Opinion

The centre needs to hold p847

Research ministers met for a seminar in London this week to discuss how to improve the handling of European-level research. The solution lies in steady and targeted reforms to practices in Brussels.

doi:10.1038/31750

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From art to image p847

As a series of articles changes direction, science's relevance to art is reaffirmed.

doi:10.1038/31752

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News

'More effectiveness needed' in Brussels' handling of research p849

David Dickson and Alison Abbott

doi:10.1038/31754

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Physicists seek definition of 'science' p849

Colin Macilwain

doi:10.1038/31758

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UK waives nuclear waste rule for Georgia p850

Alison Abbott

doi:10.1038/31760

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German reactor project faces safety challenge p850

Alison Abbott and Quirin Schiermeier

doi:10.1038/31762

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Jewish leaders meet NIH chiefs on genetic stigmatization fears p851

Meredith Wadman

doi:10.1038/31764

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Success prompts bid for second Neurolab launch p851

Tony Reichhardt

doi:10.1038/31766

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Troubled UK biotech firm faces new probe p852

Ehsan Masood

doi:10.1038/31769

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Spanish government pledges full funding for Canaries telescope p852

Alison Abbott

doi:10.1038/31771

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Beijing media join attack on air pollution p853

David Swinbanks

doi:10.1038/31774

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Banned drug 'still used until this month' p853

Meredith Wadman

doi:10.1038/31777

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Unesco board set to agree compromise on bioethics committee p854

Declan Butler

doi:10.1038/31779

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Free market is advocated for Australian universities p854

Peter Pockley

doi:10.1038/31781

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News Analysis

Test ban treaty faces make or break in the US Senate p855

A tough time lies ahead for the US administration in its push to achieve the two-thirds Senate majority needed to ratify the treaty banning atomic weapons testing. Republican senators are digging in with a complicated set of conditions and will prove hard to shift.

Colin Macilwain

doi:10.1038/31784

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News in Brief p856

doi:10.1038/31788

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Correspondence

Tycho's illusion and human cognition p857

Howard Margolis

doi:10.1038/31790

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Art in the round p857

Ian Smith

doi:10.1038/31793

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Commentary

British forensic science in the dock p859

Unregulated forensic science practices have led to a spate of wrongful convictions. There are too many 'cowboy' practitioners whose services can be bought at a price.

doi:10.1038/31795

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News and Views

A marriage of bone and nacre p861

Peter Westbroek and Frédéric Marin

doi:10.1038/31798

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Superconductors:  Current limits to wire technology p862

David Christen

doi:10.1038/31801

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Calcium signalling:  Oscillation, activation, expression p863

Jacopo Meldolesi

doi:10.1038/31804

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100 and 50 years ago p865

doi:10.1038/31807

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Environmental science:  Nitrogen oxides and tropical agriculture p866

A. F. Bouwman

doi:10.1038/31809

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Ornithology:  The purple patch p867

Tim Guilford and Paul H. Harvey

doi:10.1038/31813

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Neuropharmacology:  Premenstrual steroids? p869

Karen T. Britton and George F. Koob

doi:10.1038/31816

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Daedalus:  The wide open society p870

David Jones

doi:10.1038/31819

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News and Views Feature

Molecular clocks: mastering time by gene regulation p871

Paolo Sassone-Corsi

doi:10.1038/31821

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (222K)

Molecular clocks in development p872

Paolo Sassone-Corsi

doi:10.1038/31827

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Art and Science

Kemp's conclusions p875

What has emerged in this series, despite the core of commonalities linking old masters, classic modernists and living artists, is a clear change in shape for the relationships between art and science across the three areas.

Martin Kemp

doi:10.1038/31829

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Scientific Correspondence

Painters centre one eye in portraits p877

Christopher W. Tyler

doi:10.1038/31833

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (367K)

Ball court design dates back 3,400 years p878

Warren D. Hill, Michael Blake and John E. Clark

doi:10.1038/31837

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (204K)

New ice outdoes related nets in smallest-ring size p879

Michael O'Keeffe

doi:10.1038/31840

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (157K)

Book Reviews

Designs on evolutionary invention p881

R. McNeill Alexander reviews Cats' Paws and Catapults: Mechanical Worlds of Nature and People by Steven Vogel

doi:10.1038/31843

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Listen out for the death rattle p881

doi:10.1038/31845

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People power p882

Steven Yearley reviews The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements by James M. Jasper

doi:10.1038/31848

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Current concerns p883

Jacqueline Reynolds and Charles Tanford review Joseph Henry: The Rise of an American Scientist by Albert E. Moyer

doi:10.1038/31851

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Fossil dichotomy p883

Brian R. Rosen reviews Palaeoecology: Ecosystems, Environments, and Evolution by P. Brenchley and D. Harper

doi:10.1038/31853

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In retrospect by Mikhail Mina p884

Mikhail Mina reviews The Gospel of Afranius: The Holy History as an Object of a Detective Inquiry by Kirill Es'kov

doi:10.1038/31855

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New Journals p884

doi:10.1038/31858

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Progress

Allosteric effects of DNA on transcriptional regulators p885

Jeffrey A. Lefstin and Keith R. Yamamoto

doi:10.1038/31860

Abstract | Full Text | PDF (217K)

Article

The paradox of drowned carbonate platforms and the origin of Cretaceous Pacific guyots p889

Paul A. Wilson, Hugh C. Jenkyns, Henry Elderfield and Roger L. Larson

doi:10.1038/31865

Abstract | Full Text | PDF (297K)

Letters to Nature

Vigorous star formation hidden by dust in a galaxy at a redshift of 1.4 p895

Andrea Cimatti, Paola Andreani, Huub Röttgering and Remo Tilanus

doi:10.1038/31872

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (269K)

Discovery of two distant irregular moons of Uranus p897

Brett J. Gladman, Philip D. Nicholson, Joseph A. Burns, JJ Kavelaars, Brian G. Marsden, Gareth V. Williams and Warren B. Offutt

doi:10.1038/31890

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (247K)

Accretion rate of cosmic spherules measured at the South Pole p899

Susan Taylor, James H. Lever and Ralph P. Harvey

doi:10.1038/31894

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (297K)

Charge separation in localized and delocalized electronic states in polymeric semiconductors p903

A. Köhler, D. A. dos Santos, D. Beljonne, Z. Shuai, J.-L. Brédas, A. B. Holmes, A. Kraus, K. Müllen and R. H. Friend

doi:10.1038/31901

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (296K)

Current-limiting mechanisms in individual filaments extracted from superconducting tapes p906

X. Y. Cai, A. Polyanskii, Q. Li, G. N. Riley, Jr and D. C. Larbalestier

doi:10.1038/31907

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (296K)

See also: News and Views by Christen

Determination of the absolute chirality of individual adsorbed molecules using the scanning tunnelling microscope p909

G. P. Lopinski, D. J. Moffatt, D. D. M. Wayner and R. A. Wolkow

doi:10.1038/31913

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (279K)

Extremely acid Permian lakes and ground waters in North America p911

Kathleen Counter Benison, Robert H. Goldstein, Brigitte Wopenka, Robert C. Burruss and Jill Dill Pasteris

doi:10.1038/31917

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (269K)

Boreal forest plants take up organic nitrogen p914

Torgny Näsholm, Alf Ekblad, Annika Nordin, Reiner Giesler, Mona Högberg and Peter Högberg

doi:10.1038/31921

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (249K)

A molecular timescale for vertebrate evolution p917

Sudhir Kumar and S. Blair Hedges

doi:10.1038/31927

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (362K) | Supplementary information

The ParaHox gene cluster is an evolutionary sister of the Hox gene cluster p920

Nina M. Brooke, Jordi Garcia-Fernàndez and Peter W. H. Holland

doi:10.1038/31933

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (312K)

Oligophrenin-1 encodes a rhoGAP protein involved in X-linked mental retardation p923

Pierre Billuart, Thierry Bienvenu, Nathalie Ronce, Vincent des Portes, Marie Claude Vinet, Ramzi Zemni, Hugues Roest Crollius, Alain Carrié, Fabien Fauchereau, Michele Cherry, Sylvain Briault, Ben Hamel, Jean-Pierre Fryns, Cherif Beldjord, Axel Kahn, Claude Moraine and Jamel Chelly

doi:10.1038/31940

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (397K)

GABA_A receptor 4 subunit suppression prevents withdrawal properties of an endogenous steroid p926

Sheryl S. Smith, Qi Hua Gong, Fu-Chun Hsu, Ronald S. Markowitz, J. M. H. ffrench-Mullen and Xinshe Li

doi:10.1038/31948

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (354K)

See also: News and Views by Britton & Koob

Modifying the mechanical property and shear threshold of L-selectin adhesion independently of equilibrium properties p930

Kamal D. Puri, Shuqi Chen and Timothy A. Springer

doi:10.1038/31954

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (261K)

Calcium oscillations increase the efficiency and specificity of gene expression p933

Ricardo E. Dolmetsch, Keli Xu and Richard S. Lewis

doi:10.1038/31960

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (306K)

See also: News and Views by Meldolesi

Cell-permeant caged InsP₃ ester shows that Ca²⁺ spike frequency can optimize gene expression p936

Wen-hong Li, Juan Llopis, Michael Whitney, Gregor Zlokarnik and Roger Y. Tsien

doi:10.1038/31965

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (383K)

See also: News and Views by Meldolesi

NMR structure and mutagenesis of the FADD (Mort1) death-effector domain p941

Matthias Eberstadt, Baohua Huang, Zehan Chen, Robert P. Meadows, Shi-Chung Ng, Lixin Zheng, Michael J. Lenardo and Stephen W. Fesik

doi:10.1038/31972

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (879K)

Crystal structure of the tetramerization domain of the Shaker potassium channel p945

Andreas Kreusch, Paul J. Pfaffinger, Charles F. Stevens and Senyon Choe

doi:10.1038/31978

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (558K)

New on the Market

DNA discourse p949

Molecular biology is the subject and the objects of attention include a gel electrophoresis comet assay, an adenovirus expression kit, proof-reading polymerases, and a large-scale mouse cDNA expression array.
compiled by Brendan Horton from information provided by the manufacturers.

doi:10.1038/31983

Full Text | PDF (423K)