Contents
Vol 320, Issue 5879
Special Issue
Microbial Ecology
Introduction to special issue
News
- The Inner Lives of Sponges
Symbiotic ties, bioactive compounds, and mysterious distributions of bacteria characterize these ancient invertebrates.
- Confusing Kinships
Understanding microbial evolution and ecology rests on a solid classification system, but coming up with one is difficult.
Reviews
Contents
This Week in Science
Editorial
Editors' Choice
Podcasts
Products & Materials
News of the Week
- Landslides, Flooding Pose Threats as Experts Survey Quake's Impact
Landslides unleashed by the rupture on 12 May of a more than 200-kilometer section of the Longmenshan fault in Sichuan, China, followed by powerful aftershocks, dammed parts of nine rivers, creating 24 new lakes; experts are worried about another catastrophe.
- Farm Bill Gives Agriculture Research a Higher Profile in the Department
Spending on basic agricultural research in the United States could grow significantly thanks to a massive farm bill that Congress approved overwhelmingly last week.
- Australia's New Science Budget Gets a Mixed Review
Two of Australia's science agencies are shedding jobs and trimming programs to comply with a new national budget that's both praised and criticized by research leaders.
- Hurricanes Won't Go Wild, According to Climate Models
Two new model studies project a modest increase or even a decrease in the frequency and intensity of Atlantic tropical cyclones.
- Polar Bear Listing Opens Door to New Lawsuits
The Bush Administration's decision last week to list the polar bear as a threatened species is about to spark a new round of litigation over greenhouse gas emissions.
- The Threat to the World's Plants
A day after polar bears made headlines last week (see p. 1000), the world's leading botanical gardens issued a call to remember threatened plants, too.
- Bacteria Are Picky About Their Homes on Human Skin
In anticipation of a $115 million, 5-year effort by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, researchers are conducting a census of some of the trillions of bacteria that live within and upon human skin.
ScienceScope
Random Samples
Newsmakers
News Focus
- A New Great Lake--or Dead Sea?
Turkmenistan intends to create a huge lake in the desert by filling a natural depression with drainage water. Critics say it's a bad idea that could even spark a war.
- The End of an Intellectual Dark Age?
This autumn, 80 top university graduates will begin postgraduate studies in Turkmenistan--the country's first crop of postgrads since 1997.
- All That Makes Fungus Gardens Grow
The discovery of a parasitic yeast draws attention to the ways that pathogens can stabilize ant agriculture and other symbiotic networks.
- GLAST Mission Prepares to Explore the Extremes of Cosmic Violence
NASA's new gamma ray observatory will probe the most energetic radiation ever studied, the product of cataclysmic events deep in space.
Letters
Books
- What Systems Biology Is (Not, Yet)
Students and faculty from an interdisciplinary graduate class on systems biology review two books that offer a variety of perspectives on the field. Alon provides an analytical approach, whereas Boogerd et al. focus on philosophical aspects.
- Hard Facts About Soft Animals
The contributors combine data from anatomy, ecology, paleontology, and genomics to provide a summary of what we do and do not know about the evolutionary relationships of molluscs.
Policy Forum
- Public-Private Partnerships and Scientific Imperialism
Developed industrial nations are not taking their research and development colleagues of the developing world as equal partners in fighting infectious disease.
Perspectives
- Wi-Fi-Fo-Fum
A guide to what actually happens when you connect your laptop with Wi-Fi and WiMAX networks.
- SNO Removal
Reduced thioredoxin denitrosylates caspase-3, a key protein involved in cell death.
- Marine Calcifiers in a High-CO2 Ocean
New results show that the response of marine organisms to ocean acidification varies both within and between species.
- Stronger, Tougher Steels
Insights into the microstructure and brittle failure of steels is leading to a new generation of structural steels.
- Slicing and Dicing for Small RNAs
A new type of small RNA and mode of gene regulation is discovered in fly and mammals.
- Edward N. Lorenz (1917-2008)
A pioneer of chaos theory had a remarkable ability to distill complex systems to their physical essence.
Brevia
- Extending the Sub-Sea-Floor Biosphere
Prokaryotic cells and DNA from Archaea are present at depths greater than 1 kilometer in sediments below the ocean floor, where temperatures range up to 100° Celsius.
Research Articles
- Virus Population Dynamics and Acquired Virus Resistance in Natural Microbial Communities
Fragments of viral genes found within Archaea and Bacteria genomes are part of an antiviral defense system and can be used to identify and track the viruses themselves.
- Regulated Protein Denitrosylation by Cytosolic and Mitochondrial Thioredoxins
Thioredoxins—known to be antioxidants—also remove nitrosyl groups from a protease to activate it and may also function in this way in other cellular regulatory systems.
Reports
- Structural Diversity of Sodium
Single-crystal diffraction data reveal that many crystalline phases of sodium, some quite complex, occur near its unusual minimum melting temperature at very high pressure.
- Inverse Temperature Dependence of Toughness in an Ultrafine Grain-Structure Steel
A network of fine, fibrous grains formed at high temperatures substantially improves the strength and ductility of a low-alloy steel at low temperatures, where it is typically brittle.
- Dislocation-Driven Nanowire Growth and Eshelby Twist
A screw dislocation drives the growth of a nanowire pine tree, in which branches regularly extend from the trunk in a spiral, confirming Eshelby’s theory of dislocations.
- Detection of Silica-Rich Deposits on Mars
The rover Spirit has found opaline silica-rich soil and rocks on Mars, providing further evidence for extensive local mineralization by hydrothermal fluids at low pH.
- Formation of Box Canyon, Idaho, by Megaflood: Implications for Seepage Erosion on Earth and Mars
A classic amphitheater-shaped canyon in Idaho, similar to features seen on Mars, formed in a glacial megaflood, not through groundwater seepage at its head as was thought.
- Anticorrelated Seismic Velocity Anomalies from Post-Perovskite in the Lowermost Mantle
Analysis of 10,000 seismic waves passing through the deep mantle shows that a velocity jump 300 kilometers above the core is caused by a phase change in a major mantle mineral.
- Differential Rescue of Light- and Food-Entrainable Circadian Rhythms
When hungry, rodents may optimize their chances of finding food by engaging a food-entrained circadian clock in the brain that takes over from the light-driven clock.
- Endogenous siRNAs Derived from Transposons and mRNAs in Drosophila Somatic Cells
Endogenous small interfering RNAs transcribed from both transposons and messenger RNAs are found in somatic cells of flies and may act to silence “selfish” genetic elements.
- Resource Partitioning and Sympatric Differentiation Among Closely Related Bacterioplankton
A model of a marine plankton population reveals that ecologically distinct subgroups undergo sympatric speciation fast enough to overcome horizontal gene flow.
- A Polymorphism Within the G6PC2 Gene Is Associated with Fasting Plasma Glucose Levels
Variation in a gene for a protein in the pancreas may help explain why people have different levels of fasting blood glucose, a factor that affects disease risk.
- The Serine Protease TMPRSS6 Is Required to Sense Iron Deficiency
A cell-surface enzyme that cleaves proteins is unexpectedly necessary for sensing when iron levels are low and thereby triggering compensatory absorption of iron from food.
- The Right and the Good: Distributive Justice and Neural Encoding of Equity and Efficiency
A brain region linked to emotion-processing systems is activated as humans weigh fairness to an individual against benefit for a group.
Technical Comments
