Contents
Vol 355, Issue 6322
Contents
This Week in Science
Editorial
Editors' Choice
Products & Materials
- New Products
A weekly roundup of information on newly offered instrumentation, apparatus, and laboratory materials of potential interest to researchers.
In Brief
In Depth
- Science suffers in cold war over polar base
Researchers frozen out as parties vie for control of research station.
- Your self-driving car could kill radio astronomy
Emerging technologies pose challenges to observatories.
- Mixed results from cancer replications unsettle field
Only two confirmations in first five results.
- Unique free electron laser laboratory opens in China
New device will probe smog and other gaseous phenomena.
- How do gut microbes help herbivores? Counting the ways
Symbiotic bacteria lend talents that range from recycling nitrogen to taming plant toxins.
- A half-billion-dollar bid to head off emerging diseases
Nascent vaccine coalition has funds and early targets.
Feature
- Taming rabies
The best way to stop people from dying of rabies is to protect dogs. Can that strategy work in the world's poorest countries?
Working Life
Letters
Books et al.
- Beyond Schrödinger's cat
A physics-focused tour of the animal kingdom offers inspiration for engineers and roboticists
- Born this way?
A spirited polemic takes aim at biological sex differences but misses opportunities to highlight relevant science
Policy Forum
- Closing global achievement gaps in MOOCs
Brief interventions address social identity threat at scale
Perspectives
- Technology beats corruption
Biometric smart cards help to reduce corruption in cash transfer programs in India
- Enzymes at work are enzymes in motion
Protein motions and water both play key roles in enzyme catalysis
- Big-data approaches to protein structure prediction
Metagenomics sequence data give protein structure prediction a boost
- Chromosomal chaos silences immune surveillance
A high level of chromosomal structural abnormality can suppress the immune response to tumor cells
Association Affairs
Research Articles
- The role of dimer asymmetry and protomer dynamics in enzyme catalysis
An enzyme homodimer engages both subunits—one binds substrate in its active site; the other allosterically enhances catalysis.
- Tumor aneuploidy correlates with markers of immune evasion and with reduced response to immunotherapy
Human tumors that display extensive chromosomal aberrations appear to be more resistant to immune attack.
- Distortion of histone octamer core promotes nucleosome mobilization by a chromatin remodeler
The nucleosome histone octamer can be deformed by a nucleosome remodeling enzyme to slide nucleosomes out of the way.
Review
Reports
- Time-resolved x-ray absorption spectroscopy with a water window high-harmonic source
Ultrafast x-ray absorption spectroscopy at carbon and sulfur frequencies tracks dissociative dynamics of CF4+ and SF6+.
- Transformation of bulk alloys to oxide nanowires
Alcohol extraction of lithium from aluminum or magnesium alloys creates alkoxide nanowires that are transformed to metal nanowires on heating.
- Scaling carbon nanotube complementary transistors to 5-nm gate lengths
Carbon nanotube field-effect transistors approach the quantum limit of one electron per switching operation.
- Regional and global sea-surface temperatures during the last interglaciation
Sea surface temperatures during the last interglaciation were like those of today.
- Root diffusion barrier control by a vasculature-derived peptide binding to the SGN3 receptor
A waterproofing layer in plant roots is surveyed and maintained by peptide hormones and their receptors.
- A peptide hormone required for Casparian strip diffusion barrier formation in Arabidopsis roots
A waterproofing layer in plant roots is surveyed and maintained by peptide hormones and their receptors.
- The receptor kinase FER is a RALF-regulated scaffold controlling plant immune signaling
Regulation of plant immune responses involves competition between antagonistic but unique peptides for a broadly accessible receptor.
- Protein structure determination using metagenome sequence data
Combining metagenome data with protein structure prediction generates models for 614 families with unknown structures.
- Mechanistic basis for a molecular triage reaction
Reconstitution of a protein triage pathway shows how relative binding affinities and kinetics regulate protein fate.
Erratum
About The Cover

COVER Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park, illustrating the evolution of life on Earth from hot (middle) to colder environments (edges). Bacteria with different survival temperatures create the color scale. To study the mechanisms of enzymatic thermoadaptation, Nguyen et al. reconstructed enzyme activity over 3 billion years in response to cooling temperatures. See page 289.
Photo: Tom Murphy/National Geographic Creative