he genome of the Southeast Asian great ape or orang-utan has been sequenced - specifically a draft assembly of a Sumatran female individual and short-read sequence data from five further Sumatran and five Bornean orang-utan, Pongo abelii and Pongo pygmaeus, respectively. Sequence analysis suggests an average 99.68% Bornean–Sumatran genome-wide nucleotide identity, a large divergence reflecting the distinct evolutionary histories of the two island populations. With both orang-utan species on the endangered list, the authors hope that knowledge of the genome sequence and its variation between populations will provide a valuable resource for conservationists. Cover credit: Perry van Duijnhoven/Carel van Schaik (Inset: SCIMAT/SPL)

The Lehman Brothers building on 7th Avenue, 15 September 2008. In a Perspective review, Andrew Haldane, executive director for financial stability at the Bank of England, and ecologist Robert May look at the nature of risk that led to the recent global crisis in the international banking system. Utilizing tools more often used to analyse ecological food webs and the spread of infectious diseases, they conclude that there are lessons to be learned from the exercise that could inform future public policy decisions. The idea that advances from other disciplines can usefully be applied to financial institutions is not universally accepted, as revealed in a Forum debate featuring Neil Johnson and Thomas Lux. Picture credit: Fausto Giaccone/Anzenberger/Eyevine

For decades, the standard practice for researchers studying penguins well established as bellwethers of climate change has been to tag the birds with flipper bands. It is a controversial technique, however, with conflicting reports on whether the tags themselves can alter the birds behaviour. Now, the results of a ten-year study of free-ranging king penguins provide convincing evidence that banding is harmful. Banded birds had a markedly lower survival rate, with every major life-history trait affected, and they were more affected by climate variation than birds without bands. As well as raising doubts over marine ecosystem data based on banding, this work has implications for the ethics of animal tagging. On the cover: king penguins in the Baie Amricaine on Possession Island, Crozet Archipelago, March 2009. Picture credit: Vincent Viblanc/Claire Saraux

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization are sponsoring 2011 as the International Year of Chemistry. So Nature starts the year with an issue focused on chemistry - in many respects the central science and a vital resource for physicists and biologists. In a Comment on page 21, George Whitesides and John Deutch argue that academic chemistry is at a crossroads. 'Business as usual' is not an option, they say: to solve new problems, chemistry will need to be braver in its research choices and in how it organizes them. Illustration by Sarah Jane Coleman.