福島第一原発の事故処理と研究について、日本は国際的な協力を求めるべきだ。
Nuclear error p.5
Japan should bring in international help to study and mitigate the Fukushima crisis.
doi: 10.1038/501005b
Japan should bring in international help to study and mitigate the Fukushima crisis.
doi: 10.1038/501005b
International weapons conventions may not be perfect, but they are a vital mechanism for making wars less barbaric and less frequent — a cause that should galvanize scientists and others.
doi: 10.1038/501005a
A simple iron complex offers a chance to update how the global supply of ammonia is made.
doi: 10.1038/501006a
Reluctance to pay entrance fees stalls European Southern Observatory’s giant telescope.
doi: 10.1038/501013a
Himalayan nations take action in response to changing climate and its deadly effects.
doi: 10.1038/501014a
Conservation fight flares over invasive California eucalyptus.
doi: 10.1038/501015a
Spacecraft could continue to hunt for planets — or take on alternative tasks, such as asteroid spotting.
doi: 10.1038/501016a
Study reveals plasticity in age-related cognitive decline.
doi: 10.1038/501018a
細胞を理解するために、世界の海を航海するという極端な行動に出た生物学者がいる。
doi: 10.1038/501020a
酵素のトポイソメラーゼはDNAのもつれをほどくことで遺伝子の転写を促進する。この酵素の機能が不調になると非常に長い遺伝子の発現がうまく行われなくなるらしい。これは、神経発達障害に関わっている可能性がある。
doi: 10.1038/nature12553
量子暗号法の費用効果の高いアーキテクチャーが、ネットワークのハブノードに置いた単一の受信機を多数のエンドユーザーが共有して秘密の暗号鍵を交換するという方式によって実現された。
doi: 10.1038/501037a
生物間で見られる形態的な模倣である擬態は、長い間適応戦略の1つと考えられてきた。だが、擬態は分子レベルでも起こる。明らかになりつつある１つの例は、病原微生物が構造を擬態することで宿主の細胞受容体に結合するというものだ。
doi: 10.1038/501038a
北半球の生態系の解析から、夜間の気温上昇の植物の成長への影響は、昼間の気温が上昇した場合とは逆であることが分かった。この知見は、炭素循環モデルに関わってくる。
doi: 10.1038/501039a
視覚には、光褪色した色素の継続的な再生利用が必要である。変則的な分解経路であるオートファジーが、レチナール色素を含む上皮細胞でこの過程に関わっているらしい。
doi: 10.1038/501040a
B細胞は骨髄中で生じ、微生物感染を防御するための抗体を産生するようになる。意外なことに、B細胞の発生は腸でも起こっているようで、そこでは常在微生物によって発生が促進されることが分かった。
doi: 10.1038/nature12551
感染が起こると、炎症性の免疫応答が侵害受容器神経を活性化して痛みを引き起こすことがある。細菌病原体の1つは、痛みを直接引き起こして、免疫応答を自分に有利な方向に調節することもしているらしい。
doi: 10.1038/nature12550
The prion paradigm – the hypothesis that the seeded aggregation of certain proteins is key to understanding age-related neurodegenerative disorders – is evaluated in relation to recent studies and disease models; the paradigm suggests a unifying pathogenic principle with broad relevance to a large class of currently intractable diseases.
doi: 10.1038/nature12481
This study shows that most known mediators of immunity, such as TLR2, MyD88, T cells or B cells, and neutrophils and monocytes, are dispensable for pain produced by Staphylococcus aureus infection; instead, bacterial products, such as N-formylated peptides and α-haemolysin, induce pain by directly activating nociceptor neurons, which in turn modulate inflammation.
doi: 10.1038/nature12479
Reducing topoisomerase activity in mouse and human neurons is found to reduce the expression of long genes by impairing transcription elongation: among genes affected are numerous high-confidence candidates for autism spectrum disorder.
doi: 10.1038/nature12504
Cell-type-specific anthrax toxin receptor CMG2-null mice are generated and used to show that the Bacillus anthracis toxins lethal toxin (LT) and oedema toxin (ET) target distinct cell types; in contrast to previous suggestions, it is shown that endothelial cells are not key targets for either toxin and instead LT targets cardiomyocytes and vascular smooth muscle cells whereas ET targets hepatocytes.
doi: 10.1038/nature12510
An experimental demonstration of the concept of a ‘quantum access network’ based on simple and cost-effective telecommunication technologies yields a viable method for realizing multi-user quantum key distribution networks with efficient use of resources.
doi: 10.1038/nature12493
The ‘0.7-anomaly’ — an unexpected feature in the conductance of a quantum point contact — is shown to originate in a smeared van Hove singularity in the local density of states at the bottom of the lowest one-dimensional subband of the point contact.
doi: 10.1038/nature12421
Electric conductance through a narrow constriction of width comparable to the electronic wavelength is quantized in units of 2e2/h, but a shoulder at around 0.7 of the conductance quantum is often present in measurements; detailed experiments now confirm that this effect is due to the emergence of localized states that result from many-body interactions between electrons in the constriction.
doi: 10.1038/nature12491
Catalysis of the reduction of nitrogen to ammonia under mild conditions by a tris(phosphine)borane-supported iron complex indicates that a single iron site may be capable of stabilizing the various NxHy intermediates generated during catalytic ammonia formation.
doi: 10.1038/nature12435
Correlations between the maximum and minimum daily temperatures and a vegetation index in the Northern Hemisphere suggest that asymmetric diurnal warming (faster warming of the land surface during the night than during the day) produces several different vegetation and carbon storage effects.
doi: 10.1038/nature12434
High-resolution computed tomography is used to compare cranial volumes of extant birds, the early avialan Archaeopteryx lithographica, and non-avian maniraptoran dinosaurs that are close to the origins of Avialae and avian flight; the cranial cavity of Archaeopteryx is not distinct from that of maniraptorans, suggesting that some non-avian maniraptorans may have had the neurological equipment required for flight.
doi: 10.1038/nature12424
Training with a multitasking video game is shown to improve cognitive control abilities that decline with age, revealing the plasticity of the ageing brain; these behavioural improvements were accompanied by underlying neural changes that predicted the training-induced boost in sustained attention and enhanced multitasking performance 6 months later.
doi: 10.1038/nature12486
Biochemical and structural investigation of a model for prion-induced neurodegeneration—antibody binding to PrPC—reveals the role of the PrP flexible tail and reactive oxygen species in mediating toxicity.
doi: 10.1038/nature12402
Evidence of crosstalk between the Robo/Slit and Wnt signalling pathways is provided, and R-spondin signalling is shown to enhance canonical Wnt signalling and increase the proliferation of intestinal stem cells.
doi: 10.1038/nature12416
Primary B-cell development is thought to be restricted to the bone marrow; here it is shown to occur also in intestinal tissues of postnatal mice, that it peaks at the time of weaning and is increased upon colonization of germ-free mice, and is thus influenced by commensal microbes.
doi: 10.1038/nature12496
Glucosylceramide (GlcCer), a common precursor of different glycosphingolipids, is shown to be channelled to two distinct pathways in the Golgi; non-vesicular transport from the cis- to trans-Golgi network results in the synthesis of the globo series of glycosphingolipids, whereas vesicular transport is the main source of GlcCer for ganglioside synthesis in the Golgi cisternae.
doi: 10.1038/nature12423
A series of long molecular dynamics simulations shows that the K+ channel is sterically locked in the inactive conformation by buried water molecules bound behind the selectivity filter; a kinetic model deduced from the simulations shows how releasing the buried waters can elongate the timescale of the recovery period, and this hypothesis is confirmed using ‘wet’ biophysical experiments.
doi: 10.1038/nature12395
