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Volume 488 Issue 7410, 9 August 2012

Three hominin fossils newly discovered at Koobi Fora, east of Lake Turkana in Kenya, will greatly improve our understanding of the early radiation of the genus Homo, clarifying the iconic but enigmatic hominin cranium KNM-ER 1470, first described by Richard Leakey in Nature in 1973. The three are an exceptionally well-preserved lower jaw (KNM-ER 60000), a fragmentary lower jaw and, importantly, a well-preserved face. At between 1.78 million and 1.95 million years old, they broadly support the idea that there were at least two contemporary Homo species, in addition to Homo erectus, in the early Pleistocene of eastern Africa. The cover shows the KNM-ER 60000 lower jaw as a photographic reconstruction together with a digital visualization of KNM-ER 1470, which probably belongs to the same species. [Image by Fred Spoor]

Editorial

  • US law-makers need to encourage research on firearms-related violence so that gun laws can be based on facts rather than ideology.

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  • Enjoy Curiosity on Mars. We may not see its like again.

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World View

  • Islamist academics are gaining power in the Middle East and North Africa. But to build science needs liberal input, argues Ehsan Masood.

    • Ehsan Masood
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Research Highlights

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Seven Days

  • The week in science: Setback for Alzheimer’s drug; Higgs particle papers posted online; and astronomer Bernard Lovell dies.

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News

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News Feature

  • Mechanical instability is usually a problem that engineers try to avoid. But now some are using it to fold, stretch and crumple materials in remarkable ways.

    • Kim Krieger
    News Feature
  • Jay Bradner believes that cancer can be defeated through control of epigenetics — and he is not shy about spreading the word.

    • Amy Maxmen
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Comment

  • The media loves to sensationalize research on animal sexual behaviour — so be careful what you say, warn Andrew B. Barron and Mark J. F. Brown.

    • Andrew B. Barron
    • Mark J. F. Brown
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Books & Arts

  • Andy Tatem traces the global tracks of pathogens that have clung to the coat-tails of trade over the centuries.

    • Andy Tatem
    Books & Arts
  • Ewen Callaway finds immersion in human enhancement to be both unsettling and uplifting.

    • Ewen Callaway
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Correspondence

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News & Views

  • Astrobiology, the study of life in the Universe, is sometimes criticized as being a fashionable label with which to rebrand existing research fields. Its practitioners, however, argue that the discipline provides a broad framework for developing a better understanding of the frontiers of biology. A biologist and a planetary scientist offer their views.

    • Antonio Lazcano
    • Kevin P. Hand
    News & Views
  • The anatomy of three new fossils, including a face, lends support to the hypothesis that there were at least two parallel lineages early in the evolutionary history of our own genus, Homo. See Letter p.201

    • Bernard Wood

    Collection:

    News & Views
  • The mathematical concept of parity'time symmetry, which was first introduced in field theories of quantum mechanics, has been demonstrated experimentally in a large-scale optical system. See Article p.167

    • Luca Razzari
    • Roberto Morandotti
    News & Views
  • Measurements in a forest reveal a previously unknown atmospheric oxidant that acts as a source of sulphuric acid — one of the main precursors for the formation and growth of aerosol particles and clouds. See Letter p. 193

    • Dwayne Heard
    News & Views
  • Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy has been used to establish a vital role for protein motion in the formation of a protein–DNA complex. The finding potentially opens up fresh approaches for modifying protein function. See Letter p.236

    • Andrew J. Baldwin
    • Lewis E. Kay
    News & Views
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Article

  • Using techniques by analogy with parity–time symmetry allows a combination of optical gain and loss in large-scale synthetic lattices, which can lead, for example, to such a lattice being invisible when viewed from one side.

    • Alois Regensburger
    • Christoph Bersch
    • Ulf Peschel
    Article
  • Using optogenetic and pharmacogenetic techniques, the authors find that AGRP neurons suppress oxytocin-releasing neurons, which is a critical interaction for evoked feeding; thus they identify a circuit potentially involved in regulating hunger state.

    • Deniz Atasoy
    • J. Nicholas Betley
    • Scott M. Sternson
    Article
  • The microbial communities in the human intestine vary between individuals, and this variation is greater in older people; here it is shown that diet is the main factor that drives microbiota variation, which correlates with health.

    • Marcus J. Claesson
    • Ian B. Jeffery
    • Paul W. O’Toole
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Letter

  • The fabrication of transistors using vertical, six-sided core–multishell indium gallium arsenide nanowires with an all-surrounding gate on a silicon substrate combines the advantages of a three-dimensional gate architecture with the high electron mobility of the III–V nanowires, drastically enhancing the on-state current and transconductance.

    • Katsuhiro Tomioka
    • Masatoshi Yoshimura
    • Takashi Fukui
    Letter
  • Atmospheric observations from a boreal forest region, laboratory experiments and theoretical considerations are combined, and another compound is identified that has a significant capacity to oxidize sulphur dioxide and potentially other trace gases.

    • R. L. Mauldin III
    • T. Berndt
    • M. Kulmala
    Letter
  • A newly developed concept called ‘groundwater footprint’ is used to reveal the degree of sustainable use of global aquifers by calculating the area relative to the extractive demands; globally, this footprint exceeds aquifer area by a factor of about 3.5, and excess withdrawal is centred on just a few agriculturally important aquifers.

    • Tom Gleeson
    • Yoshihide Wada
    • Ludovicus P. H. van Beek
    Letter
  • A model of the effects of climate change on African vegetation from 1850 to 2100 predicts increases in woody plant cover, but considerable heterogeneity in the timing of these shifts dampens the shock that these changes in land-surface properties may represent to the Earth system.

    • Steven I. Higgins
    • Simon Scheiter
    Letter
  • Cells programmed to die during C. elegans embryogenesis can be eliminated from the embryo and undergo apoptosis in the absence of caspase activity via an extrusion mechanism that depends on activation of the AMPK-related kinase PIG-1 by an LKB1-like kinase complex.

    • Daniel P. Denning
    • Victoria Hatch
    • H. Robert Horvitz
    Letter
  • Some variants of the bacterial gene regulator CAP show marked differences in their affinity for DNA despite identical DNA-binding interfaces; NMR spectroscopy experiments now show that DNA binding is determined by the proteins’ internal dynamics over a broad range of timescales in a manner that cannot be predicted from the proteins’ ground-state structures.

    • Shiou-Ru Tzeng
    • Charalampos G. Kalodimos
    Letter
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Feature

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Q&A

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Futures

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