Volume 446 Issue 7139, 26 April 2007

China will join efforts to cut carbon emissions, but should not be expected to lead them.

Government agencies should act to ensure the neutrality of research contractors.

Rapid development is seeing carbon dioxide levels soar.

State parliament calls for halt to macaque research.

Biologists home in on the chemical that puts plants in bloom.

Scans of pickled organs shed fresh light on Broca's area.

Industry links force firm out of environmental study.

Closures restrict public access to documents from US agencies.

Biodiversity researchers try to bury the hatchet over barcoding.

A licensing dispute over fuel additives could spell trouble for one of Britain's nanotechnology stars, as Katharine Sanderson reports.

Antibody therapies have had more than their fair share of crashes. But designers are at work on faster, fancier new models, finds Erika Check.

A shift in population, money and political influence to America's 'sunbelt states' is helping to reshape its research universities. The first of two features looks at the far-reaching ambitions of Arizona State University. The second asks whether a rush to create extra medical schools could spread the region's resources too thinly.

How can we best reduce the risk of severe adverse reactions to marketed drugs? An international group of scientists argues that a global research network is needed to identify genetically at-risk populations.

What happens when you find a hobbit — or a unicorn?

A painting of Federico Zuccari, the founder of the academy of arts in Rome, clearly demonstrates his credentials in geometry.

The bizarre absence of certain gene classes in eukaryotes is key to understanding their evolution and complex links with prokaryotes.

Plant species that colonize new environments tend to favour habitats with ample water and nutrients. But invasive plants can be more efficient in their use of resources than that observation might imply.

A source of astoundingly energetic γ-rays associated with a star cluster might provide a clue to a century-old question: where do the cosmic rays that constantly bombard Earth come from?

Microglial cells, the immune elements of the brain, are activated in disease or following injury. New findings indicate how these cells are switched on to remove damaged cells and cellular debris.

A huge phytoplankton bloom in the Southern Ocean yields estimates of how a continuous supply of iron affects oceanic carbon sequestration. But iron is not the only factor — nutrient supply is crucial too.

A sophisticated survey of certain volatile organic compounds in the air over forest ecosystems shows how such work can reveal varied emission patterns of different chiral, or mirror-image, forms of these compounds.

'Zero-knowledge' proofs are all about knowing more, while knowing nothing. When married to cryptographic techniques, they are one avenue being explored towards improving the security of online transactions.

Proteins aren't just defined by their constituent amino acids — structural modifications can yield complex mixtures of protein forms. An approach that controls the addition of such modifications may help to define their role.

A long-standing mathematical model for the growth of grains in two dimensions has been generalized to three and higher dimensions. This will aid our practical understanding of certain crucial properties of materials.

Does blood formation in mammalian embryos and adults have separate origins or a common source? The most recent investigations into the question add a further chapter to this long-running story.

Inventor of science's most widespread programming language, Fortran.

Over 50 years ago, von Neumann derived an exact formula for the growth rate of a cell in a two-dimensional cellular structure. Now the extension of this result into three (and higher) dimensions has been found. The formula could lead to predictive models for various industrial and commercial processing scenarios, such as controlling the head on a pint of beer.

Genetic marking is used to perform a non-invasive cell tracing technique, labelling cells of the definitive haematopoetic system and observed the migration of haematopoetic progenitors from the yolks sac to the fetal liver and thymus.

This paper reports that large isotopic differences in the stable chlorine isotope ratios of meteoritic, mantle and crustal materials do not exist, that carbonaceous chondrites, mantle and crust all have the same ³⁷Cl/³⁵Cl ratios, establishing that there were no nebular reservoirs with distinct isotopic compositions, no isotopic fractionation during differentiation of the Earth and no late Cl-bearing volatile additions to the crust.

A vacuum-packaged resonator has been designed that contains the solution with particles of interest inside microfluidic channels. It is demonstrated that this device can weigh single nanoparticles, single bacterial cells and sub-monolayers of proteins adsorbed on the channel walls with sub-femtogram resolution.

A study of a phytoplankton bloom in the Southern Ocean induced by the supply of iron from deep waters below finds that the efficiency of fertilization (the ratio of carbon exported to the ocean interior to the amount of iron supplied) is at least ten times higher than estimates from short-term experiments. This suggests that changes in the supply of iron from deep water to the surface ocean may have a greater effect on atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations than previously thought.

A report on three-dimensional tomographic imaging of seismic velocities and attenuation in the Taupo Volcanic Zone, an active continental rift where earthquakes are known to occur in the lower crust finds that crustal earthquakes form a continuous band along the rift, and often occur in swarms, suggesting fluid movement in critically loaded fault zones.

Surprisingly, invasive plant species that have successfully colonized resource-poor habitats in Hawaii tend to be more efficient than native species at using limiting resources. The work has important implications for habitat management and conservation.

Measurements of the wings of swifts in a wind tunnel reveal the remarkable changes of in-flight performance afforded by changing wing shape. Swifts can halve sink speed or triple turning rate by choosing the most suitable sweep. Extended wings are superior for slow glides and turns. But swept wings are superior for fast glides and turns, they allow the birds to bear the extreme accelerational loads of fast manoeuvres in the air.

Excitatory synapses become stronger upon usage, a process known as Long Term Potentiation (LTP) that is involved in learning and memory. Excitatory LTP is accompanied by LTP at adjacent inhibitory synapses, and it is sensitive to morphine. It is suggested that disruption of such fine balance between neuronal excitation and inhibition would enhance dopamine neurons' firing during addictive processes.

Vertebrate oocytes are arrested in meiosis II until fertilization. This is one of two papers that link two previously known regulators of this arrest: the kinase Rsk that is activated by the Mos–MAPK pathway, directly phosphorylates Xerp1/Emi2 and thereby promotes its ability to inhibit the anaphase promoting complex APC/C.

Vertebrate oocytes are arrested in meiosis II until fertilization. This is one of two papers that link two previously known regulators of this arrest: the kinase Rsk that is activated by the Mos–MAPK pathway, directly phosphorylates Xerp1/Emi2 and thereby promotes its ability to inhibit the anaphase promoting complex APC/C.

Many proteins are modulated by post-translational modifications, and it has generally not been possible to access pure mimics of complex post-translational modifications. Here, a chemical tagging method is used to attach multiple carbohydrates to bacterially expressed protein scaffolds, allowing reconstitution of functionally effective mimics of higher organism post-translational modifications.

Flush with funds, Florida is enjoying a state-backed bioscience boom, says Gene Russo.

Frank Gannon tries to maintain the Irish science boom as head of Science Foundation Ireland.

NIH award may not be enough to ferry postdocs towards research independence.

My old research area seems to be heating up. Did I miss the wave or start it?

More universities are offering career and technology-transfer advice — but not enough scientists are utilizing these offices.

Microfluidics boosts the resolution of tiny mass measurements in liquid.

The importance of carbohydrates in biological processes has long been underappreciated. Armed with new tools for synthesizing, modifying and studying oligosaccharides and glycoconjugates, our understanding of these biomolecules is rapidly improving. This knowledge is also yielding promising candidates for carbohydrate-based diagnostics, drugs and vaccines.