Volume 498 Issue 7452, 6 June 2013

Research must be seen to be accountable, even if that means hanging on to redundant reviews.

An imminent rethink is required on the country’s approach to government-supported health and pharmaceutical studies, says Arthur J. Ammann.

The week in science: Transgenic wheat escapes from US testing fields, H7N9 returns after lull in China, and Martian minerals get mapped.

Researchers question benefits of tropical-wood substitute.

Scientists want to exempt computer-based text crawling from Europe’s copyright law.

Critics irked over planned release of engineered organism.

International organization aims to promote exchange and linking of DNA sequences and clinical information.

Agreement would set catch limits that are in line with scientific advice.

Reforms increase flexibility and shift spending towards non-communicable disorders.

One hundred years after Niels Bohr published his model of the atom, a special issue of Nature explores its legacy — and how much there is still to learn about atomic structure.

Physicists are stretching, stripping and contorting atoms to new and bizarre limits.

John L. Heilbron describes the route that led Niels Bohr to quantize electron orbits a century ago.

While we are still learning about the particle's true nature, says Frank Wilczek, let's celebrate its beauty.

Callum Roberts enjoys a celebration of the oceans and their largest denizens.

Michael Rawlins examines a call for biotechnology to be geared towards public health.

Martin Shubik navigates a study of the complex web of relationships that gives money meaning.

Michael White assesses a film documenting the exploitation of Antarctica's pristine Ross Sea.

Niels Bohr's model of the structure of the atom raised the question of how large an atom can be. One hundred years on, the issue is still unresolved. Two physicists discuss the theoretical limits of atomic and nuclear size.

Ultrasound measurements in a copper oxide superconductor have revealed an exotic phase of matter, composed of loops of spontaneous quantum currents, that has hitherto excelled at evading observation. See Letter p.75

The finding that innate lymphoid cells can control the activity of CD4⁺ T cells reveals another potential form of immune-system regulation, and may help to explain how the body distinguishes resident from pathogenic bacteria. See Letter p.113

Optical spectroscopic imaging has taken a leap into the intramolecular regime with an approach that achieves subnanometre spatial resolution. The technique should find applications in photochemistry and nanotechnology. See Letter p.82

The enzyme co-substrate SAM has long been known to have two chemically distinct roles. A study of the CmoA enzyme suggests that SAM has a third trick up its sleeve — it forms species known as ylides. See Letter p.123

Forests recovering from human disturbance act as a substantial sink that helps to absorb anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Simulations suggest that nutrient limitation reduces that effect.

Characteristic profiles of gut microorganisms in people with type 2 diabetes could aid diagnostics and therapies, but differing signatures between ethnicities and genders highlight the need for further studies. See Letter p.99

A review of the past six years of research on ice-sheet mass-balance change shows that accelerated loss from Greenland is a robust finding, but that loss from Antarctica is probably far lower than previously thought.

Understanding the earliest phases of primate evolution is obscured by gaps in the fossil record, but some light is shed by the discovery of a nearly complete and substantially articulated skeleton of a tiny primate from the early Eocene; the new primate lies near the pivotal evolutionary dichotomy separating the tarsier and anthropoid lineages and it possesses features that are characteristic of subsequent members of both lineages.

In freely moving rodents, eye movements serve to keep the visual fields of the two eyes continuously overlapping overhead at the expense of continuous alignment, a strategy that may have evolved to maintain constant overhead surveillance of predators.

KAT5 tyrosine phosphorylation, mediated by the tyrosine kinase c-Abl, increases after DNA damage, promoting KAT5 binding to histone H3K9me3, which triggers KAT5-mediated acetylation of the ATM kinase; this promotes the activation of the DNA damage checkpoint and cell survival.

Resonant ultrasound spectroscopy of high-temperature superconductors detects the thermodynamic signature of the pseudogap phase boundary and its evolution with doping.

In an ultracold, superfluid Fermi gas, measurements of second sound — a wave in which the superfluid and normal components of the gas oscillate in antiphase — make it possible to determine the temperature dependence of the superfluid fraction.

Chemical mapping of a single molecule by optical means down to subnanometre resolution is achieved by spectrally matching the resonance of a nanocavity plasmon to the vibronic transitions of the molecules being studied, using tip-enhanced Raman scattering.

The analysis of the isotopic signature of argon in 3.5-billion-year-old hydrothermal quartz suggests an early development of the continental crust, with implications for climate variability at that time.

Desert harvester ant colonies regulate their foraging activity and this collective behaviour appears to be under selection; colonies that forage less when conditions are poor have greater reproductive success, and the regulation of foraging behaviour appears to be inherited from parent to offspring colonies.

The genome of the carnivorous bladderwort plant Utricularia gibba is described here; despite having undergone at least three rounds of whole-genome duplication, its genome is unusually small and virtually devoid of intergenic DNA.

The faecal metagenome of a cohort of 145 European women with normal, impaired or diabetic glucose control was characterized and discriminant metagenomic markers for type 2 diabetes were identified; the discriminant markers differed from those of a recent Chinese cohort, suggesting that metagenomic predictive tools may need to be specific for age and geographic location.

In two species of songbirds and in pre-lingual human infants, vocal transitions across syllables are acquired slowly, one by one, indicating that combinatorial ability is not the starting point of vocal development but a laboriously achieved end point.

Pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) is identified as a crucial mediator of BRAF^V600E-induced cellular senescence: PDH is activated by BRAF-mediated suppression of PDK1, enhancing oxidative glucose metabolism, and PDK1 depletion eradicates mutant BRAF melanomas, indicating that this relationship between cell senescence and metabolism might be exploited therapeutically.

Group 3 innate lymphoid cells are shown to process and present antigen and to control CD4⁺ T-cell responses to intestinal commensal bacteria through an MHC-class-II-dependent mechanism.

Gene-expression studies are used to elucidate the relationship between cholesterol regulation and angiogenesis: apolipoprotein A-1 binding protein (AIBP) is found to enhance cholesterol influx from endothelial cells to high-density lipoprotein, and the resulting cholesterol depletion alters membrane lipid order in the vasculature, leading to decreased vascular endothelial growth factor receptor signalling.

Members of the SAM-dependent methyltransferase superfamily are involved in the modification of wobble uridine to 5-oxacetyl uridine in Gram-negative bacteria; CmoA converts SAM to carboxy-SAM (Cx-SAM; a metabolite that was unknown previously), and CmoB uses Cx-SAM to convert 5-hydroxyuridine to 5-oxyacetyl uridine in tRNA.

A growing number of biotechnology companies employ a skeleton crew of managers and outsource hands-on science.

Engineer takes a career risk in moving to biology.

In perfect harmony.