Contents
Vol 301, Issue 5635
Contents
This Week in Science
Editorial
Editors' Choice
NetWatch
Departments
News of the Week
ScienceScope
Random Samples
News Focus
Letters
Books
Policy Forum
Perspectives
Review
Brevia
- Extending the Upper Temperature Limit for Life
An Archean microorganism isolated from a hydrothermal vent uses Fe(III) as an electron acceptor, grows well at the temperature of an autoclave, and survives to 130°C.
Reports
- Active Nonmetallic Au and Pt Species on Ceria-Based Water-Gas Shift Catalysts
Hydrogen production via gold- or platinum-supported catalysts can be achieved with smaller quantities of these expensive metals.
- A Possible Primordial Peptide Cycle
Iron-nickel sulfides can catalyze the formation of peptides that are subsequently degraded to urea and amino acids, creating a peptide cycle that may have played a role in the origin of life.
- A Quantum Laser Pointer
A combination of three light beams, two of which have been squeezed to reduce quantum noise in one dimension, can produce a laser with a spot size of less than two angstroms.
- Electrical Manipulation of Magnetization Reversal in a Ferromagnetic Semiconductor
An electrical current can reversibly magnetize a tiny domain of a semiconductor, potentially allowing for even smaller memory storage devices.
- Ice Core Records of Atmospheric N2O Covering the Last 106,000 Years
The atmospheric concentration of nitrous oxide, an important greenhouse gas, increased abruptly at the end of the Last Ice Age, although the fraction produced from the ocean remained constant.
- 340,000-Year Centennial-Scale Marine Record of Southern Hemisphere Climatic Oscillation
Abrupt climate changes were more intense in the Southern Hemisphere than has been inferred from Antarctic ice cores, and they were closely coordinated with events in the Northern Hemisphere.
- Coral Reef Death During the 1997 Indian Ocean Dipole Linked to Indonesian Wildfires
Widespread Indonesian wildfires in 1997 fertilized the western Indian Ocean with iron, which nourished a red tide that asphyxiated local coral reefs.
- Global Trajectories of the Long-Term Decline of Coral Reef Ecosystems
Coral reefs worldwide have suffered from human activities for millennia.
- Long-Term Region-Wide Declines in Caribbean Corals
The area of the coral reefs in the Caribbean has plummeted over the past three decades.
- Tempo and Mode of Evolutionary Radiation in Iguanian Lizards
Those groups of lizards that diversified early show more differences among individual species than those that diversified later, a pattern that may apply generally.
- An Expanded Eukaryotic Genetic Code
The genetic code of yeast has been augmented by unnatural amino acids with useful functional groups, which will facilitate studies of protein function in cells.
- SCNM1, a Putative RNA Splicing Factor That Modifies Disease Severity in Mice
The susceptibility of a particular mouse strain to a genetic disease can be explained by the presence or absence of a modifier gene, a mutated splicing factor.
- Loss of a Callose Synthase Results in Salicylic Acid-Dependent Disease Resistance
Genetic removal of a plant enzyme that helps to seal off pathogen-inflicted wounds unexpectedly results in more, rather than less, resistance to disease.
- Hirschsprung Disease Is Linked to Defects in Neural Crest Stem Cell Function
Gene expression patterns in neural stem cells suggest that a common hereditary disease in which intestinal motility fails occurs because these cells fail to migrate to and form nerves in the gut.
- Geographic Barriers Isolate Endemic Populations of Hyperthermophilic Archaea
Microbes from individual hot springs are genetically distinct and have not spread throughout the globe, indicating that there is a much larger diversity of these organisms than has been assumed.
Technical Comments
