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In a collaboration with Scientific American, Nature takes a look at modern movements in teaching science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). By applying the principles of twenty-first century learning, educators should be able to produce scientists better prepared for the modern, multidisciplinary workforce and a more science-literate populace in general. Cover: Vasava
An independent report on the American Psychological Association reveals the extent to which some psychologists colluded with US military and intelligence agencies to allow torture of prisoners.
Active problem-solving confers a deeper understanding of science than does a standard lecture. But some university lecturers are reluctant to change tack.
To drive discovery, scientists heading up research teams large and small need to learn how people operate, argue Charles E. Leiserson and Chuck McVinney.
It is time to use evidence-based teaching practices at all levels by providing incentives and effective evaluations, urge Stephen E. Bradforth, Emily R. Miller and colleagues.
As government education experts call for toddler literacy, and baby apps proliferate, are we losing sight of materials-based learning? Infant scientists and young explorers thrive in the open air and through free play, eager to grasp the world — literally.
In fruit flies, protrusions can extend from stem cells in the testes to cells in a regulatory hub, mediating intercellular signalling and stem-cell maintenance. The implications of this finding are presented here from two angles. See Letter p.329
A compilation of more than 300,000 rock compositions provides crucial input into a 100-year-old debate on how the continental crust formed, and provides new constraints for theories of continental-crust development. See Article p.301
Activation of a cellular stress response and the transcription factor XBP1 in dendritic cells has now been shown to limit the cells' ability to stimulate antitumour immune responses in a mouse model of ovarian cancer.
Laboratory measurements confirm that a 'buckyball' ion is responsible for two near-infrared absorption features found in spectra of the interstellar medium, casting light on a century-old astrochemical mystery. See Letter p.322
The effects of mutations in proteins can depend on the occurrence of previous mutations. It emerges that such historical contingency is also important during the evolution of gene regulatory networks. See Letter p.361
EPR3, a plant protein, is found to act as a probable receptor for exopolysaccharide molecules that surround the plant's symbiotic bacteria. The advance sheds light on how recognition is governed in symbiotic relationships. See Article p.308
A global geochemical data set of volcanic and plutonic rocks indicates that differentiation trends from primitive basaltic to felsic compositions for volcanic versus plutonic samples are generally indistinguishable in subduction-zone settings, but are divergent in continental rifts.
This paper describes the discovery of the exopolysaccharide receptor (Epr3) in plants, and shows that its expression is induced upon perception of the bacterial Nod factors; the EPR3 receptor recognizes exopolysaccharides on the surface of rhizobia, thus controlling the symbiotic infection of the roots of legumes.
Progesterones, oestrogens and their receptors (PR, ERα and ERβ) are essential in normal breast development and homeostasis, as well as in breast cancer; here it is shown that PR controls ERα function by redirecting where ERα binds to the chromatin, acting as a proliferative brake in ERα+ breast tumours.
The observed range of luminosities of the extremely hot ‘blue hook’ stars of the globular cluster ω Centauri is successfully explained by a model in which the progenitors of these stars are second-generation helium-rich stars characterized by a range of rotation rates arising during the cluster’s very early evolution.
Laboratory measurements of the gas-phase spectrum of C60+ confirm that the diffuse interstellar bands observed at 9,632 ångströms and 9,577 ångströms arise as a result of C60+ in the interstellar medium.
Organohalide perovskites and preformed colloidal quantum dots are combined in the solution phase to produce epitaxially aligned ‘dots-in-a-matrix’ crystals that have both the excellent electrical transport properties of the perovskite matrix and the high radiative efficiency of the quantum dots.
Drosophila male germline stem cells form previously unrecognized structures, microtubule-based nanotubes, which extend into the hub, a major niche component, to mediate the niche–stem-cell signalling.
Fluorescent labelling is used to show that in E. coli, outer membrane protein (OMP) turnover is passive and binary in nature, and OMPs cluster to form islands in which diffusion of individual proteins is restricted owing to lateral interactions with other OMPs; new OMPs are inserted mostly at mid-cell, meaning that old OMP islands are displaced to the poles of growing cells.
The central nervous system undergoes constant immune surveillance, but the route that immune cells take to exit the brain has been unclear as it had been thought to lack a classical lymphatic drainage system; here functional lymphatic vessels able to carry both fluid and immune cells from the cerebrospinal fluid are shown to be located in the brain meninges.
Apolipoprotein-M-bound sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) is found to restrain the generation of new lymphocytes—and, consequently, adaptive immune responses—by activating the S1P1 receptor on bone marrow lymphocyte progenitors in mice.
The drug abiraterone is converted to Δ4-abiraterone (D4A) in mice and patients with prostate cancer, which has more potent anti-tumour activity and may lead to more effective therapies.
Novel hotspot mutant p53 gain-of-function mouse model shows that tumours depend on its sustained expression, and genetic and pharmacological approaches reveal mutant p53 as an actionable cancer drug target.
Quantification of single-cell growth over long periods of time in E. coli shows transient oscillations in cell size, with periods stretching across more than ten generations; a noisy negative feedback on cell-size control is proposed in which cells with a small initial size tend to divide later than cells with a large initial size with implications for the genetic and physiological processes required.
Epistatic interactions, whereby a mutation's effect is contingent on another mutation, have been shown to constrain evolution within single proteins, and how such interactions arise in gene regulatory networks has remained unclear; here the appearance of pheromone-response regulator binding sites in the regulatory DNA of the a-specific genes of Saccharomyces cerevisiae are shown to have required specific changes in a second pathway during the evolution from its common ancestor with Candida albicans.
Retroviruses such as HIV rely on the intasome, a tetramer of integrase protein bound to the viral DNA ends interacting with host chromatin, for integration into the host genome; the structure of the intasome as it interacts with a nucleosome is now solved, giving insight into the integration process.
Thought leaders across the globe answer one question: what is the biggest missing piece in how we educate scientists? Responses ranged from the practical to the philosophical.