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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.448 NO.7155 DATED 16 AUGUST 2007
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Stellar science: A turbulent wake
Ageing and cancer: Henrietta's legacy
Geology: The creeping San Andreas
Materials: Testing one’s metal
Social mammals: Drive him away or let him stay
· Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
· Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Stellar science: A turbulent wake (pp 780-783)
A stunning ultraviolet image of a turbulent wind wake produced by the binary star Mira offers a new, unprecedented direct measure of the star’s mass loss history.
Stars such as Mira — in the late stages of stellar evolution and with low-to-intermediate mass — return a large fraction of their original mass to the interstellar medium through the dusty, molecular winds they send out. This means they have a direct affect on subsequent star and planet formation in their host galaxy.
In this week’s Nature, D. Christopher Martin and colleagues report the discovery of an ultraviolet-emitting bow shock and turbulent wake extending over 2 degrees on the sky, produced by the interaction of Mira’s stellar wind and the ambient interstellar medium.
The wind wake is a tracer of the last 30,000 years of Mira’s mass loss history. In the past, observations of interactions between Mira-type stellar winds and the interstellar medium have been in the infrared.
CONTACT
D. Christopher Martin (California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 626 395 4243; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Ageing and cancer: Henrietta's legacy (pp 767-774)
Over fifty years ago, a 31-year-old woman underwent a biopsy for a suspicious cervical mass. Part of the sample went for pathological analysis, but another went to the research laboratory of George and Martha Gey. The patient died from her cancer just 8 months later, and on that day George Gey appeared on American TV announcing the dawn of a new era in medical research. For the first time, he explained, it was possible to grow human cells continuously in culture. And he called the biopsy-derived cell line 'HeLa', in memory of Henrietta Lacks, the unfortunate young mother whose tumour made it all possible.
Since then, researchers have been slowly stripping away the many secrets that endow cancer cells with the gift of immortality. In a review in this week's Nature, Toren Finkel and colleagues not only offer a historical perspective, but also describe the more recent research linking cancer biology to normal ageing.
CONTACT
Toren Finkel (National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, NIH, Bethesda, MD, USA)
Tel: +1 301 402 4081; E-mail: [email protected]
This author is travelling and may not have access to email, so you may wish to contact:
Allison Fisher (NHLBI Communications Office, NIH, Bethesda, MD, USA)
Tel: +1 301 496 4236; E-mail: nhlbi_news @nhlbi.nih.gov
[3] Geology: The creeping San Andreas (pp 795-797; N&V)
Scientists have discovered talc in rock samples drilled through the San Andreas fault, which could explain why this segment of the tectonic boundary experiences such a high rate of creep. The central Californian part of the San Andreas fault very slowly moves or ‘creeps’ along at a rate of up to 28 millimetres a year and is thought to be the weakest zone of the 1,300-kilometre plate boundary between North America and the Pacific. This weakness was proposed to be due to the presence of the metamorphic rock serpentinite, but recent pressure and temperature measurements have shown that serpentinite is actually too strong and unstable to produce the observed conditions.
In this week’s Nature, Diane Moore and Michael Rymer report the discovery of talc in cuttings collected during drilling of the fault zone. This three-kilometre-deep drill hole — part of the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) — is located near Parkfield in central California. Instruments have been installed across the fault to record data near the source of earthquakes, and rock and fluid samples have been collected to help scientists evaluate the geological properties that control the seismological behaviour of the fault in the region.
The authors examined the mineral composition of grains of serpentinite collected at three-metre intervals. They found that talc of recent origin had replaced the serpentinite along veins and foliations. The presence of talc in the active trace of the San Andreas fault is significant because talc has a very low shear strength in the temperature range found in the fault. They conclude that talc may therefore provide the connection between serpentinite and creep in the San Andreas fault.
CONTACT
Diane Moore (US Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 650 329 4825; E-mail: [email protected]
Christopher Wibberley (Universite de Nice - Sophia Antipolis, Valbonne, France) N&V author
Tel: +33 4 92 94 26 32; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Materials: Testing one’s metal (pp 787-790; N&V)
Using recent theoretical insights into controlling glass formation, a team of researchers has created the first monatomic metallic glass.
Glasses come in many forms. For the specific case of metallic glasses, multiple components are usually required to avoid crystallization during normal liquid cooling. In this week’s Nature, Austen Angell and colleagues report the experimental conditions for successful vitrification of metallic liquid germanium. Not only have they created the first monatomic metallic glass, they also find evidence for a rare liquid-to-liquid phase transition in this system.
CONTACT
Austen Angell (Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA)
Tel: +44 480 491 0995; E-mail: [email protected]
Gilles Tarjus (Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France) N&V author
Tel: +33 1 44 27 72 38; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Social mammals: Drive him away or let him stay (pp 798-801)
Female spotted hyaenas are the determining force behind building a healthy clan. Research published in Nature this week shows that female mate-choice is the main factor behind which group males begin their sexual career. Males that responded best to the female preferences had the highest long-term reproductive success.
Dispersal has a significant impact on lifetime reproductive success, and in group-living animals it is usually male biased. Oliver Höner and colleagues use microsatellite DNA profiling in their study and show that the responses of male hyaenas to female mate-choice rules mean that there are no specific kin discrimination mechanisms needed to avoid inbreeding. This is the first empirical study to demonstrate that male dispersal is the result of an adaptive response to female mate-choice.
CONTACT
Oliver Höner (Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Berlin, Germany)
Tel: +49 30 5168 516; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[6] Generation of optical ‘Schrodinger cats’ from photon number states (pp 784-786)
[7] Correlation between neural spike trains increases with firing rate (pp 802-806)
[8] Cdk1 is sufficient to drive the mammalian cell cycle (pp 811-815)
[9] Selection and evolution of enzymes from a partially randomized non-catalytic scaffold (pp 828-831; N&V)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 15 August at 1800 London time / 1300 US Eastern time (which is also when the embargo lifts) as part of our AOP (ahead of print) programme. Although we have included it on this release to avoid multiple mailings it will not appear in print on 16 August, but at a later date.***
[10] Crystal structure of the MgtE Mg21 transporter
DOI: 10.1038/nature06093
GEOGRAPHICAL LISTING OF AUTHORS…
The following list of places refers to the whereabouts of authors on the papers numbered in this release. For example, London: 4 - this means that on paper number four, there will be at least one author affiliated to an institute or company in London. The listing may be for an author's main affiliation, or for a place where they are working temporarily. Please see the PDF of the paper for full details.
AUSTRALIA
Brisbane: 6
FRANCE
Bordeaux: 8
Palaiseau: 6
Paris: 8
GERMANY
Berlin: 5
INDIA
Bangalore: 4
JAPAN
Saitama: 10
Yokohama: 10
SPAIN
Barcelona: 8
Madrid: 2, 8
UNITED KINGDOM
Edinburgh: 8
Sheffield: 5
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Arizona
Tempe: 4
California
Berkeley: 1
Los Angeles: 1
Menlo Park: 3
Pasadera: 1
Maryland
Bethesda: 2
Massachusetts
Boston: 9
New York
New York: 1, 7
Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh: 7
Texas
Houston: 7
Utah
Salt Lake City: 4
PRESS CONTACTS…
For North America and Canada
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Tel: +1 202 737 2355; E-mail: [email protected]
For Japan, Korea, China, Singapore and Taiwan
Mika Nakano, Nature Tokyo
Tel: +81 3 3267 8751; E-mail: [email protected]
For the UK/Europe/other countries not listed above
Helen Jamison, Nature London
Tel: +44 20 7843 4658; E-mail [email protected]
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