Volume 461 Issue 7261, 10 September 2009

Research cannot flourish if data are not preserved and made accessible. All concerned must act accordingly.

The Obama administration must fund human space flight adequately, or stop speaking of 'exploration'.

Criteria for 'green buildings' need to make energy performance a priority — as do universities.

The week in science.

Crewed missions to the Moon are under threat, warns an expert panel.

Universities are working to bring sustainability to their campuses and classrooms, and could serve as a model for other institutions looking to go carbon-neutral. But there's no single way to grade the initiatives.

US researchers hope planned reforms will reduce the risk of prosecution.

Panel calls for joint advisory body to monitor research.

Europe aims to make chemical-exposure studies more predictive while using fewer animals.

Much work remains to provide predictions to governments.

Most researchers agree that open access to data is the scientific ideal, so what is stopping it happening? Bryn Nelson investigates why many researchers choose not to share.

Hagfish and lampreys are the only surviving fish without jaws. And they could solve an evolutionary mystery, finds Henry Nicholls.

Rapid release of prepublication data has served the field of genomics well. Attendees at a workshop in Toronto recommend extending the practice to other biological data sets.

Despite existing guidelines on access to data and bioresources, good practice is not widespread. A meeting of mouse researchers in Rome proposes ways to promote a culture of sharing.

A new book describes the rapid reshaping of human priorities needed to save the planet from global warming. Some of that change is already under way at the community level, explains Robert Costanza.

The gene that determines sex in birds has eluded scientists for a decade. Now this all-important locus is revealed as a gene on the Z chromosome known for its proclivity for determining sex in all kinds of animals.

A futuristic method of data storage depends on the 'write–read' action of a multitude of tiny silicon tips. The concept of dynamic superlubricity offers a way to avoid the wear that would otherwise cripple them.

Chromium isotopes provide an eyebrow-raising history of oxygenation of Earth's atmosphere. Not least, it seems that oxygen might have all but disappeared half a billion years after its initial rise.

Dying cells release 'find-me' factors that attract professional scavenger cells to engulf and digest them. These cellular invitations to dine can take unexpected forms.

Thinner can be better, at least for the industrially useful catalysts known as zeolites. A technique that allows single layers of zeolites to assemble from solution opens up a plethora of practical applications.

It seems that growth factors may instruct blood-cell progenitors to develop into specific mature cell types, actively determining lineage choice. But is this reductionist view of cell fate overly simplistic?

The levels of messenger RNA are determined by the rates of RNA decay and transcription, but although the details of transcriptional regulation are increasingly understood, the mechanism(s) controlling mRNA decay remain unclear. In yeast, it is hypothesized that ribosomes must be removed from mRNA before transcripts are destroyed. However, here it is shown that decay takes place while mRNAs are associated with actively translating ribosomes, allowing the last translocating ribosome to complete translation.

Accumulating evidence suggests that the human telomerase reverse transcriptase catalytic subunit (TERT) has a role in cell physiology independent to that of elongating telomeres. Here it is shown to interact with RMRP, a gene that is mutated in the syndrome cartilage–hair hypoplasia, to form a distinct ribonucleoprotein complex that has RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRP) activity and produces double-stranded RNAs that can be processed into small interfering RNAs.

It has long been thought that the lunar highland crust was formed by the crystallization and floatation of plagioclase from a global magma ocean, but the exact mechanism by which such a crust formed remains debated. Data from the Japanese SELENE spacecraft are now used to produce a clear and high spatial resolution view of the composition of the lunar crust. The existence of widely distributed crustal rocks with compositions approaching 100 per cent (by volume) plagioclase is revealed.

Precise and arbitrary control of an optical field that preserves optical coherence is an important requisite for many proposed photonic technologies. Here, a coherent optical memory based on photon echoes induced through controlled reversible inhomogeneous broadening is presented. The scheme allows storage of multiple pulses of light which can be arbitrarily recalled, time-stretched or split.

Zeolites — microporous crystalline aluminosilicates — are widely used in industry as size- and shape-selective catalysts, but the micropores that enable this catalytic activity also cause diffusion limitations that adversely affect it. This can be overcome by reducing the thickness of the zeolite crystals and thus improving molecular diffusion. Here it is shown that bifunctional surfactants can direct the formation of zeolite structures that are only one unit cell thick.

It is thought that oxygenation of the Earth's atmosphere occurred in two broad steps, but details of the evolution of atmospheric oxygenation remain uncertain. Chromium (Cr) stable isotopes from banded iron formations are now used to track the presence of Cr(VI) in Precambrian oceans, providing a time-resolved picture of the oxygenation history of the Earth's atmosphere–hydrosphere system.

If organisms are involved in a perpetual struggle for existence, how is it that communities are so diverse? The traditional answer is the ecological niche but this has recently been challenged by the neutral theory of biodiversity, which explains coexistence with the equivalence of competitors. Here, theory and experimentation are integrated in order to explore this problem; the results show that diversity declines when niches are removed.

Cyanobacteria are important contributors to photosynthetic productivity in the open oceans. Functional photosystem II components are known to be encoded in cyanophage genomes and are suggested to provide a fitness advantage to the virus by boosting host performance. It is now shown that photosystem I components can also be detected in cyanophages.

How do we change our minds? Here, subjects were asked to make decisions about a noisy visual stimulus, which they indicated by moving a handle. By following hand trajectories, it was possible to determine the rare occasions when subjects changed their minds halfway through a trial. The authors extend a model developed to account for the timing and accuracy of the initial decision to explain these subsequent changes of mind.

Although sex determination in birds, as in mammals, is chromosomally based, its mechanism has been a long-standing mystery. In birds, the homogametic sex is male (ZZ) and the heterogametic sex is female (ZW); one hypothesis is that two doses of a Z-linked gene are required for male development. Here it is shown that reducing expression of the conserved Z-linked gene DMRT1 feminizes the embryonic gonads in genetically male (ZZ) chicken embryos.

Although DNA sequencing costs have fallen dramatically, they are still too high for whole genome sequencing to be used to routinely identify rare and novel variants in large cohorts. The targeted capture and massively parallel sequencing of the exomes of 12 humans is now reported. Freeman–Sheldon syndrome is used as a proof-of-concept that candidate genes for monogenic disorders can be identified by exome sequencing of a small number of unrelated, affected individuals.

Fruitflies instinctively avoid CO₂, for example that produced by stressed fellow flies, but they overcome this avoidance response in some environments that contain CO₂, such as ripening fruits. Here, a new class of odorants present in food is identified that directly inhibit CO₂-sensitive neurons in the antenna — not, as one would expect, indirectly via other olfactory pathways.

The efficient removal of apoptotic cells in vivo is thought to be due to the release of 'find-me' signals by apoptotic cells that recruit motile phagocytes. Here, the caspase-dependent release of ATP and UTP during the early stages of apoptosis is demonstrated. ATP and UTP are found to act as chemoattractants in a process mediated through the ATP/UTP receptor P2Y₂, which is present on monocytes and macrophages.

The tyrosine kinase receptor ErbB2 has been implicated in cancer, particularly breast cancer. It has been suggested that its oncogenic signalling properties result from the absence of a key 'tether' in the extracellular region that autoinhibits other human ErbB receptors. ErbB2 is now shown to be the closest structural relative of the dEGFR receptor in Drosophila; although dEGFR also lacks a tether, a distinct set of autoinhibitory interactions keep it inactive.

Electron cryomicroscopy (cryo-EM) is an increasingly powerful method for looking at the structures of large soluble proteins that does not require crystallization of the proteins. Here, the first single-particle cryo-EM study of a membrane protein is reported — the human large-conductance calcium- and voltage-activated potassium channel (BK) — in a lipid environment.

Master's programme recognizes need for bridge into industry.

Applying for jobs can be like finding the perfect date.

Foreign admissions down at US graduate schools.

Colossal data management effort could open up bioinformatics opportunities.

IT sector hurting but industry will remain a magnet for venture-capital investment.

Can Philadelphia's biotechnology industry absorb the jobs lost from pharmaceutical companies? Kerry Grens investigates.

An exercise in control.

An organism's genome consists of a complex code that specifies not only the DNA sequence of genes but also how and when they are transcribed. Recent technological advances have broadened our understanding of how this genomic DNA is transcribed into RNA and how various DNA sequences regulate gene activity. This research is improving the way in which genomic information can guide research into disease.