科学分野でも、隠喩には利用価値があることが多いが、その扱いには慎重さも必要だ。
Beyond compare p.501
Metaphors are like cheese — often desirable but sometimes full of holes.
doi: 10.1038/500501b
Metaphors are like cheese — often desirable but sometimes full of holes.
doi: 10.1038/500501b
Scientists are homing in on the reasons for the current hiatus in global warming, but all must recognize that the long-term risk of warming from carbon dioxide remains high.
doi: 10.1038/500501a
Propellants offer satellites greater efficiency and lower toxicity than liquid hydrazine.
doi: 10.1038/500509a
Thomson Reuters suspends journals from its rankings for ‘citation stacking’.
doi: 10.1038/500510a
This year’s cyclones grant sea ice a temporary reprieve.
doi: 10.1038/500512a
A spate of successful public offerings has raised ample funding for biotechnology — and anxiety about when the good times will end.
doi: 10.1038/500513a
Method extends archaeological and linguistic data by tracing early human migration.
doi: 10.1038/500514a
時間と空間の挙動だけでなく、これらがどこから来たかを説明しないかぎり、物理学は完結しないと多くの研究者は考えている。
doi: 10.1038/500516a
ある種の藻類の鱗片には大気中二酸化炭素濃度が低かった時期の特徴が含まれていることがあると分かり、これに触発されて、化石記録中でこのような特徴が見つかった。今回のフォーラムでは、この発見の気候科学と海洋生態学における意味について、専門家たちが論じている。
doi: 10.1038/500532a
学習から嗜癖に至るさまざまな過程に関わっている神経調節因子のドーパミンの作用は解明済みと考えられていた。しかし、ラットが報酬を求めて移動する際にドーパミン濃度が上昇するという知見は、現在の理論を覆すかもしれない。
doi: 10.1038/500533a
持続時間の短いγ線バーストに続く赤外線放射が観測されたことは、コンパクトな連星系の合体がこのようなバーストの原因であり、宇宙で最も重い原子核を作り出すという仮説を裏付けるものだ。
doi: 10.1038/500535a
前立腺がんで重要な役割を持つある転写因子とその標的遺伝子の間のつながりを制御する長鎖非コードRNAが見つかったことは、RNAが細胞核中の情報の流れを支配する仕組みについての手がかりを与えてくれる。
doi: 10.1038/nature12548
太陽の数十倍を超える質量を持つ大質量星は、我々の宇宙で支配的である。だが今回、収縮しているさなかのガス雲や塵の観測から、このような星の形成についての理論に疑問が投げかけられている。
doi: 10.1038/500537a
腸内細菌の多様性が低いと、多様性が高い場合に比べて、体脂肪率が高く、炎症が起こりやすくなることが分かった。だが、食餌を変えるという治療法は、こうした状態を改善する助けとなる可能性がある。
doi: 10.1038/500538a
Analysis of the gut microbial gene composition in obese and non-obese individuals shows marked differences in bacterial richness between the two groups, with individuals with low richness exhibiting increased adiposity, insulin resistance, dyslipidaemia and inflammation; only a few bacterial marker species are needed to distinguish between individuals with high and low bacterial richness, providing potential for future diagnostic tools.
doi: 10.1038/nature12506
Strong evidence that a kilonova — an event similar to a faint, short-lived supernova — accompanied the short-duration γ-ray burst GRB 130603B provides support for the hypothesis that such bursts are produced by the merger of two compact stellar objects.
doi: 10.1038/nature12505
A strong inverse correlation between gravity and topography leads to the conclusion that Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, must have a rigid ice shell with an elastic thickness exceeding 40 kilometres.
doi: 10.1038/nature12400
Artificial spin-ice systems are lithographically fabricated arrays of interacting ferromagnetic nanometre-scale islands; a procedure to thermalize two types of artificial spin ice with different geometries has now been developed, resulting in unprecedentedly large ground-state domains in square lattices and crystallites of ordered magnetic charges in kagome lattices.
doi: 10.1038/nature12399
New measurements of stable isotope vital effects in fossil coccoliths show a step increase in reliance of coccolithophore photosynthesis on active transport of dissolved bicarbonate in the late Miocene epoch, suggesting both a low threshold for adaptation of coccolithophores to carbon dioxide and a decrease in global carbon dioxide levels at that time.
doi: 10.1038/nature12448
Multidecadal trends in the terminus position of outlet glaciers along the margin of the East Antarctic ice sheet reveal three epochal patterns of glacier retreat or advance consistent with a rapid and coherent response to air temperature and sea-ice trends.
doi: 10.1038/nature12382
An anaerobic methanotroph (ANME-2d) can perform nitrate-driven anaerobic oxidation of methane through reverse methanogenesis, using nitrate as the terminal electron acceptor, and nitrite produced by ANME-2d is reduced to dinitrogen gas through a syntrophic relationship with an anaerobic ammonium-oxidizing bacterium.
doi: 10.1038/nature12375
Whole-genome whole-population sequencing is used to examine the dynamics of genome-sequence evolution in Saccharomyces cerevisiae populations for 1,000 generations; this reveals patterns of sequence evolution driven by pervasive genetic hitchhiking and interference, and shows that beneficial mutations that escape drift and increase in frequency typically occur in cohorts.
doi: 10.1038/nature12344
Cyclic voltammetry reveals an extended mode of reward-predictive dopamine signalling in the striatum as rats navigate; signals increase as the rats approach distant rewards, instead of showing phasic or steady tonic activity, and the increases scale flexibly with the distance and size of the rewards.
doi: 10.1038/nature12475
After previously discovering that the ion channel TRPA1 is used as an internal temperature sensor in Drosophila to control the slow response of flies to shallow thermal gradients, the authors show here that the rapid response of flies to steep warming gradients relies on a different protein, GR28B, providing the first example of a thermosensory role for a gustatory receptor.
doi: 10.1038/nature12390
In obese and overweight individuals, diet-induced weight loss and weight-stabilization interventions improve the low microbiota gene richness and clinical phenotypes seen before intervention, but have less of an effect on inflammatory phenotypes.
doi: 10.1038/nature12480
A population of multipotent cardiopulmonary mesoderm progenitors (CPPs) within the posterior pole of the heart expresses Wnt2, Gli1 and Isl1; these CPPs arise from cardiac progenitors before lung development, generate the mesoderm lineages within the cardiac inflow tract and lung, and are regulated by hedgehog expression from the foregut endoderm.
doi: 10.1038/nature12358
Single-cell RNA sequencing and weighted gene co-expression network analysis are used to study transcriptome change in pre-implantation embryos and oocytes; this reveals a conserved genetic program between human and mouse but with different developmental specificity and timing, and conserved hub genes that may be key in pre-implantation development.
doi: 10.1038/nature12364
A study of prostate cancer cells reveals a transcriptional activation role for long non-coding RNAs (PRNCR1 and PCGEM1) that bind to the androgen receptor, and is also observed for the truncated androgen receptor characteristic of many aggressive prostate cancers.
doi: 10.1038/nature12451
In an in vitro Xenopus extract system that can undergo cell cycles, mitosis spreads through the cytoplasm in ‘trigger waves’ of Cdk1 activation, which may reflect a more general biological mechanism related to action potentials and calcium waves.
doi: 10.1038/nature12321
The site of collision between two chromosome replication forks can be used to reinitiate replication independent of an active origin, with potentially pathogenic effects.
doi: 10.1038/nature12312
