Volume 503 Issue 7474, 7 November 2013

Governments need to strengthen support for scientists who preserve our cultural heritage.

The behaviour of millions of minuscule beads reveals some secrets of collective motion.

Exposure therapy helps some people affected by compulsive washing, but often the contaminant is intangible, says Stanley Rachman.

The week in science: India launches its first spacecraft to Mars, a new dolphin species is reported, and a rare hybrid eclipse wows sky-watchers.

European agency selects mission themes, with X-ray telescope the biggest winner.

Despite political challenges, engineered primates could be better disease models than mice.

Moveable sensor grid will begin monitoring Alaska next summer.

Proteomic technique proves that 300-year-old Linnaean elephant was wrongly classified.

Scientists fear EU biosafety rules could complicate publication of work on infectious diseases.

Technologies that probe neural circuitry could greatly advance the study of human cognition.

Computer chips inspired by human neurons can do more with less power.

Barack Obama announced his BRAIN Initiative on 2 April. Ever since, neuroscientists have been scrambling to work out what it actually is.

A neuroscientist reflects on his experience of studying the circuits that control neural activity while his own brain began slowly failing him.

Researchers have generally looked for signs of Alzheimer's disease in the whole brain or at the single-gene level. The biggest clues will come from monitoring collections of neurons, says Kenneth S. Kosik.

Tim Radford contemplates three fascinating studies on what it means to be human.

Mike Davis explores a vision of car-free, socially networked urban environments.

Jad Abumrad co-hosts Radiolab, the science-heavy, nationally syndicated US public-radio show. As it enters its tenth year, he takes time out from a 21-city North American tour with co-host Robert Krulwich to talk about crafting high-speed science stories on radio.

Eus Van Someren welcomes a call to critically evaluate progress in research on this form of dementia.

Physicist and Manhattan Project veteran.

It emerges that a transcription program differentially regulates inhibitory inputs in distinct neuronal compartments — an unexpected coordinated switch for achieving experience-dependent 'plasticity' in neural circuits. See Letter p.121

Populations of rolling particles have been shown to display unidirectional collective motion in a racetrack enclosure. Theoretical modelling suggests that hydrodynamic and electrostatic effects promote such behaviour. See Letter p.95

Research on guppies provides the most definitive evidence yet for the rare-male effect — a long-standing hypothesis to explain the perplexing maintenance of variation in traits that are subject to strong mate choice. See Letter p.108

Decisions can differ depending on the context that surrounds them. Analyses of the prefrontal cortex region of the monkey brain indicate that a dynamical process at the neuronal population level controls this behaviour. See Article p.78

Uncertainty in estimates of the effects of aerosols on climate stems from poor knowledge of the past, pristine atmosphere — so getting a better understanding of these effects might not be as useful as was thought. See Article p.67

In response to bad news about risk, young adolescents alter estimates of their own vulnerability to adverse events less accurately than older people. The finding has implications for managing risk-taking behaviour in young people.

The connectivity of cortical neurons relates to the way in which they encode sensory features, and integrate them with behavioural context; these factors are discussed in relation to recent research, the major questions still to be addressed, and emerging techniques that may help to answer these.

An alternative view of diabetes is presented in which blood glucose homeostasis is achieved via collective actions of two regulatory systems: a brain-centred glucoregulatory system (BCGS), which works together with the pancreatic islets; defects in both systems may be required for diabetes to occur, and interventions targeting both systems may have greater therapeutic potential.

It has been assumed that a better understanding of the effects of anthropogenic aerosols will greatly reduce the large uncertainties associated with our predictions of the radiative forcing effects of aerosols on climate; however, this study shows that nearly half of the uncertainty in the radiative effect of aerosols on clouds derives from uncertainties in pre-industrial natural aerosols.

Mouse and human studies reveal that incorrect gene dosage of SHANK3 (a gene linked to some human neuropsychiatric disorders, including autism spectrum disorder) is associated with behavioural abnormalities including mania, possibly because of actin regulation problems in excitatory/inhibitory synapses.

This study shows that in monkeys making context-dependent decisions, task-relevant and task-irrelevant signals are confusingly intermixed in single units of the prefrontal cortex, but are readily understood in the framework of a dynamical process unfolding at the level of the population; a recurrently connected neural network model reproduces key features of the data and suggests a novel mechanism for selection and integration of task-relevant evidence towards a decision.

The X-ray crystal structure of the Drosophila dopamine transporter bound to the antidepressant drug nortriptyline is presented, providing the first crystal structure of a eukaryotic neurotransmitter sodium symporter.

Acceleration of relativistic electrons in a dielectric laser accelerator at high electric field gradients is reported, setting the stage for the development of future multi-staged accelerators of this type.

Populations of millions of colloidal rolling particles are shown to self-organize to achieve coherent motion; comparison between experiment and theory based on the microscopic interactions between these ‘rollers’ suggests that hydrodynamic interactions promote the emergence of the collective motion.

Magnetic fields micropatterned within a paramagnetic fluid can simultaneously trap and position both magnetic and non-magnetic microparticles, the latter including live bacteria.

The structure of molten basalt up to 60 GPa by means of in situ X-ray diffraction is described, with the coordination of silicon increasing from four under ambient conditions to six at 35 GPa, and subsequent reduced melt compressibility, which seems to affect siderophile-element partitioning.

Manipulation of the frequency of naturally occurring colour patterns within replicate pools of fish at three sites shows that males with rare colour patterns have higher reproductive fitness, demonstrating negative frequency-dependent selection mediated by sexual selection.

A neural circuit from the parabrachial nucleus to the central nucleus of the amygdala mediates appetite suppression.

Neuronal dendrites are not passive cables, but whether their excitability contributes to computation at the cell’s soma has been uncertain; by observing and interfering with dendritic ‘spikes’ during sensory stimulation, it is now shown that active dendritic processing enhances somatic orientation selectivity, a fundamental brain computation.

The transcription factor NPAS4 enables neurons to distinguish synaptic inputs received at their soma or dendrites; sensory stimulation increases NPAS4 which promotes inhibitory synapses on the soma and destabilizes inhibitory synapses on the dendrites.

Failure of integrin-mediated cell-matrix attachment is sufficient to initiate dermal fibrosis and autoimmunity in mouse models of scleroderma; integrin-modulating therapies prevent the recruitment and activation of plasmacytoid dendritic cells that appear central to immunological dysregulation and maintenance of the pro-fibrotic synthetic programme.

The direction of integrin signalling is found to be determined by the coordinated and opposing binding waves of talin and Gα₁₃ to the same region of the integrin β₃ cytoplasmic domain at mutually exclusive but distinct sites, and a potent new anti-thrombotic drug that does not cause bleeding is designed on the basis of these findings.

This study finds a direct correlation between LARGE-glycan extension on dystroglycan and the protein’s capacity for extracellular matrix ligands; in regenerating mouse muscle, short LARGE-glycan polysaccharides cause various defects, including muscle dysfunction and a predisposition to dystrophy, and in muscular dystrophy patients, increased clinical severity of disease corresponds to shorter LARGE-glycans.

LeuT, a bacterial homologue of eukaryotic biogenic amine transporters (BATs), is engineered to harbour human BAT-like pharmacology by the mutation of key residues around the primary binding pocket; this mutant is able to bind several classes of antidepressant drug with high affinity, helping to define their common mechanisms of action.

Tools that make it possible to chart every neuron and its connections are helping neuroscientists to realize their dream of whole-brain maps.

With several big data projects under way, there is growing demand for neuroimaging expertise.

A love affair with research can be just as heartbreaking as romantic love, says Christopher Schmitt.

Off the scale.