Table of contents

Europe plots course for funding navigation system p390

doi:10.1038/449390b

HIV vaccine failure prompts Merck to halt trial p390

doi:10.1038/449390c

FDA poised for broader powers over drugs on sale p390

doi:10.1038/449390d

California universities maintain tobacco habit p390

doi:10.1038/449390e

Meteorite proves to be a hit in Peru p390

doi:10.1038/449390f

News

Correction p390

doi:10.1038/449390g

Column

Party of One

Passing the test p391

What role should the federal government have in pre-college science education? David Goldston looks at why the US Congress is acting now to help define that.

David Goldston

doi:10.1038/449391a

Full Text | PDF (152K)

Business

Copycat consolidation p393

As more blockbuster drugs come off patent, generic drugmakers face a changing landscape. Meredith Wadman looks at their strategies for survival.

Meredith Wadman

doi:10.1038/449393a

Full Text | PDF (149K)

News Features

The theatre: Bringing the past to life p395

Can a stage spectacular based on a TV documentary bring science to life and please the punters too? Brendan Maher joins a palaeontologist to watch the dinosaurs walk.

doi:10.1038/449395a

Full Text | PDF (651K)

See also: Editor's summary

Environment: Riding on the roof of the world p398

China's railway to Tibet is an engineering marvel or an environmental menace — or perhaps both. Jane Qiu takes a ride to find out.

doi:10.1038/449398a

Full Text | PDF (2,410K)

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Correspondence

Ocean pipes could help the Earth to cure itself p403

James E. Lovelock & Chris G. Rapley

doi:10.1038/449403a

H-index: however ranked, citations need context p403

Michael C. Wendl

doi:10.1038/449403b

H-index: age and sex make it unreliable p403

Clint D. Kelly & Michael D. Jennions

doi:10.1038/449403c

Conservationists could slip up in oil-palm enterprise p403

Reuben Clements & Mary Rose C. Posa

doi:10.1038/449403d

Books and Arts

Research funding in the twenty-first century p405

Are universities and market forces compatible?

Michael M. Crow reviews Science for Sale: The Perils, Rewards and Delusions of Campus Capitalism by Daniel S. Greenberg

doi:10.1038/449405a

Full Text | PDF (161K)

Atlas on our shoulders p406

Edvard I. Moser reviews The Body has a Mind of its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better by Sandra Blakeslee & Matthew Blakeslee

doi:10.1038/449406a

Full Text | PDF (191K)

Ups and downs of a senator scientist p406

Salvatore Coen reviews The Volterra Chronicles: The Life and Times of an Extraordinary Mathematician 1860–1940 by Judith R. Goodstein

doi:10.1038/449406b

Full Text | PDF (410K)

Oceanography fathomed p407

Arnold Gordon reviews To Follow the Water: Exploring the Ocean to Discover Climate by Dallas Murphy

doi:10.1038/449407a

Full Text | PDF (346K)

Exhibition: The invisible continent p408

Emiliano Feresin

doi:10.1038/449408a

Full Text | PDF (128K)

See also: Editor's summary

News and Views

Environmental science: Forests and floods p409

One strategy for reducing catastrophic floods invokes protecting or regenerating forests that lie upstream of a threatened region. Support for this approach comes from a global-scale analysis of flood risk.

William F. Laurance

doi:10.1038/449409a

Full Text | PDF (324K)

Immunology: Changed destiny p410

For practical and ethical reasons, researchers are on the lookout for ways to reprogramme one mature cell type into another. In one case, this might be as easy as switching off a single gene.

Huafeng Xie & Stuart H. Orkin

doi:10.1038/449410a

Full Text | PDF (277K)

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Nuclear physics: A non-disappearing magic trick p411

Well-established models of nuclei describe properties such as shells and magic numbers. But how do these predictions stand up to scrutiny for exotic, unstable nuclei? Pretty well, according to the latest study.

Ragnar Bengtsson & Peter Möller

doi:10.1038/449411a

Full Text | PDF (337K)

Evolutionary biology: Development with a bite p413

Predictions drawn from experiments on the growth of molar teeth in mice, and applied to a wide range of related species, provide a remarkable connection between developmental and evolutionary biology.

P. David Polly

doi:10.1038/449413a

Full Text | PDF (386K)

See also: Editor's summary

50 & 100 Years Ago p414

doi:10.1038/449414a

Full Text | PDF (238K)

Quantum physics: Qubits ride the photon bus p415

Quantum mechanics using whole electrical circuits might seem a far-fetched idea. But make the circuits superconducting, and they can be used to send and collect single photons, rather like atoms do — only better.

Antti O. Niskanen & Yasunobu Nakamura

doi:10.1038/449415a

Full Text | PDF (207K)

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Genomics: Vine work p417

Charles Wenz

doi:10.1038/449417a

Full Text | PDF (139K)

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Review

Taking dendritic cells into medicine p419

Ralph M. Steinman & Jacques Banchereau

doi:10.1038/nature06175

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (7,322K)

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Articles

Predicting evolutionary patterns of mammalian teeth from development p427

Kathryn D. Kavanagh, Alistair R. Evans & Jukka Jernvall

doi:10.1038/nature06153

Abstract | Full Text | PDF (596K) | Supplementary information

Enzymatic capture of an extrahelical thymine in the search for uracil in DNA p433

Jared B. Parker, Mario A. Bianchet, Daniel J. Krosky, Joshua I. Friedman, L. Mario Amzel & James T. Stivers

doi:10.1038/nature06131

Abstract | Full Text | PDF (692K) | Supplementary information

See also: Editor's summary

Letters

Coherent quantum state storage and transfer between two phase qubits via a resonant cavity p438

Mika A. Sillanpää, Jae I. Park & Raymond W. Simmonds

doi:10.1038/nature06124

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (2,295K)

Coupling superconducting qubits via a cavity bus p443

J. Majer, J. M. Chow, J. M. Gambetta, Jens Koch, B. R. Johnson, J. A. Schreier, L. Frunzio, D. I. Schuster, A. A. Houck, A. Wallraff, A. Blais, M. H. Devoret, S. M. Girvin & R. J. Schoelkopf

doi:10.1038/nature06184

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (712K)

Electronic and structural transitions in dense liquid sodium p448

Jean-Yves Raty, Eric Schwegler & Stanimir A. Bonev

doi:10.1038/nature06123

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (557K) | Supplementary information

See also: Editor's summary

Millennial-scale trends in west Pacific warm pool hydrology since the Last Glacial Maximum p452

Judson W. Partin, Kim M. Cobb, Jess F. Adkins, Brian Clark & Diego P. Fernandez

doi:10.1038/nature06164

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (740K) | Supplementary information

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Metal saturation in the upper mantle p456

Arno Rohrbach, Chris Ballhaus, Ute Golla–Schindler, Peter Ulmer, Vadim S. Kamenetsky & Dmitry V. Kuzmin

doi:10.1038/nature06183

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (291K) | Supplementary information

Fire and flood management of coastal swamp enabled first rice paddy cultivation in east China p459

Y. Zong, Z. Chen, J. B. Innes, C. Chen, Z. Wang & H. Wang

doi:10.1038/nature06135

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (305K)

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The grapevine genome sequence suggests ancestral hexaploidization in major angiosperm phyla p463

Olivier Jaillon, Jean-Marc Aury, Benjamin Noel, Alberto Policriti, Christian Clepet, Alberto Casagrande, Nathalie Choisne, Sébastien Aubourg, Nicola Vitulo, Claire Jubin, Alessandro Vezzi, Fabrice Legeai, Philippe Hugueney, Corinne Dasilva, David Horner, Erica Mica, Delphine Jublot, Julie Poulain, Clémence Bruyère, Alain Billault, Béatrice Segurens, Michel Gouyvenoux, Edgardo Ugarte, Federica Cattonaro, Véronique Anthouard, Virginie Vico, Cristian Del Fabbro, Michaël Alaux, Gabriele Di Gaspero, Vincent Dumas, Nicoletta Felice, Sophie Paillard, Irena Juman, Marco Moroldo, Simone Scalabrin, Aurélie Canaguier, Isabelle Le Clainche, Giorgio Malacrida, Eléonore Durand, Graziano Pesole, Valérie Laucou, Philippe Chatelet, Didier Merdinoglu, Massimo Delledonne, Mario Pezzotti, Alain Lecharny, Claude Scarpelli, François Artiguenave, M. Enrico Pè, Giorgio Valle, Michele Morgante, Michel Caboche, Anne-Françoise Adam-Blondon, Jean Weissenbach, Francis Quétier & Patrick Wincker for The French–Italian Public Consortium for Grapevine Genome Characterization

doi:10.1038/nature06148

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (1,456K) | Supplementary information

Genetic variation in a human odorant receptor alters odour perception p468

Andreas Keller, Hanyi Zhuang, Qiuyi Chi, Leslie B. Vosshall & Hiroaki Matsunami

doi:10.1038/nature06162

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (389K) | Supplementary information

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Conversion of mature B cells into T cells by dedifferentiation to uncommitted progenitors p473

César Cobaleda, Wolfram Jochum & Meinrad Busslinger

doi:10.1038/nature06159

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (844K) | Supplementary information

IgH class switching and translocations use a robust non-classical end-joining pathway p478

Catherine T. Yan, Cristian Boboila, Ellen Kris Souza, Sonia Franco, Thomas R. Hickernell, Michael Murphy, Sunil Gumaste, Mark Geyer, Ali A. Zarrin, John P. Manis, Klaus Rajewsky & Frederick W. Alt

doi:10.1038/nature06020

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (682K) | Supplementary information

Rag mutations reveal robust alternative end joining p483

Barbara Corneo, Rebecca L. Wendland, Ludovic Deriano, Xiaoping Cui, Isaac A. Klein, Serre-Yu Wong, Suzzette Arnal, Abigail J. Holub, Geoffrey R. Weller, Bette A. Pancake, Sundeep Shah, Vicky L. Brandt, Katheryn Meek & David B. Roth

doi:10.1038/nature06168

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (296K) | Supplementary information

Structural basis of Dscam isoform specificity p487

Rob Meijers, Roland Puettmann-Holgado, Georgios Skiniotis, Jin-huan Liu, Thomas Walz, Jia-huai Wang & Dietmar Schmucker

doi:10.1038/nature06147

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (1,038K) | Supplementary information

Crystal structure of the heterotrimer core of Saccharomyces cerevisiae AMPK homologue SNF1 p492

Gabriele A. Amodeo, Michael J. Rudolph & Liang Tong

doi:10.1038/nature06127

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (659K) | Supplementary information

Structural basis for AMP binding to mammalian AMP-activated protein kinase p496

Bing Xiao, Richard Heath, Peter Saiu, Fiona C. Leiper, Philippe Leone, Chun Jing, Philip A. Walker, Lesley Haire, John F. Eccleston, Colin T. Davis, Stephen R. Martin, David Carling & Steven J. Gamblin

doi:10.1038/nature06161

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (639K) | Supplementary information