Editorials

Steering the future of computing p383

Computational power is surging thanks to insatiable consumers. Natural scientists should seize opportunities to stimulate computer science, to help everybody cope with huge volumes of data.

doi:10.1038/440383a

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A scramble for Africa p383

Large dams benefit contractors and corrupt governments more than they aid the African people.

doi:10.1038/440383b

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A colourful past p384

The production of dyes in the nineteenth century marked a turning point in the appliance of science.

doi:10.1038/440384a

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Research Highlights

Research highlights p386

doi:10.1038/440386a

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News

London's disastrous drug trial has serious side effects for research p388

Observers call for rules to be tightened.

Meredith Wadman

doi:10.1038/440388a

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Graphic detail: Are adverts revealing nuclear secrets? p389

Indian newspaper clippings request special parts.

Geoff Brumfiel

doi:10.1038/440389a

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Sidelines p390

doi:10.1038/440390a

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Trauma trials leave ethicists uneasy p390

Issue of 'no consent' raises fundamental questions.

Rex Dalton

doi:10.1038/440390b

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Chemists shrug off unseemly spotlight p390

Efforts to selectively break carbon-hydrogen bonds continue apace.

Emma Marris

doi:10.1038/440390c

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Tide of censure for African dams p393

A wave of Chinese-built dams in Africa, particularly the Merowe project in Sudan, could have devastating consequences for local communities. Jim Giles reports.

Jim Giles

doi:10.1038/440393a

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Microwave data refine picture of Universe p395

Deeper analysis of probe data released.

Jenny Hogan

doi:10.1038/440395a

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News in brief p396

doi:10.1038/440396a

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News Features

2020 computing: Champing at the bits p398

Despite some remaining hurdles, the mind-bending and frankly weird world of quantum computers is surprisingly close. Philip Ball finds out how these unusual machines will earn their keep.

doi:10.1038/440398a

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2020 computing: Milestones in scientific computing p399

doi:10.1038/440399a

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2020 computing: Everything, everywhere p402

Tiny computers that constantly monitor ecosystems, buildings and even human bodies could turn science on its head. Declan Butler investigates.

doi:10.1038/440402a

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Business

Drive for drugs leads to baby clinical trials p406

US regulators are moving sharply to ease the early stages of drug development, despite safety concerns. Meredith Wadman reports.

doi:10.1038/440406a

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In brief p407

doi:10.1038/440407a

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Market watch p407

Colin Macilwain

doi:10.1038/440407b

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Correspondence

Scientists must be able to report without censorship p408

Barbara A. Mikulski

doi:10.1038/440408a

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Scientists should be heard, but not expect to set policy p408

William R. Dickinson

doi:10.1038/440408b

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Fraud: anonymous 'stars' would not dazzle reviewers p408

Henning Bauch

doi:10.1038/440408c

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Research skewed by stress on highest-impact journals p408

Mark Maslin

doi:10.1038/440408d

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Commentaries

2020 Computing: Exceeding human limits p409

Scientists are turning to automated processes and technologies in a bid to cope with ever higher volumes of data. But automation offers so much more to the future of science than just data handling, says Stephen H. Muggleton.

doi:10.1038/440409a

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2020 Computing: The creativity machine p411

What will emerge from using the Internet as a research tool? The answer, Vernor Vinge argues, will be limited only by our imaginations.

doi:10.1038/440411a

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2020 Computing: Science in an exponential world p413

The amount of scientific data is doubling every year. Alexander Szalay and Jim Gray analyse how scientific methods are evolving from paper notebooks to huge online databases.

doi:10.1038/440413a

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2020 Computing: Can computers help to explain biology? p416

The road leading from computer formalisms to explaining biological function will be difficult, but Roger Brent and Jehoshua Bruck suggest three hopeful paths that could take us closer to this goal.

doi:10.1038/440416a

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2020 Computing: A two-way street to science's future p419

To view the relationship between computing and science as a one-way street is mostly untrue today, argues Ian Foster, and will be even less true by 2020.

doi:10.1038/440419a

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Books and Arts

When computers take over p421

What if the current exponential increase in information-processing power could continue unabated?

Paul Davies reviews The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil

doi:10.1038/440421a

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A taste of a rotten past p422

W. F. Bynum reviews Sacred Cow, Mad Cow: A History of Food Fears by Madeleine Ferrières

doi:10.1038/440422a

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Boning up on dinosaurs p423

Luis M. Chiappe reviews The Microstructure of Dinosaur Bone: Deciphering Biology with Fine-Scale Techniques by Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan

doi:10.1038/440423a

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Summing up physics p423

Malcolm Longair reviews The Equations: Icons of Knowledge by Sander Bais

doi:10.1038/440423b

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Science in culture: Porcelain perception p424

Not everything is as it seems in the ceramics of Pauline Wiertz.

Colin Martin

doi:10.1038/440424a

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News and Views

Molecular biology: RNA lost in translation p425

In any manufacturing process, quality control is crucial, and gene expression is no exception. A new pathway monitors mRNAs — the intermediaries of gene expression — and destroys faulty molecules.

David Tollervey

doi:10.1038/440425a

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Biochemistry: Gas with an ancient history p426

Researchers persist in tackling our ignorance of what life was like way back in Earth's history. Evidence of methane production in ancient microbial ecosystems now emerges from 3.5-billion-year-old rocks.

Don E. Canfield

doi:10.1038/440426a

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Membrane biology: Permutations of permeability p427

The first glimpse into the molecular basis of how sodium ions are transported across cell membranes by ion channels shows that cation-selective channels are variations on potassium channels.

William N. Zagotta

doi:10.1038/440427a

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Chemistry: Perkin, the mauve maker p429

Philip Ball

doi:10.1038/440429a

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Earthquakes: A movement in four parts? p430

From time to time, over millennia, northwestern North America has experienced huge earthquakes. These events may be preceded by tell-tale subsidence, but the evidence is devilishly difficult to decipher.

Joanne Bourgeois

doi:10.1038/440430a

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Solid-state physics: Light at the end of the channel p431

If photonic circuits are ever to compete with their electronic counterparts, strong confinement of light waves coupled with low propagation losses is needed. A new class of waveguides offers both.

Francisco J. Garcia-Vidal

doi:10.1038/440431a

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Mathematical physics: Going to ground p433

How can one find the minimum total energy of an infinite number of particles? A proof showing that, for certain interactions, periodic 'ground states' exist provides a new perspective on this, one of the oldest questions in physics.

Christos N. Likos

doi:10.1038/440433a

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Cell division: Running rings around the spindle p434

Deepa Nath

doi:10.1038/440434a

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Brief Communications

Avian flu: Influenza virus receptors in the human airway p435

Avian and human flu viruses seem to target different regions of a patient's respiratory tract.

Kyoko Shinya, Masahito Ebina, Shinya Yamada, Masao Ono, Noriyuki Kasai and Yoshihiro Kawaoka

doi:10.1038/440435a

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Ecology: Human role in Russian wild fires p436

Danilo Mollicone, Hugh D. Eva and Frédéric Achard

doi:10.1038/440436a

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Retraction p437

doi:10.1038/440437a

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Articles

Southern Ocean sea-ice extent, productivity and iron flux over the past eight glacial cycles p491

E. W. Wolff, H. Fischer, F. Fundel, U. Ruth, B. Twarloh, G. C. Littot, R. Mulvaney, R. Röthlisberger, M. de Angelis, C. F. Boutron, M. Hansson, U. Jonsell, M. A. Hutterli, F. Lambert, P. Kaufmann, B. Stauffer, T. F. Stocker, J. P. Steffensen, M. Bigler, M. L. Siggaard-Andersen, R. Udisti, S. Becagli, E. Castellano, M. Severi, D. Wagenbach, C. Barbante, P. Gabrielli and V. Gaspari

doi:10.1038/nature04614

Abstract | Full Text | PDF (375K) | Supplementary information

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Human chromosome 11 DNA sequence and analysis including novel gene identification p497

Todd D. Taylor, Hideki Noguchi, Yasushi Totoki, Atsushi Toyoda, Yoko Kuroki, Ken Dewar, Christine Lloyd, Takehiko Itoh, Tadayuki Takeda, Dae-Won Kim, Xinwei She, Karen F. Barlow, Toby Bloom, Elspeth Bruford, Jean L. Chang, Christina A. Cuomo, Evan Eichler, Michael G. FitzGerald, David B. Jaffe, Kurt LaButti, Robert Nicol, Hong-Seog Park, Christopher Seaman, Carrie Sougnez, Xiaoping Yang, Andrew R. Zimmer, Michael C. Zody, Bruce W. Birren, Chad Nusbaum, Asao Fujiyama, Masahira Hattori, Jane Rogers, Eric S. Lander and Yoshiyuki Sakaki

doi:10.1038/nature04632

Abstract | Full Text | PDF (182K) | Supplementary information

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Letters

Significant primordial star formation at redshifts z 3–4 p501

Raul Jimenez and Zoltan Haiman

doi:10.1038/nature04580

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A non-spherical core in the explosion of supernova SN 2004dj p505

Douglas C. Leonard, Alexei V. Filippenko, Mohan Ganeshalingam, Franklin J. D. Serduke, Weidong Li, Brandon J. Swift, Avishay Gal-Yam, Ryan J. Foley, Derek B. Fox, Sung Park, Jennifer L. Hoffman and Diane S. Wong

doi:10.1038/nature04558

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Channel plasmon subwavelength waveguide components including interferometers and ring resonators p508

Sergey I. Bozhevolnyi, Valentyn S. Volkov, Eloïse Devaux, Jean-Yves Laluet and Thomas W. Ebbesen

doi:10.1038/nature04594

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Mechanical twisting of a guest by a photoresponsive host p512

Takahiro Muraoka, Kazushi Kinbara and Takuzo Aida

doi:10.1038/nature04635

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Evidence from fluid inclusions for microbial methanogenesis in the early Archaean era p516

Yuichiro Ueno, Keita Yamada, Naohiro Yoshida, Shigenori Maruyama and Yukio Isozaki

doi:10.1038/nature04584

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See also: Editor's summary | News and Views by Canfield

Modelling conservation in the Amazon basin p520

Britaldo Silveira Soares-Filho, Daniel Curtis Nepstad, Lisa M. Curran, Gustavo Coutinho Cerqueira, Ricardo Alexandrino Garcia, Claudia Azevedo Ramos, Eliane Voll, Alice McDonald, Paul Lefebvre and Peter Schlesinger

doi:10.1038/nature04389

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The nature of plant species p524

Loren H. Rieseberg, Troy E. Wood and Eric J. Baack

doi:10.1038/nature04402

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The prolyl isomerase Pin1 regulates amyloid precursor protein processing and amyloid- production p528

Lucia Pastorino, Anyang Sun, Pei-Jung Lu, Xiao Zhen Zhou, Martin Balastik, Greg Finn, Gerburg Wulf, Jormay Lim, Shi-Hua Li, Xiaojiang Li, Weiming Xia, Linda K. Nicholson and Kun Ping Lu

doi:10.1038/nature04543

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A P-type ATPase required for rice blast disease and induction of host resistance p535

Martin J. Gilbert, Christopher R. Thornton, Gavin E. Wakley and Nicholas J. Talbot

doi:10.1038/nature04567

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CD69 acts downstream of interferon-/ to inhibit S1P₁ and lymphocyte egress from lymphoid organs p540

Lawrence R. Shiow, David B. Rosen, Nadda Brdiková, Ying Xu, Jinping An, Lewis L. Lanier, Jason G. Cyster and Mehrdad Matloubian

doi:10.1038/nature04606

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An excitable gene regulatory circuit induces transient cellular differentiation p545

Gürol M. Süel, Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo, Louisa M. Liberman and Michael B. Elowitz

doi:10.1038/nature04588

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CHIP-mediated stress recovery by sequential ubiquitination of substrates and Hsp70 p551

Shu-Bing Qian, Holly McDonough, Frank Boellmann, Douglas M. Cyr and Cam Patterson

doi:10.1038/nature04600

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RNA-mediated response to heat shock in mammalian cells p556

Ilya Shamovsky, Maxim Ivannikov, Eugene S. Kandel, David Gershon and Evgeny Nudler

doi:10.1038/nature04518

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Endonucleolytic cleavage of eukaryotic mRNAs with stalls in translation elongation p561

Meenakshi K. Doma and Roy Parker

doi:10.1038/nature04530

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The Dam1 kinetochore ring complex moves processively on depolymerizing microtubule ends p565

Stefan Westermann, Hong-Wei Wang, Agustin Avila-Sakar, David G. Drubin, Eva Nogales and Georjana Barnes

doi:10.1038/nature04409

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Atomic structure of a Na⁺- and K⁺-conducting channel p570

Ning Shi, Sheng Ye, Amer Alam, Liping Chen and Youxing Jiang

doi:10.1038/nature04508

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Naturejobs

A mixed blessing p575

Paul Smaglik

doi:10.1038/nj7083-575a

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Building the Midwest's future p576

Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin have had mixed fortunes in their efforts to build up their research infrastructure. Partnerships may prove to be the strongest construction, says Paul Smaglik.

Paul Smaglik

doi:10.1038/nj7083-576a

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Eric Betzig, group leader, Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Leesburg, Virginia p578

Virginia Gewin

doi:10.1038/nj7083-578a

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Taiwan's international expansion p578

Gopi Kuppuraj

doi:10.1038/nj7083-578b

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Life of Riley? p578

Mhairi Dupre

doi:10.1038/nj7083-578c

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Highlight: Austria

doi:10.1038/nj0115

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Futures

The candidate p580

Washington 2.0

Jack McDevitt

doi:10.1038/440580a

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