Editorials

Congressional agendas p243

A US Congress newly dominated by Democrats needs to exercise financial restraint. Manned spaceflight is a good candidate for cuts, and energy research needs belated leadership.

doi:10.1038/444243a

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Order for microbes p243

Burgeoning microbial gene data require coherent efforts to make them readily usable.

doi:10.1038/444243b

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Success and successor p244

Exit an outstanding science minister; enter a more political operator.

doi:10.1038/444244a

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Research Highlights

Research highlights p246

doi:10.1038/444246a

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News

The politics of breathing p248

Both sides in a US pollution dispute claim that science is on their side. Emma Marris explains how environmental laws have forced them into this position.

doi:10.1038/444248a

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WHO boss faces test of independence p250

China's candidate secures top job at health agency.

Declan Butler

doi:10.1038/444250a

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Q&A: Bart Gordon p251

The incoming chair of the House Committee on Science sets out his stall.

Emma Maris

doi:10.1038/444251a

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Sidelines p251

doi:10.1038/444251b

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UK civil servants accused of warping science p252

Politicians criticized for 'cherry-picking' evidence.

Jim Giles

doi:10.1038/444252a

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Gunmen seize academics at Baghdad ministry p252

Iraq rocked by mass kidnap at institute

Jim Giles and Declan Butler

doi:10.1038/444252b

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German stem-cell law under fire p253

Funding agency calls for relaxation of research rules.

Alison Abbott

doi:10.1038/444253a

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Neanderthal genome sees first light p254

Initial sequences sheds light on common ancestor.

Rex Dalton

doi:10.1038/444254a

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News in brief p255

doi:10.1038/444255a

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Business

The chips are down p256

Geneticists' desire to track the roots of complex diseases has shaken up the market for gene chips. Meredith Wadman reports on two firms jostling for position in a business potentially worth US$500 million.

doi:10.1038/444256a

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In brief p257

doi:10.1038/444257a

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Market watch p257

doi:10.1038/444257b

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News Features

Genetic information: Codes and enigmas p259

There's more than one way to read a stretch of DNA, finds Helen Pearson — and we need to understand them all.

doi:10.1038/444259a

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Waste management: One man's trash... p262

When landfills overflow, governments need new ways to deal with garbage. David Cyranoski visits a plant in Japan where plasma technology is turning waste into energy.

doi:10.1038/444262a

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Charmed, I'm sure p264

What makes the perfect protein purification or the right reagent reaction? Trevor Stokes investigates the weird world of good-luck lab charms.

doi:10.1038/444264a

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Correspondence

Answering critics can add fuel to controversy p265

Edward Witten

doi:10.1038/444265a

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Criticism: what to do about science's bad public image? p265

Boris Striepen

doi:10.1038/444265b

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Creationists attack secular education in Russia p265

Georgy S. Levit, Uwe Hofeld and Lennart Olsson

doi:10.1038/444265c

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Creationism, evolution: nothing has been proved p265

Maciej Giertych

doi:10.1038/444265d

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Commentary

Safe handling of nanotechnology p267

The pursuit of responsible nanotechnologies can be tackled through a series of grand challenges, argue Andrew D. Maynard and his co-authors.

doi:10.1038/444267a

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Books and Arts

Opposition to science p271

A molecular biologist explores the gulf between spirituality and his own rationalist viewpoint.

James T. Bradley reviews Challenging Nature: The Clash of Science and Spirituality at the New Frontiers of Life by Lee M. Silver

doi:10.1038/444271a

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Biology's big idea p272

David Robinson reviews In the Beat of a Heart: Life, Energy, and the Unity of Nature by John Whitfield

doi:10.1038/444272a

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A complex mind p273

Elio Raviola reviews Il Nobel dimenticato: La vita e la scienza di Camillo Golgi (The Forgotten Nobel: the Life and Science of Camillo Golgi) by Paolo Mazzarello

doi:10.1038/444273a

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Science in culture p274

Artists reveal a variety of responses to the contents of a natural-history museum.

Philip Campbell

doi:10.1038/444274a

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News and Views

Evolutionary biology: Ancient genomics is born p275

The reality of a complete Neanderthal genome draws near, as two papers report the sequencing of large amounts of Neanderthal DNA. The results will help to answer some central questions on human evolution.

David M. Lambert and Craig D. Millar

doi:10.1038/444275a

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Seismology: Greatness thrust upon them p276

The latest research seems to imply that all earthquakes are born equal. But combining that insight with earlier, seemingly contradictory, work could help us to tell which tremors grow to become more equal than others.

James F. Dolan

doi:10.1038/444276a

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50 & 100 Years Ago p277

doi:10.1038/444277a

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Cell biology: Brief encounters bolster contacts p279

Molecules often work together in complexes to carry out their functions in the cell. But how do they get together in such a dynamic environment? A structural study follows proteins as they meet their partners.

Tom L. Blundell and Juan Fernández-Recio

doi:10.1038/nature05306

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Medicine: Grapes versus gluttony p280

A compound found in red grapes called resveratrol improves the health and lifespan of mice on a high-calorie diet. This is potentially good news for overweight humans. Does it bode well for the rest of us too?

Matt Kaeberlein and Peter S. Rabinovitch

doi:10.1038/nature05308

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Fluid dynamics: Spinning discs in the lab p281

What causes gas to be drawn in towards black holes, rather than remain in a stable orbit as planets do around the Sun? A laboratory result indicates that something more than just hydrodynamics must be at work.

Steven A. Balbus

doi:10.1038/444281a

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Environmental chemistry: Browning the waters p283

Levels of dissolved organic carbon in British streams and lakes have risen over the past two decades. It might be a downstream effect of decreased acid rain — but isolating single factors is notoriously difficult.

Nigel Roulet and Tim R. Moore

doi:10.1038/444283a

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Brief Communications

Upper Palaeolithic infant burials p285

Thomas Einwögerer, Herwig Friesinger, Marc Händel, Christine Neugebauer-Maresch, Ulrich Simon and Maria Teschler-Nicola

doi:10.1038/444285a

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Materials: Carbon nanotubes in an ancient Damascus sabre p286

M. Reibold, P. Paufler, A. A. Levin, W. Kochmann, N. Pätzke and D. C. Meyer

doi:10.1038/444286a

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (195K) | Supplementary information

Brief Communications Arising

Earth science: Palaeo-altimetry of Tibet pE4

Peter Molnar, Gregory A. Houseman and Philip C. England

doi:10.1038/nature05368

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Earth science: Palaeo-altimetry of Tibet (reply) pE4

D. B. Rowley and B. S. Currie

doi:10.1038/nature05369

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Review

The plant immune system p323

Jonathan D. G. Jones and Jeffery L. Dangl

doi:10.1038/nature05286

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Articles

Analysis of one million base pairs of Neanderthal DNA p330

Richard E. Green, Johannes Krause, Susan E. Ptak, Adrian W. Briggs, Michael T. Ronan, Jan F. Simons, Lei Du, Michael Egholm, Jonathan M. Rothberg, Maja Paunovic and Svante Pääbo

doi:10.1038/nature05336

Abstract | Full Text | PDF (899K) | Supplementary information

See also: Editor's summary | News and Views by Lambert & Millar

Resveratrol improves health and survival of mice on a high-calorie diet p337

Joseph A. Baur, Kevin J. Pearson, Nathan L. Price, Hamish A. Jamieson, Carles Lerin, Avash Kalra, Vinayakumar V. Prabhu, Joanne S. Allard, Guillermo Lopez-Lluch, Kaitlyn Lewis, Paul J. Pistell, Suresh Poosala, Kevin G. Becker, Olivier Boss, Dana Gwinn, Mingyi Wang, Sharan Ramaswamy, Kenneth W. Fishbein, Richard G. Spencer, Edward G. Lakatta, David Le Couteur, Reuben J. Shaw, Placido Navas, Pere Puigserver, Donald K. Ingram, Rafael de Cabo and David A. Sinclair

doi:10.1038/nature05354

Abstract | Full Text | PDF (520K) | Supplementary information

See also: Editor's summary | News and Views by Kaeberlein & Rabinovitch

Letters

Hydrodynamic turbulence cannot transport angular momentum effectively in astrophysical disks p343

Hantao Ji, Michael Burin, Ethan Schartman and Jeremy Goodman

doi:10.1038/nature05323

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See also: Editor's summary | News and Views by Balbus

Half-metallic graphene nanoribbons p347

Young-Woo Son, Marvin L. Cohen and Steven G. Louie

doi:10.1038/nature05180

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Free-electron-like dispersion in an organic monolayer film on a metal substrate p350

R. Temirov, S. Soubatch, A. Luican and F. S. Tautz

doi:10.1038/nature05270

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Flushing submarine canyons p354

Miquel Canals, Pere Puig, Xavier Durrieu de Madron, Serge Heussner, Albert Palanques and Joan Fabres

doi:10.1038/nature05271

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Predicting the endpoints of earthquake ruptures p358

Steven G. Wesnousky

doi:10.1038/nature05275

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (227K) | Supplementary information

See also: Editor's summary | News and Views by Dolan

Allee effects and pulsed invasion by the gypsy moth p361

Derek M. Johnson, Andrew M. Liebhold, Patrick C. Tobin and Ottar N. Bjørnstad

doi:10.1038/nature05242

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A protein interaction network for pluripotency of embryonic stem cells p364

Jianlong Wang, Sridhar Rao, Jianlin Chu, Xiaohua Shen, Dana N. Levasseur, Thorold W. Theunissen and Stuart H. Orkin

doi:10.1038/nature05284

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Boc is a receptor for sonic hedgehog in the guidance of commissural axons p369

Ami Okada, Frédéric Charron, Steves Morin, David S. Shin, Karen Wong, Pierre J. Fabre, Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Susan K. McConnell

doi:10.1038/nature05246

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Influence of the thalamus on spatial visual processing in frontal cortex p374

Marc A. Sommer and Robert H. Wurtz

doi:10.1038/nature05279

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Haemagglutinin mutations responsible for the binding of H5N1 influenza A viruses to human-type receptors p378

Shinya Yamada, Yasuo Suzuki, Takashi Suzuki, Mai Q. Le, Chairul A. Nidom, Yuko Sakai-Tagawa, Yukiko Muramoto, Mutsumi Ito, Maki Kiso, Taisuke Horimoto, Kyoko Shinya, Toshihiko Sawada, Makoto Kiso, Taiichi Usui, Takeomi Murata, Yipu Lin, Alan Hay, Lesley F. Haire, David J. Stevens, Rupert J. Russell, Steven J. Gamblin, John J. Skehel and Yoshihiro Kawaoka

doi:10.1038/nature05264

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Visualization of transient encounter complexes in protein–protein association p383

Chun Tang, Junji Iwahara and G. Marius Clore

doi:10.1038/nature05201

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See also: Editor's summary | News and Views by Blundell & Fernández-Recio

Bacterial chromatin organization by H-NS protein unravelled using dual DNA manipulation p387

Remus T. Dame, Maarten C. Noom and Gijs J. L. Wuite

doi:10.1038/nature05283

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (2,816K) | Supplementary information

Structural basis for messenger RNA movement on the ribosome p391

Gulnara Yusupova, Lasse Jenner, Bernard Rees, Dino Moras and Marat Yusupov

doi:10.1038/nature05281

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Naturejobs

Prospects p395

Global university rankings provide uncertain guidance.

Paul Smaglik

doi:10.1038/nj7117-395a

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Treasure Ireland p396

The Irish government is investing heavily in science and technology. As a result, career opportunities are becoming plentiful. Quirin Schiermeier reports

Quirin Schiermeier

doi:10.1038/nj7117-396a

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John McNeil, scientific director, Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, Malaria Vaccine Initiative, Bethesda, Maryland p398

John McNeil seeks fresh approaches to malaria treatment.

Virginia Gewin

doi:10.1038/nj7117-398a

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A step between bench and bedside p398

NIH institute establishes translational-research centre for environmental sciences.

Hannah Hoag

doi:10.1038/nj7117-398b

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Done deal p398

With my dissertation defence finally done, I can get on with my life.

Andreas Andersson

doi:10.1038/nj7117-398c

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Spotlight on Ireland

doi:10.1038/nj0133

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Futures

An unfortunate book tour p400

Who wants to live for ever?

Will Heydt-Minor

doi:10.1038/444400a

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