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Volume 527 Issue 7576, 5 November 2015

A representation of two alternative scenarios for the Australian economy to 2050. For a developed nation to move to a sustainable society requires simultaneous rebalancing of economics, energy, agriculture and behaviour. Steve Hatfield-Dodds et al. use a multimodel framework to assess the ability to achieve this within a single nation-continent, Australia. Looking at climate, water, food, energy and biodiversity, they show that economic improvement is possible without ecological deterioration, but that specific political and economic choices need to be made to achieve this. Cover art: Emily Cooper.

Editorial

  • Reform is long overdue for Germany’s archaic medical-education system, which puts undue pressure on students and contaminates the scientific literature.

    Editorial

    Advertisement

  • Researchers should add their voices to the effort to stop attacks on health workers in war zones.

    Editorial
  • A tribute to the nineteenth-century polymath whose algebra lets you search the Internet.

    Editorial
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World View

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Research Highlights

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Social Selection

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Seven Days

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News

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Correction

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News Feature

  • A London lab is deploying every technology it can to understand infant brains, and what happens when development goes awry.

    • Linda Geddes
    News Feature
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Comment

  • Develop the science of data synthesis to join up the myriad varieties of health information, insist Julian H. Elliott, Jeremy Grimshaw and colleagues.

    • Julian H. Elliott
    • Jeremy Grimshaw
    • Ida Sim
    Comment
  • Open sharing of data that are collected with smart devices would empower citizens and create jobs, say Dirk Helbing and Evangelos Pournaras.

    • Dirk Helbing
    • Evangelos Pournaras
    Comment
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Books & Arts

  • Lasana T. Harris commends a book exposing the lack of scientific basis to 'enhanced interrogation techniques'.

    • Lasana T. Harris
    Books & Arts
  • A polished biopic of tech titan Steve Jobs fails to plumb fully his inner contradictions, finds Timo Hannay.

    • Timo Hannay
    Books & Arts
  • Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week's best science picks.

    • Barbara Kiser
    Books & Arts
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Correspondence

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News & Views

  • A modelling study argues that comprehensive policy change could limit Australia's environmental pollution while maintaining a materials-intensive path to economic growth. But other paths are worth considering. See Article p.49

    • Benjamin L. Bodirsky
    • Alexander Popp
    News & Views
  • What could cause a water droplet to start bouncing on a surface? It seems that a combination of evaporation and a highly water-repellent surface induces droplet bouncing when ambient pressure is reduced. See Letter p.82

    • Doris Vollmer
    • Hans-Jürgen Butt
    News & Views
  • Cutting-edge experiments show that the hormone leptin, which is secreted by fat cells, promotes fat loss by activating the release of catecholamine signalling molecules from neurons wrapped around the fat cells.

    • Johan Ruud
    • Jens C. Brüning
    News & Views
  • The discovery that potassium ion channels are involved in electrical signalling between bacterial cells may help to unravel the role of ion channels in microbial physiology and communication. See Article p.59

    • Sarah D. Beagle
    • Steve W. Lockless
    News & Views
  • A sensitive cold-ion experiment probes sound at the level of phonons, the fundamental quantum units of vibration. It shows that phonons mix in such a way that they can be classified as 'bosonic' particles, like photons. See Letter p.74

    • Dave Kielpinski
    News & Views
  • Single-cell analyses reveal that combinatorial changes in the intracellular locations of transcription factors can tune the expression of the factors' target genes in response to environmental stimuli. See Article p.54

    • Antoine Baudrimont
    • Attila Becskei
    News & Views
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Article

  • A multi-model framework that accounts for climate, water, energy, food, biodiversity and economic activity in Australia reveals that a sustainable society that enjoys economic improvement without ecological deterioration is possible, but that specific political and economic choices need to be made to achieve this.

    • Steve Hatfield-Dodds
    • Heinz Schandl
    • Alex Wonhas
    Article
  • Many gene-regulatory proteins have been shown to activate in pulses, but whether cells exploit the dynamic interaction between pulses of different regulatory proteins has remained unexplored; here single-cell videos show that yeast cells modulate the relative timing between the pulsatile transcription factors Msn2 and Mig1—a gene activator and a repressor, respectively—to control the expression of target genes in response to diverse environmental conditions.

    • Yihan Lin
    • Chang Ho Sohn
    • Michael B. Elowitz
    Article
  • Ion channels in bacterial biofilms are shown to conduct long-range electrical signals within the biofilm community through the propagation of potassium ions; as predicted by a simple mathematical model, potassium channel gating is shown to coordinate metabolic states between distant cells via electrical communication.

    • Arthur Prindle
    • Jintao Liu
    • Gürol M. Süel
    Article
  • Piezo1, a mechanosensitive cation channel, senses shear stress of blood flow for proper blood vessel development, regulates red blood cell function and controls cell migration and differentiation; here a trimeric architecture of this novel class of ion channel is reported, suggesting that Piezo1 may use its peripheral propeller-like ‘blades’ as force sensors to gate the central ion-conducting pore.

    • Jingpeng Ge
    • Wanqiu Li
    • Maojun Yang
    Article
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Letter

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Toolbox

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Feature

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Futures

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Outlook

  • Researchers are struggling to analyse the steadily swelling troves of '-omic' data in the quest for patient-centred health care.

    • Michael Eisenstein
    Outlook
  • Mark Caulfield is chief scientist at Genomics England, which was set up in 2013 to deliver the UK 100,000 Genomes Project, initially focusing on cancers, rare diseases and infection. Caulfield, a cardiovascular clinician and researcher, spoke about the UK approach to big data in biomedicine and the role of Genomics England — including how it plans to embed genomic medicine in Britain's National Health Service (NHS).

    • Claire Ainsworth
    Outlook
  • The effort to catalogue proteins goes deeper in a push to make genetics research deliver practical benefits.

    • Neil Savage
    Outlook
  • Wearable sensors and smartphones are providing a flood of information and empowering population-wide studies.

    • Neil Savage
    Outlook
  • Precision medicine demands precise matching of deep genomic and phenotypic models — and the deeper you go, the more you know.

    • Cathryn M. Delude
    Outlook
  • Organizing and accessing biomedical big data will require quite different business models, say Philip E. Bourne, Jon R. Lorsch and Eric D. Green.

    • Philip E. Bourne
    • Jon R. Lorsch
    • Eric D. Green
    Outlook
  • A former paediatric oncologist and molecular biologist with experience in academia and industry, Perry Nisen was senior vice-president for science and innovation at GlaxoSmithKline in 2014 before becoming chief executive at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, California. He discusses the challenges facing drug discovery in the era of big data.

    • Eric Bender
    Outlook
  • Gathering and understanding the deluge of biomedical research and health data poses huge challenges. But this work is rapidly changing the face of medicine.

    • Eric Bender
    Outlook
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Nature Outlook

  • Advances in sequencing technology have triggered a tsunami of genomic data, and these are joined by waves of information from other '-omics' studies, clinical trials and patient records. Analysis of this big data is launching the era of precision medicine — but enormous scientific, engineering and institutional challenges remain.

    Nature Outlook
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