Volume 502 Issue 7471, 17 October 2013

Care must be taken not to raise unrealistic expectations for RTS,S malaria vaccine.

A look into the past frames our attempts to find extraterrestrial intelligence.

Public policy is too often derailed by assessments based on faulty data, says Martin Rees, as he calls for the formation of an international data watchdog.

The week in science: Nobel Peace Prize goes to chemical-weapons watchdog, Russia replaces space chief, and Italy ends controversial stem-cell trial.

Experiments suffer from lack of lab materials and staff during US government shutdown.

Prize proves that theorists can measure up to experimenters.

Social scientists want to examine how climate panel’s internal dynamics affect outcomes.

Construction delays force rethink of research programme, but fusion target still on track.

Government faces obstacles to mining medical records.

But critics say mitochondrial replacement carries safety and ethical concerns.

Evaluating research output and judging which work to fund is getting harder.

Many governments are assessing the quality of university research, much to the dismay of some researchers.

Publishing in the most prestigious journals can open doors, but their cachet is under attack.

Make bibliographic citation data freely available and substantial benefits will flow, says David Shotton, director of the Open Citations Corpus.

The reference is not dead — it is exploding to encompass the full spectrum of research outputs from lines of code to video frames, explains Mark Hahnel.

As interests vie for the soul of smart cities, Melanie Moses asks: “Smarter for whom?”

Graham Farmelo delights in a study of Albert Einstein's under-appreciated contributions to quantum theory.

Nicola Jones finds a treatise on a proposed global-warming fix intriguing, but isn't converted to the cause.

Epidemiologist who traced roots of chronic disease to early life.

Analysis of cancer genomes is moving beyond the confines of a particular disease — researchers are now comparing the genetic and epigenetic characteristics of multiple tumour types. Two scientists comment on what such studies can teach us about cancer biology and how they may guide clinical practice. See Article p.333

Lasers known as frequency combs have been used to generate molecular spectra from samples within microseconds and with high spatial resolution. This offers fresh prospects for making microscopy observations in real time. See Letter p.355

Cellular reprogramming to a stem-cell state has now been achieved in tissues of genetically engineered mice. This work signals a future for regenerative medicine in which tissue fates might be manipulated in living organisms. See Article p.340

New observations suggest that certain extremely bright supernovae are not the nuclear explosions of very massive stars. Instead, they may be ordinary-mass events lit up by a potent central fountain of magnetic energy. See Letter p.346

Lysosomes are the main degradative compartment in cells, but they are also involved in cell-death pathways. Studies using existing drugs show that lysosomes are excellent pharmacological targets for selectively destroying cancer cells.

Finding a way to control how particles bind to cells could open up opportunities for biomedical research. The discovery of a method for directing the orientation of particle–cell interactions is therefore a cause for excitement.

A drug already used to treat Parkinson's disease induces repair of the damage that occurs to the myelin sheath around nerve fibres during multiple sclerosis. The finding offers new therapeutic avenues for this disease. See Article p.327

A checklist of criteria to determine the readiness of high-throughput ‘omics’-based tests for guiding patient therapy in clinical trials is discussed; the checklist, developed by the US National Cancer Institute in collaboration with additional scientists with relevant expertise, provides a framework to evaluate the strength of evidence for a test and outlines practical issues to consider before using the test in a clinical setting, with an aim to avoid premature advancement of omics-based tests in clinical trials.

In Earth’s mantle, the shape change of olivine grains depending on temperature and the presence of melt can result in the development of olivine crystallographic preferred orientation during diffusion creep, meaning that the process may be the principal mechanism of mantle flow.

Multiple sclerosis is associated with a deficiency in generation of mature oligodendroctyes; an image-based screen for oligodendrocyte differentiation inducers identified the compound benztropine, which enhances remyelination acting through muscarinic receptors and decreases clinical severity in a multiple sclerosis model system.

As part of The Cancer Genome Atlas Pan-Cancer effort, data analysis for point mutations and small indels from 3,281 tumours and 12 tumour types is presented; among the findings are 127 significantly mutated genes from cellular processes with both established and emerging links in cancer, and an indication that the number of driver mutations required for oncogenesis is relatively small.

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) have been created in vivo by reprogramming mouse somatic cells with Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc; these cells have totipotent features that are missing from in vitro created iPS cells or embryonic stem cells.

Observations of two slow-to-fade super-luminous supernovae are reported; both show relatively fast rise times and blue colours, which are incompatible with pair-instability models.

A time-resolved, continuous parity measurement of two superconducting qubits in a three-dimensional circuit quantum electrodynamics architecture is reported; by further implementing feedback control, entanglement is generated ‘on demand’.

A new multiplex technique of coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectro-imaging with two laser frequency combs is shown to record molecular spectra of broad bandwidth on a microsecond scale.

Amines at typical atmospheric concentrations of a only few molecules per trillion air molecules combine with sulphuric acid to form highly stable aerosol particles at rates similar to those observed in the lower atmosphere.

Cambrian great appendage arthropods had heads that bore a claw-like appendage pair; neuroanatomical and phylogenetic analysis of a well-preserved Alalcomenaeus fossil reveals the relationship of great appendage arthropods to Chelicerata.

ESP22, a new pheromone produced by juvenile mice before puberty and released through the tears, activates neurons in the vomeronasal organ and inhibits mating behaviour in adult males towards animals expressing this signal.

CaMKII is known to be pathologically activated in heart failure and arrhythmias; here it is shown that glucose-induced CaMKII activation via O-linked glycosylation might contribute to cardiac pathology in diabetes.

Exploration of the interacting effect of statin exposure and genetic variation on gene expression identifies a cis-eQTL that is differentially associated with expression of the GATM gene, which encodes a rate-limiting enzyme involved in creatine synthesis, and that is associated with incidence of statin-induced myopathy, the major adverse effect of statin treatment.

Interstrand crosslink (ICL) repair involves proteins whose mutation results in the disorder Fanconi anaemia: here gene knockdown studies in mice show that the absence of HELQ, a protein previously implicated in ICL repair, compromises germ cell development and results in tumour predisposition due to defective recombination at damaged replication forks.

A novel high-throughput sequencing kinetics approach is used to measure functional binding of the apparently nonspecific RNA-binding protein C5 to all possible sequence variants in its substrate binding site; C5 binds different substrate variants with affinities varying widely, and with a similar affinity distribution to that of highly specific nucleic-acid-binding proteins, but it does not bind its physiological RNA targets with the highest affinity.

This paper demonstrates that the mechanism of break-induced replication (BIR) is significantly different from S-phase replication, as it proceeds via a migrating bubble driven by Pif1 helicase, results in conservative inheritance of newly synthesized DNA, and is inherently mutagenic.

This paper demonstrates that Pif1 helicase works with polymerase d to promote DNA synthesis through a migrating D-loop, a mechanism used to copy tens of kilobases during repair of chromosome breaks by break-induced replication (BIR).

Grant reviewers are increasingly focusing on the scientific and social impact of proposed research projects.

Even if one PhD experience turns sour, another could offer the right opportunity, says Susie Crowe.

Citation rates are higher when data are publicly shared, study finds.

Canadian survey respondents complain of low pay, meagre benefits and lack of careers training.

UK academics say research-evaluating system detracts from their work.

Displacement activity.

Knowing the structures of G-protein-coupled receptors, says Lindau keynote speaker Brian Kobilka, should help with drug development. But how is this progressing?

The winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Gerhard Ertl ponders biology's big questions with Diane Wu.

Dan Shechtman, the winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, speaks to Valerie Gerard about creating leaders and achieving prosperity though technological entrepreneurship.

Rebecca Melen talks to Robert Grubbs, the joint winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, about how his research is being applied to many different processes.

Richard R. Ernst pioneered one- and two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and talks to Stephanie Harris about why dimensions are important in life as well as in science.

Richard Schrock, a recipient of the 2005 chemistry prize, speaks with Jonathan Moerdyk about whether olefin metathesis, the field he helped to pioneer, has peaked.

Are biofuels the way forward, or should we be looking to advanced solar technologies to power the future? The debate began on Lindau and continues here.

From green chemistry to rare earth metal catalysts, the Nature Outlook: Chemistry Masterclassuses the 2013 Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting as a basis to explore some of the most pressing issues in chemistry, presenting the perspectives of Nobel laureates as well as the young researchers aiming to emulate their success.