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Volume 519 Issue 7542, 12 March 2015

The idea that the Holocene is over and a new human-dominated geological epoch, the Anthropocene, has begun is being extensively discussed. As yet there is no formal agreement on when the Anthropocene may have started and defining the beginning of an epoch as a formal geologic unit of time requires locating a global marker of a shift in the Earth’s state recorded in stratigraphic material. Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin assess the anthropogenic signatures in the geological record against the formal requirements for the recognition of a new epoch and identify two dates � 1610 and 1964 � that may mark the beginning of the Anthropocene. See also the News Feature on page 144. Cover illustration: Alberto Seveso.

Editorial

  • Political interference in the selection process for the headquarters of the Square Kilometre Array should not go unchallenged.

    Editorial

    Advertisement

  • Stratigraphers have yet to decide whether the Anthropocene is a new unit of geological time.

    Editorial
  • As the first true science journal marks 350 years, we must defend scholarly pursuits.

    Editorial
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World View

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Research Highlights

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Social Selection

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Seven Days

  • The week in science: NASA’s Dawn probe orbits dwarf planet Ceres; ivory burns in Kenya; and the first round-the-world trip by a solar plane begins.

    Seven Days
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News

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News Feature

  • Momentum is building to establish a new geological epoch that recognizes humanity's impact on the planet. But there is fierce debate behind the scenes.

    • Richard Monastersky
    News Feature
  • The world is full of bloody conflicts that can drag on for decades. Some researchers are trying to find resolutions through complexity science.

    • Dan Jones
    News Feature
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Comment

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Books & Arts

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Correspondence

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Obituary

  • Nobel-prizewinning chemist who rearranged carbon–carbon bonds.

    • Jean-Marie Basset
    Obituary
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News & Views

  • The detection of silicon-rich particles originating from Saturn's moon Enceladus suggests that water–rock interactions are currently occurring inside it — the first evidence of ongoing hydrothermal activity beyond Earth. See Letter p.207

    • Gabriel Tobie
    News & Views
  • The secreted enzyme Notum has been found to inhibit the Wnt signalling pathway through removal of a lipid that is linked to the Wnt protein and that is required for activation of Wnt receptor proteins. See Article p.187

    • Roel Nusse
    News & Views
  • A method for tracking the descendants of hundreds of thousands of yeast cells in an evolving population reveals that thousands of individuals contribute to early increases in population-wide fitness. See Article p.181

    • David Gresham
    News & Views
  • Bacteria use CRISPR–Cas systems to develop immunity to viruses. Details of how these systems select viral DNA fragments and integrate them into bacterial DNA to create a memory of invaders have now been reported. See Articles p.193 & p.199

    • Ido Yosef
    • Udi Qimron

    Special:

    News & Views
  • Climate simulations show that interactions between particles of black carbon and convective and cloud processes in the atmosphere must be considered when assessing the full climatic effects of these light-absorbing particulates.

    • Ben Booth
    • Nicolas Bellouin
    News & Views
  • A study of the African lungfish reveals that it has a rudimentary ability to detect pressure waves caused by sound. The finding expands our knowledge of how hearing evolved in early tetrapods, the first vertebrates to have limbs and digits.

    • Jennifer A. Clack
    News & Views
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Perspective

  • Formal criteria must be met to define a new human-driven epoch; the geological evidence appears to do so, with 1610 and 1964 both likely to satisfy the requirements for the start of the Anthropocene.

    • Simon L. Lewis
    • Mark A. Maslin

    Special:

    Perspective
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Article

  • The biochemical activity of Notum as a carboxylesterase that removes an essential lipid moiety from Wnt proteins is uncovered; the interaction of Notum with glypicans is required to ensure localization at the cell surface, and Notum may provide a new target for therapeutic development in diseases with defective Wnt signalling.

    • Satoshi Kakugawa
    • Paul F. Langton
    • Jean-Paul Vincent
    Article
  • The bacterial CRISPR/Cas system acquires short phage sequences known as spacers that integrate between CRISPR repeats and constitute a record of phage infection; this study shows that the Cas1–Cas2 complex is the minimal machinery required for spacer acquisition and the complex integrates oligonucleotide DNA substrates into acceptor DNA in a manner similar to retroviral integrases and DNA transposases with Cas 1 as the catalytic subunit and Cas2 acting to increase integration activity.

    • James K. Nuñez
    • Amy S. Y. Lee
    • Jennifer A. Doudna
    Article
  • Bacterial CRISPR–Cas loci acquire short phage sequences called spacers that integrate between DNA repeats and how these viral sequences are chosen was unknown; in these studies of the type II CRISPR–Cas system of Streptococcus pyogenes, the Cas9 nuclease known to inactivate invading viral DNA was found to be required for the selection of functional spacers during CRISPR immunity.

    • Robert Heler
    • Poulami Samai
    • Luciano A. Marraffini
    Article
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Letter

  • Analysis of silicon-rich, nanometre-sized dust particles near Saturn shows them to consist of silica, which was initially embedded in icy grains emitted from Enceladus’ subsurface waters and released by sputter erosion in Saturn’s E ring; their properties indicate their ongoing formation and transport by high-temperature hydrothermal reactions from the ocean floor and up into the plume of Enceladus.

    • Hsiang-Wen Hsu
    • Frank Postberg
    • Ralf Srama
    Letter
  • Ultracold atomic gases in optical lattices potentially offer simulations of condensed-matter phenomena beyond what theory and computations can access; compensated optical lattice techniques applied to the Hubbard model now enable unprecedented low temperatures to be reached for fermions — only 1.4 times that of the antiferromagnetic phase transition, approaching the limits of present modelling techniques.

    • Russell A. Hart
    • Pedro M. Duarte
    • Randall G. Hulet
    Letter
  • Studies of gene-expression levels in embryos of Caenorhabditis elegans and of other phyla reveal the timing and location of expression of all genes and support a model in which the endoderm program dates back to the origin of multicellularity while the ectoderm originated as a secondary germ layer freed from ancestral feeding functions.

    • Tamar Hashimshony
    • Martin Feder
    • Itai Yanai
    Letter
  • Up to half of children with severe developmental disorders of probable genetic origin remain without a genetic diagnosis; here, in a systematic and nationwide study of 1,133 children with severe, undiagnosed developmental disorders, and their parents, exome sequencing and array-based detection of chromosomal rearrangements reveals novel genes causing developmental disorders, increasing the proportion of children that can now be diagnosed to 31%.

    • T. W. Fitzgerald
    • S. S. Gerety
    • M. E. Hurles
    Letter
  • Population recordings reveal that neurons in the mouse superior colliculus are grouped according to their preferred orientations or movement axes for visual line stimuli, similar to the columnar arrangement in visual cortex of higher mammals; this functional architecture suggests that the superior colliculus samples the visual world unevenly for stimulus orientations.

    • Evan H. Feinberg
    • Markus Meister
    Letter
  • Collective behaviour in animal groups can improve individual perception and decision-making, but the neural mechanisms involved have been hard to access in classic models for these phenomena; here it is shown that Drosophila’s olfactory responses are enhanced in groups of flies, through mechanosensory neuron-dependent touch interactions.

    • Pavan Ramdya
    • Pawel Lichocki
    • Richard Benton
    Letter
  • Cationic substances, including some drugs, can activate mast cells in an IgE-independent manner, leading to histamine release, inflammation and airway contraction; here, the G-protein-coupled receptor MrgprB2, the orthologue of human MRGPRX2, is shown to be the sole mast cell receptor for these substances in mice.

    • Benjamin D. McNeil
    • Priyanka Pundir
    • Xinzhong Dong
    Letter
  • Group 2 innate lymphoid cells are shown to have a critical role in energy homeostasis by producing methionine-enkephalin peptides in response to interleukin 33, thus promoting the beiging of white adipose tissue; increased numbers of beige (also known as brown-like or brite) fat cells in white adipose tissue leads to increased energy expenditure and decreased adiposity.

    • Jonathan R. Brestoff
    • Brian S. Kim
    • David Artis
    Letter
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Feature

  • Surveys of sexual harassment and assault during field research and on campus reveal a hitherto secret problem.

    • Virginia Gewin
    Feature
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Career Brief

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Futures

  • All that remains.

    • S.B. Divya
    Futures
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