Volume 442 Issue 7100, 20 July 2006

Risk assessment is a useful environmental tool, but not if it is used as a cover for a deregulatory agenda.

An Australian dam project threatens a living fossil.

Synthesis paves way for industrial applications.

Scientists respond to cardinal's call for excommunication.

University investigation criticized for lack of transparency.

Plasma physicist falls foul of US export controls.

Lungfish face extinction, say environmentalists.

A sister of the Mars Express probe has made it to Venus. And scientists have travelled to Beijing to discuss its first results. Horst Uwe Keller, who is presenting images from the craft's camera, spoke to Nature from the meeting.

The first foreign-based biotech company to list its shares in Japan has been caught up in bureaucracy — but its experience should help others. Ichiko Fuyuno reports.

DNA extracted from bones could shed light on what happened when our ancestors crossed paths with Neanderthals. But not everyone can get the fossils out of the ground, as Rex Dalton learns.

The White House is trying to reform environmental and health regulation across the board. But it is doing so very quietly. Colin Macilwain takes a look behind the scenes.

For policymakers, biodiversity can present more complex challenges than climate change, argue Michel Loreau, Alfred Oteng-Yeboah and their co-authors. So why isn't there an international panel of experts for biodiversity?

Why doesn't the Lucky Country's scientific and technological strength match its natural riches?

A minor volcanic eruption in Ethiopia was the main visible clue to a massive injection of magma along the Afar rift last year. Such inconspicuous processes could have been crucial in early continental break-up.

Ecological communities are dauntingly complex. Nonetheless, ecologists gallantly persevere in eliciting insights about the factors that govern the behaviour and persistence of these messy, tangled webs.

When carbon fibres just won't do, but nanotubes are too expensive, where can cost-conscious materials scientists go to find a practical conductive composite? The answer could lie with graphene sheets.

The hundreds of hydrogen atoms in a protein can be used as reporters to describe how the protein folds into and out of shape. The results challenge the dogma that this is always an all-or-nothing process.

Small temperature changes can affect the packing of granular materials without mechanical disturbance.

Real food webs are structured so that top predators couple distinct energy channels that differ in both productivity and turnover rate. Theory suggests that such coupling is critical to the maintenance of food web stability, with important implications for conservation and ecosystem management.

Examination of the viral E1 hexameric helicase structure finds that a loop of each subunit becomes attached to a nucleotide and remains associated with it during the next six steps of translocation, thereby escorting a single nucleotide through the channel.

Individual sheets of graphene can be readily incorporated into a polymer matrix, giving rise to composite materials having potentially useful electronic properties.

Mapping of a gene in maize that functions in paramutation — where one silent allele of a gene 'mutates' the actively expressed allele, so that it too becomes silenced — finds that it encodes a protein involved in RNA processing. This research provides support for the involvement of RNAs in paramutation.

The transcription factor KLF2 has been thought to control survival of T lymphocytes, as KLF2-deficient T cells develop in the thymus, but fail to populate the peripheral lymphoid organs. But this report shows that the phenotype results from an unexpected role of KLF2 in regulating the expression of lymphocyte trafficking molecules.

Structural insight into the complex between the GTPase Rab33 and the TBC domain of the GTPase-activating protein Gyp1p reveals that the TBC domain supplies two catalytic residues in trans — an unexpected dual finger mechanism.

One of two papers in this issue that identifies enzymes capable of demethylating a tri-methyl group from Lys 9 of histone H3 — a mark required for the establishment of heterochromatin and previously considered to be stable. GASC1, a member of the JMJD2 enzyme family, can disrupt heterochromatin structure when overexpressed and may contribute to tumour development.

One of two papers in this issue that identifies enzymes capable of demethylating a tri-methyl group from Lys 9 of histone H3 — a mark required for the establishment of heterochromatin and previously considered to be stable. JHDM3A, a member of the JMJD2 enzyme family, can disrupt heterochromatin structure when overexpressed and may function in euchromatin to regulate transcription.

Nuclear magnetic resonance is used to monitor unfolding of a protein atom-by-atom from the native state. The results have greater resolution than had been previously achieved, and confirm that folding is a statistical process.

Morale, money or moving house can all be reasons for switching labs mid-project. Kendall Powell learns from those who have made the jump with success.

Glover becomes Scotland's chief scientific adviser.

Graduate student breaks into biotechnology.

Sorting through the clutter to retain the big ideas.

A brain implant for whatever ails you.

A huge rupture, detected in satellite data, leads to a gruelling camel trek.