Volume 452 Issue 7187, 3 April 2008

The need to transform the world's energy technology is even greater than many perceive.

Surrogate end points can be helpful in clinical trials — but only if they are used with care.

Claim that the challenge of cutting emissions has been underestimated is debated.

Clean development mechanism may be capped.

Dismissal of toxicologist raises concerns over delayed safety report.

Scribbles on the margins of science.

Laser combs offer ground-based telescopes a chance to spot planetary homes from home.

Dolphins turn on the charm.

Science alone can't determine how regulations are written, argues David Goldston.

Low- and zero-energy buildings could have a huge impact on energy use and carbon emissions. We have the technologies, but if they are to mitigate climate change, green-building design must hit the mass market, says Declan Butler.

Sometimes it is necessary to immerse yourself in a subject. Erik Vance meets a woman whose research takes her deep — waist-deep — into cetacean anatomy.

Portugal's spending on research is near the lowest in western Europe. Can a single-minded lady with half a billion euros change things, asks Alison Abbott.

How big is the energy challenge of climate change? The technological advances needed to stabilize carbon-dioxide emissions may be greater than we think, argue Roger Pielke Jr, Tom Wigley and Christopher Green.

Fastidious history chronicles how a suburb of Washington DC became home to the Internet.

Three studies identify an association between genetic variation at a location on chromosome 15 and risk of lung cancer. But they disagree on whether the link is direct or mediated through nicotine dependence.

The search for Earth-like planets outside our Solar System is bedevilled by the lack of an adequate frequency standard for calibrating starlight. Tweaking existing laser 'frequency combs' could be a way forward.

Earth breathes in and out, murmuring gently to itself as it does so. The habit has been ascribed to the tickling effects of ocean waves — but a new-found twisting oscillation might reopen the search for the source.

Although several drugs are available to combat often-deadly fungal infections, many of these pathogens have acquired multidrug resistance. Discerning how they have achieved this could help us hit back.

Magnetism and superconductivity are caused by spontaneous ordering on a macroscopic scale. Studies of a two-dimensional superconductor reveal another striking example of such behaviour — superinsulation.

A virtue of using small interfering RNAs as therapeutics is their exquisite specificity. But when it comes to inhibiting blood-vessel growth, it seems that they can act generically without even entering a cell.

Visionary science-fiction author.

The antiangiogenic effect of siRNAs does not depend on the target of the siRNA, or on intraocular administration. Rather, the siRNAs activate TLR3, a cell surface receptor for long viral dsRNAs, and innate immunity.

Use of a single-molecule approach finds that translation by the ribosome occurs through a reiterative process of translocation and pausing. A single translocation event covers three nucleotides, in which three substeps are detected, and is rapid. The pauses, which are longer and whose length depends on the mRNA's secondary structure, are rate-determining and are composed of at least two processes.

Fungal Pdr1p family proteins bind directly to diverse drugs and xenobiotics, resulting in activation of transcription and induction of multidrug resistance. The mechanism has analogy to regulation of multidrug resistance in vertebrates by nuclear receptors.

Searches for extrasolar planets using the periodic Doppler shift of stellar spectral lines have recently achieved a precision of 60 cm s⁻¹, sufficient to find a 5-Earth-mass planet in a Mercury-like orbit around a Sun-like star. The fabrication of an 'astro-comb' that should allow a precision as high as 1 cm s⁻¹ in astronomical radial velocity measurements is reported

This paper shows that at a certain finite temperature, a Cooper-pair insulator undergoes a transition to a superinsulating state with infinite resistance. Experimental evidence of this transition in titanium nitride films is presented and it is demonstrated that the superinsulating state is dual to the superconducting state: it is destroyed by a sufficiently strong critical magnetic field, and breaks down at some critical voltage which is analogous to the critical current in superconductors.

It has been suggested that production, transport, and deposition of dust is influenced by climatic changes on glacial-interglacial timescales. This paper presents a high-resolution record of aeolian dust from the EPICA Dome C ice core in East Antarctica, which suggests that dust is increasingly correlated with Antarctic temperature as the climate becomes colder, indicative of a progressive coupling of the climates of Antarctica and lower latitudes.

The observed motion of continents relative to the Earth's spin axis may be due either to rotation of the entire Earth relative to its spin axis ('true polar wander'), or to the motion of individual tectonic plates. To distinguish between these processes, the global average of continental motion and rotation in a palaeomagnetic reference frame over the past 320 Myr was computed and two components were identified: a steady northward motion and, during certain time intervals, clockwise and counterclockwise rotations, which they interpret as true polar wander.

Microsporidia contain a tiny mitochondrial remnant called a mitosome, but the function of this organelle is unknown. Microsporidian genomes encode several components of the mitochondrial iron–sulphur-cluster machinery. This paper describes the cloning, characterization and subcellular localization of several Fe–S-cluster components for two microsporidia. Although some components localize to the mitosome, others are cytosolic, raising questions about how their function is coordinated.

Nearly 17 million sequences were used in a comparative metagenomic approach of 45 microbiomes and viriomes from distinct environments. Although core metabolic traits were represented in microbial genomes from all environments, differences could be correlated with biogeochemical condition. The analysis also revealed a surprising array of viral metabolic capabilities, suggesting that viruses may serve as a gene pool.

A genome-wide association study for lung cancer finds that genetic sequences in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor subunit gene cluster contribute susceptibility. Interestingly, this susceptibility is not related to smoking status or frequency, and seems to come from a change in an amino acid in the receptor itself.

A genome-wide association study involving lung cancer finds that genetic sequences in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor subunit gene cluster contribute to susceptibility. This paper finds that alleles present in a cluster of nicotinic acid receptor genes affect smoking quantity in European samples, and are therefore also associated with risk of lung cancer and peripheral arterial disease.

It is shown that in addition to the well-documented representation of retinal motion, primate area middle temporal area neurons are sensitive to the relative depth of stimuli defined by motion parallax. Motion parallax is a powerful depth cue that arises when the observer is moving due to near and far objects moving across the retina at different speeds.

Endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) is shown to have a role in cellular transformation and tumour maintenance downstream of Ras–AKT signalling. eNOS exerts its effect through nitrosylation and activation of endogenous wild-type Ras proteins.

In a mouse model for skin cancer, β-catenin signalling is shown to be important to specifically maintain a population of cancer stem cells. These cancer stem cells share properties with normal bulge stem cells and may therefore be derived from those cell. As β -catenin signalling isn't required for normal skin homeostasis, it may be a suitable new target for skin cancer therapy.

This paper examines the link between coagulation and systematic inflammation, and shows that coagulation proteases signal to dendritic cells by activating PAR1, resulting in activation of the shingolipid signalling component and dissemination of inflammation from the lymph nodes to the lungs.

Bangalore has a growing biotech sector, supported by a tradition of academic science. But there are still challenges in committing to discovery science and retaining top talent. Gene Russo reports.

Tapolczay looking to bolster MRC tech transfer

Max Planck gets complex with new degree programme.

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Genetic labelling reveals a role for hair follicle stem cells in skin cancer.

The technological advances of the past decade have helped researchers to characterize the molecular basis of cancer. With this knowledge, drugs targeted at specific molecules have been designed. New diagnostics, or biomarkers, for cancer are now urgently needed to determine which of these new drugs a patient is most likely to benefit from.