Volume 490 Issue 7421, 25 October 2012

A Texas cancer-research fund needs big fixes to restore badly eroded trust.

The Italian system’s contempt for its scientists is made plain by the guilty verdict in L’Aquila.

Improving Wikipedia entries for notable women scientists should be only the start for a higher profile for women in science, says Athene Donald.

The week in science: Manslaughter verdict rocks seismology; European rethink on biofuels; and battery firm A123 declares bankruptcy.

As the election nears, the opinions of the presidential candidates diverge over research.

US biosecurity concerns could harm collaboration.

Marblar aims to help scientists turn discoveries into innovative applications.

Bid to boost salmon stocks relied on hotly debated science and dubious carbon credits.

Critics question whether institute has resolved conflicts between commercial and scientific goals.

Researchers say that some chemicals have unexpected and potent effects at very low doses — but regulators aren't convinced.

From genes to hormone levels, biology may help to shape political behaviour.

Moves towards a global water commodities market must be stopped. It will push the price of food far beyond the peaks of the past five years, warns Frederick Kaufman.

Mario Livio celebrates the guiding light for modern physics.

An expanded model for heading off planetary tipping points offers much to both optimists and the apocalyptically inclined, finds Peter Kareiva.

Mark Buchanan enjoys the quirky memoir of a mathematical rebel — the late Benoît Mandelbrot.

Lab luminaries jostle with consumptive cultural icons in a vivid history of tuberculosis, finds Stefan H. E. Kaufmann.

Sara Seager enjoys a frank and vivid account of planet hunting.

David Morrison finds contemporary echoes in a history of 'science wars', from Velikovsky to Lysenko and beyond.

Dominic ffytche contemplates Oliver Sacks' journey through the past and future science of hallucinations.

Calestous Juma assesses a call for policy to feed the world at a time of squeezed production and soaring prices.

Ian Wilmut assesses a critique of how genomics, bioethics and neuroscience are meeting their potential.

Biophysicist who helped to establish the field of structural biology.

The identification of a signalling protein that regulates the accumulation of fat and connective tissue in breasts may help to explain why high mammographic density is linked to breast-cancer risk. It may also provide a marker for predicting this risk.

The finding that pools of gas hydrates — compounds that trap natural gas emissions — in ocean sediments are deeper than expected implies that the hydrates are destabilizing, and might release gigatonnes of methane. See Letter p.527

Developing therapeutic drugs that target peptide receptors is challenging. The structure of one of these G-protein-coupled receptors, NTS1, activated and bound to a peptide, provides an excellent starting point. See Article p.508

A quantitative analysis shows that epistasis — the fact that genetic background determines whether a mutation is beneficial, deleterious or inconsequential — is the main factor regulating evolution at the level of proteins. See Letter p.535

An explanation has been proposed for the observed excess of cosmic light at infrared wavelengths. It invokes stars that are cast into the dark-matter haloes of their parent galaxies during powerful galaxy collisions. See Letter p.514

Whole-genome sequences of wild rice and cultivated rice varieties are used to produce a map of rice genome variation, and show that rice was probably first domesticated in southern China.

The roles of BATF transcription factors in dendritic cell differentiation are studied, providing evidence for molecular compensation by related family members; compensation is based on the interaction of the BATF leucine zipper domains with IRF factors to mediate cooperative gene activation.

The X-ray crystal structure of a rat neurotensin receptor in complex with the C-terminal portion of neurotensin is presented; this is the first structure of a member of the β group of class A G-protein-coupled receptors.

Measurements of the anisotropy power spectrum of the cosmic near-infrared background radiation show the clustering amplitude to be larger than existing model predictions involving distant primordial galaxies or nearby faint galaxies: the fluctuations are proposed to originate from intrahalo stars of all galaxies with dark-matter haloes of 10⁹ to 10¹² solar masses at redshifts of about 1 to 4.

A crystalline material is investigated that responds to a slowly increasing external stress by exhibiting impulsive ‘avalanche’ behaviour as well as smooth stress release that is approximately as slow as the external stress rate; unusual oscillatory behaviour in the avalanche time series is reported.

The synthesis of an all-carbon quaternary stereocentre in an acyclic system is reported; the chemical transformation involves the formation of two new stereogenic centres—including the challenging all-carbon quaternary one in an aldol adduct—via a combined carbometalation–oxidation reaction, giving a stereodefined trisubstituted enolate.

Seismic data and modelling are used to reveal clathrate destabilization along the eastern margin of the United States; the destabilization is probably linked to warming, or a slight shift, in the Gulf Stream.

The solubility of argon in lower mantle minerals is shown to be much higher than for xenon, so that the depletion of xenon relative to argon in Earth’s atmosphere can be explained by mantle degassing.

A comparison of more than 1,000 orthologues of diverse proteins shows that the rate of amino-acid substitution in recent evolution is an order of magnitude lower than that expected in the absence of epistasis, indicating that epistasis is pervasive throughout protein evolution.

Phosphorylation of the NOD-like receptor NLRC4 is essential for activation of the NLRC4 inflammasome complex in response to bacterial stimuli.

The pleiotropic transcription factor IRF4 is shown to regulate CD4⁺ T-cell differentiation and T_H17 function through cooperative binding interactions with BATF and JUN family proteins via AP1–IRF4 composite elements (AICEs).

In a Drosophila imaginal epithelial disc system, mutations that lead to mitochondrial dysfunction can also promote tumorigenic growth of neighbouring cells expressing an activated Ras oncogene.

A new class of peptides, mambalgins, is isolated from the African snake the black mamba, which can abolish pain through inhibition of particular subtypes of acid-sensing ion channels expressed either in central or peripheral neurons.

Protein–protein interactions, essential for understanding how a cell functions, are predicted using a new method that combines protein structure with other computationally and experimentally derived clues.

Immunoglobulin genes are expressed from either the maternal or paternal chromosome; it is now shown that in early haematopoietic stem cells, an individual cell can choose either of the two alleles, but as they develop they become committed to only one.

Biochemical and structural analysis of the drug transporter P-glycoprotein in Caenorhabditis elegans at a resolution of 3.4 angstroms is used to generate a homology model of the human protein and supports a picture in which P-glycoprotein uses the energy from ATP hydrolysis to expel lipophilic molecules from the inner leaflet of the cell membrane.

Internships can help scientist job seekers to get a head start on the competition.

Emerging regions have robust collaborations, but need more researchers.

Research council lays out tactics for addressing breaches of research integrity.

A time to reflect.