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Volume 445 Issue 7127, 1 February 2007

Editorial

  • Human spaceflight is no excuse for ignoring the home planet, which needs constant monitoring from space.

    Editorial

    Advertisement

  • A public debate about renewing Britain's nuclear weaponry is undermined by excessive secrecy.

    Editorial
  • Research cuts by the world's largest drug company reflect a challenging outlook for the industry.

    Editorial
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Research Highlights

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News

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News in Brief

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Correction

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Business

  • Physicists at the University of Cambridge are leading a revolution in how data can best be displayed. Katharine Sanderson reports.

    • Katharine Sanderson
    Business
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News Feature

  • Three years ago, President George W. Bush told NASA to return American astronauts to the Moon. Geoff Brumfiel reports on how far they have got.

    • Geoff Brumfiel
    News Feature
  • Extracting a cell from a budding human embryo can expose genetic defects, but does it actually help generate more healthy babies? Bruce Goldman investigates.

    • Bruce Goldman
    News Feature
  • Is parachuting into the Amazonian jungle any way to save an ecosystem? One team of biologists thinks so. Thomas Hayden joined them on a trip to Peru to find out what they do.

    • Thomas Hayden
    News Feature
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Correspondence

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Books & Arts

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Connections

  • If handled appropriately, data about Internet-based communication and interactivity could revolutionize our understanding of collective human behaviour.

    • Duncan J. Watts
    Connections
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News & Views

  • The spiciness of foods such as horseradish is perceived through sensory neurons of the pain pathway. The lingering pungency of some such foods results from chemical modification of the channels that trigger these neurons.

    • Michael J. Caterina
    News & Views
  • Put two types of crystal together in one lattice, and the resulting material can have properties greater than the sum of those of its individual components. Until now, that's been a difficult trick to pull off on a large scale.

    • James R. Heath
    News & Views
  • The behaviour of water in the atmosphere is a poorly understood part of the hydrological cycle. Applying the principles of isotope chemistry to satellite data provides a powerful approach for improving the situation.

    • Thom Rahn
    News & Views
  • Despite gold's reputation as an inert element, chemists have mined a rich seam of catalytic reactions that use this metal. The latest example stakes out gold's claim as a versatile catalyst.

    • Steven P. Nolan
    News & Views
  • Which end of a fly embryo becomes the head is partly dictated by the accumulation of bicoid RNA at the anterior pole. The protein that amasses the RNA turns out to be an old acquaintance from a different context.

    • Tor Erik Rusten
    • Harald Stenmark
    News & Views
  • Electrical circuits might be regarded as rather mundane pieces of classical engineering. But their electromagnetic fields are, like light, a quantum object whose energy comes in discrete units — photons.

    • Frank K. Wilhelm
    • Enrique Solano
    News & Views
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Article

  • Production of stomata, the gas-exchange structure in plants, requires asymmetric cell division and cell type differentiation in an orderly manner. Identification of a key switch gene for the fate transition of stomatal precursor cells revealed a compelling view that consecutive actions of three closely related bHLH proteins control stomatal differentiation, a mechanism strikingly similar to cell-type differentiation in animals.

    • Lynn Jo Pillitteri
    • Daniel B. Sloan
    • Keiko U. Torii
    Article
  • The structure of TPP1's oligonucleotide binding fold contains features that are particularly characteristic of TEBPβ. When the POT1–TPP1 complex is bound to telomeric DNA, it does not inhibit telomerase activity, as other telomere binding proteins do. Instead, the presence of POT1–TPP1 unexpectedly stimulates telomerase activity and processivity.

    • Feng Wang
    • Elaine R. Podell
    • Ming Lei
    Article
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Letter

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Prospects

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Movers

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Networks and Support

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Career View

  • Choosing a mentor can be excruciating.

    • Maria Ocampo-Hafalla
    Career View
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Recruitment

  • Women, it seems, often get a raw deal in science — so how can discrimination be tackled?

    • Lutz Bornmann
    Recruitment
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Authors

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Brief Communications Arising

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