Volume 469 Issue 7331, 27 January 2011

An attempt to rework US food-safety regulations will fail without sufficient funds.

Solar measurements are better than ever — but that prowess could endanger future efforts.

Tim Radford takes aim at the popular myth that researchers are hopeless at explaining their work to a general audience.

The week in science.

Deal boosts Europe's bid to build world's biggest observatory, as US groups compete for funds.

As revolution reshapes the country, researchers lay plans for a system that will foster free thinking and innovation.

Population giant weighs in with funds for disease-related genetics project.

Imaging technique could help to resolve questions about brain plaques associated with the condition.

After years of struggle on behalf of ocean science, Wang Pinxian is taking a key role in China's plans to expand marine research.

Researchers in Panama suffered under a dictatorship and were overshadowed by the United States. Now the country is attempting a scientific renaissance.

Patrick D. Shirey and Gary A. Lamberti call for action to stem the rising tide of species redistribution caused by Internet sales.

Autism's broad diagnosis has fuelled fears about vaccines despite no evidence for a link, finds Melvin Konner.

John Whitfield reflects on Evelyn Hutchinson, who transformed natural history into an explanatory science.

Colin Martin views a showcase of zoological art — and a dodo painting that misled scientists for 400 years.

For many – if not all – of us, cognitive enhancement is desirable, but agents that would truly improve memory are hard to find. Unexpectedly, the product of an imprinted gene emerges as a promising candidate. See Article p.491

The ability to store entangled photons in a solid-state memory, and to retrieve them while preserving the entanglement, is a required step on the way to practical quantum communication. This step has now been taken. See Letters p.508 & p.512

Oscillations in gene transcription that occur in response to biological daily clocks coordinate the physiological workings of living organisms. But turnover in cellular energy may be sufficient to make the clock tick. See Article p.498 & Letter p.554

With the spread of fast-food outlets and more sedentary lifestyles, the prevalence of diabetes in India is rising alarmingly. But the subpopulations at risk and the symptoms of the disease differ from those in the West.

The recently refurbished Hubble Space Telescope reveals a galaxy from a time when the Universe was just 500 million years old, providing insights into the first throes of galaxy formation and the reionization of the Universe. See Letter p.504

Different groups of diving vertebrates vary greatly in size, with whales being by far the largest. A comparative investigation of the links between swimming speed, size and metabolism provides clues to the reasons.

After learning, memories are strengthened through a process called 'consolidation', which requires new gene and protein expression, rendering new information less vulnerable to disruption. Several transcription factor families are involved in this process, but many of the relevant downstream targets are unknown. Here, IGF-II, a protein typically implicated in somatic tissue growth and repair, is identified as an essential factor in memory retention. IGF-II initiates its own network of signalling cascades that can lead to synaptic potentiation and are most effective within a short time frame immediately after learning. Thus, IGF-II represents an endogenous target for potentially modulating cognitive enhancement.

Circadian clocks are critical timing regulators of physiology and behaviour that are ubiquitous in eukaryotes. Most mechanistic models of the this clock are based on transcription cycles, but some evidence for post-translational regulation has recently surfaced in plants and cyanobacteria. This is one of two groups demonstrating a role for the oxidation of peroxiredoxin proteins in maintaining an entrainable oscillation in human red blood cells and a unicellular alga. These data indicate a role for non-transcriptional mechanisms in clock models and open the door to future work exploring the connections between the transcriptional and non-transcriptional circadian machinery.

Here, the full two-year Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF09) data are used to conduct an ultra-deep search for z≈10 galaxies in the heart of the reionization epoch, only 500 million years after the Big Bang. One possible z≈10 galaxy candidate is found. It is also shown that regardless of source detections, the star formation rate density is much smaller (∼10%) at this time than it is just ∼200 million years later at z≈8. The 100–200 million years prior to z≈10 is clearly a crucial phase in the assembly of the earliest galaxies.

Harnessing entanglement between light and material systems is of interest for future quantum information technologies. Here, entanglement is demonstrated between a photon at the telecommunication wavelength (1,338 nm) and a single collective atomic excitation stored in a crystal. These resources pave the way for building multiplexed quantum repeaters for long-distance quantum networks.

The reversible transfer of quantum states of light into and out of matter constitutes an important building block for future applications of quantum communication. Here, the reversible transfer of photon–photon entanglement into entanglement between a photon and a collective atomic excitation in a solid-state device is reported. This should simplify frequency-matching of light with matter interfaces in advanced applications of quantum communication, bringing fully quantum-enabled networks a step closer.

Scanning probe techniques such as atomic force microscopy can be readily harnessed to prepare nanoscale structures with exquisite resolution, but are not in general suited for high-throughput patterning. Techniques based on contact printing, on the other hand, offer high throughput over large areas, but can't compete on resolution. Now, an approach is described that offers the best of both worlds: by attaching an array of hard, scanning-probe-like silicon tips to a flexible elastomeric substrate (similar to those used in contact printing), it is possible to rapidly create arbitrary patterns with sub-50-nm resolution over centimetre-scale areas.

Basal lubrication — the input of melt water to the interface between glaciers or ice sheets and bedrock — is often thought to increase ice velocity. However, recent theoretical work illustrated how the development of efficient subglacial drainage associated with high melt-water input can lead to reductions in ice velocity. Now, satellite observations of ice velocity in Greenland are used to provide empirical support: although initial ice speed-up is similar in all years, warm years with high melt-water input experience a dramatic late summer slowdown, relative to warm years. The findings show that expectations of speed-up from basal lubrication alone cannot be assumed to cause net ice speed-up.

Tunicates are the closest living relatives of the vertebrates. Many aspects of their lives and development are, however, poorly understood. It is generally thought that among ascidian tunicates such as Ciona, the superficially vertebrate-like central nervous system of the motile 'tadpole' larva degenerates and is completely replaced by an adult nervous system that develops from scratch. Here, state-of-the-art transgenesis and imaging techniques are used to show that this is not the case. There is continuity between the larval and adult nervous systems, with the adult nervous system developing from stem-cell-like ependymal cells found in the larva.

The genome of the southeast Asian orang-utan has been sequenced. The draft assembly of a Sumatran individual alongside sequence data from five Sumatran and five Bornean orang-utan genomes is presented. The resources and analyses described offer new opportunities in evolutionary genomics, insights into hominid biology, and an extensive database of variation for conservation efforts.

Genetic imprinting, or the preferential expression of a single parental allele, has typically been implicated as an influential factor during development, but whether unequal representation of one allele can influence social behaviour has not been studied. Here, it is demonstrated that the adaptor protein Grb10 is predominantly expressed from the paternal allele in brain and that ablating this allelic bias induces behavioural modifications of a social nature. At this time, Grb10 is unique in the sense that tissue-specific actions of each parental allele can influence distinct physiological or behavioural processes.

Using large-scale exome sequencing, this study identifies a second (after VHL) frequently mutated gene in clear cell renal cell carcinomas, the most frequent type of kidney cancer. PBRM1, a member of the SWI/SNF complex involved in transcriptional regulation, is mutated in about 40% of cases and shown to function as tumour suppressor gene. PBRM1 was independently found as a putative cancer gene involved in pancreatic cancer in a mouse transposon screen.

Bifidobacteria are natural inhabitants of the human gut and are known to provide protection from infection. It is now shown that certain features of bifidobacterial metabolism that ultimately lead to the production of acetate are involved in this effect.

Ultraviolet (UV) exposure has been implicated in melanoma formation. Here it is shown, in a mouse model, that UVB induces the recruitment of macrophages which produce interferon-γ to promote melanomagenesis. The study suggests that in melanomas, interferon-γ could be targeted therapeutically.

Circadian clocks are critical timing regulators of physiology and behaviour that are ubiquitous in eukaryotes. Most mechanistic models of the this clock are based on transcription cycles, but some evidence for post-translational regulation has recently surfaced in plants and cyanobacteria. This is one of two groups demonstrating a role for the oxidation of peroxiredoxin proteins in maintaining an entrainable oscillation in human red blood cells and a unicellular alga. These data indicate a role for non-transcriptional mechanisms in clock models and open the door to future work exploring the connections between the transcriptional and non transcriptional circadian machinery.

A complex of RNA and protein known as the box C/D RNP catalyses the site-specific modification of RNAs with a 2′-O-methylation group. The structure of the full complex has now been solved, including the guide RNA and either of two substrate RNAs. This structure reveals how the guide and target RNAs are aligned, and how the methyltransferase subunit, fibrillarin, facilitates placement of the target ribose into the active site.

O GlcNAc transferase (OGT) is an essential mammalian enzyme that glycosylates proteins with O-linked β-N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc), and this regulates a variety of cellular signalling pathways. Here, the crystal structure of human OGT as a binary complex with UDP and a ternary complex with UDP and a peptide substrate is presented. The structures show how OGT recognizes peptide sequences and provide information on the enzymatic mechanism.

The professional science master's degree is growing in popularity but is losing its initial funding. Can it survive?

Graduate students bear as much responsibility as their mentors for ensuring that they are well guided through their degrees, say Hugh Kearns and Maria Gardiner.

Doing a postdoc in the US helped spur Jon Simons's neuroscience career.

Plant-research grant aims to provide industry-relevant skills.

Workarounds discussed for securing job benefits for same-sex partners and spouses.

Conflict of interest regulation under consideration.

A history lesson.