プライバシーを守るためには、個人データへのアクセスに関する開かれた議論が不可欠だ。
Track the trackers p.137
Oversight and public debate about access to personal data are crucial to preserving privacy.
doi: 10.1038/498137b
Oversight and public debate about access to personal data are crucial to preserving privacy.
doi: 10.1038/498137b
The stigma associated with mental illness discourages investment in finding cures — even though the burden of the disorders on society is immense.
doi: 10.1038/498137a
Lucrative prizes emulating the Nobels bring welcome money and publicity for science.
doi: 10.1038/498138a
Cap-and-trade pilot schemes set stage for nationwide roll-out.
doi: 10.1038/498145a
Pilot project will bring drug companies together to test targeted lung-cancer therapies.
doi: 10.1038/498146a
Regulator triggers efforts to standardize faecal transplants.
doi: 10.1038/498147a
Photons emerge as competitors to electrons in computer circuits.
doi: 10.1038/498149a
State-of-the-art collar reveals animal’s quick reflexes and phenomenal acceleration.
doi: 10.1038/498150a
Funding jitters rife ahead of government spending review.
doi: 10.1038/498151a
科学賞の新設によって、潤沢な資金を得ている科学者もいるが、こういった賞が科学を進歩させる方法として適切なのか、という疑問の声も上がっている。
doi: 10.1038/498152a
無人航空機の科学研究への利用に、関心が高まっている。
doi: 10.1038/498156a
ヒト胚性幹細胞が、体細胞核移植と呼ばれる方法によってようやく作製された。このような細胞の研究がさらに進めば、再プログラム化による幹細胞作製技術を改良するための手がかりが得られると考えられる。
doi: 10.1038/498174a
極低温原子ガスは、物性物理学におけるさまざまな現象を調べるための優れた基盤となる。こうした低温ガスを使ってスピンホール効果の操作が行われ、スピントランジスターの原子版が作られた。
doi: 10.1038/498175a
幹細胞の分化は、遺伝子の発現と転写の影響を受けるのと同時に、RNAプロセシングによっても制御されている。この知見は、幹細胞の持てる力を研究や治療のために発揮させるのに向けた重要な一歩といえる。
doi: 10.1038/nature12253
マラリア感染は必ずしも致命的ではない。その理由の１つは、蚊によって伝播されたことで、マラリア原虫が哺乳類宿主でより防御効果の高い免疫応答を引き出すようになるためらしい。
doi: 10.1038/nature12252
広大な宇宙空間にわたって観測された微量の水素ガスが、宇宙の膨張の加速を引き起こしていると思われる未知の宇宙エネルギーである「暗黒エネルギー」を測定するための標準として初めて使われた。
doi: 10.1038/498179a
質の良くない耕作地は、牧草地に変えることによって土壌の侵食が防がれるようになり、そこに炭素が隔離されてきた。ある研究によって、こうした場所が耕作地に戻されると温室効果ガスが放出され、耕された場合には特にその影響が著しいことがわかった。
doi: 10.1038/498180a
地球の上部マントルのレオロジー的性質に水は大きな影響を及ぼしていると広く考えられている。しかし、カンラン石中でのケイ素の拡散を調べた実験によって、この考えに疑いが投げかけられることになった。
doi: 10.1038/498181a
GIRKチャネルはカリウムイオンに膜を通過させ、それによって細胞の電気的状態、ひいてはその機能に影響を及ぼす。構造データから、このチャネルが機能している際の状態についての手がかりが得られた。
doi: 10.1038/nature12255
A novel tracking collar provides highly precise location, speed and acceleration data from 367 runs by five cheetahs in the wild; although a top speed of 58 m.p.h. was reported, few runs were above 45 m.p.h. with the average run around 31 m.p.h., and hunting success depended on grip, manoeuvrability and muscle power rather than outright speed.
doi: 10.1038/nature12295
An X-ray structure and electrophysiological analysis of mammalian G-protein-gated inward rectifier potassium channel GIRK2 in complex with βγ reveals a pre-open channel structure consistent with channel activation by membrane delimited G-protein subunits.
doi: 10.1038/nature12241
Investigations show that all the second-generation stars in the globular cluster NGC 6752 fail to reach the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) phase; every AGB star in the sample has a low sodium abundance, indicating that they are exclusively first-generation stars.
doi: 10.1038/nature12191
The spin Hall effect, whereby flowing particles experience orthogonally directed, spin-dependent Lorentz-like forces, is observed in a quantum-degenerate gas and used to produce a cold-atom spin transistor.
doi: 10.1038/nature12185
The ‘time cloak’ experiment is extended here using a time analogue of the Talbot effect in optics — in which a plane wave incident on a diffraction grating produces repeated images of the grating at regular distances — to show that almost half of the time axis can be concealed.
doi: 10.1038/nature12224
An innovative technique based on scanning tunnelling probes with integrated thermocouples is developed and used to measure heat dissipation in the electrodes of atomic and molecular junctions.
doi: 10.1038/nature12183
Measurements of the silicon self-diffusion coefficients in olivine at high temperature show that the effect of water content on rock deformation is actually very small, not large as was previously thought.
doi: 10.1038/nature12193
The patterning of barium in tooth enamel is shown to be a reliable marker of lactation in humans and macaques; furthermore, the study of a tooth from a Neanderthal child reveals the weaning process in this extinct species.
doi: 10.1038/nature12169
Exome sequencing of patients with congenital heart disease (CHD) and their unaffected parents reveals an excess of strong-effect, protein-altering de novo mutations in genes expressed in the developing heart, many of which regulate chromatin modification in key developmental genes; collectively, these mutations are predicted to account for approximately 10% of severe CHD cases.
doi: 10.1038/nature12141
This study defines a novel RIP1-kinase- and IL-1α-dependent autoinflammatory pathway that depends on NF-κB and is controlled by the tyrosine phosphatase SHP-1.
doi: 10.1038/nature12174
Serial passage of the malaria parasite through rodents, primates or human hosts increases parasite virulence, suggesting that vector transmission regulates virulence, although direct evidence for this has been lacking; mosquito transmission is shown here to intrinsically modify asexual blood-stage Plasmodium chabaudi chabaudi, which elicits altered host immune responses that, in turn, modify disease severity.
doi: 10.1038/nature12231
A search for variants in coding exons of 25 genome-wide association study risk genes in a large cohort of autoimmune patients finds that rare coding-region variants at known loci have a negligible role in common autoimmune disease susceptibility, arguing against the previously proposed rare-variant synthetic genome-wide association hypothesis.
doi: 10.1038/nature12170
Single-cell RNA sequencing is used to investigate the transcriptional response of 18 mouse bone-marrow-derived dendritic cells after lipopolysaccharide stimulation; many highly expressed genes, such as key immune genes and cytokines, show bimodal variation in both transcript abundance and splicing patterns. This variation reflects differences in both cell state and usage of an interferon-driven pathway involving Stat2 and Irf7.
doi: 10.1038/nature12172
This study identifies MBNL proteins as negative regulators of alternative splicing events that are differentially regulated between ES cells and other cell types; several lines of evidence show that these proteins repress an ES cell alternative splicing program and the reprogramming of somatic cells to induced pluripotent stem cells.
doi: 10.1038/nature12270
Isoform B of the chromatin-binding protein Brd4 acts to suppress DNA damage response signalling.
doi: 10.1038/nature12147
Using a CO-FISH method with single-chromosome resolution, sister chromatids of the sex chromosomes, but not autosomes, are shown to segregate nonrandomly during asymmetric cell divisions of Drosophila male germline stem cells; this suggests that it is unlikely that nonrandom sister chromatid segregation serves to protect the ‘immortal strand’ to avoid replication-induced mutations as proposed previously.
doi: 10.1038/nature12106
