Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Volume 457 Issue 7227, 15 January 2009

Can he do it? The cover shows Barack Obama and George W. Bush prior to their 10 November Oval Office meeting. The handover takes place next week. In this issue we look at the Bush legacy, and the emerging policies of the Obama administration. [COVER PICTURE: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images]

Authors

Top of page ⤴

Editorial

  • As Barack Obama sets a fresh agenda for the US approach to climate change and energy, scientists must make sure that they do not merely watch from the sidelines.

    Editorial
  • The Obama administration must help prevent terrorists from building a nuclear device.

    Editorial
  • George Bush's AIDS programme needs leadership and support from the Obama administration.

    Editorial
Top of page ⤴

Research Highlights

Top of page ⤴

Journal Club

Top of page ⤴

News

  • Barack Obama's nominees for top federal positions are not speaking to the press until their appointments are confirmed, but they have spoken out before.

    News
  • Indo-German research cruise sets sail despite criticism.

    • Quirin Schiermeier
    News
  • China's leading conservation centre is facing down an onslaught of rubber plantations. Jane Qiu reports from Jinghong.

    • Jane Qiu
    News
Top of page ⤴

News in Brief

Top of page ⤴

Correction

Top of page ⤴

News Feature

  • In the first of three features on the legacy of the Bush administration, Declan Butler looks at the United States' failure to deal with the risks of nuclear proliferation.

    • Declan Butler
    News Feature
  • Was setting up PEPFAR — a massive HIV treatment programme — the best thing that President Bush ever did? Erika Check Hayden investigates.

    • Erika Check Hayden
    News Feature
Top of page ⤴

Correspondence

Top of page ⤴

Commentary

  • Rejuvenate the Environmental Protection Agency. End the stem-cell ban. Re-engage with the UN on climate change. Six leading voices tell Nature what the new US president needs to do to move beyond the Bush legacy.

    Commentary
Top of page ⤴

Essay

  • Powerful chemical signals have been identified in moths, elephants and fish, recounts Tristram D. Wyatt. But, contrary to stories in the popular press, the race is still on to capture human scents.

    • Tristram D. Wyatt
    Essay
Top of page ⤴

Books & Arts

  • A high-profile copyright activist is fighting for traditional publishers to stop criminalizing their own readers, explains Jonathan Zittrain.

    • Jonathan Zittrain
    Books & Arts
  • Voted the world's best restaurant, Spain's elBulli near Barcelona offers an unusual culinary experience, from hot velvet-crab aspic with mini-corncob couscous to ice-cold liquorice nitro-dragon dessert. Innovative head chef Ferran Adrià explains how science and haute cuisine can work together.

    • Jascha Hoffman
    Books & Arts
Top of page ⤴

News & Views

  • How can we investigate a disease affecting neurons, which cannot be isolated from patients for analysis? As the study of one neurological disorder shows, a first step might be to make patient-specific neurons.

    • Michael Sendtner
    News & Views
  • Turbulent convection in a rotating body is a common but poorly understood phenomenon in astrophysical and geophysical settings. Consideration of boundary effects offers a fresh angle on this thorny problem.

    • Peter L. Read
    News & Views
  • Oscillations in gene expression regulate various cellular processes and so must be robust and tunable. Interactions between both negative and positive feedback loops seem to ensure these features.

    • Jeff Gore
    • Alexander van Oudenaarden
    News & Views
  • Observations of superfluid behaviour — flow without friction — of unusual character in a condensed-matter system pave the way to investigations of superfluidity in systems that are out of thermal equilibrium.

    • Jonathan Keeling
    • Natalia G. Berloff
    News & Views
Top of page ⤴

Article

  • Intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells sense and transmit light information to brain centres that control non-image-forming visual functions, such as the pupillary light reflex and circadian photoentrainment. This paper describes the biophysical properties of these melanopsin-containing cells. It is found that single-photons of light are sufficient to elicit large and prolonged responses.

    • Michael Tri H. Do
    • Shin H. Kang
    • King-Wai Yau
    Article
Top of page ⤴

Letter

  • Blue stragglers in globular clusters are abnormally massive stars that should have evolved off the stellar main sequence long ago. There are two processes that can create these objects: direct stellar collisions or binary evolution. This study reports that there is a clear, but sublinear, correlation between the number of blue stragglers found in a cluster core and the total stellar mass contained within it, and it is concluded that most blue stragglers come from binary systems.

    • Christian Knigge
    • Nathan Leigh
    • Alison Sills
    Letter
  • In a classical Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer superconductor, pairing and coherence are established simultaneously below the critical transition temperature (Tc). But in the copper oxide high- Tc superconductors, a pseudogap extends above Tc. Spectral gaps arising from pairing precursors are qualitatively similar to those caused by competing states, rendering a standard approach to their analysis inconclusive. This paper reports that the spectral weight of the superconducting coherent peak increases away from the node following the trend of the superconducting gap, but then starts to decrease in the antinodal region.

    • Takeshi Kondo
    • Rustem Khasanov
    • Adam Kaminski
    Letter
  • Turbulent rotating convection controls many observed features in stars and planets, such as magnetic fields. It has been argued that the influence of rotation on turbulent convection dynamics is governed by the ratio of the relevant global-scale forces: the Coriolis force and the buoyancy force. This paper presents results from laboratory and numerical experiments which exhibit transitions between rotationally dominated and non-rotating behaviour that are not determined by this global force balance. Instead, the transition is controlled by the relative thicknesses of the thermal (non-rotating) and Ekman (rotating) boundary layers.

    • Eric M. King
    • Stephan Stellmach
    • Jonathan M. Aurnou
    Letter
  • This paper presents the first detailed description of the braincase of Ptomacanthus, an acanthodian that lived in the Early Devonian. The results show that acanthodians were probably not a natural group: Ptomacanthus was either a very early relative of sharks, or close to the common ancestry of all modern jawed vertebrates.

    • Martin D. Brazeau
    Letter
  • Dendritic spine morphogenesis is sensitive to experience-dependent plasticity, but whether or not experience-induced structural changes outlast the experience itself is unknown. This paper reveals that long-lived spine density increases in response to monocular deprivation that persist beyond the duration of time the eye was closed. Subsequent deprivation fails to induce further spine density increases, suggesting initial experience may provide a structural experience 'trace' that could be utilized in response to further functional shifts.

    • Sonja B. Hofer
    • Thomas D. Mrsic-Flogel
    • Mark Hübener
    Letter
  • This paper shows that insects possess a structure very similar, both anatomically and functionally, to the blood-filtering tissue of the vertebrate kidney, and raises the possibility that components of the vertebrate excretory system were inherited from their invertebrate ancestors. It is also shown that fly orthologues of the major constituents of the slit diaphragm of the kidney form a complex of interacting proteins similar to the vertebrate slit diaphragm complex.

    • Helen Weavers
    • Silvia Prieto-Sánchez
    • Barry Denholm
    Letter
  • Polploidy is a common feature of many plants, and in addition some plants exist as intra- and interspecific hybrinds. Such plants display growth vigour, and genes involved in metabolism and energy, photosynthesis and starch accumulation are upregulated compared to the parents. This study examines the mechanistic basis of increased growth, and reports that epigenetic modifications of circadian clock regulators mediates the expression of genes in photosynthetic and metabolic pathways.

    • Zhongfu Ni
    • Eun-Deok Kim
    • Z. Jeffrey Chen
    Letter
  • Both strands of DNA are replicated simultaneously, but they have opposite polarities. A trombone model has been proposed to explain how replication machinery that moves in one direction can accomplish this feat. In this model, the lagging strand forms a loop that allows it to enter the replication machinery in the same direction as the leading strand. This study uses single molecule techniques to examine this process in real time, and it finds that this loop is reinitiated with the priming of every Okazaki fragment, and released when the previous fragment is encountered by the replisome.

    • Samir M. Hamdan
    • Joseph J. Loparo
    • Antoine M. van Oijen
    Letter
Top of page ⤴

Corrigendum

Top of page ⤴

Prospects

Top of page ⤴

Postdocs and Students

  • Job prospects are looking gloomy as the economic downturn runs its course, but there are bright spots for some. Genevive Bjorn reports on ways to shelter from the storm.

    • Genevive Bjorn
    Postdocs and Students
Top of page ⤴

Futures

  • You must remember this ...

    • John Frizell
    Futures
Top of page ⤴
Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Quick links