oncogenesis.
The structural basis of transfer RNA mimicry and conformational plasticity by a viral RNA
Timothy M. Colussi,
David A. Costantino,
John A. Hammond,
Grant M. Ruehle,
Jay C. Nix
+ et al.
RNA molecules can perform multiple functions, which can be driven by different conformational states; here, the crystal structure of the transfer-RNA-like structure of the turnip yellow mosaic virus is solved, providing insight into the structural basis of RNA multifunctionality.
Corrigendum
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Corrigendum: Sustained translational repression by eIF2α-P mediates prion neurodegeneration
Julie A. Moreno,
Helois Radford,
Diego Peretti,
Joern R. Steinert,
Nicholas Verity
+ et al.
Erratum
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Erratum: CTP synthase 1 deficiency in humans reveals its central role in lymphocyte proliferation
Emmanuel Martin,
Noé Palmic,
Sylvia Sanquer,
Christelle Lenoir,
Fabian Hauck
+ et al.
Retraction
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Retraction: Generation of cell polarity in plants links endocytosis, auxin distribution and cell fate decisions
Pankaj Dhonukshe,
Hirokazu Tanaka,
Tatsuaki Goh,
Kazuo Ebine,
Ari Pekka Mähönen
+ et al.
