Volume 504 Issue 7480, 19 December 2013

A rethink on monitoring land-use change is needed to estimate effects on global warming.

Can you tell a sci-fi tale in just 200 characters? Then the Nature Futures competition is for you.

The revelation that US and British spy agencies have undermined a commonly used encryption code should alarm researchers, says Charles Arthur.

The week in science: China lands rover on the Moon, Israel joins CERN, and the number of animals used for scientific purposes in the European Union falls.

Unexpected fractures above the world’s biggest storage site could provide path for leaks.

Failure to impose a ban on deep-sea fishing jeopardizes the future of vulnerable ecosystems, say researchers.

Researchers ponder whether Eastern Europe’s large areas of abandoned land should be replanted or left as a carbon sink.

Foundations increasingly fund biomedical research, but are reluctant to pay overhead costs.

From the US shutdown to breakthroughs in stem-cell therapies, the past 12 months have seen fluctuating fortunes for science.

Clear brains, hydrogen bonds and gas expelled from galaxies are among the most striking images of 2013.

Ten people who mattered this year.

As emerging players jostle old ambitions, Nigel Lockyer calls for the next generation of particle-physics projects to be coordinated on a global scale.

On the anniversary of a landmark piece of US legislation, four experts weigh in on what has worked and what needs to change.

Harold McGee surveys a seething array of microbially transformed treats — from beard beer and grasshopper sauce to extreme herring and armpit cheese.

Melanie Keene revisits two Victorian children's science primers that harnessed interest in the supernatural.

Bioethicist who fought for disability rights in reproductive technologies.

The thermal history of thousands of rock samples convincingly confirms the idea that climate cooling accelerates the rate of erosion at Earth's surface — and implicates glaciers in particular. See Letter p.423

Large panels of human cancer cell lines have been profiled at the DNA, RNA and pharmacological levels to accelerate the search for cancer therapies. But two of those large data sets show only partial concordance. See Analysis p.389

A marriage between satellite observations and modelling has shown that acceleration of electrons in the magnetosphere can be explained by scattering of these particles by plasma oscillations known as chorus waves. See Letter p.411

The discovery of a protein that is targeted for degradation by the 'witch' hormones called strigolactones reveals a mechanism by which shoot architecture is controlled in rice plants. See Articles p.401 & p.406

Adapted extracts from selected News & Views articles published this year.

This Analysis compares two large-scale pharmacogenomic data sets that catalogued the sensitivity of a large number of cancer cell lines to approved and potential drugs, and finds that whereas the gene expression data are largely concordant between the two studies, the reported drug sensitivity measures and subsequently their association with genomic features are highly discordant.

This study describes comprehensive synaptic engulfment by astrocytes, mediating synapse elimination in an activity-dependent manner; this elimination process involves the MEGF10 and MERTK phagocytic pathways and persists into adulthood, with mutant mice that lack these pathways in astrocytes exhibiting a failure to refine retinogeniculate connections during development.

Strigolactones (SLs), key regulators of plant growth, are believed to mediate their responses through a proposed receptor (D14) that interacts with an F-box protein (D3) to form a D14–SCF^D3 protein complex; here the perception of SLs by the D14–SCF^D3 complex and the control of gene expression are linked by the finding that DWARF 53, a repressor protein of SL signalling, interacts with the D14–SCF^D3 complex and is ubiquitinated and degraded in a SL-dependent manner.

Strigolactones (SLs), key regulators of plant growth, are believed to mediate their responses through a proposed receptor (D14) that interacts with an F-box protein (D3) to form a D14–SCF^D3 protein complex; here the perception of SLs by the D14–SCF^D3 complex and the control of gene expression are linked by the finding that DWARF 53, a repressor protein of SL function, interacts with the D14–SCF^D3 complex and is ubiquitinated and degraded in a SL-dependent manner.

High-resolution measurements of electrons obtained by satellite during the geomagnetic storm of 9 October 2012 together with a data-driven global wave model are analysed to show that scattering by a magnetospheric electromagnetic emission, known as ‘chorus’, can explain the temporal evolution of the observed increase in relativistic electron flux.

Engineered dissipation is used to deterministically produce and stabilize entanglement between two trapped-ion quantum bits, independently of their initial states; the entanglement is stabilized even in the presence of experimental noise and decoherence.

An entangled Bell state of two superconducting quantum bits can be stabilized for an arbitrary time using an autonomous feedback scheme, that is, one that does not require a complicated external error-correcting feedback loop.

To establish what effect the Late Cenozoic cooling climate shift might have had on global erosion, inverse modelling of thermochronometric ages is used to show that erosion rates are increased by cooling, especially in glaciated mountain ranges.

A prospective longitudinal study identifies the earliest known indicator of social disability in human infancy: decline in attention to others’ eyes in infants who are later diagnosed with autism; the decline is evident already within the first 2 to 6 months of life, which reveals the early unfolding of the disorder but also offers a promising opportunity for the future of early intervention.

Two private, heterozygous mutations in two functionally related genes, GUCY1A3 and CCT7, are identified in an extended family with myocardial infarction; these genes encode proteins that work together to inhibit platelet activation after nitric oxide stimulation, suggesting a link between impaired nitric oxide signalling and myocardial infarction risk.

Two small-molecule disruptors of the glucokinase–glucokinase-regulatory-protein complex, AMG-1694 and AMG-3969, are identified that decrease blood glucose levels in various models of hyperglycaemic rodents.

This work shows that the Themis protein has a critical role in positive and negative thymocyte selection by dampening responses to low-affinity ligands but without affecting responses to high-affinity ligands, thus enabling positive selection of weakly self-reactive thymocytes.

The gut microbial metabolite butyrate is shown to induce the differentiation of colonic T regulatory cells in mice and to ameliorate the development of colitis; it also increases histone H3 acetylation at the Foxp3 promoter.

In mice, provision of butyrate—a short-chain fatty acid produced by commensal microorganisms during starch fermentation—facilitates extrathymic generation and differentiation of Foxp3⁺ regulatory T cells, demonstrating that metabolic by-products are sensed by cells of the immune system and affect the balance between pro- and anti-inflammatory cells.

The O-glycosylation enzyme Galnt11 has an important role in heterotaxy, a disorder of left–right body patterning or laterality: Galnt11 modulates Notch signalling which alters cilia types at the embryonic left–right organizer, therefore determining laterality.

This study establishes an important role for the enzyme Tet1 in erasing genomic imprinting in vivo — mice with a knockout of paternal Tet1 give rise to progeny with imprinting defects and associated growth and development defects, which leads to early embryonic lethality; furthermore, analysis of the DNA methylation dynamics in reprogramming primordial germ cells (PGCs) suggests that Tet1 is required at a late stage of the reprogramming process, in the second wave of DNA demethylation in PGCs.

During mammalian X-chromosome inactivation, the Xist long noncoding RNA coats the future inactive X chromosome and recruits polycomb repressive complex 2 to a nucleation site, but how Xist spreads silencing across the entire X chromosome is unclear; here high-resolution maps of Xist binding sites across the X chromosome are generated and show that Xist does not spread across the inactive X chromosome uniformly but in two steps, initially targeting gene-rich islands before later spreading to intervening gene-poor domains.

With the right mix of persistence and support structures, scholars from minority groups can thrive as they pursue their PhDs.

Dearth of high-ranking women in UK academia misrepresents faculty members and students, says report.

Basic research increasingly targets societal outcomes, finds study.

Professors are entitled to speak out and publish on social media, argues report.

It's all in the delivery.

Increased understanding of immune- and tumour-cell biology has led to an explosion of research into potential ways to harness the immune system to kill cancer. By Emily Elert.

William Coley found a way to prompt the immune system to fight cancer over a century ago. After years of neglect, scientists are now seeking to replicate his success.

Tumours can put a brake on the immune system, but new therapies work by removing these brakes. Now, researchers have to figure out how to use them most effectively.

Immunologist Karolina Palucka, at the Baylor Institute for Immunology Research in Dallas, Texas, helped treat Nobel prizewinner Ralph Steinman's pancreatic cancer with dendritic cells — the cells he co-discovered. Here she explains the use of dendritic cells in cancer immunotherapy.

Using a variety of creative imaging techniques, researchers are tracking the dynamic interactions of immune and cancer cells. Their results will guide drug development.

Genetically altered immune cells are helping to push life-threatening cancers into remission and generating a buzz.

An experimental vaccine implanted beneath the skin could usher in biomaterial-based immunotherapies for cancer.

A groundswell of research on the immune system is yielding a deeper understanding of how cancer progresses and offering new ways to stop it. As a result of these efforts, a range of cancer therapies are under development that work by turning our own immune cells against tumours.