Volume 451 Issue 7177, 24 January 2008

Mitt Romney's pledge to plough $20 billion a year into energy research may signal an unseemly bidding war.

DARPA should focus on its founding values.

The changing face of public and private funding.

Three-year study will capture variation in 1,000 people.

He's a physician who has had a major role in the eradication of smallpox and in tackling blindness. Now Larry Brilliant is heading up Google.org, the dotcom giant's philanthropic arm, which plans to tackle emerging diseases, climate change and poverty. Declan Butler talks to him about his diseases strategy.

In the third of a series of articles examining nuclear issues, Jeff Tollefson looks at options for fuelling a global boom in nuclear power stations without enabling nuclear proliferation.

Shroud of secrecy surrounds innovation organization.

Research within a biblical framework to be peer reviewed.

Molecular cluster defies accurate analysis.

Slime mould displays remarkable rhythmic recall.

Scribbles on the margins of science.

Last-minute cuts to the research budget have left US scientists nervous about future funding. David Goldston looks at what Congress and the president might do next.

Viral and microbial interactions within living tissues are more complex than previously thought. Melinda Wenner explores whether a periodic table of the infectious could help sort out the mess.

Half a century after its creation, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is considered a paragon of government innovation. But some question whether it is still relevant. Sharon Weinberger reports.

Are scientists publishing more duplicate papers? An automated search of seven million biomedical abstracts suggests that they are, report Mounir Errami and Harold Garner.

A Natural History Museum researcher unlocks its cluttered store rooms to expose an extraordinary past.

As the US military's research arm turns fifty — and other branches of government seek to adopt its famously nimble approach — a former director reflects on what worked and what didn't.

A century-long record of levels of inorganic carbon in the Mississippi, extracted from the water-treatment plants of New Orleans, documents the changes wrought by shifting agricultural practices in the river's basin.

Without its Vpu protein, the AIDS-associated virus HIV-1 becomes stuck to the surface of the human cell in which it has replicated. The mysterious factor that tethers HIV-1 is probably a cell-membrane protein.

Building two different fluorescing dyes into a composite organic nanocrystal makes a tunable light generator. At just the right dye proportions, a low-cost, highly efficient source of white light is the result.

Fast jet streams blow along the hallmark coloured bands that engirdle Jupiter's surface. By observing how storms erupt in these jet streams and disturb them, we can penetrate deeper into what lies beneath.

Imagine being able to tweak the properties of a compound simply by replacing a molecular 'cartridge' with a different one. Just such a capability has been developed in a new class of porous crystalline materials.

Mobile genetic elements called transposons could cause havoc in the genome if left unregulated. Of the various cellular defence strategies used to preserve genome integrity, one involves exploiting transposons themselves.

Light that propagates without spreading or diffracting sounds like a theorist's pipedream. But it is a very real proposition, and could be used to illuminate some profound aspects of wave–particle duality.

Molecular cell biology has long been dominated by a protein-centric view. But the emergence of small, non-coding RNAs challenges this perception. These plentiful RNAs regulate gene expression at different levels, and have essential roles in health and disease.

The HIV protein Vpu is required for the release of viral particles. This paper shows that it counteracts the host cell protein CD317, renamed as tetherin. Tetherin is involved in the retention of newly budded HIV-1 virions at the cell surface.

A transposon surveillance and genome organization mechanism is described in fission yeast. CENP-B proteins bind to Tf2 retrotransposons and mediate their silencing by recruiting histone deacetylases. CENP-B proteins are also required for the clustering of Tf2 retrotransposons into network-like structures in the nucleus.

Observations and modelling of two plumes in Jupiter's atmosphere that erupted at the same latitude as the strongest jet (23° North) are reported. Based on dynamical modelling it is concluded that the data are consistent only with a wind that extends well below the level where solar radiation is deposited.

A quantum dot that can be optically initialized to contain a well-defined and very stable hole spin has been designed, with a relaxation time long enough to allow potential applications in solid-state quantum networks.

A computational study identifies pressure-induced reactivity between the two lightest metals, lithium and beryllium. Although normally not even miscible, they form a number of ordered alloy compounds stable at high pressures. Intriguingly, quasi-two-dimensional electronic states emerge within the three-dimensional crystal environment of one of the alloys. This feature appears as the high pressure 'squeezes' electrons away from the lithium atoms and into layers of almost ideal free-electron like states that are close to the beryllium atoms.

A high temporal resolution, 100-year data set from the Mississippi River is coupled with sub-watershed and precipitation data to reveal that a ∼40 percent increase in flux of bicarbonate that has occurred over the last 50 years is clearly anthropogenically driven. This is caused by an increase in discharge from agricultural watersheds not balanced by a rise in precipitation. It is suggested that land use change and management are arguably more important than changes in climate and carbon dioxide fertilization.

Seismological investigations and finite-element mechanical modelling are used to show that the load exerted by large Hawaiian volcanoes can be sufficient to rupture the oceanic crust. When combined with the accelerated subsidence of the oceanic crust, this may control the surface morphology of Hawaiian volcanoes.

This paper describes and models a striking example of non-random ecological patterning over large spatial scales apparently caused by the interaction between a common species of tropical arboreal ant and one of its natural enemies under spatially homogeneous conditions.

The basis of regulation of proliferation of pluripotent embryonic stem cells has been unclear. It is found that endogenous GABA receptor signalling controls proliferation of embryonic stem cells and other tissue-specific stem cell types via a mechanism that involves cell cycle proteins previously associated with cellular DNA damage responses.

The computing power of the brain depends on its components, nerve cells, being wired to each other in very specific patterns.

Some of the molecules involved in this specificity have been identified, and it is demonstrated that nerve cells miss-wire when these molecules are missing or, conversely, when they are present in the wrong place.

In establishing circuits in the retina, retinal neurons form complex patterns depending on repulsion or attraction to their own processes, and to the cell bodies and processes of other neurons. The first cell surface adhesive protein that mediates this cell spacing in the mammalian retinal is described. This paper also identifies a spontaneous mutation in mice that creates a loss of function allele of Dscam, which in Drosophila mediates dendrite arborization and axon tiling, and finds the mutants eyes had disorganized retinas with faulty cell spacing.

Light and gibberellins (GA) regulate multiple aspects of plant development, and this paper is one of two studies that provide molecular insights into the connection between these pathways. Without GA, DELLA proteins (GA-signalling repressors) interact with PIFs (phytochrome-interacting proteins) and inhibit their binding to gene promoters. GA triggers degradation of DELLA proteins, thereby allowing PIFs to bind to their target promoters and regulate gene expression. These results reveal a signalling cascade that contributes to coordinated plant growth regulation by light and gibberellins.

Light and gibberellins (GA) regulate multiple aspects of plant development, and this paper is one of two studies that provide molecular insights into the connection between these pathways. Without GA, DELLA proteins (GA-signalling repressors) interact with PIFs (phytochrome-interacting proteins) and inhibit their binding to gene promoters. GA triggers degradation of DELLA proteins, thereby allowing PIFs to bind to their target promoters and regulate gene expression. These results reveal a signalling cascade that contributes to coordinated plant growth regulation by light and gibberellins.

Bacterial flagella contain a secretion apparatus that is related to the type III secretion system used by many pathogens to transfer effector proteins into host cells. It has been thought that the ATPase, FliL provides the energy for transport. This is one of two papers that argue against this widely held view and show that flagellar secretion can occur even in the absence of the ATPase and is instead driven by the proton motive force.

Bacterial flagella contain a secretion apparatus that is related to the type III secretion system used by many pathogens to transfer effector proteins into host cells. It has been thought that the ATPase, FliL provides the energy for transport. This is one of two papers that argue against this widely held view and show that flagellar secretion can occur even in the absence of the ATPase and is instead driven by the proton motive force.

Rebuffing a troubled economic and political past, Argentina is trying to get on the science map with a new science ministry and attempts to retain young talent. Paul Smaglik reports.

Raise a glass to world domination.

Unravelling a mechanism that stops HIV travelling between cells.