Volume 467 Issue 7315, 30 September 2010

Twenty years after reunification, Germany is on a path to recover its former scientific glory.

UK regulatory bodies are unpopular, but not all deserve the axe.

Strict controls on what federal researchers can reveal about their work is a disservice to science and the public, says Kathryn O'Hara.

The week in science.

Decision to relocate colony of ageing research chimpanzees becomes political.

Bureaucracy and schedule conflicts could lead to overlapping dark-energy missions from the United States and Europe.

Graduate programmes are assessed and measured, but stale data could reduce impact of long-awaited report.

Critics of Chinese researchers targeted in physical attacks.

Successes at entangling three-circuit systems brighten the prospects for solid-state quantum computing.

The ten-year Census for Marine Life is about to unveil its final results. But how deep did the $650-million project go?

Postdoc Vipul Bhrigu destroyed the experiments of a colleague in order to get ahead. It took a hidden camera to expose a surreptitious and malicious side of science.

Alexander Gann and Jan Witkowski unveil newly found letters between key players in the DNA story. Strained relationships and vivid personalities leap off the pages.

Daniel Greenberg scrutinizes Roger Pielke Jr's argument for a greater emphasis on adapting to climate change.

Fact-packed final volume of a quartet on nuclear security is required reading, writes Joseph Cirincione.

A section of salt marsh in a Biennale pavilion links the city and its environment, notes Colin Martin.

Helen Pilcher on the rise of science comedy.

Projects such as building dams and diverting watercourses enhance water security for humans. But they do little to protect the biodiversity of associated ecosystems, and that's a long-term necessity. See Article p.555

The trend towards using ultracold atomic gases to explore emergent phenomena in many-body systems continues to gain momentum. This time around, they have been used to explore novel pairing mechanisms in one dimension. See Letter p.567

Spikes on the surface of HIV to which antibodies can bind are sparse. One of nature's solutions is to sometimes produce antibodies that bind tightly to a spike with one arm and grab another structure with the other arm. See Letter p.591

The ratio of nutrient elements in marine subsurface waters is much the same everywhere, even though biogeochemically distinct ocean biomes exist. A modelling study that includes mixing solves this conundrum. See Article p.550

Delimitation of species is especially taxing when populations of similar organisms occupy non-overlapping geographical ranges. A new quantitative framework offers a consistent approach for tackling the problem.

The resonant behaviour of clusters of gold nanoparticles has been tuned by gradually bringing the particles together. The approach could have many applications, including chemical and biological sensing.

The major nutrients nitrate and phosphate have one of the strongest correlations in the sea, with a slope similar to the average nitrogen to phosphorus content of plankton biomass (16:1). Why this global relationship exists, despite the wide range of nitrogen to phosphorus ratios at the organism level, is unknown. Here, an ocean circulation model and observed nutrient distributions have been used to show that the covariation of dissolved nitrate and phosphate is maintained by ocean circulation.

Water security affects human wellbeing both directly and indirectly, through its effects on biodiversity. Here, a global map has been generated that shows threats to both direct and indirect water security from a full range of potential stressors. Technological investments have also been incorporated. The map shows that nearly 80% of the world's population is exposed to high levels of threat to water security. Investment enables rich nations to offset high stressor levels, but less wealthy nations remain vulnerable.

The small GTPase Ran regulates nuclear transport and cell division by creating a gradient of RanGTP around chromosomes. The RCC1 protein recruits Ran to nucleosomes and activates Ran's nucleotide exchange activity. Here, the crystal structure of the complex between RCC1 and the nucleosome core particle is revealed. It provides an atomic view of how a chromatin protein interacts with the histone and DNA components of the nucleosome.

Nearly forty years ago, Fulde, Ferrell, Larkin and Ovchinnikov (FFLO) proposed an exotic theory of polarized superconductivity. FFLO correlations have never been observed, but it is thought that in one dimension (1D) a state with FFLO correlations occupies a major part of the phase diagram. Now, intriguing measurements are reported of the phase profile of a two-spin mixture of ultracold ⁶Li atoms trapped in an array of 1D tubes. The findings may provide a hint of FFLO physics.

Quantum entanglement is one of the key resources required for quantum computation. In superconducting devices, two-qubit entangled states have been used to implement simple quantum algorithms, but three-qubit states, which can be entangled in two fundamentally different ways, have not been demonstrated. Here, however, three superconducting phase qubits have been used to create and measure these two entangled three-qubit states.

Quantum entanglement is a key resource for technologies such as quantum communication and computation. A major question for solid-state quantum information processing is whether an engineered system can display the three-qubit entanglement necessary for quantum error correction. A positive answer to this question is now provided. A circuit quantum electrodynamics device has been used to demonstrate deterministic production of three-qubit entangled states and the first step of basic quantum error correction.

Water within glaciers and ice sheets has a strong potential to influence ice velocity and, ultimately, the rate of sea-level rise. But so far direct measurement of the magnitude and characteristics of water stored within glaciers has proved difficult. Here, a combination of in situ borehole measurements and radar and seismic imaging has been used to show that there is an extensive network of basal crevasses in the Bench Glacier in Alaska. The crevasses hold water equivalent to at least a decimetre layer.

Resolving whether static or dynamic stress triggers most aftershocks and subsequent mainshocks is essential to understand earthquake interaction and to forecast seismic hazard. It has recently been argued that the decay of aftershocks with distance from the main earthquake could be explained only by dynamic triggering. This hypothesis has now been tested, the conclusion being that the observed decay can be better explained by static triggering.

Until now, studies of evolution in the laboratory have primarily been carried out in asexual systems with small genomes, such as bacteria and yeast. Here, however, whole-genome resequencing data are presented from fruitfly populations that have experienced over 600 generations of laboratory selection for accelerated development. The results suggest that unconditionally advantageous alleles rarely arise, are associated with small net fitness gains, or cannot fix because selection coefficients change over time.

During immune responses, antibodies are selected for their ability to bind to foreign antigens with high affinity, in part by their ability to undergo homotypic bivalent binding. However, this type of binding is not always possible. Here, the monoclonal antibodies produced in two infected subjects in response to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) glycoprotein have been analysed. The results provide evidence for polyreactivity, which may be required when the density of glycoprotein spikes is so low that bivalent binding is unlikely.

PLX4032 is a selective inhibitor of the B-RAF protein that has shown promising results in an early clinical trial in melanoma patients with an activating mutation in B-RAF. Now the structure and function of this inhibitor are described. Translational data from a phase I trial show that clinical efficacy requires a substantial degree of inhibition of the ERK pathway downstream of B-RAF. The data also show that BRAF-mutant melanomas are highly dependent on B-RAF activity.

Nuclear pore complexes selectively transport cargos across the nuclear envelope. Here, a nuclear transport assay has been developed that allows the movement of single cargo proteins to be followed in real time. A succession of transport substeps is observed, and the NPC is found to be functionally asymmetric to importing cargos. The study provides insight into the mechanism of selective transport through the NPC.

Newly synthesized messenger RNA is exported from the nucleus through nuclear pores. Here, a new imaging and tracking method has been developed to study the kinetics of mRNA export, with 20-ms time-precision and 26-nm spatial precision. A three-step model for export is presented, comprising docking, transport and release. Notably, mRNAs can move bi-directionally through the pore complex.

Following their synthesis, eukaryotic messenger RNAs have a 7-methylguanosine cap added to their 5′ ends to protect the mRNAs from degradation. Here it is shown that, in vitro and in yeast, caps lacking a methyl group are recognized by the Rai1 protein, which clips off the incomplete cap. The data provide evidence that Rai1 is part of a quality-control mechanism that monitors, and promotes the digestion of, aberrant mRNAs that might arise during stress conditions.

In most bacteria and all archaea, glutamyl-tRNA synthetase (GluRS) glutamylates both tRNA^Glu and tRNA^Gln; Glu-tRNA^Gln is then converted to Gln-tRNA^Gln by an amidotransferase. Here the structure is reported of a bacterial complex containing tRNA^Gln, GluRS and the amidotransferase GatCAB. The structure provides an explanation for how the enzymes work consecutively: only one can assume a productive state at any time. There also seems to be an intermediary state in which neither enzyme is productive.

In the one-cell Caenorhabditis elegans embryo, anteroposterior polarization is facilitated by large-scale flow of the actomyosin cortex, which segregates cortical polarity proteins into anterior and posterior domains. The underlying forces and physical principles behind long-range flow are unclear. Here, a new method is described by which to measure cortical tension. The results identify two prerequisites for large-scale cortical flow: a gradient in actomyosin contractility and a sufficiently large viscosity of the cortex.

A survey of UK PhD holders shows that their skills do transfer to employment, and many graduates aren't bound for academia.

University administrators need to understand growing trends if they are to train their postdocs properly and still advance their research efforts, argues Rania Sanford.

Tennessee's science enterprise aims to capitalize on institutional strengths, a government lab and low costs of living.

Oak Ridge National Lab's director discusses Tennessee's opportunities and challenges.

Yes, you!