Volume 508 Issue 7494, 3 April 2014

Few biology degrees still feature natural history. Is the naturalist a species in crisis?

Above the ‘big neuroscience’ commotion, literature plays its part.

Given the lack of global legislation, nations should work hard to establish cross-border protections for vulnerable species, says Aaron M. Ellison.

The week in science: Court halts Japanese whaling, misconduct found in controversial stem-cell papers, and a surprising rise in autism diagnoses.

Crimean institutions put their future in Russia’s hands as Ukraine attempts research reforms.

Agencies face rising applications for rare-disease therapies resulting from increasingly precise disease definitions.

Facing engineering constraints, researchers propose four destinations for European rover.

As hints emerge of a major weather event this year, poor data could thwart attempts to improve predictions.

Analysis of chemical patterns on DNA shows promise for explaining disease, but few results have yet been replicated.

The immune system can be a powerful weapon against cancer — but researchers are still grappling with how to control it.

After years of work in the Antarctic, John Kovac and his team have captured strong evidence for a long-held theory about the Universe’s birth.

Bernard Wood explains why the announcement of 'handy man' in April 1964 threw the field of hominin evolution into a turmoil that continues to this day.

Businesses and the public can keep watch when governments fail to provide environmental data, say Angel Hsu and colleagues.

As elections begin in India, Mathai Joseph and Andrew Robinson call for an end to the stultifying bureaucracy that has held back the nation's science for decades.

To mark the 450th anniversary of the bard's birth, Jennifer Rampling probes how mathematics and technology shaped his era.

The newest chapter in James Lovelock's Gaia saga holds out hope, finds Tim Lenton.

Susanne Ahmari reviews a personal and scientific journey through obsessive–compulsive disorder.

The identification of the enzyme plasmin as a defence against cancer cells that have spread to the brain, and of tumour-cell serpin proteins that inhibit plasmin production, outlines a mechanism for the formation of brain metastases.

If a pregnant mouse lacks vitamin A, her offspring are born with smaller lymph nodes and have impaired immune responses as adults — a finding that adds immune development to this vitamin's list of key functions. See Letter p.123

Planets are no longer the only Solar System bodies sporting ring systems. Two dense rings have been detected encircling a Centaur object — a relatively small, icy interloper from the distant reaches of the Solar System. See Letter p.72

A study finds that contractile cells that surround the capillary vessels of the brain control the blood supply to healthy neurons, and that their death may aggravate brain injury by strangling vessels. See Article p.55

Simulations of Earth's growth show a correlation between the timing of the Moon's formation and the amount of mass that Earth accreted afterwards. This relationship provides a way of measuring the age of our planet. See Letter p.84

Widespread genetic heterogeneity in cells of human tumours poses a question: what prevents the fittest clone from taking over? A demonstration of interdependence between distinct clones might shed light on this puzzle. See Letter p.113

Neuronal activity relaxes pericytes, leading to capillary dilation and increased blood flow, before arterioles dilate, suggesting that pericytes initiate blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) functional imaging signals; pericytes constrict and die in rigor in ischaemia, which will cause a long-lasting blood flow decrease after stroke, and damage the blood–brain barrier.

High-resolution structures of the Photorhabdus luminescens TcA toxin subunit and the entire Tc toxin complex reveal important new insights into Tc complex structure and function.

A new high-throughput sequencing method to determine mRNA poly(A)-tail length enabled studies of individual RNAs across species and developmental stages to investigate the role of poly(A) length in translational regulation; the relationship between poly(A) length and translational efficiency shown in early embryo systems does not occur later in development, a finding that explains different regulatory consequences of microRNAs acting at different developmental times.

Observations of a stellar occultation by (10199) Chariklo, a minor body that orbits the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune, reveal that it has a ring system, a property previously observed only for the four giant planets of the Solar System.

In combination with sympathetic cooling of translational degrees of freedom (leading to Coulomb crystallization), cooling of the rotational degrees of freedom of magnesium hydride ions using a helium buffer gas leads to temperatures in a tunable range from 60 kelvin down to about 7 kelvin for a single ion, the lowest such temperature so far recorded.

The resonant interaction between γ-ray photons and an ensemble of nuclei with a periodically modulated resonant transition frequency can be used to control the waveforms of the photons coherently; for example, individual γ-ray photons can be converted into a coherent, ultrashort pulse train or into a double pulse.

A large number of N-body simulations of the giant-impact phase of planet formation, combined with the measured concentrations of highly siderophile elements in Earth’s mantle, reveal that the Moon must have formed at least 40 million years after the condensation of the first solids of the Solar System.

CA2 neuron inactivation leads to a severe deficit in social memory, while having little effect on other well-known hippocampal functions such as contextual or spatial memory.

Human fibroblasts can be converted into hepatocytes capable of repopulating mouse livers by shortcutting reprogramming to pluripotency with factors promoting endoderm and hepatocyte differentiation.

A rare constitutional translocation between chromosomes 15 and 21 predisposes to catastrophic chromosomal damage followed by amplification of megabase regions, causing a specific subtype of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.

This study finds that triple-negative breast cancers (TNBC) show an increased basal level of endoplasmic reticulum stress and activation of the XBP1 branch of the unfolded protein response; furthermore, XBP1 promotes tumour formation of TNBC cell lines by interacting with and regulating HIF1α.

New apparatus is used to maintain proliferating cancer cells in low-glucose conditions, demonstrating that mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) is essential for optimal proliferation in these conditions; the most sensitive cell lines are defective in OXPHOS upregulation and may therefore be sensitive to current antidiabetic drugs that inhibit OXPHOS.

In a mouse model of tumours initiated by Wnt signalling in which a proportion of tumours are biclonal, that is, composed of basal and luminal clones with distinct genetic alterations, these clones are shown to cooperate to maintain tumour growth in a Wnt-dependent manner.

Patients with melanomas carrying an activating BRAF mutation respond to treatment with BRAF inhibitors although resistance to the inhibitor usually emerges; this resistance is shown to arise through increased expression of receptor tyrosine kinases such as EGFR; however, these changes decrease cell fitness and during a break from inhibitor treatment these cells are selected against, revealing that some patients who acquire EGFR expression may benefit from inhibitor re-treatment after a drug holiday.

Dietary vitamin A during pregnancy is required for the formation of secondary lymphoid organs of the developing embryo and affects the offspring’s immune competence in adulthood.

In Caenorhabditis elegans, mitochondrial activity as measured by the frequency of the mitochondrial flash in young adult animals is a powerful predictor of lifespan across genetic, environmental and stochastic factors.

Beams of charged particles can treat cancer more safely and effectively than X-rays. Physicists and biomedical researchers are working to refine the technology for wider use.

Promising results in cancer immunotherapy offer growing opportunities — and challenges — in translational research.

Solar System findings help geochemist to return to China to launch planetary-chemistry lab.

More female students must take up physical sciences to meet demand in UK technical sectors.

Sweden seeks to allow foreign postgraduates to stay on for work.

UK invests in postgraduate training in physical sciences, maths and engineering.

Science fiction in 200 characters or less.

Sixty years after the first schizophrenia drug hit the market, researchers are still struggling to understand and treat the disorder. By Emily Elert.

Unravelling the mystery of verbal dysfunction in schizophrenia could yield clues to the nature of the disease.

A massive research collaboration is revealing hundreds of genes underlying schizophrenia risk, and may point the way to targeted treatments.

Researchers have made good progress with animal tests for cognition. The next step is to devise a rodent model for drug development.

Schizophrenia debilitates not just by psychosis but by depriving people of the ability to feel pleasure.

Paying attention to risk factors and warning signs could avert some cases of schizophrenia — or at least better prepare people for what's to come.

Schizophrenia patients in developing countries seem to fare better than their Western counterparts. Researchers are keen to find out why.

People with schizophrenia show signs of accelerated ageing — a phenomenon that could lead researchers to a deeper understanding of the disease.

Failures in the development of schizophrenia treatments don't justify the dramatic overhaul now being proposed, says Stephen R. Marder.

The more we study the genetics of schizophrenia, says Steven E. Hyman, the more daunting — and exciting — are the challenges we see ahead.

About one in every one hundred people must endure the psychosis, disorientation, and social withdrawal that define schizophrenia. While there is still no effective treatment in development, scientists are learning more about the genetic and biochemical basis of this severe disorder. It is hoped that this new knowledge will one day result in new treatments that will let people living with schizophrenia lead more normal lives.