Volume 495 Issue 7441, 21 March 2013

Successes at last week’s wildlife-trade treaty meeting must be backed up with action.

Latest pontiff looks to enhance social relevance of Catholic Church.

The new head of the European Research Council will have more power and focus than former presidents, says Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker.

The week in science: AstraZeneca cuts research posts as part of restructuring plans; Japan recovers methane from seabed hydrates; and Internet innovators win million-pound prize.

NIH likely to retire hundreds of government-owned chimpanzees.

Unburned methane could be adding to the environmental impact of gas flares in North Dakota.

Curiosity’s memory glitch prompts mission scientists to pick up the pace.

Online bioinformatics companies rush to provide genomics platforms and software for hospitals.

After decades of preparation, firm moves forward with plans to harvest mineral-rich nuggets from sea floor.

Scientists and publishers clash over licences that would let machines read research papers.

As an early adopter of astronomical technology, Andrea Ghez is revealing secrets about the giant black hole at the Galaxy's centre.

The world's longest-running experiments remind us that science is a marathon, not a sprint.

Planetary stability must be integrated with United Nations targets to fight poverty and secure human well-being, argue David Griggs and colleagues.

Roads are proliferating across the planet. Located and designed wisely, they can help rather than harm the environment, argue William F. Laurance and Andrew Balmford.

Henry Nicholls relishes the history of the 'ape man' who braved the dangers of Gabon — and of Victorian England.

Christopher Boehm relishes a wide-ranging assessment of primate morality.

Oren Harman assesses the first biography of biologist W. D. Hamilton, the 'greatest Darwinian since Darwin'.

A glasses-free three-dimensional display technology has been invented that may be an exciting alternative to current solutions for mobile devices. It makes use of an optical effect known to school physics students. See Letter p.348

Haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells move from the bone marrow into the circulation to replenish normal blood-cell levels. Inhibiting a prostaglandin-mediated signalling pathway may promote this process. See Letter p.365

The finding that global mass loss from landscapes is dominated by physical erosion and chemical weathering from flat terrain, rather than from mountains, challenges our understanding of how Earth's surface evolves.

Mutations in the promoter sequence of the gene encoding a component of the enzyme telomerase have been discovered in patients with melanoma, suggesting that mutations in this regulatory region can drive tumour development.

Geometrical frustration results from an incompatibility between the spatial arrangement of a system's constituents and the interactions between them. The effect has now been observed in a triangular triple quantum dot.

The versatility of RNA seems limitless. The latest surprise comes from circular RNAs, which are found to counteract the function of another class of regulatory RNA — the microRNAs. See Article p.333 & Letter p.384

Bright, gravitationally magnified galaxies have been found across a wide span of cosmic time. The first results from the still-growing ALMA telescope show its power to reveal these galaxies' redshifts and internal structure. See Letter p.344

Advances in population genetics and genome sequencing have made it possible to identify anonymous fragments of DNA that have undergone selection. This yields some evolutionary answers, and a panoply of puzzles. See Letter p.360

Multi-electrode cortical recordings during the production of different consonant-vowel syllables reveal distinct speech-articulator representations that are arranged somatotopically, with temporal and spatial patterns of activity across the neural population corresponding to phonetic features and dynamics.

Biochemical, functional and computational analyses are combined to show that circular RNAs are a large class of animal RNAs with regulatory potency.

The authors describe how the eukaryotic replicative helicase is recruited to origins and reveal a novel ATPase-dependent quality control mechanism.

A spectroscopic redshift survey of extraordinarily bright millimetre-wave-selected sources of carbon monoxide line emission — originating from star-forming molecular gas — shows that at least ten of these sources lie at redshifts greater than four, indicating that the fraction of dusty starburst galaxies at high redshifts is greater than previously thought.

A multiview, dynamic three-dimensional display suitable for mobile devices is achieved by using a set of directional grating pixels etched on the backlight surface; such glasses-free displays could revolutionize areas such as data visualization, medical training and entertainment.

A global synthesis of stable nitrogen isotopic values in lacustrine sediments indicates a period of declining enrichment from 15,000 to 7,000 years before present, probably in response to terrestrial carbon sequestration.

Sea-floor magnetotelluric data are used to image the electrical conductivity of the lithosphere–asthenosphere boundary offshore of Nicaragua; a high-conductivity layer confined to depths of 45–70 kilometres is found, interpreted to be a partially molten channel of low viscosity.

Whole-genome resequencing of dogs and wolves helps identify genomic regions that are likely to represent targets for selection during dog domestication.

Endogenous prostaglandin E₂ (PGE₂) is a potent regulator of haematopoietic stem cell (HSC) retention in the bone marrow; inhibition of endogenous PGE₂ signalling by non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs results in enhanced HSC and haematopoietic progenitor cell mobility via E-prostanoid 4 (EP4) receptor antagonism.

The authors show that the pluripotency factor NANOG interacts with TET1 and TET2 methylcytosine hydroxylases, and that the hydroxylation of 5-methylcytosine to 5-hydroxymethylcytosine enhances the efficiency of somatic cell reprogramming in a NANOG-dependent manner.

A microscopy study of the cellular basis of mammalian skeletal elongation in development and evolution reveals three phases of chondrocyte volume enlargement, including a phase of disproportionate fluid increase.

A shortage of constitutive brown adipose tissue is shown to result when brown adipogenic progenitor cells lack a type of BMP receptor; however, this leads to an increase in sympathetic input to white adipose tissue and a compensatory browning of white fat depots.

A natural circular RNA termed ciRS-7 is shown to function as a negative regulator of microRNA; ciRS-7 acts as an efficient sponge for the microRNA miR-7, and is resistant to the usual microRNA-mediated degradation pathway of exonucleolytic RNA decay.

This study shows that autophagosomes form at sites of contact between the endoplasmic reticulum and mitochondria, and that formation requires the SNARE protein syntaxin 17.

The crystal structure of the transcriptional regulator HNF-4α bound to its DNA response element and coactivator-derived peptides is described, revealing a multidomain convergence centre that serves as an allosteric transmission system.

The reproductive sciences offer an unusual variety of career options — but some are more fertile than others.

Geneticist's work on twinning leads to European award and post in Singapore.

A radical element.