The Chinese government’s professed commitment to transparency and responsiveness has had a rocky start. That bodes ill for the desire to attract the best science brains from around the world.
doi: 10.1038/531413a
Now that gravitational waves have been discovered, it is time to put them to use.
doi: 10.1038/531413b
Scientists must unite to stop Turkey from removing the right to freedom of expression.
doi: 10.1038/531414a
Initiatives aim to measure global warming’s impact on high seas and deep currents.
doi: 10.1038/531421a
Smartphone programs allow researchers to recruit large numbers of participants and monitor them in real time.
doi: 10.1038/531422a
Oceanography, brain science and stem cells among research fields that look set to grow.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2016.19590
Country's 13th Five-Year Plan advances a broad goal to phase down coal and expand renewable energy.
doi: 10.1038/531425a
Two conflicting studies are at centre of row.
doi: 10.1038/531426a
重力波の直接検出により、ブラックホール理論の正しさが確かめられ、天文学は新しい時代を迎えている。
doi: 10.1038/531428a
クラゲは、海洋生態系的にはあまり重要でないと長い間考えられてきたが、実際には海洋食物網に欠かすことのできない存在であるらしい。
doi: 10.1038/531432a
初期アルツハイマー病のマウスモデルで、記憶形成の際に脳の海馬で本来なら活性化されている神経間シナプス接続を増強してやると、記憶障害が回復することが明らかにされた。
doi: 10.1038/nature17312
渡り鳥は全球的に減少しつつある。ヨーロッパの渡り鳥についての広範囲にわたる研究で、非繁殖期に広く分散する種は、分散範囲がもっと制限されている種に比べて数が減りにくいらしいことが分かった。
doi: 10.1038/531451a
ハロゲン化アルケニルは、小型有機分子の合成に使われる最も有用な構成要素の一種である。容易に手に入るアルケンから交差メタセシス反応によって直接ハロゲン化アルケニルを作り出すことを可能にする触媒が見つかった。
doi: 10.1038/531453a
宿主の微生物の個体数が多い海洋環境内では、宿主当たりのウイルス数が、宿主の個体数が少ない場合に比べて減少していることが分かった。これは、宿主と共存する溶原感染と宿主を殺す溶菌感染というウイルスの生き残り戦略の相対的な役割に関する理論に疑問を投じるものだ。
doi: 10.1038/nature17303
月の正反対の側に位置する2つの場所に存在する氷は、かつては月の向きが現在の自転軸からずれていたことを示唆している。この知見は、月の火山活動歴と関わりがある。
doi: 10.1038/531455a
世界各地からの数千人が参加した異文化研究実験によって、脱税や不正な政治活動などの社会的規則違反は、個人が本質的に持っている正直さに有害な影響を及ぼすことが明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/nature17307
One shortcoming of olefin metathesis has been that acyclic alkenyl halides could not be generated efficiently and stereoselectively; but now halo-substituted molybdenum alkylidene species are shown to be able to participate in high-yielding olefin metathesis reactions that afford acyclic 1,2-disubstituted Z-alkenyl halides.
doi: 10.1038/nature17396
An analysis of 24 coral reef viromes challenges the view that lytic phage are believed to predominate when the density of their hosts increase and shows instead that lysogeny is more important at high host densities; the authors also show that this model is consistent with predator–prey dynamics in a range of other ecosystems, such as animal-associated, sediment and soil systems.
doi: 10.1038/nature17193
The loss of the TP53 gene is often involved in the development of human cancer; here, the deletion of other genes in the vicinity is shown also to contribute to cancer progression in a mouse model.
doi: 10.1038/nature17157
Deep γ-ray observations of the Galactic Centre with arcminute angular resolution show traces of petaelectronvolt protons within the central ten parsecs of our Galaxy; the accelerator of these particles could have provided a substantial contribution to Galactic cosmic rays in the past.
doi: 10.1038/nature17147
Polar hydrogen deposits on the Moon provide evidence that its spin axis has shifted; analysis of the locations of these deposits and of the lunar figure suggests that the shift occurred as a result of changes in the Moon’s moments of inertia caused by a low-density thermal anomaly beneath the Procellarum region.
doi: 10.1038/nature17166
Incomplete premelting at the edges of monolayer colloidal crystals is triggered by a bulk solid–solid phase transition and truncated by a mechanical instability that induces homogeneous bulk melting of the crystal; these observations challenge existing theories of two-dimensional melting.
doi: 10.1038/nature16987
Synthesis of atomically precise zigzag edges in graphene nanoribbons is demonstrated using a bottom-up strategy based on surface-assisted arrangement and reaction of precursor monomers; these nanoribbons have edge-localized states with large energy splittings.
doi: 10.1038/nature17151
Variability in North African dust dispersal, which affects air quality and the amount of radiation reaching the ground, is captured by the wind patterns over the Sahara; climate models suggest a downward trend in dust concentration with increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
doi: 10.1038/nature17149
To test whether there is a relationship between the level of national corruption and the intrinsic honesty of individuals, a behavioural test of the honesty of people from 23 countries was conducted; the authors found that high national scores on an index of rule-breaking are linked with reduced personal honesty.
doi: 10.1038/nature17160
The genus Homo had considerably smaller cheek teeth, chewing muscles and jaws than earlier hominins; here, the introduction of raw but processed meat, from which energy could more easily be extracted, is shown to have possibly been responsible for this change.
doi: 10.1038/nature16990
Nuclear DNA sequences from Middle Pleistocene Sima de los Huesos hominins show they were more closely related to Neanderthals than to Denisovans, and indicate a population divergence between Neanderthals and Denisovans that predates 430,000 years ago.
doi: 10.1038/nature17405
Experiments in transgenic mouse models of early Alzheimer’s disease show that the amnesia seen at this stage of the disease is probably caused by a problem with memory retrieval from the hippocampus rather than an encoding defect.
doi: 10.1038/nature17172
Tracing the fate of circulating tumour cells by intravital two-photon lung imaging shows that tumours produce microparticles as they arrive and these migrate along the lung vasculature and are mostly taken up by interstitial myeloid cells, in a process that contributes to metastatic seeding; a minor subset of microparticles is engulfed by conventional dendritic cells, which are thought to contribute to the initiation of an anti-tumour immune response in lung-draining lymph nodes.
doi: 10.1038/nature16985
A known oncogene, MITF, resides in a region of chromosome 3 that is amplified in melanomas and associated with poor prognosis; now, a long non-coding RNA gene, SAMMSON, is shown to also lie in this region, to also act as a melanoma-specific survival oncogene, and to be a promising therapeutic target for anti-melanoma therapy.
doi: 10.1038/nature17161
The GCN2 kinase is shown to have a protective role in the regulation of intestinal inflammation during amino acid starvation in a mouse model of colitis.
doi: 10.1038/nature17186
PGC1α protects against kidney injury by upregulating enzymes that enhance nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) and driving local accumulation of the fatty acid breakdown product β-hydroxybutyrate, which leads to increased production of the renoprotective prostaglandin E2.
doi: 10.1038/nature17184
A hybrid crystal structure of Mycobacterium smegmatis mycocerosic acid synthase, a multienzyme involved in the biosynthesis of mycobacterial branched-chain fatty acids, exemplifies the organization of fully-reducing polyketide synthases.
doi: 10.1038/nature16993
