Volume 480 Issue 7378, 22 December 2011

Brazilian lawmakers should not weaken their stance on deforestation to appease landowners.

As the year ends, Nature highlights individuals who rose to prominence — or fell from grace.

The discovery of the Higgs boson will complete the standard model — but it could also point the way to a deeper understanding, says Gordon Kane.

The week in science: Cornell to build US$2-billion science campus in New York; Kepler finds a twin Earth; and Fukushima is declared to be in cold shutdown.

Scientists call for stricter biosafety measures for dangerous avian-influenza variants.

Bill tops up health, energy and translational-science spending.

US-government-funded studies to be evaluated under stricter criteria.

Many US agencies now have policies banning political manipulation of research — but ambiguities remain.

From neutrinos to stem cells: a round-up of the year in research and science policy.

Flying rhinos and furious rats vie with graphene knots and space technology in 2011’s most striking pictures.

Ten people who mattered this year.

The past year has shown how prone a highly networked society is to abrupt change. The future of our complex world, says Philip Ball, depends on becoming resilient to shocks.

Peer review continues long after a paper is published, and that analysis should become part of the scientific record, say Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky.

Carl Zimmer charts the boom in electronic publishing and what that spells for wood pulp and ink.

From stretchy ice cream to wire-brushed crackling, Harold McGee digests an eclectic modernist menu.

For the past decade, physicist Kenneth Libbrecht has been studying how ice crystals form, taking thousands of photographs of their intricate structures. He describes how he grows snowflakes in his lab at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and never tires of tracking the real thing in the far north.

Philip Ball celebrates the fourth centenary of Johannes Kepler's ice-crystal analysis.

Biologist who revolutionized our view of early cell evolution.

A planetary system has been found in a startlingly tight orbit around an evolved star. The finding challenges the idea that close-in planets are destroyed as their host star evolves. See Letter p.496

The major threats to amphibian species include pandemic disease and changes in climate and in land use. A study of the global distributions of these threats predicts that they will affect most amphibians by 2080. See Letter p.516

A technique for cooling ultracold atoms in optical lattices has been demonstrated. This advance should allow the physics of strongly correlated systems, including that of quantum magnetism, to be explored. See Letter p.500

Unusual lattice vibrations have been discovered in scandium trifluoride — a simple compound that shrinks when heated. This finding may help to explain the phenomenon of negative thermal expansion.

In mammals, molecular clocks regulate transcription and glucose homeostasis. One way they do so is by controlling glucocorticoid-receptor signalling, which suggests that clocks are embedded in liver metabolism. See Letter p.552

Adapted extracts from selected News & Views articles published this year.

Recent advances in amide-bond-forming reactions are reviewed and summarized, highlighting the successful implementation of new synthetic methodologies and the limitations that need to be overcome to efficiently make the next generation of conventional small-molecule pharmaceuticals, therapeutic peptides, and natural and non-natural proteins.

An overview of the latest advances in cancer immunotherapy.

Base-pair-resolution genomic maps of DNA methylation are generated in the mouse, providing new insights in gene regulation.

Two planets around the post-red-giant star KIC 05807616 are shown to have survived being engulfed by the former red giant

A type of interaction blockade that occurs for ultracold atoms confined to an optical lattice may offer a means of reducing the temperature and, thus, entropy of quantum gases to the level necessary for quantum simulation.

A solution-processing method known as solution shearing is used to introduce lattice strain to organic semiconductors, thus improving charge carrier mobility.

A continuous record of hydrologic variability for the past 17,000 years at the mouth of the Zambezi River shows that hydrologic conditions in southeast Africa were controlled by variations in local insolation and migrations of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, rather than by Indian Ocean temperature.

Amphibian populations are declining; here, the spatial distribution and interactions of threats from climate change, land-use change and the spread of fungal disease are assessed.

Sequencing of Medicago truncatula, a model organism of legume biology, shows that genome duplications had a role in the evolution of endosymbiotic nitrogen fixation.

Natural variation in hecw-1 encoding an E3 ubiquitin ligase influences the avoidance of pathogenic bacteria by Caenorhabditis elegans and forms a molecular basis for behavioural variation.

Nectin-4 is identified as a receptor for measles virus on epithelial cells, and measles virus might use nectin-4 for emergence in the airways.

Thymus-derived regulatory T cells are activated by recognition of peripheral self antigen, persist in the target tissue on cessation of antigen exposure, and respond to re-exposure to self antigen with enhanced functional activity.

Human neurons derived from induced pluripotent stem cells permit the study of aberrant protein processing and aggregation in Machado–Joseph disease.

A new strategy for derivation of human midbrain dopamine neurons from pluripotent cells was developed; transplantation of the neurons in mice, rats and parkinsonian monkeys show they are a promising source of cells for applications in regenerative medicine.

Circadian co-regulators cryptochrome 1 and 2 are shown to alter globally the transcriptional response to glucocorticoids in mouse embryonic fibroblasts.

Genome-wide analysis shows that H2B S112 O-linked to N-acetylglucosamine is frequently located near transcribed genes, suggesting that histone GlcNAcylation facilitates transcription of the genes.

The NMR structure of the murine leukaemia virus recoding translational signal is determined, giving insight into the mechanism of read-through in retroviruses.

Crystallographic studies show that high-molecular-mass drugs bind to the bacterial multidrug transporter AcrB at a previously unseen ‘proximal’ binding pocket before peristaltic transfer to the known ‘distal’ pocket, whereas low-molecular-mass drugs bind directly to the distal pocket.

NMR spectroscopy is used to elucidate the intermediates in the bacterial transformation of alkylphosphonates to phosphate, showing that the essential bond cleavage occurs in a radical-based reaction in the presence of S-adenosyl-l-methionine.

Nature's mentoring awards honour three scientists in France.

Postdoc committees can give insight into industry career paths, argue Christopher Tsang and Michael Fisher.

Robotic reflections.

Although modern medicine is established in Asia, traditional medicine also plays a big role in people's healthcare — and is gaining in popularity in other countries too.

The concepts of Asia's traditional medicines might sound alien to Western ears, but some of them are starting to evolve to fit scientific investigation.

Systems science can provide guidance in capturing the complementary approaches to healthcare, says Jan van der Greef.

Many ingredients in traditional herbal medicines cannot be absorbed by the human gut. Could our microbial inhabitants do for us what we can't do ourselves?

The repertoire of traditional Chinese medicine could offer rich pickings for modern drug developers, but researchers must first define and test herbal concoctions.

Applying modern intellectual property standards to ancient medicines.

The editor of Nature China reports on his first visit to a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner to find out how this ancient practice is dispensed in the twenty-first century — and to see if anything can be done to relieve his back pain.

The practice of traditional medicine in Japan includes many modern techniques but faces numerous challenges — including political pressure from China.

Traditional plant-based remedies are not risk-free. Doctors and patients need to be informed about the possible side effects, says Masatomo Sakurai.

Can Western guidelines govern Eastern herbal traditions?

To investigate traditional Asian medicines properly, we need to rethink the way they are tested, say Liang Liu, Elaine Lai-Han Leung and Xiaoying Tian.

With an ingredients list that includes rhino horn and tiger bone, traditional Asian medicine is on a collision course with wildlife preservation.