Volume 450 Issue 7169, 22 November 2007

Nature has implemented a peer-review policy for strong claims.

The decision to make the Leopoldina Germany's national academy of sciences is to be welcomed.

Iraqi national challenges British government for right to study biology and chemistry.

Scribbles on the margins of science.

But decision to pull out of observatory could save millions.

Anthropologists lobby to retain Native Indian skeletons for study.

A plant in Uganda hopes to sell cut-price drugs by taking advantage of exemptions from rules that protect patents. But its operators face major obstacles, as Tatum Anderson reports.

Far below the surface of the ocean, beyond the reach of the Sun's rays, organisms still have eyes. Mark Schrope investigates seeing without sunlight.

With keen immunological insight and a knockout mouse 'factory', Shizuo Akira leads by quiet example. David Cyranoski visits the world's most-cited scientist as he prepares to run one of Japan's premier research centres.

There may be more to great dishes than a dash of chemistry and a squeeze of lime juice.

Providing cures for health problems isn't enough, if people's personal or cultural beliefs clash with the scientific approach. Policy-makers must recognize and engage with these objections.

Researchers have achieved the testing goal of generating embryonic stem cells from the cells of an adult primate. The procedure used could provide insights into a variety of diseases, if it can be applied in humans.

Before carbon nanotubes can fulfil their potential in device applications, better ways must be found to produce pure samples of them. A promising approach involves wrapping them up in a shell of polymer.

Termites digest wood with the help of their intestinal microorganisms. The first metagenomic analysis of the inhabitants of a termite gut provides insight into this feat of biomass-to-energy conversion.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey represents the most ambitious attempt yet to map out a slice of the sky. In the first five years of its existence, it has revealed cosmic structures on every conceivable scale.

Sudden collapses of the sea floor can generate oceanic sediment flows that dwarf the global annual sediment input from rivers. Such flows can travel great distances, and undergo transformation along the way.

The effect of increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide on carbon uptake in and export from the upper ocean is one of the big questions in environmental science. But it can be tackled experimentally.

The split personality of the conduction electrons in one high-temperature superconductor might indicate that periodic modulations of their spin and charge density are a general feature of these mystifying materials.

The top 20 policy and research priorities for conditions such as diabetes, stroke and heart disease.

The reprogramming of rhesus macaque adult fibroblasts into embryonic stem cells using somatic cell nuclear transfer is demonstrated. Until now, creating embryonic stem cells in this way has only been successful in mice. This success with primates suggests that this approach could work for generating patient-derived embryonic stem cells, which could be used to treat a variety of diseases without immune rejection.

Human CtIP (a homologue of yeast Sae2) interacts with the putative resection nuclease, the Mre11 complex, and enhances its nuclease activity. CtIP and Mre11 are both required for efficient homologous recombination, for recruitment of the ATR checkpoint kinase and single-strand binding protein RPA to the break, and for ATR activation. This shows how end resection, activation of the checkpoint, and repair are interrelated.

The crystal structure of the maltose transporter, in complex with its periplasmic maltose-binding protein, at 2.8 Å resolution is presented. Because both ATP and maltose are bound and a mutation that prevents ATP hydrolysis has been introduced, the complex has been captured in an intermediate state and a mechanism for maltose transport proposed.

The discovery of several white dwarfs with atmospheres primarily composed of carbon, with little or no trace of hydrogen or helium is reported. These stars do not fit satisfactorily in any of the currently known theories of post-asymptotic giant branch evolution.

A microcavity structure to which a periodic potential is applied has been designed, which effectively creates an array of weakly-coupled condensates. This allows the observation of fundamental dynamic behaviour, namely the build-up of certain superfluid-like states, which has been predicted for arrays of atomic Bose–Einstein condensates, but not yet observed.

The observation of a negative Hall resistance in the magnetic-field-induced normal state of underdoped 'YBCO'materials, which reveals that these pockets are electron-like rather than hole-like. It is proposed that these electron pockets most probably arise from a reconstruction of the Fermi surface caused by the onset of a density-wave phase, as is thought to occur in the electron-doped copper oxides near the onset of antiferromagnetic order.

The use of time series data from 522 remote lakes and streams in North America and northern Europe and a simple model shows that dissolved organic carbon concentrations between 1990– 2004 have increased in proportion to the rates at which atmospherically deposited anthropogenic sulphur and sea salt have declined. It is suggested that acid deposition to these ecosystems has been partially buffered by changes in organic acidity and that the rise in dissolved organic carbon is integral to recovery from acidification.

It is estimated that global increasing CO₂ emissions will lead to significant ocean acidification. Although the effects on individual marine species have been explored previously, this presents first empirical results to estimate the impact on a natural community ecosystem.

A relatively new imaging technique is used to reveal that some Cretaceous gymnosperm seeds have evolutionary links with Gnetales (an evolutionarily hard-to-place gymnosperm group with three living genera) and the Bennetitales (an extinct group of cycad-like plants). The link between Gnetales and Bennetitales may have important consequences for our understanding of the evolution of seed plants, including flowering plants.

A drug used as an antidepressant in humans increases Caenorhabditis elegans lifespan. In humans, this drug blocks neural signalling by the neurotransmitter serotonin. In C. elegans, it seems to act as an antagonist for the serotonin receptor and for the receptor of the neurotransmitter octopamine. The drug's effect on lifespan seems to involve mechanisms similar to those that underlie lifespan extension by dietary restriction.

The key to successful social interactions is the ability to accurately assess others' intentions, be they friend or foe. In humans, this ability is present very early on in life, as is shown here when preverbal infants evaluate individuals based on their actions towards others, preferring helpers to neutral or hindering individuals.

Wood-feeding 'higher' termites rely on their hindgut symbionts for the intitial steps in cellulose degradation. Metagenomic analysis of this microbial community reveals a diverse range of bacterial cellulase and hydrolase genes, as well as genes important in other metabolic functions, such as H2 metabolism, CO₂-reductive acetogenesis and N₂ fixation.

Regulatory T cells suppress immune function by direct cell to cell contact and secretion of the cytokines IL-10 and TGF-β. In this paper, a novel member of the IL-12 cytokine family that contributes to Treg function is identified.

The crystal structure of a SNARE protein bound to a clathrin adaptor is reported, which reveals that there is highly specific interactions between two folded domains as opposed to the linear peptide motif or folded domains that have been described for other families of cargo proteins. This is the first example of a SNARE association with a clathrin adaptor and describes a novel mechanism by which cargo can be recruited into clathrin coated vesicles.

LHCII, the main light-harvesting complex in photosynthesis, has an inbuilt capability to undergo transformation into a dissipative state by conformational change, but it was not known if such events occur in vivo or how energy is dissipated in this state. The transition into the dissipative state is associated with a twist in the configuration of the LHCII-bound carotenoid neoxanthin identified using resonance Raman spectroscopy. Applying this technique to study isolated chloroplasts and whole leaves, this paper shows that the same change in neoxanthin configuration occurs in vivo, to an extent consistent with the magnitude of energy dissipation.

India's biotech bottleneck is a cautionary tale on how to look past the hype and gauge job prospects.

The rush to join in India's latest boom sector has led to a bottleneck.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute welcomes new director.

University College London opens new cancer institute.

Nervously, and with much trepidation, I've decided to leave science research.

A match made in silicon.

Termite gut bacteria produce a wealth of wood-degrading enzymes.