Table of contents
Volume 420 Number 6911 pp1-106
Opinion
Private embryos, public policy p1
In the United States, assisted reproduction and embryo research in the private sector have been left largely unregulated, whereas federally funded labs face stringent controls. The distinction makes little sense.
doi:10.1038/420001a
Reform by stealth p1
The government of Silvio Berlusconi apparently wants to restructure Italian science, but seems uninterested in consultation.
doi:10.1038/420001b
News
US biologists wary of move to view embryos as human beings p3
Erika Check
doi:10.1038/420003a
Gene centre chips in with better route to microarrays p3
Alison Abbott
doi:10.1038/420003b
News
Developing countries to gain from carbon-trading fund p4
Natasha McDowell
doi:10.1038/420004a
Academies back Smithsonian's calls for direct funds p4
Kendall Powell
doi:10.1038/420004b
Theses spark twin dilemma for physicists p5
Declan Butler
doi:10.1038/420005a
Health initiative gets warm welcome p5
Geoff Brumfiel
doi:10.1038/420005b
Mussel model calls for cash to combat invading species p6
Tony Reichhardt
doi:10.1038/420006a
Japanese physicists beam as meson production soars p6
David Cyranoski
doi:10.1038/420006b
Hostage deaths put gas weapons in spotlight p7
Quirin Schiermeier
doi:10.1038/420007a
news feature
Space science: Out of this world p10
NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts aims to turn speculative ideas into tomorrow's space missions. Tony Reichhardt attends its latest get-together, and asks whether the investment is worth it.
Tony Reichhardt
doi:10.1038/420010a
Put your lab in a different class p12
In many countries, students are turning away from the hard sciences. Can initiatives that give young people hands-on experience of research help to lure them back? Sally Goodman goes back to school.
Sally Goodman
doi:10.1038/420012a
Correspondence
Slow-moving journals hinder conservation efforts p15
Critical policy decisions miss out on research stuck in an 18-month publishing queue.
Peter Kareiva, Michelle Marvier, Sabrina West and Joy Hornisher
doi:10.1038/420015a
Sharp eyes saw through early effort to fake prints p15
G. S. Sodhi and Jasjeet Kaur
doi:10.1038/420015b
Science and government share anti-terrorist goals p16
E. William Colglazier
doi:10.1038/420016a
Peer review to select academic job applicants p16
Esteban Fernández-Juricic, Wladimir J. Alonso and Cynthia Schuck-Paim
doi:10.1038/420016b
New Journals
The future of electronic data p17
Will the universities' own electronic repositories affect traditional publishing?
Ann J. Wolpert reviews
doi:10.1038/420017a
Access to scientific literature p19
The web can complement libraries, but not replace them.
Wil Weston reviews
doi:10.1038/420019a
That shrinking feeling p20
Harold G. Craighead reviews Lab on a Chip: Miniaturisation for Chemistry and Biology chair of editorial board Andreas Manz
doi:10.1038/420020a
Biological molecules at large p20
David L. Kaplan reviews Macromolecular Bioscience
doi:10.1038/420020b
A home for proteomics data? p21
Matthias Mann reviews Molecular and Cellular Proteomics
doi:10.1038/420021a
Shining a light on molecules p21
Robin M. Hochstrasser reviews Photochemistry and Photobiological Sciences
doi:10.1038/420021b
Adapting to a diverse world p22
Andy Purvis reviews Organisms, Diversity and Evolution
doi:10.1038/420022a
In the land of the giants p23
Greg Elgar reviews Comparative and Functional Genomics
doi:10.1038/420023a
Signs of life in planetary science p23
Monica M. Grady reviews Astrobiology
doi:10.1038/420023b
Noise worth listening to p24
Katja Lindenberg reviews Fluctuation and Noise Letters
doi:10.1038/420024a
Growing up with quantum computing p25
Isaac Chuang reviews Quantum Information and Computation
doi:10.1038/420025a
From bench to bedside and back p26
Michelle D. Garrett reviews Cell Cycle and Cancer Biology and Therapy
doi:10.1038/420026a
News and Views
Carbon cycle: The wildfire factor p29
Events such as wildfires, occurring on a tiny area of the globe, can have a huge impact on the global carbon cycle. This much is plain from investigation of the terrible fires that afflicted Indonesia five years ago.
David Schimel and David Baker
doi:10.1038/420029a
Vision: What is a naked retina good for? p30
The crab Bythograea thermydron has eyes that consist of large naked retinas. Studies of the crab's larval forms suggest that these eyes are a specific adaptation to the dim environment of oceanic volcanic vents.
Michael F. Land
doi:10.1038/420030a
Astronomy: Twinkle, twinkle, neutron star p31
Neutron stars, as the name suggests, are mostly made of neutrons. But the cores of these tiny, dense stellar leftovers might conceal new states of matter, including strange matter. The light from these stars holds the key.
Cole Miller
doi:10.1038/420031a
Protein folding: With a little help... p33
Experiments and computer simulations are converging in their exploration of the timescales on which protein folding occurs. Such developments are a promising way forward in molecular biophysics.
Charles L. Brooks, III
doi:10.1038/420033a
100 and 50 years ago p33
doi:10.1038/420033b
Plant ecology: Express delivery by bat p34
The seeds of plants need to be dispersed to locations where they can survive and grow. In the deserts of Mexico, it seems that a species of bat is the dispersal agent of choice for a giant cactus.
Peter D. Moore
doi:10.1038/420034a
Condensed-matter physics: Magnetic frustration squeezed out p35
Atomic spins in a 'frustrated' magnet cannot simultaneously minimize the energies of their local interactions: they fluctuate continuously, even at very low temperatures. But under pressure, they line up in an ordered way.
Peter Schiffer
doi:10.1038/420035a
Astronomy: Close encounters of the tidal kind p38
Between the Magellanic Clouds, in a region swept with tides of gas, stars are forming. The detection of carbon monoxide shows gas is condensing, and further observations may reveal the ultimate fate of the clouds.
Tommy Wiklind
doi:10.1038/420038a
Medicine: Tackling multiple sclerosis p39
New work in mice finds that certain anti-cholesterol drugs can reduce symptoms of disease in brain autoimmune disorders that are akin to human multiple sclerosis. There are also hints as to how the drugs might work.
Hartmut Wekerle
doi:10.1038/420039a
Brief Communications
Biomechanics: Suction feeding by a tiny predatory tadpole p41
This amphibian shoots its mouth forwards in a fish-like manner to suck in its prey.
Stephen M. Deban and Wendy M. Olson
doi:10.1038/420041a
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (115K) | Supplementary information
Purinergic receptors: An ATP-gated ion channel at the cell nucleus p42
Lucy Atkinson, Carol. J. Milligan, Noel J. Buckley and Jim Deuchars
doi:10.1038/420042a
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (60K)
Article
Structure of a T7 RNA polymerase elongation complex at 2.9 Å resolution p43
Tahir H. Tahirov, Dmitry Temiakov, Michael Anikin, Vsevolod Patlan, William T. McAllister, Dmitry G. Vassylyev and Shigeyuki Yokoyama
doi:10.1038/nature01129
Abstract | Full Text | PDF (748K) | Supplementary information
Letters to Nature
Gravitationally redshifted absorption lines in the X-ray burst spectra of a neutron star p51
J. Cottam, F. Paerels and M. Mendez
doi:10.1038/nature01159
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (284K)
See also: News and Views by Miller
Pressure-induced crystallization of a spin liquid p54
I. Mirebeau, I. N. Goncharenko, P. Cadavez-Peres, S. T. Bramwell, M. J. P. Gingras and J. S. Gardner
doi:10.1038/nature01157
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (556K)
See also: News and Views by Schiffer
Epitaxial core–shell and core–multishell nanowire heterostructures p57
Lincoln J. Lauhon, Mark S. Gudiksen, Deli Wang and Charles M. Lieber
doi:10.1038/nature01141
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (459K) | Supplementary information
The amount of carbon released from peat and forest fires in Indonesia during 1997 p61
Susan E. Page, Florian Siegert, John O. Rieley, Hans-Dieter V. Boehm, Adi Jaya and Suwido Limin
doi:10.1038/nature01131
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (427K)
See also: News and Views by Schimel & Baker
The origin of geomagnetic jerks p65
Jeremy Bloxham, Stephen Zatman and Mathieu Dumberry
doi:10.1038/nature01134
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (728K)
Adaptive visual metamorphosis in a deep-sea hydrothermal vent crab p68
Robert N. Jinks, Tara L. Markley, Elizabeth E. Taylor, Gina Perovich, Ana I. Dittel, Charles E. Epifanio and Thomas W. Cronin
doi:10.1038/nature01144
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (366K)
See also: News and Views by Land
Neurons in medial prefrontal cortex signal memory for fear extinction p70
Mohammed R. Milad and Gregory J. Quirk
doi:10.1038/nature01138
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (333K)
p75 interacts with the Nogo receptor as a co-receptor for Nogo, MAG and OMgp p74
Kevin C. Wang, Jieun A. Kim, Rajeev Sivasankaran, Rosalind Segal and Zhigang He
doi:10.1038/nature01176
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (470K)
The HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor, atorvastatin, promotes a Th2 bias and reverses paralysis in central nervous system autoimmune disease p78
Sawsan Youssef, Olaf Stüve, Juan C. Patarroyo, Pedro J. Ruiz, Jennifer L. Radosevich, Eun Mi Hur, Manuel Bravo, Dennis J. Mitchell, Raymond A. Sobel, Lawrence Steinman and Scott S. Zamvil
doi:10.1038/nature01158
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (684K) | Supplementary information
See also: News and Views by Wekerle
Recruitment and regulation of phosphatidylinositol phosphate kinase type 1
by the FERM domain of talin p85
Gilbert Di Paolo, Lorenzo Pellegrini, Kresimir Letinic, Gianluca Cestra, Roberto Zoncu, Sergei Voronov, Sunghoe Chang, Jun Guo, Markus R. Wenk and Pietro De Camilli
doi:10.1038/nature01147
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (476K) | Supplementary information
Type I phosphatidylinositol phosphate kinase targets and regulates focal adhesions p89
Kun Ling, Renee L. Doughman, Ari J. Firestone, Matthew W. Bunce and Richard A. Anderson
doi:10.1038/nature01082
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (441K) | Supplementary information
Nbs1 is essential for DNA repair by homologous recombination in higher vertebrate cells p93
Hiroshi Tauchi, Junya Kobayashi, Ken-ichi Morishima, Dik C. van Gent, Takahiro Shiraishi, Nicole S. Verkaik, Diana vanHeems, Emi Ito, Asako Nakamura, Eiichiro Sonoda, Minoru Takata, Shunichi Takeda, Shinya Matsuura and Kenshi Komatsu
doi:10.1038/nature01125
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (418K) | Supplementary information
Structure of a protein determined by solid-state magic-angle-spinning NMR spectroscopy p98
Federica Castellani, Barth van Rossum, Annette Diehl, Mario Schubert, Kristina Rehbein and Hartmut Oschkinat
doi:10.1038/nature01070
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (1,507K)
Naturejobs
moversMedicine, Drug discovery, Integrative genomics, Agrochemicals, Genome Sciences, Transitions p99
doi:10.1038/nj6911-99a
Letters to Nature
Absolute comparison of simulated and experimental protein-folding dynamics p102
Christopher D. Snow, Houbi Nguyen, Vijay S. Pande and Martin Gruebele
doi:10.1038/nature01160
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (309K) | Supplementary information
See also: News and Views by Brooks
corrigendum: Undermethylation associated with retroelement activation and chromosome remodelling in an interspecific mammalian hybrid p106
Rachel J. Waugh O'Neill, Michael J. O'Neill and Jennifer A. Marshall Graves
doi:10.1038/nature01162
erratum: Simulation of the atmospheric thermal circulation of a martian volcano using a mesoscale numerical model p106
Scot C. R. Rafkin, Magdalena R. V. Sta. Maria and Timothy I. Michaels
doi:10.1038/nature01206