脳を電気刺激して認知機能改善を図る装置は、自製も可能で利用が増えそうだが、効果は不明でリスクもあり、監視が必要だ。
Brain blast p.271
DIY attempts at electrical brain stimulation to improve cognition are to get easier.
doi: 10.1038/498271b
DIY attempts at electrical brain stimulation to improve cognition are to get easier.
doi: 10.1038/498271b
A project to pool data and tools to calculate earthquake hazards is an important milestone, but it will be down to individuals to decide how to interpret and respond to those risks.
doi: 10.1038/498271a
The US government gives up its fight to keep age restrictions on the morning-after pill.
doi: 10.1038/498272a
IRIS mission aims to scrutinize the layer between the star’s surface and its flickering corona.
doi: 10.1038/498279a
First particle containing four quarks is confirmed.
doi: 10.1038/498280a
Change to gene patents leaves US biotech in a lather.
doi: 10.1038/498281a
Researchers disagree over canine domestication.
doi: 10.1038/498282a
Researcher stands by results despite demand for retraction.
doi: 10.1038/498283a
Revised data show Soviet Union’s 1970s lunar vehicle outdistanced NASA’s Opportunity — for now.
doi: 10.1038/498284a
D-Wave社は量子コンピューター作製の新しい方式を開発したパイオニアだが、論争も招いている。
doi: 10.1038/498286a
増え続ける地震被害を軽減しようと、Ross Steinは、世界の地震リスク地図作成を目指している。
doi: 10.1038/498290a
雲の中で起こる液滴凍結過程についての研究から、大気中の鉱物ダストに含まれる微量成分の1つがこの過程の主要な触媒として働いていることが示唆された。この知見が雲での液滴凍結の研究や大気エアロゾル研究に及ぼす複雑な影響について、2人の専門家が論じている。
doi: 10.1038/nature12256
石をハンマーとして使って木の実を割る野生のオマキザルについての研究から、このサルが道具として使っていた石などの時間・空間的変化パターンが明らかになり、このような挙動が考古学的視点から検討可能であることが確証された。
doi: 10.1038/498303a
HIVがCD4+ T細胞を殺して免疫系を働けなくすることはずっと以前から知られている。ウイルスが宿主細胞のゲノムに組み込まれることによって活性化されるタンパク質のDNA-PKが、細胞死を引き起こす「工作員」であることが今回明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/nature12254
昆虫の飛翔の原理が生物学によって明らかにされたことが、技術者が航空力学で功績を挙げるためのヒントとなった。微細加工技術の進歩によって、今回初めてロボットハエが飛行できるようになった。
doi: 10.1038/nature12258
カルシウム原子核は、その構造のために原子核の性質を研究する際の良いテストケースとなる。2種類の重いカルシウム原子核の質量が計測され、原子核モデルのための基準が得られた。
doi: 10.1038/498307a
無秩序な構造を持つタンパク質でも、機能の異なる2つの結合部位の間でシグナル伝達ができることがわかり、タンパク質内の情報伝達には、こうした部位をつなぐ特定の構造経路が必要であるという考えに疑問が投げかけられることになった。
doi: 10.1038/498308a
遺伝的多様性に極めて富んだヘパシウイルス属およびpegivirus属に分類される新種ウイルスが、野生の齧歯類やコウモリ個体群で多数見つかったことは、C型肝炎ウイルスの起源を明らかにするのに役立ちそうだ。
doi: 10.1038/498310b
Realizing holographic video displays is proving far from straightforward, but it is shown here that it may be possible to overcome the limitations of present displays by harnessing the desirable optical manipulation properties of anisotropic leaky-mode spatial light modulators.
doi: 10.1038/nature12217
This study identifies a deubiquitinase (DUB) that specifically recognises and cleaves linear ubiquitin chains, implicating linear (de)ubiquitination in Wnt signalling and angiogenesis; mutations in gumby cause defects in angiogenesis in mice, and structural and biochemical analysis shows that gumby encodes a linear-ubiquitin-specific DUB.
doi: 10.1038/nature12296
Cross-species genetic screens reveal that decreased mitogen-activated protein kinase signalling reduces polyglutamine-expanded ataxin 1 levels and toxicity in models of spinocerebellar ataxia type 1.
doi: 10.1038/nature12204
Cytosolic DNA arising from intracellular bacterial or viral infections induces type I interferon through activation of the DNA sensor cGAS, which catalyses the synthesis of cyclic dinucleotide which in turn activates STING; here the crystal structures of a carboxy-terminal fragment of cGAS alone and in complex with UTP and DNA–ATP–GTP complex are determined.
doi: 10.1038/nature12305
An observation of a rare merger of two massive submillimetre bright galaxies that is forming stars at an unexpectedly high rate of 2,000 solar masses a year shows that such mergers can indeed form the most massive elliptical galaxies by about redshift 1.5.
doi: 10.1038/nature12184
The compositions of the 3.7-billion-year-old surface rocks on Mars — as observed by the Spirit rover at Gusev crater — are shown to be consistent with early mixing of oxidized surface material into the uppermost Martian mantle: such oxidation appears to have had less influence on more recent volcanic rocks, which are sampled as Martian meteorites.
doi: 10.1038/nature12225
The masses of the exotic calcium isotopes 53Ca and 54Ca measured by a multi-reflection time-of-flight method confirm predictions of calculations including nuclear three-body interactions.
doi: 10.1038/nature12226
Molecular dynamics simulations of melting ice have identified the spatial separation of a defect pair into its constituent components as a crucial first step: once this step has been taken, defects can persist and grow, and rapidly turn ice into liquid water.
doi: 10.1038/nature12190
Feldspar minerals are shown to dominate ice nucleation by mineral dust in clouds containing both liquid water and ice particles, despite feldspar being a minor component of the dust believed to be the main source of ice nuclei.
doi: 10.1038/nature12278
The complete skeleton of a new avialan dinosaur from the Tiaojishan Formation (Middle–Late Jurassic period) of Liaoning Province, China, is described and included in a comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of basal Paraves.
doi: 10.1038/nature12168
Two major classes of inhibitory neurons in mouse anterior cingulate cortex, somatostatin and parvalbumin interneurons, form functionally homogeneous populations that are recruited at distinct moments in time and encode unique behavioral variables in a foraging task.
doi: 10.1038/nature12176
Microbial sequencing of samples obtained from multiple skin sites in healthy human adults shows that core-body and arm sites are dominated by fungal species of the genus Malassezia, whereas foot sites show high fungal diversity, and that skin topography is associated with differential compositions of bacterial and fungal communities.
doi: 10.1038/nature12171
Two-photon intravital imaging is used here to define the regulation of interstitial neutrophil migration at local sites of cell death upon sterile tissue injury and infection; leukotriene B4 (LTB4) is shown to act between neutrophils as a signal relay molecule that acts to enhance the radius of neutrophil recruitment within the inflamed interstitium, and also to control, in concert with integrin receptors, dense neutrophil clustering for tight wound seal formation.
doi: 10.1038/nature12175
HIV-1 causes CD4+ T-cell death through viral integration by stimulation of DNA-dependent protein kinase (DNA-PK), a protein known to act in the p53 damage response pathway for double-stranded DNA breaks, in activated cells.
doi: 10.1038/nature12274
Cytosolic DNA induces type I interferon via activation of STING; the immediate STING activator is produced by the recently identified DNA sensor cGAS and is shown here to be an unorthodox cyclic dinucleotide harbouring a 2′-5′ linkage between guanosine and adenosine.
doi: 10.1038/nature12306
In Arabidopsis, RNA-directed DNA methylation is a poorly understood gene silencing pathway in which small interfering RNAs generated by RNA polymerase IV (Pol-IV) target a DNA methyltransferase to its sites of action; here structural and genomic analyses demonstrate that SHH binds chromatin via repressive histone modifications and recruits Pol-IV to enable siRNA production.
doi: 10.1038/nature12178
Single-molecule FRET is used to examine how an intrinsically disordered protein, the adenovirus E1A oncoprotein, interacts with two different protein partners (the pocket domain of pRb and the TAZ2 domain of CBP/p300); the biophysical behaviour of E1A depends on whether the N-terminal region and/or the CR2 region of E1A is free to interact with potential protein partners or whether they are ‘masked’ (that is, via their absence or a pre-existing interaction with another protein partner).
doi: 10.1038/nature12294
