Research articles

Previously glaciated landscapes tend to have large areas concentrated at the same elevation; here it is shown that small climate changes can trigger massive glacial expansions for these landscapes, explaining long-term patterns of erosion in the Quaternary period.

Several nickel-rich and helium-rich lava samples from ocean islands and large igneous provinces suggest that mantle plume material formed by core–mantle interaction during the crystallization of a melt-rich layer or basal magma ocean.

An earthquake source model in which stable, rate-strengthening behaviour at low slip rates is combined with coseismic weakening due to rapid shear heating of pore fluids, allowing unstable slip to occur in segments that can creep between events, explains a number of both long-term and coseismic observations of faults that hosted the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake and the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake.

Immune rejection may limit the therapeutic use of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs); here, terminally differentiated mouse iPSCs are shown to generate negligible immune rejection in their host.

The three-dimensional structure of the insulin–insulin receptor complex has proved elusive, confounded by the complexity of producing the receptor protein; here is the first glimpse of the interaction between insulin and its primary binding site on the insulin receptor, a view based on four crystal structures of insulin bound to truncated insulin receptor complexes.

Plate tectonics and climate change are shown to have driven the diversity and extinction of planktonic foraminifera throughout their evolutionary history.

The structures of three distinct human transcription factor IID (TFIID) protein assemblies are solved using cryo-electron microscopy; by incorporating TAF8 and TAF10, the key structural changes that remodel TFIID during assembly are determined, particularly the transition from a symmetric core-TFIID to an asymmetric holo-complex.

The crystal structure of rubella virus E1 glycoprotein in its post-fusion form reveals a class II fusion protein with distinct features so far unseen in any other crystallized fusion protein; the location of an antibody-neutralization epitope also suggests that rubella-specific antibodies may function through prevention of E1 glycoprotein trimer formation during cell entry.

Biguanides such as metformin, which is the most widely prescribed drug for type-2 diabetes, are shown to antagonize the actions of glucagon by decreasing the levels of cyclic AMP.

Numerical simulations of a widely separated binary star system demonstrate that planetary systems around one star may often be strongly perturbed by the other star, triggering planetary ejections and increasing the orbital eccentricities of surviving planets.

The infrared luminosity of a young protostar (about 10⁵ years old) is found to increase by a factor of ten in roughly one week every 25.34 days; this is attributed to pulsed accretion associated with an unseen binary companion.

Modelling that integrates the effects of uncertainties in relevant geophysical, technological, social and political factors on the cost of keeping transient global temperature increase to below certain limits shows that political choices have the greatest effect on the cost distribution.

About half of the satellites in the Andromeda galaxy (M 31), all with the same sense of rotation about their host, form a planar subgroup that is extremely wide but also very thin.

It was proposed that protein kinase M-ζ (PKM-ζ) is a key factor in long-term potentiation (LTP) and memory maintenance on the basis of the disruption of LTP and memory by inhibitors of PKM-ζ; however, here mice that do not express PKM-ζ are shown to have normal LTP and memory, thus casting doubts on a critical role for PKM-ζ in these processes.

Genetically removing PKM-ζ in mice has no effect on memory, and despite absence of this kinase, the original peptide inhibitor of PKM-ζ still disrupts memory in these mutant mice; these data re-open the exploration for key molecules regulating maintenance of long-term plasticity processes.

Two giant, linearly polarized radio lobes have been found emanating from the Galactic Centre, and are thought to originate in a biconical, star-formation-driven outflow from the Galaxy’s central 200 parsecs that transports a huge amount of magnetic energy, about 10⁵⁵ ergs, into the Galactic halo

Observations of the young star HD 142527, whose disk is separated into inner and outer regions by a gap suggestive of the formation of a gaseous giant planet, show that accretion onto the star is maintained by a flow of gas across the gap, in agreement with dynamical models of planet formation.

The oxygen fugacity of the deepest rock samples from Earth’s mantle is found to be more oxidized than previously thought, with the result that carbon in the asthenospheric mantle will be hosted as graphite or diamond but will be oxidized to produce carbonate melt through the reduction of Fe³⁺ in silicate minerals during upwelling.