Table of contents
Volume 432 Number 7018 pp657-783
Editorials
Where theology matters p657
The voices of religion are more prominent and influential than they have been for many decades. Researchers, religious and otherwise, need to come to terms with this, while noting that some dogma is not backed by all theologians.
doi:10.1038/432657a
Spinning out of control p657
Researchers should beware of 'public relations' screens that are anything but helpful to science communication.
doi:10.1038/432657b
News
Curators bugged by museum's vision for insect collection p659
Staff complain about London's insect relocation plan.
Jim Giles
doi:10.1038/432659a
Californians hash out guide for spending stem-cell billions p660
Experts meet to work out details of state funding plan.
Jonathan Knight
doi:10.1038/432660a
Thompson cedes crown after stormy reign over US health p660
Disgruntled researchers glad to see health secretary leave.
Erika Check
doi:10.1038/432660b
Ecologists attack plans for rare-species act p661
Critics say US bills will soften protection of endangered animals.
Emma Marris
doi:10.1038/432661a
Europe faces call to ban imports of wild birds p661
Rules against avian trade aim to halt disease and conserve wildlife.
Rex Dalton
doi:10.1038/432661b
Inquiry hears claim of threats over lab move p662
UK Medical Research Council head accused of threatening staff.
Jim Giles
doi:10.1038/432662a
Move afoot to lend bioweapons treaty more muscle p662
Biological Weapons Convention to consider rapid-response team.
Declan Butler
doi:10.1038/432662b
India and China mount joint quake study in the Himalayas p663
Researchers to study plate collision in rare partnership.
K. S. Jayaraman
doi:10.1038/432663a
Grads rally round student in Toronto harassment case p663
Canadian students support alleged victim.
Erika Check
doi:10.1038/432663b
News Features
Religion and science: Studies of faith p666
Embryonic stem-cell research is putting fresh strain on the already fractious relationship between science and religion. TonyReichhardt explores how faith is shaping the ever-changing landscape of bioethics.
doi:10.1038/432666a
Religion and Science: Buddhism on the brain p670
Many religious leaders find themselves at odds with science, but the head of Tibetan Buddhism is a notable exception. Jonathan Knight meets a neurologist whose audience with the Dalai Lama helped to explain why.
doi:10.1038/432670a
Correspondence
Australians net benefits of sustainable fish farming p671
Issues of concern need to be recognized, confronted through research and resolved.
Anthony Cheshire and John Volkman
doi:10.1038/432671a
Politics: scientists are as qualified as anyone else p671
Chun-Liang Pan and Ming-Chang Chiang
doi:10.1038/432671b
If we ignore politics, will politics ignore science? p671
Ying-Hen Hsieh
doi:10.1038/432671c
Christmas books
Glaciers lost p673
A winter's tale tackles the rise and fall of ice ages.
Euan Nisbet reviews Frozen Earth: The Once and Future Story of Ice Ages by Doug Macdougall
doi:10.1038/432673a
On the record p674
doi:10.1038/432674a
Ring theory p674
Michael A. Goldman reviews The Science of Middle-Earth by Henry Gee
doi:10.1038/432674b
Smart underwear for time travellers p675
Paul Davies reviews How to Clone the Perfect Blonde: Using Science to Make Your Wildest Dreams Come True by Sue Nelson and Richard Hollingham
doi:10.1038/432675a
Swimming beneath solid seas p675
Lloyd Peck reviews Under Antarctic Ice: The Photographs of Norbert Wu by Norbert Wu and Jim Mastro and Frozen Oceans by David Thomas
doi:10.1038/432675b
Skeleton key p676
doi:10.1038/432676a
Swine fever p676
Temple Grandin reviews The Whole Hog: Exploring the Extraordinary Potential of Pigs by Lyall Watson
doi:10.1038/432676b
More books for Christmas p676
doi:10.1038/432676c
Essay
ConceptWarming the world p677
Greenhouse effect: Fourier's concept of planetary energy balance is still relevant today.
Raymond T. Pierrehumbert
doi:10.1038/432677a
Full Text | PDF (143K) | Supplementary information
News and Views
Genomes: Fowl sequence p679
Chickens have been an invaluable model organism for decades. Their usefulness in research, from genomics to breeding, will further increase with the sequencing of the genome of one chicken species.
Jeremy Schmutz and Jane Grimwood
doi:10.1038/432679a
Microbiology: Jekyll or hide? p680
Many bacteria can adopt different lifestyles: in a free-living state, they are virulent and cause disease; in a surface-attached community, they are less virulent but may go unnoticed. How is this 'decision' made?
George A. O'Toole
doi:10.1038/432680a
Planetary science: Volcanoes on Quaoar? p681
Quaoar, a large body in the Kuiper belt, has crystalline water ice on its surface, yet conditions there should favour amorphous ice. Does this mean that resurfacing has taken place — perhaps even volcanism?
David J. Stevenson
doi:10.1038/432681a
Behavioural biology: Name that tune p682
Understanding how early auditory memories are laid down could help to explain their role in vocal development. Some ingenious experiments in birds provide fresh ideas about how such memories are represented.
Daniel Margoliash
doi:10.1038/432682a
100 and 50 years ago p683
doi:10.1038/432683a
Climate change: Tropical flip-flop connections p684
A long climatic record shows that episodic wet periods in northeastern Brazil are linked to distant climate anomalies. The ocean–atmosphere system can evidently undergo rapid and global reorganization.
John C. H. Chiang and Athanasios Koutavas
doi:10.1038/432684a
Plant biochemistry: Green catalytic converter p684
Christopher Surridge
doi:10.1038/432684b
Hearing: Channel at the hair's end p685
Ion channels controlled by sound underlie the sense of hearing. Having long eluded researchers, the first such mammalian channel has now been identified in the mouse inner ear.
Jonathan Ashmore
doi:10.1038/432685a
Obituary: Eberhard Gwinner (1938–2004) p687
Roland Brandstaetter and John Krebs
doi:10.1038/432687a
Brief Communications
Granular physics: Creating a dry variety of quicksand p689
An aerated form of sand engulfs objects instantaneously, shooting out a jet of grains.
Detlef Lohse, Remco Rauhé, Raymond Bergmann and Devaraj van der Meer
doi:10.1038/432689a
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (289K) | Supplementary information
Adhesion: Elastocapillary coalescence in wet hair p690
José Bico, Benoît Roman, Loïc Moulin and Arezki Boudaoud
doi:10.1038/432690a
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (122K)
Progress
Bose–Einstein condensation of excitons in bilayer electron systems p691
J. P. Eisenstein and A. H. MacDonald
doi:10.1038/nature03081
Abstract | Full Text | PDF (1,851K)
Articles
Sequence and comparative analysis of the chicken genome provide unique perspectives on vertebrate evolution p695
International Chicken Genome Sequencing Consortium
doi:10.1038/nature03154
Abstract | Full Text | PDF (1,406K) | Supplementary information
See also: News and Views by Schmutz & Grimwood
A genetic variation map for chicken with 2.8 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms p717
International Chicken Polymorphism Map Consortium
doi:10.1038/nature03156
Abstract | Full Text | PDF (299K) | Supplementary information
TRPA1 is a candidate for the mechanosensitive transduction channel of vertebrate hair cells p723
David P. Corey, Jaime García-Añoveros, Jeffrey R. Holt, Kelvin Y. Kwan, Shuh-Yow Lin, Melissa A. Vollrath, Andrea Amalfitano, Eunice L.-M. Cheung, Bruce H. Derfler, Anne Duggan, Gwénaëlle S. G. Géléoc, Paul A. Gray, Matthew P. Hoffman, Heidi L. Rehm, Daniel Tamasauskas and Duan-Sun Zhang
doi:10.1038/nature03066
Abstract | Full Text | PDF (388K) | Supplementary information
See also: News and Views by Ashmore
Letters to Nature
Crystalline water ice on the Kuiper belt object (50000) Quaoar p731
David C. Jewitt and Jane Luu
doi:10.1038/nature03111
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (381K)
See also: News and Views by Stevenson
Routing of anisotropic spatial solitons and modulational instability in liquid crystals p733
Marco Peccianti, Claudio Conti, Gaetano Assanto, Antonio De Luca and Cesare Umeton
doi:10.1038/nature03101
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (280K) | Supplementary information
Unusual phase transitions in ferroelectric nanodisks and nanorods p737
Ivan I. Naumov, L. Bellaiche and Huaxiang Fu
doi:10.1038/nature03107
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (213K)
Wet periods in northeastern Brazil over the past 210 kyr linked to distant climate anomalies p740
Xianfeng Wang, Augusto S. Auler, R. Lawrence Edwards, Hai Cheng, Patricia S. Cristalli, Peter L. Smart, David A. Richards and Chuan-Chou Shen
doi:10.1038/nature03067
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (495K) | Supplementary information
See also: News and Views by Chiang & Koutavas
Spreading-rate dependence of melt extraction at mid-ocean ridges from mantle seismic refraction data p744
Daniel Lizarralde, James B. Gaherty, John A. Collins, Greg Hirth and Sangmyung D. Kim
doi:10.1038/nature03140
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (399K) | Supplementary information
Spatial scaling of microbial eukaryote diversity p747
Jessica L. Green, Andrew J. Holmes, Mark Westoby, Ian Oliver, David Briscoe, Mark Dangerfield, Michael Gillings and Andrew J. Beattie
doi:10.1038/nature03034
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (209K) | Supplementary information
A taxa–area relationship for bacteria p750
M. Claire Horner-Devine, Melissa Lage, Jennifer B. Hughes and Brendan J. M. Bohannan
doi:10.1038/nature03073
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (180K) | Supplementary information
Species-typical songs in white-crowned sparrows tutored with only phrase pairs p753
Gary J. Rose, Franz Goller, Howard J. Gritton, Stephanie L. Plamondon, Alexander T. Baugh and Brenton G. Cooper
doi:10.1038/nature02992
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (438K) | Supplementary information
See also: News and Views by Margoliash
Early motor activity drives spindle bursts in the developing somatosensory cortex p758
Rustem Khazipov, Anton Sirota, Xavier Leinekugel, Gregory L. Holmes, Yehezkel Ben-Ari and György Buzsáki
doi:10.1038/nature03132
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (591K) | Supplementary information
A physical map of the chicken genome p761
John W. Wallis, Jan Aerts, Martien A. M. Groenen, Richard P. M. A. Crooijmans, Dan Layman, Tina A. Graves, Debra E. Scheer, Colin Kremitzki, Mary J. Fedele, Nancy K. Mudd, Marco Cardenas, Jamey Higginbotham, Jason Carter, Rebecca McGrane, Tony Gaige, Kelly Mead, Jason Walker, Derek Albracht, Jonathan Davito, Shiaw-Pyng Yang, Shin Leong, Asif Chinwalla, Mandeep Sekhon, Kristine Wylie, Jerry Dodgson, Michael N. Romanov, Hans Cheng, Pieter J. de Jong, Kazutoyo Osoegawa, Mikhail Nefedov, Hongbin Zhang, John D. McPherson, Martin Krzywinski, Jacquie Schein, LaDeana Hillier, Elaine R. Mardis, Richard K. Wilson and Wesley C. Warren
doi:10.1038/nature03030
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (127K)
See also: Letter by Wallis et al.
Early blastomere determines embryo proliferation and caste fate in a polyembryonic wasp p764
Vladimir Zhurov,
Tomislav Terzin
and
Miodrag Grbi
doi:10.1038/nature03171
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (511K) | Supplementary information
Dominant influence of HLA-B in mediating the potential co-evolution of HIV and HLA p769
Photini Kiepiela, Alasdair J. Leslie, Isobella Honeyborne, Danni Ramduth, Christina Thobakgale, Senica Chetty, Prinisha Rathnavalu, Corey Moore, Katja J. Pfafferott, Louise Hilton, Peter Zimbwa, Sarah Moore, Todd Allen, Christian Brander, Marylyn M. Addo, Marcus Altfeld, Ian James, Simon Mallal, Michael Bunce, Linda D. Barber, James Szinger, Cheryl Day, Paul Klenerman, James Mullins, Bette Korber, Hoosen M. Coovadia, Bruce D. Walker and Philip J. R. Goulder
doi:10.1038/nature03113
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (535K) | Supplementary information
Fbxw7/Cdc4 is a p53-dependent, haploinsufficient tumour suppressor gene p775
Jian-Hua Mao, Jesus Perez-losada, Di Wu, Reyno DelRosario, Ryosuke Tsunematsu, Keiichi I. Nakayama, Ken Brown, Sheila Bryson and Allan Balmain
doi:10.1038/nature03155
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (401K) | Supplementary information
Rubisco without the Calvin cycle improves the carbon efficiency of developing green seeds p779
Jörg Schwender, Fernando Goffman, John B. Ohlrogge and Yair Shachar-Hill
doi:10.1038/nature03145
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (198K) | Supplementary information
