Volume 454 Issue 7202, 17 July 2008

The Templeton Foundation's exploration of science and faith merits tolerance, not outright rejection.

Britain's 'big science' funding agency is now in a position to regain much-needed credibility.

Antarctica's hidden water will keep its secrets for another year.

Discovery calls into question the country's ability to track its nuclear material.

Plan to use chelating agents on children comes under fire.

Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby, was born 30 years ago this month after being conceived outside the body using in vitro fertilization (IVF). Helen Pearson asks what developments in reproductive medicine could have an equivalent impact in the next three decades.

Geological map pinpoints fresh areas of contamination in Asia.

Initiative aims to be one-stop shop for articles.

Scribbles on the margins of science.

Radar data offer clues to turbine potential.

Biologists launch knockout resource.

Not all NASA launches need rockets and countdowns. Eric Hand sees the alternative in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

Our actions have driven top predators from much of the world, resulting in complex consequences for many ecosystems, explains Stuart Pimm.

Ruth Deech, former chair of Britain's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, reflects on how the science that gave an infertile couple a baby has been extended to saving lives.

Snakes have graceful, elongated bodies containing hundreds of vertebrae. This extreme of morphology stems from evolutionary changes in a developmental clock that regulates body patterning.

Heavy atoms can be detected by electron microscopy, but lighter atoms, such as carbon or hydrogen, are more elusive. These bashful atoms can now be pinpointed if they are adsorbed to a single layer of graphite.

That mutations in the SOD1 enzyme underlie inherited forms of a motor neuron disease known as ALS is clear. But the question of what the consequences of such mutations are seems to have more than one answer.

From the timing, it looks as if an episode of marked oceanic oxygen deficiency during the Cretaceous was the result of undersea volcanism. Studies of such events are relevant to the warming world of today.

How cells sense nutrients to control growth is largely unknown. One missing link involved in conveying the nutrient signal to the TOR protein, which regulates growth, seems to be the Rag proteins.

For the cell-division cycle to progress, hundreds of genes and proteins must be coordinately regulated. Systems-level studies of this cycle show that positive-feedback loops help to keep events in sync.

Philanthropist at the interface of religion and science.

In budding yeast, the Start checkpoint in the G1 cell cycle phase is a point after which cells are irreversibly committed to cell division. Previous work has identified a linear pathway that triggers the Start transition. In contrast, analyses of single cells reveal that Start represents a positive feedback-dependent sharp switch that coordinates the simultaneous transcription of a large group of cell cycle genes and the budding of a daughter cell.

During mitosis, the two copies of each chromosome pair are held together by cohesin. Three subunits of cohesin form a ring structure and it has been proposed that the sister chromatids are tethered together by being encircled by cohesin rings. This paper provides the most direct evidence to date that cohesin rings topologically entrap two DNA molecules.

The origin and growth of magnetic fields in galaxies is still something of an enigma. Quasars with strong MgII absorption lines are unambiguously associated with larger rotation measures, which requires that organized fields of surprisingly high strength are associated with normal galaxies when the Universe was only about half its present age.

Results from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) of phyllosilicate-rich regions are reported. It is discovered that stratigraphic relationships show olivine-rich materials overlying phyllosilicate-bearing units, indicating cessation of aqueous alteration before emplacement of the olivine-bearing unit. It is also found phyllosilicates in sedimentary deposits clearly laid by water, pointing to a rich diversity of Noachian environments conducive to habitability.

A 'circuit' quantum electrodynamics system where a superconducting qubit acts as an atom-like two-energy level system and is embedded in a microwave transmission circuit (acting as the optical cavity) is studied. In this system, it is demonstrated that the creation of pure quantum states, known as Fock states, which give specific numbers of energy quanta, in this case photons. Fock states with up to six photons are prepared and analysed.

Detecting individual low-atomic-number atoms is extremely challenging using conventional transmission electron microscopy. This paper reports the direct imaging in a transmission electron microscope (TEM) of atomic carbon and hydrogen using graphene as a substrate which provides a near-invisible background. The approach could be used for the direct study at the atomic level of organic species such as biomolecules.

Oceanic anoxic events (OAEs) were episodes of widespread marine anoxia during which large amounts of organic carbon were buried on the ocean floor under oxygen-deficient bottom waters, and OAE2 is the most widespread and best defined OAE of the mid-Cretaceous. It is found that that the marine osmium isotope record changes abruptly just at or before the onset of the OAE2 at two distant sites, and it is calculated that over 97 per cent of the total osmium content at both sites is magmatic in origin, indicative of a widespread magmatic pulse at the onset of OAE2.

In contrast to marine environments, the occurrence of nitrogen fixation in terrestrial environments does not seem to be dependent on nitrogen availability. An alternative framework is proposed, based on the assumptions that enhanced phosphate acquisition by nitrogen fixing plants provides an advantage in phosphate limited environments and that temperature limits nitrogen fixation in high latitudes.

This paper shows that disturbance, in this case experimental acidification of a whole lake, can cause communities to shift from seemingly random incoherent dynamics to strongly synchronous dynamics.

The vertebrate body axis is divided into a number of segments or 'somites', such as the number of vertebrae. But what controls vertebra number, and its variation between species? This paper postulates that the number depends on a balance between the division of the body into somites (the segmentation clock rate) and the overall rate of development, as established by showing that the large number of vertebrae in snakes comes from a much greater segmentation clock speed in snakes, relative to development as a whole, than in other vertebrates.

The effect of conditioned reinforcement in rats is studied using an experimental paradigm that differentiated between cues evoking thoughts of specific outcomes or cues that evoked general stimulus–emotion representations. It is reported that rats were willing to work for either form of cue, but that the orbitofrontal cortex was important for only conditioned reinforcement involving cues that evoked thoughts of specific outcomes.

This study reports a function for IGFBP-4 as a cardiogenic growth factor, showing that IGFBP-4 enhances cardiomyocyte differentiation in vitro, and knockdown of IGFBP-4 attenuated cardiomyogenesis both in vitro and in vivo. The effect was independent of IGF binding, and was mediated by canonical Wnt signalling. IGFBP-4 physically interacted with a Wnt receptor Frizzled 8 (Frz8) and a Wnt co-receptor low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 6 (LRP6), and inhibited Wnt3A binding to Frz8 and LRP6.

The T_H17 pathway is thought to contribute to the pathogenesis of a number of human autoimmune diseases. This study examines which cytokines are required for the production of IL-17A by memory and naive human CD4⁺ T cells.

Chromosomes separate abruptly during anaphase of mitosis, but how this switch-like behaviour is achieved is unclear. Cohesion between sister chromatids is dissolved by the protease separase, which is held in check by securin. In this paper, a positive feedback loop regulating the ubiquitination and destruction of securin is proposed to make anaphase more switch-like.

Flexizyme is an in vitro evolved ribozyme which can specifically add an amino acid onto the terminal 3'OH of a tRNA. The structure of flexizyme joined to a tRNA mimic is solved. Interestingly, the RNA displays many of the known aminoacyl tRNA synthetase–tRNA interactions, approaches the tRNA in a similar manner, and exhibits an induced fit conformation that enhances specificity.

New leadership coming to Human Frontier Science Program Organization.

Max Planck Society hits the rails in India in search of talent.

The random walk of my career.

Beware the long arm of the law.

Animals not only pursue happiness, but also specific expectations.