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A representation of an anoa � a type of dwarf buffalo � and human hand stencils from a cave in Sulawesi, Indonesia. New dating results challenge the traditional view that western Europe was the centre of a crucial stage in the evolution of modern human intelligence and culture � based largely on the emergence of figurative or representational art in cave paintings and sculptures around 40,000 years ago. New dating data on a series of hand stencils and paintings of wild animals from caves in the Maros karst in Sulawesi, Indonesia, suggest that figurative art appeared at more or less the same time at opposite ends of the Late Pleistocene world. Or was cave painting practised by the first Homo sapiens to leave Africa tens of thousands of years earlier? Cover: Maxime Aubert.
Better collaboration is a laudable goal, but that alone will not be enough to fix the damage caused by Europe’s falling investment, says Amaya Moro-Martin.
The week in science: Ebola exported to US and Spain; Italy's health minister rejects controversial stem-cell trial; and tens of thousands of walruses crowd ashore in Alaska.
As the Large Hadron Collider prepares to come back to life after a two-year hiatus, physicists are gearing up to go beyond the standard model of particle physics.
Studies of stencils and paintings from prehistoric caves in Indonesia date the art to at least 39,900 years ago — around the same age as the earliest cave art previously known, 13,000 kilometres away in western Europe. See Letter p.223
The nature of ultraluminous X-ray astronomical sources has long been unclear. The latest observations of these rare systems provide some crucial clues, but still leave theorists scratching their heads. See Letters p.198 & p.202
The spliceosome enzyme complex removes intron sequences from RNA transcripts to form messenger RNA. The crystal structure of a lasso-shaped RNA suggests a mechanism for this splicing process. See Article p.193
A measurement of the mass of the heftiest-known elementary particle, the top quark, which exists for less than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, sheds light on the ultimate fate of our Universe, although ambiguities cloud its interpretation.
Analyses in mice and humans indicate that non-caloric artificial sweeteners may promote obesity-associated metabolic changes by changing the function of the bacteria that colonize the gut. See Article p.181
A newly constructed electron-energy monochromator for an atomic-resolution transmission electron microscope has resolved spectroscopic signatures of chemical-bond vibrations that are spatially highly localized. See Letter p.209
The adoption of a new form of tool use has been observed to spread along social-network pathways in a chimpanzee community. The finding offers the first direct evidence of cultural diffusion in these animals in the wild.
Non-caloric artificial sweeteners (NAS), widely used food additives considered to be safe and beneficial alternatives to sugars, are shown here to lead to the development of glucose intolerance through compositional and functional changes in the gut microbiota of mice, and the deleterious metabolic effects are transferred to germ-free mice by faecal transplant; NAS-induced dysbiosis and glucose intolerance are also demonstrated in healthy human subjects.
Caspase-4 and caspase-11 are shown to be the direct sensors for cytoplasmic lipopolysaccharide in humans and mice, respectively, mediating inflammatory cell death in intracellular bacterial infection.
This study determines the structure of a branched lariat RNA, providing insights into rearrangement of the intron between the two steps of RNA splicing.
Ground-based and satellite observations show that the black hole in the ultraluminous X-ray source P13 has a mass of less than 15 times that of the Sun and displays the properties that typically distinguish ultraluminous X-ray sources from other stellar-mass black holes.
X-ray pulsations with an average period of 1.37 seconds have been detected from a known ultraluminous X-ray source hitherto thought to be a black hole; the pulsations instead unequivocally identify the source as an accreting magnetized neutron star ten times brighter than any previously known.
The magnetoresistance effect in WTe2, a layered semimetal, is extremely large: the electrical resistance can be changed by more than 13 million per cent at very high magnetic fields and low temperatures.
Recent advances in electron microscopy are shown to allow vibrational spectroscopy at high spatial resolution in a scanning transmission electron microscope, and also to enable the direct detection of hydrogen.
A global, observation-based assessment of whole-ecosystem carbon turnover times shows that the overall mean global carbon turnover time is about 23 years and that locally its spatial variability depends on precipitation at least as strongly as on temperature.
Investigation of the chemical nature and sources of particulate matter at urban locations in four Chinese cities during a severe haze pollution event finds that the event was driven to a large extent by secondary aerosol formation.
Cave art from the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, consisting of human hand stencils and animal paintings, is at least 40,000 years old, raising the question of why rock art traditions appeared at more or less the same time at opposite ends of the Late Pleistocene human world.
Inappropriate activation of the tumour-suppressor protein p53 during development can promote phenotypes similar to those of CHARGE syndrome, suggesting that p53 activation not only has a beneficial function in suppressing cancer but also a deleterious function in promoting developmental syndromes.
Using biochemical and genetic approaches, a protein-competition-based mechanism that controls the balance between stem cell self-renewal and differentiation of germline stem cells in the Drosophila melanogaster ovary has been uncovered.
In human β-thalassaemiaerythroblasts, HSP70 is sequestered in the cytoplasm by the excess of free α-globin chains and can no longer protect the master transcriptional factor of erythropoiesis GATA-1 from caspase-3 cleavage; transduction of a nuclear-targeted HSP70 or a caspase-3 uncleavable GATA-1 mutant restored maturation of erythropoiesis.
The structure of mouse Dis3l2 bound to an oligoU substrate shows a funnel-like substrate-binding site with the RNA being fed into the active site along a path that is distinct from that seen in the related catalytic subunit of the exosome — 12 uracils of the oligoU-tailed RNA are recognized in a complex network of interactions, suggesting the basis for target specificity.
The POU homeodomain transcription factor Pit1 is required for pituitary development; here Pit1-occupied enhancers are shown to interact with the nuclear architecture components matrin-3 and Satb1, and this association is required for activation of Pit1-regulated enhancers and coding target genes.