Contents
Vol 321, Issue 5890
Special Issue
Challenges in Theoretical Chemistry
Introduction to special issue
News
- Problem Solved* (*sort of)
Researchers have toiled for decades to understand how floppy chains of amino acids fold into functional proteins. Learning many of those rules has brought them to the verge of being able to make predictions about proteins they haven't even discovered.
Perspectives
Special Feature
- In the Geosciences, Business Is Booming
Flat federal funding means tight times in academia, but jobs abound in the petroleum, mining, and environmental consulting industries.
- Geoscientists in High Demand in the Oil Industry
The next generation of petroleum geologists will face unique challenges in meeting the world's energy demands.
- Hydrogeologists Tap Into Demand for an Irreplaceable Resource
Cross-disciplinary collaborations and a steady stream of new environmental problems give groundwater experts plenty of work to do.
Special Feature
Special Feature
- In the Geosciences, Business Is Booming
Flat federal funding means tight times in academia, but jobs abound in the petroleum, mining, and environmental consulting industries.
- Geoscientists in High Demand in the Oil Industry
The next generation of petroleum geologists will face unique challenges in meeting the world's energy demands.
- Hydrogeologists Tap Into Demand for an Irreplaceable Resource
Cross-disciplinary collaborations and a steady stream of new environmental problems give groundwater experts plenty of work to do.
Contents
This Week in Science
Editorial
Editors' Choice
Podcasts
- Science Podcast
The 8 August 2008 show includes science in Muslim countries, the brain signature of borderline personality disorder, geoscience careers, and more.
Products & Materials
News of the Week
- Scientists Seek Answers, Ponder Future After Anthrax Case Suicide
Did he really do it? That's the main question on the minds of many scientists this week after an Army researcher apparently close to being indicted for the worst bioterror attack in U.S. history took his own life.
- Scientists Targeted in California Firebombings
Animal-rights extremists are suspected in attacks in Santa Cruz early Saturday morning that forced one researcher and his family from their home and destroyed another researcher's car.
- Court Ruling Scrambles Clean Air Plans, Leaving a Vacuum
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, state regulators, and the electric power industry are struggling to come to grips with the impact of a surprise court decision last month that dismantled a major air-pollution regulation.
- Ethics Questions Add to Concerns About NIH Lines
Some federally funded scientists are having second thoughts about working with the 21 human embryonic stem cell lines available to them under President George W. Bush's policy, following a report indicating that the cells are getting increasingly stale--not only scientifically but ethically as well.
- Phoenix's Water May Be Gumming Up the Works
The Phoenix lander's most dramatic achievement so far (see sidebar for others) has been touching martian water ice--which may also be creating the mission's biggest challenge.
- Successes, Past and Future
The Phoenix lander has run into problems handling the martian soil it was sent to analyze (see main text). But it has had its accomplishments, including a successful landing, ice in easy reach, and instrumentation that works.
- Researchers Flock to View Fleeting Display of Solar Corona
Dozens of scientists gathered in Jinta in western China to observe the total solar eclipse on 1 August and take advantage of the rare opportunity to observe the corona, a swirling halo of plasma that's a millionth as bright as the solar disk.
ScienceScope
Random Samples
Newsmakers
News Focus
- Deciphering the Genetics of Evolution
Powerful personalities in evolutionary biology have been tussling over how the genome changes to set the stage for evolution.
- Industrial-Style Screening Meets Academic Biology
A $100-million-a-year-effort to find chemicals for exploring cellular processes and drug discovery is about to move into production; skeptics say it is struggling to meet its goals.
- Universities Join the Screening Bandwagon
Unlike the screening centers funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (see main text), many of the high-throughput screening facilities at universities lack chemists to do the tweaking required to verify a "hit" and improve the strength and specificity of the interaction.
- Can the Vaquita Be Saved?
Scientists are embarking on a last-ditch effort to help the world's most endangered marine mammal avoid the fate of its Chinese cousin, the baiji.
Letters
Books
- Plague Through History
The contributors to these volumes integrate findings from history, archaeology, epidemiology, and molecular biology to provide multifaceted accounts of the plague and its effects on human history.
- A Sharp Look at Stories of Smell
The author provides a wide-ranging and well-grounded account of the science and culture of smell.
Policy Forum
- Scientific Misconduct: Do the Punishments Fit the Crime?
What happens to researchers after a finding of misconduct?
Perspectives
- A Breath of Aire for the Periphery
A rare cell type in peripheral lymphoid tissues may act as a safety net in eliminating autoreactive immune cells.
- Planetary System Formation
The diversity of extrasolar planets and planetary systems challenges present theories of planetary system formation.
- Trust Me on This
Borderline personality disorder is associated with abnormal activity in a brain region associated with monitoring trust in relationships.
- The Coming Arctic Invasion
In a future warmer climate, mollusks and other species are likely to migrate from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the Bering Strait.
- Symmetric Transporters for Asymmetric Transport
The crystal structure of a membrane transporter protein sheds light on the molecular mechanism by which glucose is absorbed by the intestine and the kidneys.
Brevia
- Latent Fingerprint Chemical Imaging by Mass Spectrometry
Imaging of fingerprints in the field with a portable mass spectrometer can reveal the presence of drugs, explosives, or other materials and help resolve overlapping prints.
Research Articles
- The Rupture and Repair of Cooperation in Borderline Personality Disorder
In a game, patients with personality disorder cannot build trust with normal partners, possibly because they cannot distinguish between trusting and distrusting acts in others.
- The Crystal Structure of a Sodium Galactose Transporter Reveals Mechanistic Insights into Na+/Sugar Symport
The structure of a sugar transporter suggests how these proteins may rearrange to permit the sugar to enter and leave the binding site on opposite sides of the membrane.
Reports
- Gas Disks to Gas Giants: Simulating the Birth of Planetary Systems
A model of the evolution of planets from a gas-rich disk shows that the disk’s density and viscosity affect the final distribution of planets and that our solar system is unusual.
- Suppressing Spin Qubit Dephasing by Nuclear State Preparation
A series of voltage pulses can mitigate the detrimental influence of background spins in gallium arsenide, allowing the spin of quantum dots to remain coherent for microseconds.
- Large Electrocaloric Effect in Ferroelectric Polymers Near Room Temperature
A polymer undergoes a large change in ordering on application of an electric field at near-room temperatures, causing a temperature drop potentially useful for refrigeration.
- Programming DNA Tube Circumferences
Synthetic molecular tubes with monodisperse, programmable circumferences are self-assembled using a single-stranded DNA motif.
- The Role of Excited-State Topology in Three-Body Dissociation of sym-Triazine
Molecular imaging, along with theoretical analysis, shows that two distinct mechanisms interact to simultaneously break apart a molecule into three equivalent fragments.
- Phyllosilicate Diversity and Past Aqueous Activity Revealed at Mawrth Vallis, Mars
One of the oldest water channel deposits on Mars shows a layered sequence of different clay minerals produced by a history of aqueous alteration.
- Brown Carbon Spheres in East Asian Outflow and Their Optical Properties
Pollution blown from East Asia over the Pacific contains abundant brown spherules, not simply black or organic carbon particles, complicating modeling of its climatic effects.
- A Conserved Mutation in an Ethylene Biosynthesis Enzyme Leads to Andromonoecy in Melons
Melon plants have both hermaphroditic and male flowers, a mating system that results from a mutation involved in ethylene synthesis that is still under positive selection.
- Human CHN1 Mutations Hyperactivate α2-Chimaerin and Cause Duane's Retraction Syndrome
A signaling protein that helps nerve fibers find their correct target muscles is required for innervation of the eye muscles and, if defective, causes an eye movement disorder.
- Deletional Tolerance Mediated by Extrathymic Aire-Expressing Cells
Cells in the spleen and lymph nodes express self-antigens to detect and remove circulating self-reactive immune cells that have escaped deletion by the thymus.
- Dichotomous Dopaminergic Control of Striatal Synaptic Plasticity
Contrary to previous assumptions, dopamine helps both strengthen and weaken synapses made by cortical cells onto cells of the subcortical striatum.
- Dynamic Shifts of Limited Working Memory Resources in Human Vision
Working memory is a flexibly allocated, but finite, resource; more attention given to an object means it is remembered more precisely, whereas other objects are remembered less well.
