Contents
Vol 336, Issue 6084
Contents
This Week in Science
Editorial
Editors' Choice
Podcasts
- Science Podcast
The show includes classifying cousins, the evolution of bad teeth, where science and comedy meet, and more.
Products & Materials
- New Products
A weekly roundup of information on newly offered instrumentation, apparatus, and laboratory materials of potential interest to researchers.
News of the Week
- Around the World
In science news around the world this week, a British team has canceled a geoengineering experiment, field biologists seeking research permits to work in the tiger reserves of Karnataka in southern India may be getting a reprieve, a project to drill into the heart of a "supervolcano" in southern Italy got the go-ahead, budget cuts are engulfing a unique research area in Ontario, an intruder was arrested at a GM field trial, and a prostate cancer test has been deemed to do more harm than good.
- Random Sample
Questions surrounding the origin of a nearly complete skeleton of an Asian relative of Tyrannosaurus called Tarbosaurus, auctioned off on 20 May in New York City, touched off a protest by the Mongolian government. With funding from Arts Council England, the University of Cambridge's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is delving into its collections to find new ways to describe complex migration and trading routes through Cambridgeshire, as well as human history back to the Paleolithic. And this week's numbers quantify fish stocks that are not being overfished and U.S. teenagers who have prediabetes or diabetes.
- Newsmakers
This week's Newsmaker is electrical engineer L. Rafael Reif, who has been voted president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Findings
News & Analysis
- Dams Along Sudanese Nile Threaten Ancient Sites
Sudanese officials said last week that their government intends to move ahead with three massive dams along the Nile River and its tributaries, threatening hundreds of largely unexplored ancient sites.
- Senate Bills Would Make Room for More STEM Graduates
The U.S. Senate has waded into the debate over whether to permit more foreign-born scientists trained at U.S. universities to stay in the country.
- NSF's ‘Big Pitch’ Tests Anonymized Grant Reviews
An experiment being conducted at the U.S. National Science Foundation indicates that NSF may be turning down deserving research proposals because of potential biases in the grant-review process.
- Homegrown Organic Matter Found on Mars, But No Life
Researchers have discovered organic matter encased in once-molten martian rocks, demonstrating that the planet has been producing its own organic matter for eons with no help from life.
- Military's Plan to Buy Biofuels Hits Roadblock in U.S. House
The U.S. House of Representatives last week blocked the Department of Defense from buying more costly substitutes for petroleum-based fuels.
- NSF Gives Clinical Students a Shot At Winning Graduate Fellowships
The U.S. National Science Foundation has restored the funding eligibility of students in graduate psychology programs, allowing a doctoral student in psychology to win a prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship.
News Focus
- An Evolutionary Theory of Dentistry
Why are our teeth so rotten? Biologists point to a mismatch between our diets and lifestyles and those of our ancestors.
- The Burdens of Being a Biped
A number of musculoskeletal issues are rooted in our evolutionary history, in particular to the switch to walking upright more than 7 million years ago.
- Single-Cell Sequencing Tackles Basic and Biomedical Questions
At the meeting, four groups described new insights derived from sequencing DNA from individual human cells.
- HDL Itself Does Not Prevent Heart Attacks
A new genetic analysis presented at the meeting shows that while high HDL might correlate with a healthier heart, it's not itself responsible for lowering heart attack risks.
Letters
Books et al.
- On Ruts and Getting Out of Them
Duhigg recounts engaging stories that illuminate how habits function and offer hope to those trying to change their behavior.
- Transit Reflections
The Royal Observatory marks the upcoming transit of Venus with a small exhibition on our efforts to grasp the vast distances of the universe.
Essays on Science and Society
- Learning Biology by Recreating and Extending Mathematical Models
Dynamics of Biological Systems, the IBI Prize–winning module, brings mathematics into the biology laboratory.
Policy Forum
- From “Science in Europe” to “European Science”
Early impacts of the European Research Council suggest shifts toward competition and excellence in EU-wide basic science.
Perspectives
- Pushing Your Back into Place
Establishment of the dorsal-ventral body axis during fly oogenesis depends on pushing forces provided by polymerizing microtubules.
- Guided Tour to the Heart of RISC
The crystal structures of human and yeast Argonaute proteins reveal the intricacies of the multidomain enzyme at the hub of the RNA interference machinery.
- Resolving Some Old Problems in Protein Crystallography
Two methods improve the quality and ease of structural modeling by showing how to include diffraction data that are often thrown away.
- Kinship and Human Thought
Language and communication are central to shaping concepts such as kinship categories.
- Enter the Majorana Fermion
Electrical measurements on a semiconductor–superconductor hybrid structure reveal the signature of this long-predicted exotic particle.
- Systems Biology, Metabolomics, and Cancer Metabolism
Constructing metabolic profiles of 60 cancer cell lines by integrating metabolomics and systems biology revealed increased glycine consumption in highly proliferative cancer cells.
- An Avian Magnetometer
Neurons in the pigeon brain encode information on Earth's magnetic field for orientation and navigation.
Association Affairs
Brevia
- Predicting Pragmatic Reasoning in Language Games
A Bayesian inference model predicts how listeners decode communications.
Research Article
- Growing Microtubules Push the Oocyte Nucleus to Polarize the Drosophila Dorsal-Ventral Axis
The addition of tubulin monomers to microtubules provides the force to relocate the oocyte nucleus.
Reports
- Signatures of Majorana Fermions in Hybrid Superconductor-Semiconductor Nanowire Devices
Theoretically predicted particles that double as their own antiparticles emerge in a superconductor-coupled indium antimonide nanowire.
- Unidirectional Growth of Microbumps on (111)-Oriented and Nanotwinned Copper
Oriented copper grains grown using direct-current electroplating serve as a template for intermetallic microbumps.
- Real-Time Imaging of Pt3Fe Nanorod Growth in Solution
An in situ liquid stage is used to study the formation of nanowires from solution in a transmission electron microscope.
- Direction-Specific Interactions Control Crystal Growth by Oriented Attachment
Iron oxyhydroxide nanoparticles rotate until finding a perfect lattice match with a neighboring particle to grow.
- Large-Pore Apertures in a Series of Metal-Organic Frameworks
Metal-organic frameworks with hexagonal channel pores up to almost 100 angstroms in diameter have been synthesized.
- Linking Petrology and Seismology at an Active Volcano
Volcanic minerals from a Mount St. Helens eruption reveal a causal relationship between magma processes and seismicity.
- Temperature-Dependent Alterations in Host Use Drive Rapid Range Expansion in a Butterfly
A warmer UK has enabled the brown argus butterfly to expand its range by feasting on the geranium.
- Linking Crystallographic Model and Data Quality
A statistical method places model and data quality on the same scale and indicates how far one can model.
- Structures from Anomalous Diffraction of Native Biological Macromolecules
Don’t get MAD or be SAD; try lower energy.
- The Crystal Structure of Human Argonaute2
The structure of the core protein of the human RNA interference machinery is determined at high resolution.
- Metabolite Profiling Identifies a Key Role for Glycine in Rapid Cancer Cell Proliferation
Rapidly growing cancer cells rely on the amino acid glycine to make nucleotides.
- FKF1 Conveys Timing Information for CONSTANS Stabilization in Photoperiodic Flowering
A plant protein sensitive to blue light links longer afternoons to more flowering.
- Kinship Categories Across Languages Reflect General Communicative Principles
The systems of terms used in different languages to describe kin are optimized for simplicity and informativeness.
- Neural Correlates of a Magnetic Sense
Neurons in a pigeon’s brain encode the direction and intensity of the geomagnetic field.
