Volume 462 Issue 7272, 26 November 2009

Japan's effort to make budget allocations by public hearing could be good for the country and for science, but not as currently planned.

Britain's main opposition party needs policies for research and for universities.

The US Food and Drug Administration cannot fulfil its mandate without a serious funding boost.

The week in science.

Second financial crisis in two years leaves researchers questioning the council's long-term viability.

British climate centre reeling over Internet posting of sensitive material.

Nilgiri location threatens important elephant habitat.

Projects to monitor antibodies seek true extent of H1N1 infection.

Researchers aim to launch full-scale system by 2030.

deCODE's demise leaves fate of its valuable genetic database unclear.

Slices from the brain of H.M., a key patient in pioneering memory studies, will be immortalized online.

Experimental planting scheme has insufficient controls to prevent gene flow to native crops, critcs say.

The new head of the US Food and Drug Administration has inherited an agency battered by crises. Meredith Wadman asks whether Peggy Hamburg can concoct a cure.

An intuitive approach to computer modelling could reveal paths to discovery, finds Lucas Laursen.

Lessons are still being learnt from the Antarctic Treaty, adopted 50 years ago this week. It set a visionary precedent for governing regions and resources beyond national jurisdictions, says Paul Arthur Berkman.

Henner Busemann enjoys a hymn to the passionate collectors who fuelled the science of meteorites.

The common skate is not at all common: this large marine fish has 'critically endangered' status. That it turns out to be not one species, but two, is a sharp reminder that good taxonomy must underpin conservation.

Killer T cells were thought to patrol the body unhindered, freely gaining access to sites of infection. But it seems that, at least in some body tissues, helper T cells must pave the way for killer T-cell entry.

Electrical injection and detection of spin-polarized electrons in a silicon chip have now been demonstrated at room temperature, paving the way to the development of low-power semiconductor spintronics circuitry.

When it comes to proteins and their environments, opposites repel. So how is the highly charged, polar helix of a transmembrane ion channel accommodated by a non-polar membrane? Easily, if the charges are buried.

Observations of star clusters in the Milky Way defy the view that the constituents of these systems are almost invariably chemically alike. The outlying clusters could be the tattered relics of once larger systems.

Trailblazer in the study of protein synthesis.

The formate–nitrite transporter family, of which FocA is a representative member, is known to transport short-chain acids in bacteria, archaea, fungi, algae and parasites; however, the structure and transport mechanism of these transporters remain unknown. Here, study of the crystal structure of Escherichia coli FocA reveals that the overall structure of FocA closely resembles that of aquaporin, suggesting that it is in fact a channel, rather than a transporter.

Despite the growing number of X-ray crystal structures of membrane proteins, direct structural information about proteins in their native membrane environment remains scarce. Neutron diffraction, solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and molecular dynamics simulations are now used to investigate the structure and hydration of bilayer membranes containing S1–S4 voltage-sensing domains.

The globular star clusters ω Centauri and M 22 are thought to be the remaining cores of disrupted dwarf galaxies, but they are viewed as exceptional. Here, calcium abundances for seven globular clusters are reported and compared to ω Centauri. The results lead the authors to conclude that these globular clusters are also probably the relics of more massive primeval dwarf galaxies that merged and disrupted to form the proto-Galaxy.

ω Centauri is the only globular star cluster in the Galactic halo known to have multiple stellar populations with a significant spread in iron abundance and age. But now Terzan 5, a globular-cluster-like system in the Galactic bulge, is reported to have two stellar populations with different iron contents and ages. So Terzan 5 could be the surviving remnant of one of the primordial building blocks which are thought to merge and form galaxy bulges.

Heavily doped semiconductors, which can exhibit superconductivity, and low-dimensional superconducting thin films are currently limited by interface scattering, electronic or atomic-scale disorder. Here, the fabrication of a high-quality superconducting layer within a thin-film heterostructure based on SrTiO₃ is reported. By selectively doping a narrow region of SrTiO₃ a two-dimensional superconductor is formed that should provide a model system in which to explore the quantum transport and interplay of both superconducting and normal electrons.

Spintronics aims to represent digital information using spin orientation rather than electron charge, ideally at room temperature and in silicon, which is already ubiquitous in present-day technologies. But so far successful control of spin has only been achieved for electrons and at low temperatures. Now room-temperature injection, manipulation and detection of spin polarization of both electrons and their positively charged counterparts (holes) brings the realization of silicon spintronic devices closer.

The Agulhas leakage allows the transport of warm and salty Indian Ocean waters into the Atlantic Ocean and provides the main source of heat and salt for the surface branch of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. The results of a high-resolution ocean general circulation model now show that the transport of Indian Ocean waters into the South Atlantic via the Agulhas leakage has increased during the past decades in response to a change in wind forcing.

The Gulf of California is a part of the world's seafloor-spreading system surrounded by enough seismometers to provide sufficiently high horizontal resolution to address the long-standing debate about the relative importance of dynamic and passive upwelling in the shallow mantle beneath spreading centres. Here, Rayleigh-wave tomography is used to image the shear velocity in the upper 200 kilometres or so of the mantle; the results suggest areas of dynamic upwelling.

Auditory perception can be enhanced or interfered with by visual information from a speaker's face, but previous studies looking at whether tactile information influences speech perception have been limited. Here, by applying inaudible air puffs on participants' skin and thereby mimicking the tiny bursts of aspiration produced by certain speech sounds, it is found that syllables are more likely to be heard as aspirated, demonstrating that tactile information is also integrated in auditory perception.

Receptor-activator of NF-κB ligand (RANKL) and its receptor RANK are known to be essential regulators of bone remodelling, lymph node organogenesis and formation of a lactating mammary gland, but the functional relevance of their expression in the brain has been unclear. RANKL and RANK are now reported to have an essential role in the brain, with the central injection of RANKL into mice and rats triggering severe fever, and a further potential role in the control of thermoregulation in females.

CD4⁺ T helper cells provide critical signals for the generation of cytotoxic CD8⁺ T lymphocyte (CTL) responses in vivo as well as promoting protective CD8⁺ memory T-cell development. However, the role of CD4 help in the control of CTL responses at the effector stage is unknown. Here, fully helped effector CTLs are shown to rely on CD4⁺ T cells to provide the necessary cue for entry into infected tissue.

Homocitrate is an essential component of the enzyme nitrogenase, which is required for nitrogen fixation. However, the NifV gene, which encodes homocitrate synthase, is not present in most rhizobial species that require symbiotic association with legumes to perform efficient nitrogen fixation. The FEN1 gene of a model legume, Lotus japonicus, is now shown to overcome the lack of NifV in rhizobia for symbiotic nitrogen fixation.

Although light is needed for photosynthesis, it can also cause severe oxidative damage. For this reason, protective mechanisms involving feedback-regulated de-excitation of chlorophyll molecules in photosystem II (qE) have evolved. In contrast to flowering plants, little is known about the qE mechanism of eukaryotic algae. Here, a qE-deficient mutant green alga is shown to lack two of the three genes encoding LHCSR, an ancient member of the light-harvesting complex superfamily.

Accurate transfer RNA (tRNA) aminoacylation is necessary for translational fidelity; however, the accuracy of tRNA aminoacylation in vivo is uncertain. In mammalian cells, approximately 1% of methionine residues used in protein synthesis are now shown to be aminoacylated to non-methionyl-tRNAs. Furthermore, misacylation of methionine increases up to tenfold upon exposing cells to viruses, toll-like receptor ligands or oxidative stress.

Next February, Richard Olds will begin his tenure as dean of the planned new medical school at the University of California, Riverside. The school is due to open in 2012.

It's a win-win situation.

Health-care and policy executives seek probe into commercial bias.

Field-research posts created as part of a global initiative to combat wildlife-borne diseases.

US needs aggressive legislation and a three-fold increase in R&D to advance clean technology industry.

Scientists looking to capitalize on their latest discovery might consider starting a company. But that's more complex than it may seem, as Karen Kaplan reports.

Being human.

Materials have only recently been designed to impart specific biological functions. As biologists and materials scientists work closely together, the interdisciplinary field of biomaterials is generating substances that can direct stem-cell fate, modulate immune responses and allow extremely sensitive diagnostic assays. New materials are also being creating by mimicking the clever solutions that nature has evolved.