Volume 487 Issue 7405, 5 July 2012

The UK government's latest appointment offers hope for British science.

The printing press changed the world; three-dimensional printing could do the same.

Biomedical scientists risk forgetting what they’re working for if they don’t connect with the people who are affected by their research, says Tal Nuriel.

The week in science: First weight-loss pill approved for more than a decade; GSK pleads guilty to health-care fraud; and Gabon burns ivory in stance against illegal trade.

US academic centres fear they will lose out as upheld Affordable Care Act cuts payments.

Industry urged towards sustainable farming practices as rising demand drives deforestation.

Experts worry that uranium-enrichment technique could be used to make bombs.

Conflict at Kenya Medical Research Institute exposes widespread tensions.

Uri Simonsohn explains how he uncovered wrongdoing in psychology research.

External groups hope scrutiny will restrain government.

Immunologist Mark Walport, head of one of the world’s largest biomedical charities, will take on role in 2013.

Three-dimensional printers are opening up new worlds to research.

Much of our neural circuitry is fixed during childhood. Researchers are finding ways to unglue it, raising hopes for treating many brain disorders.

Linguistic analysis reveals how advisers influenced President Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis 50 years ago, argues David R. Gibson.

Danger from nuclear weapons is mounting. It is time to take control of the nuclear fuel cycle and move towards a world without warheads, says Scott D. Sagan.

With the annual exodus from labs and lecture theatres on the horizon, Nature's regular reviewers and editors share some gripping holiday reads.

Palaeoanthropologist who pioneered description of African hominins.

Fossils from a new South African site show that some human ancestors ate fruits and leaves, as do most primates today. The finding challenges ideas of why and how the human lineage split from the ancestors of extant apes. See Letter p.90

It seems that embryonic stem cells regularly pass through a transient state during which they can generate all the cell types of an animal, including those of the placenta. See Article p.57

A rapid drop in infrared emission from a Sun-like star could indicate that a drastic event has cleared a circumstellar disk of dusty debris — the material from which planets form. See Letter p.74

Uncovering the contribution of rare species to ecosystems is crucial to predicting the impacts of biodiversity loss. It seems that these species can be ecologically very different from their common relatives, but only in some cases.

Western-style diets could be contributing to the rapid increase in inflammatory bowel disease. New research suggests that dietary fat can alter bile composition and so favour the growth of pro-inflammatory gut microbes. See Letter p.104

A remarkable reaction that reverses the chemical behaviour of molecules known as 1,3-diketones allows a new strategy that could be used to prepare a range of potentially useful, naturally occurring compounds. See Letter p.86

A rare cell subpopulation within mouse embryonic stem cell cultures is identified that exhibits properties of two-cell (2C) embryos; the interconversion of ES cells to 2C cells correlates with endogenous retroviral activity.

After introducing the T-cell receptor and other essential signalling genes, a non-immune cell is capable of displaying the early events of T-cell activation when placed in contact with antigen-presenting cells, and the initial signalling in this reconstituted system is shown to require the spatial reorganization of molecules at the cell interface.

A simulation of the distribution of the first stars at a cosmic age of about 180 million years reveals that the 21-cm atomic hydrogen signature of these stars is an enhanced (ten millikelvin) fluctuation signal on scales of a few hundred million light-years.

Observations of a young, Sun-like star indicate that orbiting debris from the process of terrestrial planet formation has undergone an unprecedented phase of rapid evolution that cannot be explained by any known physical model.

Propagating optical plasmons — collective electron excitations coupled to photons — are launched in graphene and studied with near-field optical microscopy, revealing ultra-strong optical field confinement and gate-tunable control of optical fields at nanoscale dimensions.

Plasmons are directly launched in graphene, and their key parameters — propagation and attenuation — are studied with near-field infrared nano-imaging.

A simple, regioselective and enantioselective method for allylating β-diketones has been developed, significantly expanding the pool of easily accessible enantiomerically enriched and functionally complex tertiary carbinols.

Phytolith, stable carbon isotope, and dental microwear texture data for two individuals of Au. sediba, 2-million-year-old hominins from South Africa, show that they consumed a mostly C₃ diet that probably included harder foods, and both dicotyledons (for example, tree leaves, fruits, and wood or bark) and monocotyledons (for example, grasses and sedges); this diet contrasts with previously described diets of other early hominin species.

Sequencing of the genome of the butterfly Heliconius melpomene shows that closely related Heliconius species exchange protective colour-pattern genes promiscuously.

Subcellular compartmentalization established by mobilization of intracellular calcium stores in RIA interneurons provides a means of self-motion monitoring and a cellular basis for integrating sensory and motor signals in nematodes’ brains.

Consumption of a diet high in milk-derived fat is shown to increase the abundance of sulphite-reducing bacteria by altering bile composition, leading to inflammation and colitis in genetically susceptible mice.

In a porcine cystic fibrosis model, lack of cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) is shown to result in acidification of airway surface liquid (ASL), and this decrease in pH reduces the ability of ASL to kill bacteria; the findings directly link loss of the CFTR anion channel to impaired defence against bacterial infection.

SIRT7 is an H3K18Ac-selective deacetylase that has a pivotal role in chromatin regulation, maintenance of cellular transformation programs and tumour formation in vivo.

Nanobody-aided X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy are used to describe the Ca²⁺-dependent polymerization dynamics of the S-layer of the Geobacillus stearothermophilus cell wall.

In synthetic biology, the use of regulatory proteins that bind either DNA or RNA to reprogram mammalian cellular functions allows a variety of computational ‘logic circuits’ to be built in a plug-and-play manner, which may pave the way for precise and robust control of future gene-based and cell-based therapies.

Non-native English speakers face challenges when trying to publish. But there are resources that can provide help.

Cancer researcher turns scientific photography into his main career pursuit.

There's always time.