Volume 451 Issue 7178, 31 January 2008

Reflecting on the endeavours of scientists past can provide both inspiration and pleasure.

As the US writers' strike rolls on, now is the time for scientists to extend the hand of friendship.

Heavy industry set to pay for allowances under carbon-trading scheme.

After just four years, government axes post.

Scribbles on the margins of science.

US payments to beat proliferation attacked as ineffective.

Assembly of detector completes Large Hadron Collider.

Academy pulls the plug on research programme.

Legislation threatens to hamper research projects.

GlaxoSmithKline told early of diabetes blockbuster's links to heart attacks.

Name-calling sparks dispute over aetosaurs.

What can evolution say about why humans kill - and about why we do so less than we used to? Dan Jones reports.

Genomewide association studies are starting to turn up increasingly reliable disease markers. Monya Baker investigates where we are now and what comes next.

Dublin's new Science Gallery hopes to dissolve barriers between science and city through conversation. Director Michael John Gorman explains how the gentle art will bring new voices to research.

In the first of a monthly series on small museums, Alison Abbott profiles the University History Museum in Pavia, which recalls the key role of northern Italy in Enlightenment science.

There is a widely accepted theoretical explanation for why sex in some species is determined at the embryo stage by environmental factors such as temperature. That theory is now supported by experiment.

Three-dimensional nanoparticle arrays are likely to be the foundation of future optical and electronic materials. A promising way to assemble them is through the transient pairings of complementary DNA strands.

Certain cells bind so tightly to each other that, on occasion, one cell ends up inside another, usually with fatal consequences for the ingested cell. This involuntary cell death might help protect us from cancer.

The Universe is expanding ever faster — the effect of 'dark energy', most astronomers believe. Surveys of how galaxies were distributed in the past could provide precise clues to what is driving this acceleration.

Two research teams have captured snapshots of the influenza virus's membrane-bound hydrogen-ion channel, which is essential for infection and virulence. Their findings agree on the basics, but differ in details.

The future of the video display is both flexible and transparent. Finding a material for the attendant electronics that is small-scale, bendy and see-through is a tall order — but a promising candidate is emerging.

The segmentation of the Drosophila melanogaster embryo is a well-known paradigm for pattern formation in development. However, the quantitative description of the transcriptional control mechanisms underlying this process is still missing. A new approach to the problem of predicting the pattern of gene expression based on cis-regulatory sequence is described. This new algorithm modelling protein–DNA interactions is likely to prove useful for many other protein–DNA interaction systems.

A measurement of the radial anisotropy at a redshift z ≅ 0.8 that is consistent with the standard cosmological-constant model with low matter density and flat geometry is reported, although error bars are still too large to distinguish among alternative origins for the accelerated expansion.

This paper shows that even a pure compound, in this case lead titanate, can display a morphotropic phase boundary under pressure. The results are consistent with first principles theoretical predictions, but show a richer phase diagram than anticipated; moreover, the predicted electromechanical coupling at the transition is larger than any known.

This paper demonstrates that the interactions between complementary DNA strands attached to nanoparticle surfaces can be tuned to drive the reversible formation of three-dimensional crystals with an open structure. The hope now is that the approach might be extended further, to provide easy access to new classes of ordered multicomponent materials with useful properties.

This paper demonstrates that the DNA molecules attached to gold nanoparticles and the DNA molecules used to link them can be selected to ensure that the nanoparticles assemble into either face centred cubic or body-centred cubic crystals. Synthetically programmable colloid crystallization has finally arrived!

Atlantic hurricane activity has increased since 1995. It is widely thought that rising Atlantic sea surface temperatures have played a role in this increase, but the magnitude of this contribution is not known. The contribution for storms that formed in the tropical North Atlantic, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico is quantified using a statistical model based on two environmental variables: local sea surface temperature and an atmospheric wind field. It is found that local sea surface warming was responsible for roughly 40 per cent of the increase in hurricane activity between 1996 and 2005.

Two recent great earthquakes near the Kuril Islands dramatically demonstrate the process by which large subduction-zone earthquakes can modulate the stress regime and earthquake activity within the subducting oceanic plate itself.

In mammals and birds, sex is determined by genotype at fertilization, but reptiles determine the sex of an individual by interaction with the environment, typically temperature. The Charnov–Bull model speculates that environmental sex determination will be favoured by selection if it could be shown that different temperature regimes maximized reproductive fitness for each sex. This has not been confirmed, partly because of the difficulty of setting up the 'control' experiment. However, hormone treatments have been used to overcome this difficulty, and a short-lived species of lizard shows that the Charnov–Bull model is correct.

It is argued that a quiescence state in nematodes, 'lethargus', presents many similarities with sleep as defined in mammals and flies. cGMP signalling is also identified as a new pathway involved in sleep control in both Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila. As lethargus is associated with the worm's larval molts, they suggest that sleep may have evolved to allow for developmental changes.

Cytoplasmic RIG-like helicases are sensors of viral RNA, and signal through the mitochondrial adaptor protein MAVS to activate IRF3 and induce type 1 interferon production. This paper shows that a member of the NLR family of proteins called NLRX1 is a negative regulator of the pathway and functions by inhibiting the interaction of the viral sensor with the MAVS adaptor.

The protein kinase AMPK protects the ischemic heart from injury and apoptosis by promoting glucose uptake. This paper shows that AMPK is activated by the inflammatory cytokine MIF which is produced and released by the heart under ischemic stress.

One of two papers that show that by inhibiting the deacetylase Sirt1, DBC1 promotes increased acetylation of p53 and p53-mediated apoptosis in human cells.

One of two papers that show that by inhibiting the deacetylase Sirt1, DBC1 promotes increased acetylation of p53 and p53-mediated apoptosis in human cells.

A vital component of influenza A virus' replication machinery is the M2 proton channel. Until recently, M2 was effectively targeted by amantadane-based antivirals, but resistance to these drugs is now so widespread that they have become ineffective. In the first of two related papers, the structure of a 38-residue segment of M2, in complex with rimantadine, is determined by NMR spectroscopy. It is concluded that a rimantadine molecule binds to each monomer at the protein–lipid interface and inhibits the tetrameric channel allosterically.

A vital component of influenza A virus' replication machinery is the M2 proton channel. Until recently, M2 was effectively targeted by amantadane-based antivirals, but resistance to these drugs is now so widespread that they have become ineffective. In the second of two related manuscripts, the crystal structure of a 25-residue fragment of M2, both with and without amantadine, is described. It is concluded that a single amantadine molecule binds in the centre of the M2 tetramer to physically occlude the pore.

The complexities of conducting science in India.

New director-general coming to CERN.

Singapore's Institute of Medical Biology strives for translation.

The Biopolis offers me vast opportunity and a challenging new laboratory culture.

The customer is always right.

Shutting off genes stops cancer cells from growing but leaves healthy cells unharmed.

Computational theory reveals an unusual quality in a pure compound.