Volume 483 Issue 7388, 8 March 2012

The practice of science cannot be, nor should it be, entirely apolitical.

Publishers and scientists should do more to foster the mining of research literature by computer.

The week in science: China’s research-budget boost; UN meets Millennium Development goals in water and poverty; and the NIH launches an online registry for genetic tests.

Medics warn of missed chance to use drugs to curb HIV.

First compelling evidence of self-annihilating entities in a semiconductor is a step forward for quantum computing.

National Ignition Facility approaches energy break-even point, but uncertainty over next step persists.

Computers can rapidly scan through thousands of research papers to make useful connections, but work is being slowed by publishers' unease.

Japan's worst-ever nuclear accident displaced more than 100,000 people. Many could now safely return home. Yet mistrust of the government prolongs their exile.

Japan is rebuilding its coastal cities to protect people from the biggest tsunamis.

What can scientists learn from the Tohoku tragedy to improve tsunami forecasting and save lives?

Today's tools and geophysical knowledge could be utilized more effectively for earthquake hazard mitigation, says Hiroo Kanamori.

A spate of huge earthquakes in the past seven years has provided humbling lessons, says Thorne Lay.

The accident at Fukushima has convinced many nations to phase out nuclear power. Economics will be the deciding force, says Peter Bradford.

A chronicle of events preceding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has a thriller-like edge, finds Amanda Mascarelli.

Stefan Michalowski and Georgia Smith thrill to artist Berenice Abbott's 'portraits' of physical forces.

Vijay Iyer is a New York jazz pianist who has academic roots in physics and music cognition. As he releases Accelerando — a follow-up to his 2009 world number one jazz album Historicity — he talks about the bodily origins of rhythm, the science of improvisation and the social function of music.

What is the biological explanation for menopause, and for female survival beyond it? A study suggests that competition for help in ancestral societies may have been key to the evolution of this unusual human trait.

By ripping an electron away from a molecule and then slamming it back again, the motion of nuclei in a molecule has been tracked with extremely high temporal and spatial resolution. See Letter p.194

Piezo proteins have been shown to form large ion channels that serve a sensory function in fruitflies. The findings help to explain how Piezos convert mechanical force into biological signals. See Article p.176 & Letter p.209

The gorilla genome reveals that genetic similarities among humans and the apes are more complex than expected, and allows a fresh assessment of the evolutionary mechanisms that led to the primate species seen today. See Article p.169

The finding that reactive iron species may have a role in stabilizing organic matter in ocean sediments underlines the tight coupling between the biogeochemical cycles of carbon and iron. See Letter p.198

Debates over the role of sirtuin proteins in ageing are maturing into functional assessments of the individual proteins. It seems that overexpression of a specific sirtuin can extend lifespan in male mice. See Letter p.218

By making polymers whose central blocks have a range of lengths, materials have been prepared that contain separate, intermeshed domains extending throughout the material — a highly desirable structure.

The genome of a western lowland gorilla has been sequenced and analysed, completing the genome sequences of all great ape genera, and providing evidence for parallel accelerated evolution in chimpanzee, gorilla and human lineages at a number of loci.

Large transmembrane proteins of the Piezo family assemble as tetramers to form a new class of ion channel that can be activated by mechanical force.

Microscopy reveals the dynamics of the type VI secretion system of Vibrio cholerae and its structural and functional resemblance to the contractile tail sheath of bacteriophages.

Experimental demonstration of the Landauer bound in a generic one-bit memory—linking the erasure of information to the production of heat and, thus, entropy—confirms the connection between information theory and thermodynamics.

Experiments using ultrafast mid-infrared light pulses on nanostructures access a new regime in photoelectron emission, revealing classical sub-cycle electron dynamics in optical near-fields and breaking a diffraction limit in strong-field physics.

Molecular structures are imaged with sub-ångström precision and exposure times of a few femtoseconds.

About one-fifth of organic carbon in sediments is bound to reactive iron phases, which are metastable over geological timescales and may therefore serve as a sink for the long-term storage of organic carbon.

The morphology of the oldest definitive fleas—from the Middle Jurassic and Early Cretaceous periods of China—suggests that they had ‘reptilian’ hosts before radiating to mammalian and avian hosts, and their stout and elongate sucking siphons suggest that they may be rooted among the scorpionflies of the Mesozoic era.

Analysis of stability criteria for different types of complex ecological network shows key differences between predator–prey interactions, which are stabilizing, and competitive and mutualistic interactions, which are destabilizing.

The Drosophila Piezo protein is shown to function in sensory neurons to transduce mechanical force in vivo.

Tat-NR2B9c, a PSD-95 inhibitor, is shown to reduce stroke-induced behavioural and neuroanatomical deficits in cynomolgous macaques when administered in the presence of an ischemic penumbra, suggesting the potential of PSD-95 inhibition as a neuroprotectant strategy for clinical investigation.

The role of sirtuins in longevity is controversial, and little is known about mammalian sirtuins; now, male mice that overexpress SIRT6 are shown to have a longer lifespan than wild-type mice, unlike their female counterparts.

Histone deacetylase 2 is shown to suppress genes involved in cognitive function epigenetically, potentially opening the door to treatments for Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases by developing HDAC2-selective inhibitors.

Local skin infection is shown to generate long-lived T cells that reside throughout the skin and are potent effector cells, superior to circulating memory T cells in providing rapid long-term protection again cutaneous re-infection.

Academics who delay retirement could create roadblocks for early-career researchers.

Balancing a career and the obligations of a full-time job can be deceptively difficult, says Gaston Small.

A taste of history.