Volume 493 Issue 7434, 31 January 2013

The United States must boost energy spending to make its mark on the climate debate.

Research balloons have taught us much about the atmosphere, and could now fly into space.

Scientists in restless territories such as Scotland, Quebec and Catalonia should embrace change, Colin Macilwain suggests.

The week in science: Big science award announced; US team drills through to subglacial lake; German science minister investigated for plagiarism.

Graphene and virtual brain win billion-euro competition.

Wide-ranging review edges towards single funding pot.

Researchers marshal technology in bid to thwart fungal outbreak in Central America.

Nature probe reveals lack of oversight of researchers who win two grants for similar projects.

Alternative transistor relies on exotic semiconductor.

President will use regulations to sidestep stalled Congress.

We may be seeing some of the Solar System's most striking objects during rare moments of glory.

Size limits have been a part of fisheries management for decades, but some fear that they are doing more harm than good.

Funding agencies may be paying out duplicate grants, according to an analysis by Harold R. Garner, Lauren J. McIver and Michael B. Waitzkin.

Dean Keith Simonton fears that surprising originality in the natural sciences is a thing of the past, as vast teams finesse knowledge rather than create disciplines.

Two takes on two generations of problem-solving 'geeks of war' fascinate Sharon Weinberger

Mark Peplow explores chemistry's golden age — and its brushes with Romanticism — at London's Royal Society.

Kevin Padian weighs up a life of a great science popularizer who resisted Darwinism.

Discoverer of life's third domain, the Archaea.

Some worker fire ants will tolerate multiple queens in their colony, but others only one. It turns out that this behaviour is governed by a gene cluster on an unusual pair of chromosomes. Two scientists describe what these findings mean to the fields of social evolution, genetics and beyond. See Letter p.664

The Sun's magnetic activity varies cyclically over a period of about 11 years. An analysis of a new, temporally extended proxy record of this activity hints at a possible planetary influence on the amplitude of the cycle.

The spliceosome complex removes intron sequences from RNA transcripts to form messenger RNA. The structure of a spliceosomal protein, Prp8, reveals the complex's active site and casts light on the origin of splicing. See Article p.638

Breakdown of dissolved organic nitrogen in the ocean had been thought to be the preserve of microbes at the surface. The discovery that these microbes are not up to the task calls for a reassessment of the biogeochemistry of this nitrogen pool.

Brush-like polymers with a rigidity similar to that of polymers in living cells have been synthesized and used to build force-responsive materials. The advance opens the door to applications in drug delivery and tissue engineering. See Letter p.651

Physicists have puzzled over a hidden electronic order in a uranium-based material for decades. A new theory attributes it to not just a single but a double breaking of time-reversal symmetry. See Article p.621

The formation of Ising quasiparticles in URu₂Si₂ results from ‘hastatic’ order, which breaks double time-reversal symmetry, mixing states of integer and half-integer spin, and accounts for the large entropy of condensation and the magnetic anomaly observed in torque magnetometry.

Mutations in mitochondrial DNA cause a wide range of disorders in humans, with a high prevalence; here it is shown that the nucleus of an affected woman’s egg could be inserted into healthy donor egg cytoplasm by spindle transfer, allowing the birth of healthy offspring.

Nuclear genome transfer using unfertilized donor oocytes is performed and shown to be effective in preventing the transmission of mitochondrial DNA mutations; the swapped oocytes can develop to the blastocyst stage, and produce parthenogenetic embryonic stem-cell lines that show normal karyotypes and only mitochondrial DNA from the donor oocyte.

The crystal structure of yeast Prp8 bound to a U5 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein particle assembly factor Aar2 is solved, offering insight into the architecture of the spliceosome active site, and supporting a possible common origin of eukaryotic pre-messenger-RNA splicing and group II intron splicing.

In combination with existing observations and detailed circumstellar models, the detection of hydrogen deuteride emission from the star TW Hydrae implies a circumstellar disk mass of more than 0.05 solar masses, which is enough to form a planetary system like our own.

A layered on-chip structure of magnetic thin films is engineered to permit the vertical transfer of magnetic information over near-atomic distances.

Thermal transitions of polyisocyanide single molecules to polymer bundles and finally networks lead to hydrogels mimicking the properties of biopolymer intermediate-filament networks; their analysis shows that bundling and chain stiffness are crucial design parameters for hydrogels.

Palaeoproxy evidence shows that the sea-surface-temperature gradient across the tropical Pacific Ocean strengthened during the Medieval Warm Period but weakens in model-projected future warming; this is because solar radiation induces greater precipitation for the same temperature change than greenhouse gases.

Riverine carbon-14 measurements show that anthropogenic disturbance of peat swamp forest in southeast Asia is causing increased release of carbon that has been stored in the peat for thousands of years.

Fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) are socially polymorphic, with some workers tolerating several queens in their colony and others tolerating just one; this study shows that a non-recombining supergene is responsible for this social polymorphism, and the operation of this genomic region is remarkably similar to that of sex chromosomes.

Calcium imaging in live mice shows that a rare population of unmyelinated sensory neurons—expressing the G-protein-coupled receptor MRGPRB4—responds specifically to massage-like stroking of hairy skin, with positive reinforcing behavioural effects.

Alzheimer’s-prone mice deficient in NLRP3 or caspase-1 fail to develop learning deficits and show reduced neuropathology.

Mice expressing a constitutively active form of RagA are unable to inhibit mTORC1 after birth and to trigger autophagy, and succumb perinatally.

Lymphocyte migration in the spleen is visualized live in mice using a real-time two-photon laser-scanning microscopy approach revealing that marginal zone and follicular B cells are highly motile and can shuttle between compartments, and integrin adhesion is the key to cellular retention in the marginal zone.

Evidence for a link between cellular senescence and metabolic regulation is provided, through the observation that p53 represses the expression of malic enzymes, thereby regulating NADPH, lipid and glutamine metabolism; in turn, this repression further activates p53, promoting cellular senescence.

To identify comprehensively factors involved in RNAi and microRNA-mediated gene expression regulation, this study performed a phylogenetic analysis of 86 eukaryotic species; the candidates this approach highlighted were subjected to Bayesian analysis with transcriptional and proteomic interaction data, identifying protein orthologues of already known RNAi silencing factors, as well as other hits involved in splicing, suggesting a connection between the two processes.

The structures of three distinct human transcription factor IID (TFIID) protein assemblies are solved using cryo-electron microscopy; by incorporating TAF8 and TAF10, the key structural changes that remodel TFIID during assembly are determined, particularly the transition from a symmetric core-TFIID to an asymmetric holo-complex.

Several crystal structures of the rotary motor of bacterial V-ATPase are solved at high resolution, representing different asymmetric structures and enabling the prediction of a model for the rotational mechanism of V₁-ATPase.

Informal networks are key to idea-sharing, argue Mark Fishman, Robert Cross and Brigitta Tadmor.

Computational ecologist's online open notebook brings opportunities.

Male life scientists have committed fraud more often than women.

US physics PhD holders are increasingly taking postdoc jobs.

Women seeking pay rises face more disapproval than men.

Postcard from the edge.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the grim reaper's primary calling card, but people can take steps to keep the world's number one killer at bay.

Better thought-out town planning and interior design can create healthier environments, but how to effectively implement the best designs remains uncertain.

Improving lifestyles could halve the number of deaths caused by cardiovascular disease, says Joep Perk.

New imaging methods and biomarkers may help identify people who are at risk for heart disease but are overlooked by standard risk assessments.

A hormone system adapted for self-preservation can break and fix your heart, say Sébastien Foulquier, Ulrike Muscha Steckelings and Thomas Unger.

Research is illuminating the molecular mechanisms that can cascade into debilitating heart disease.

New drugs and more focused therapy might cut down on atrial fibrillation and reduce the incidence of stroke.

The standard medications for hypertension and cholesterol have lingering issues, but new drugs hold promise for high-risk patients.

Mental factors beyond stress trigger physiological changes that can cause heart disease.

Heart disease causes almost one in three deaths worldwide. While improved diet and lifestyle changes play huge roles in combating the disease, discoveries about the biochemical and cellular mechanisms involved are bringing forth new treatments - from better drugs to surgical procedures.