Volume 451 Issue 7176, 17 January 2008

Monsanto and Syngenta are wrong to withdraw from an international assessment on agriculture.

... to save a historic home of scientific stimulation.

Planet-hunting telescope cost could hold back other space projects.

Japan rushes to capitalize on 'reprogrammed' adult cells.

In the second of a series of articles, Geoff Brumfiel looks at whether certain nuclear-weapons technology should be shared.

Scribbles on the margins of science.

New power stations could be forced to store greenhouse-gas emissions.

Time runs out for acclaimed scientific symposia.

China launches large-scale human sequencing initiative.

Physicists often borrow techniques from other fields. But how far can this get you? Geoff Brumfiel asks if simple table-top experiments can provide new insights into the early Universe.

A German physicist and a hedge-fund magnate are competing to push protein simulations into the realm of the millisecond. Brendan Borrell finds out what is at stake.

Polymath pieces together the surprising past of the human body from fins, wings, hangovers and hiccups.

In songbirds, a class of neurons shows a striking similarity in activity when the bird sings and when it hears a similar song. This mirroring neuronal activity could contribute to imitation.

The most common form of uranium in solution is notoriously unreactive, limiting the use of the element. But interactions of this complex with potassium ions unleash a potentially rich seam of unexpected chemistry

Although some diseases occur when both copies of a gene are mutated, mutation of just one copy of certain tumour-suppressor genes promotes tumorigenesis. Identifying such mutations is arduous, but worth the effort.

How and when galaxies assembled their mass to become the structures seen today are among astronomy's big outstanding questions. A comprehensive study of nearby galaxies provides a new angle on the issue.

Immune mediator molecules such as antimicrobial peptides are crucial for host responses to pathogens. Akirins are the latest identified components of a signalling cascade that leads to these responses in insects and mice.

A new variation on an old theme in atomic physics, a spectral distortion known as the Fano effect, has been revealed — not in an atom, but in an artificial nanostructure known as a quantum dot.

Earth science, a field in which science and profession have been intimately linked, has grown through the practicalities imposed by industrialization and war but must now revamp to address climate change.

Earth's composition, evolution and structure are in part a legacy of provenance (where it happened to form) and chance (the stochastics of that formation).

Seismic waves generated in Earth's interior provide images that help us to better understand the pattern of mantle convection that drives plate motions.

The discovery of a new silicate structure at conditions corresponding to a depth of 2,700 kilometres below Earth's surface has fundamentally changed our understanding of the boundary between the core and mantle.

The past few decades have witnessed significant progress in our understanding of the physics and complexity of earthquakes. This has implications for hazard mitigation.

Erosional and depositional landscapes are linked by the sediment-routing system. Observations over a wide range of timescales might show how these landscapes are translated into the narrative of geological history.

Clues from ancient rocks are helping to produce a coherent picture of how Earth's atmosphere changed from one that was almost devoid of oxygen to one that is one-fifth oxygen.

Past episodes of greenhouse warming provide insight into the coupling of climate and the carbon cycle and thus may help to predict the consequences of unabated carbon emissions in the future.

Much progress has been made towards understanding what caused the waxing and the waning of the great ice sheets, but a complete theory of the ice ages is still elusive.

Climate models predict that the ocean's circulation will weaken in response to global warming, but the warming at the end of the last ice age suggests a different outcome.

Recent evidence suggests that, on a global scale, terrestrial ecosystems will provide a positive feedback in a warming world, albeit of uncertain magnitude.

With humans having an increasing impact on the planet, the interactions between the nitrogen cycle, the carbon cycle and climate are expected to become an increasingly important determinant of the Earth system.

The only way to stabilize Earth's climate is to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but future changes in the carbon cycle might make this more difficult than has been thought.

Clouds constitute the largest single source of uncertainty in climate prediction. A better understanding of small-scale cloud processes could shed light on the role of clouds in the climate system.

The unique set of challenges that face humankind today mean that it is more essential than ever that Earth scientists apply their understanding of the planet to benefit society and that society invite them to do so.

A certain class of neurons in the swamp sparrow forebrain displays a precise auditory–vocal correspondence, and it is shown that these neurons respond in a temporally precise fashion to auditory presentation of certain note sequences in this songbird's repertoire and to similar note sequences in other birds' songs.

Clear Fano resonances that can be tuned by changing the device design or with applied voltages are observed. In the nonlinear regime, the visibility of the Fano interferences increases dramatically, which could be used as a sensitive probe of the degree of coupling between discrete states and the continuum, which is relevant for example for qubits where coupling to the environment needs to be kept to a minimum.

A versatile system, based on modular DNA hairpins, that allows assembly and disassembly pathways to be programmed into DNA building blocks is described. A key development is the reaction graph, a simple representation of DNA modules and their interactions that simplifies the overall design process. In this way, it is possible to write assembly programs that are executed to prepare branched junction molecules, self-catalysing pairs of DNA duplexes and molecular trees.

The balance of oxygen production over three years at sites in the North and South Pacific subtropical gyres is examined using oxygen sensors deployed on profiling floats. It is found that mixing events during early winter homogenize the upper water column and cause low oxygen concentrations. Oxygen then increases below the mixed layer at a nearly constant rate that is similar to independent measures of net community production.

A large amount of water could potentially reside in the Earth's mantle transition zone, as two minerals there, wadsleyite and ringwoodite, can store significant amounts of water in their crystal structure. This paper reports the electrical conductivity measurements of these minerals, and finds that they can explain observed conductivity-depth profiles without introducing a significant amount of water into the mantle transition zone.

Chronic pain is an unwelcome consequence of inflammatory disease and nerve injury that currently has no effective treatment. This paper shows that specific pharmacological inhibition of α2 and α3 subunits of GABA_A receptors is an effective therapy for inflammatory and neuropathic pain in rats.

Deletions on chromososme 5q are associated with myelodysplastic lesions. The genes responsible have largely remained elusive. But use of an RNA interference-based approach that can identify haploinsufficient tumour suppressor genes identifies RPS14, which regulates ribosomal RNA processing as a candidate tumour suppressor gene responsible for this so-called 5q⁻ syndrome.

Telogen lag is a delay period where the hair follicle is refractive to signals that stimulate regeneration. Even though this concept has been around for over 50 years, the molecular mechanisms behind this phenomenon are still poorly understood. This paper shows that bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) and their inhibitors are crucial molecules in controlling hair follicle waves and cycling.

The isolation of tumour-initiating cells from human melanomas is reported, with preliminary evidence suggesting that these melanoma stem cells can be specifically targeted with antibodies targeted against ABCB5, which offers a potential therapeutic strategy against melanomas.

Listeria monocytogenes multiplies rapidly in the cytosol of infected cells, but has also been found in intracellular vacuoles during persistent infection. Now, these vacuoles are described as sites of comparably slow bacterial replication, which may promote bacterial survival in face of the host immune response.

Degradation of bacterial mRNAs involves internal cleavage events, but internal cleavage is prevented until the 5' triphosphate of the mRNA is converted to a monophosphate. However, the identity of this pyrophosphatase was unknown. This work shows that the product of the NudH gene (now called RppH) possesses this activity and accelerates mRNA degradation in vivo. This enzyme is a member of the Nudix family of pyrophosphohydrolases.

Spastin and kastin are AAA-ATPases that function as microtubule severing enzymes. Mutations in spastin are the predominant cause of hereditary spastic paraplegias (HSP). The atomic structure of spastin monomer and coupled with atomic docking generate a model of spastin hexamer is solved. Spastin forms a ring with a prominent central pore and six radiating arms that dock onto the microtubule.

Medical Research Council gets new director.

India is angling for international students and fellows.

Postdoc leaves South Africa for United States.

It's a write off.

Interfering with genes reveals cause of bone-marrow disorder.