Volume 531 Issue 7596, 31 March 2016

Artificial fixes to make the most of summer time may do more harm than good.

Psychology drives some overindulgence — and it could help us to resist.

Britain has announced a tax on sugary drinks. Countries should go further and target foods that have large carbon footprints, says Adam Briggs.

The animal ‘fights’ of Mammal March Madness foster conversations about wildlife biology.

Observatories go it alone; the Philippines gets its first satellite; and Russian funding concerns.

Craig Venter’s creation comes as CRISPR gene-editing methods provide alternative ways to tinker with life’s building blocks.

Most polled researchers in Britain and the wider EU think that the union benefits science.

Scientists will track psychological and medical outcomes of controversial treatments to help transgender adolescents transition.

Decision by US National Science Foundation could hamper research on conservation biology, climate change and invasive species.

Sea levels could rise by more than 15 metres by 2500 if greenhouse-gas emissions continue to grow.

Behind the scenes at Europe’s massive synchrotron — where science never sleeps.

Scientists are helping to stop antisocial behaviour in the world's most popular online game. The next stop could be a kinder Internet.

Automatic wayfinding is eroding natural abilities, warns Roger McKinlay.

Andrew Robinson marvels afresh at the self-taught mathematical genius in a new biopic.

Hedderik van Rijn weighs up an erudite but idiosyncratic survey of how we perceive life passing.

Anthony King views video games for pigs and urban 'aquaponics' at Science Gallery Dublin's latest show.

Athene Donald weighs up a survey of workplace changes designed to avoid gender bias.

Organelles called primary cilia that protrude from cells have been thought to sense the surrounding environment through calcium-channel proteins that respond to force. Two scientists discuss the implications for developmental biology and kidney disease of a study that challenges this hypothesis. See Letter p.656

Increasing cholesterol levels in the cell membranes of killer T cells boosts the cells' ability to mount an immune response against tumour cells in mice. Such a strategy might be valuable in anticancer immunotherapies. See Letter p.651

Gravimeters have applications ranging from oil exploration to the detection of underground tunnels, but size and lack of portability have limited their field use. A device the size of a postage stamp promises fresh opportunities. See Letter p.614

Lack of the protein IRP2 in mice prevents organelles called mitochondria from accumulating toxic levels of iron in response to smoke exposure. This discovery links environmental and genetic risk factors for a chronic lung disease.

Processes such as photosynthesis depend on the interplay between the electric dipoles of chromophore molecules. Yet these dipole–dipole interactions have not been visualized at the atomic level — until now. See Letter p.623

In rats, individual differences in risk preference and in sensitivity to gains compared with losses are controlled by a specific neuronal population, stimulation of which neutralizes risk-seeking behaviour. See Letter p.642

Climate and ice-sheet modelling that includes ice fracture dynamics reveals that Antarctica could contribute more than a metre of sea-level rise by 2100 and more than 13 metres by 2500, if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated.

Much of the intracellular protein degradation in eukaryotes is controlled by cullin–RING ubiquitin ligases (CRLs), a vast class of enzymes which are regulated by the COP9 signalosome (CSN); structural characterization of CSN–N8CRL4A complexes by cryo-electron microscopy reveals an induced-fit mechanism of CSN activation triggered only by catalytically activated CRLs without bound substrate, explaining how CSN acts as a global regulator of CRLs.

A sub-nanometre resolution cryo-EM structure of human TFIID bound to TFIIA and core promoter DNA and a model of the TFIID-based pre-initiation complex.

It has long been debated whether elements heavier than zinc are formed continually, for example in core-collapse supernovae, or in rare events, such as neutron star mergers; here, studies of element abundances in a local ultrafaint dwarf galaxy provide evidence that these elements are formed during rare yet prolific stellar events.

A light-weight, low-cost microelectromechanical system gravimeter is presented with sensitivity and stability high enough to measure the elastic deformation of the Earth’s crust as a result of tidal forces, enabling many applications.

A combined experimental and theoretical investigation of phononic properties in nanocrystal-based semiconductors reveals that unusually strong coupling between phonons and electrons originates from the mechanical softness of the surfaces of the nanocrystalline domains and sheds new light on their recombination in nanocrystal-based devices.

Luminescence induced by highly localized excitations that are produced by electrons tunnelling from the tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope is used to map the spatial distribution of the excitonic coupling in well-defined arrangements of a few zinc-phthalocyanine molecules and the dependence of this spatial distribution on the relative orientation and phase of the transition dipoles of the individual molecules.

Archaean komatiites are shown to originate in hot mantle plumes that entrained hydrous material from deep in the mantle.

Acclimation of leaf respiration to a 3–5-year period of warming by 3.4 °C for 10 North American tree species in forest conditions eliminated 80% of the increase in leaf respiration expected of non-acclimated trees; this suggests that the increase in respiration rates of terrestrial plants from climate warming, and the associated increase in atmospheric CO₂ levels, may be less than anticipated.

Embryos in a particular phylum of the animal kingdom tend to most resemble one another at a stage in the middle of embryogenesis known as the phylotypic period; a transcriptional analysis of embryogenesis from single embryos of ten different phyla reveals that the transcripts expressed at the phylotypic stage (or mid-developmental transition) differ greatly between phyla, and a ‘phylum’ may be defined as a set of species sharing the same signals and transcription factor networks during the mid-developmental transition.

Increased activity of dopamine receptor type-2 (D2R)-expressing cells in the nucleus accumbens of rats during a ‘decision’ period reflects a ‘loss’ outcome of the previous decision and predicts a subsequent safe choice; by artificially increasing the activity of D2R neurons during the decision period, risk-seeking rats could be converted to risk-avoiding rats.

Activation of glucose-sensing neurons in the ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus using radio waves or magnetic fields remotely and non-invasively in vivo increases plasma glucose and glucagon, and suppresses plasma insulin; conversely, remote inhibition of glucose-sensing neurons decreased blood glucose and increased plasma insulin.

Modulating cholesterol metabolism can improve CD8⁺ T-cell-mediated immunity against tumours; genetic or pharmacological inhibition of the cholesterol esterification enzyme ACAT1 led to higher plasma membrane cholesterol levels, better T-cell receptor clustering and signalling, improved immunological synapse maturation, and enhanced antitumour activity in mice.

Mechanosensation, if it originates in primary cilia, is not via calcium signalling.

A series of FRET-based β-arrestin2 biosensors are used to study the dynamics and conformational changes that occur when β-arrestin2 binds to and dissociates from the β₂-adrenergic receptor in living cells; results show that after β-arrestin2 dissociates from the β₂-adrenergic receptor, it stays at the cell membrane in an active conformation for a while, indicating that β-arrestin is able to signal in a G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR)-free state.

A series of intramolecular fluorescent FlAsH BRET reporters is used to monitor conformational changes in β-arrestin2 following activation of seven G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), showing that different GPCRs produce distinct β-arrestin2 conformational signatures that correlate with the stability of the receptor–arrestin complex and the role of β-arrestin2 in activating or dampening downstream signalling events, which explains how different GPCRs can use a common effector for different purposes.

Researchers are learning how to convert devices into global laboratories.

Thomas Klinger describes how a once-troubled experimental fusion reactor got back on a solid footing.

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