WWW.NATURE.COM/NATURE
This press release is copyright Nature.
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Neuroscience: Male and female flies wired differently for sex
Astrophysics: A threshold for massive star formation
Monsoons: Completing the record
Commentary: Malaria’s billion-dollar moment
Ecology: Locating what’s in the larder
Materials science: An engineering material toughens up
And finally… Donning a disguise outside the theatre
· Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
· Geographical listing of authors
Editorial contacts: While the best contacts for stories will always be the authors themselves, in some cases the Nature editor who handled the paper will be available for comment if an author is unobtainable. Editors are contactable via Ruth Francis on +44 20 7843 4562. Feel free to get in touch with Nature's press contacts in London, Washington and Tokyo (as listed at the end of this release) with any general editorial inquiry.
Warning: This document, and the Nature papers to which it refers, may contain information that is price sensitive (as legally defined, for example, in the UK Criminal Justice Act 1993 Part V) with respect to publicly quoted companies. Anyone dealing in securities using information contained in this document or in advanced copies of Nature’s content may be guilty of insider trading under the US Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
The Nature journals press site is at http://press.nature.com
· PDFs for the Articles, Letters, Progress articles, Review articles, Insights and Brief Communications in this issue will be available on the Nature journals press site from 1400 London time / 0900 US Eastern time on the Friday before publication.
· PDFs of News & Views, News Features, Correspondence and Commentaries will be available from 1400 London time / 0900 US Eastern time on the Monday before publication
PICTURES: While we are happy for images from Nature to be reproduced for the purposes of contemporaneous news reporting, you must also seek permission from the copyright holder (if named) or author of the research paper in question (if not).
HYPE: We take great care not to hype the papers mentioned on our press releases, but are sometimes accused of doing so. If you ever consider that a story has been hyped, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected], citing the specific example.
PLEASE CITE NATURE AND OUR WEBSITE www.nature.com/nature AS THE SOURCE OF THE FOLLOWING ITEMS. IF PUBLISHING ONLINE, PLEASE CARRY A HYPERLINK TO http://www.nature.com/nature
[1] Neuroscience: Male and female flies wired differently for sex (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature06808
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 27 February 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 28 February, but at a later date. ***
Subtle differences in brain wiring may be enough to give male and female fruitflies their contrasting sexual behaviours — despite the fact that these behaviours are induced by the same pheromone, a study published in Nature shows.
Sexual behaviour occurs when fruitflies sniff a pheromone called cVA, activating brain cells in a region called the DA1 glomerulus. But these behavioural effects differ between the sexes — males become disinterested in other males, whereas females become more interested.
Richard Axel and colleagues now use a combination of fluorescent staining and detailed microscopy to show that these behavioural differences are associated with differing patterns of connections between DA1 glomerulus cells and other brain cells in the male and female brains. The technique could also be used to investigate other brain pathways in popular laboratory organisms such as the mouse, the researchers suggest.
CONTACT
Richard Axel (Columbia University, New York, NY, USA)
Tel: +1 212 305 6915; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Astrophysics: A threshold for massive star formation (pp 1082-1084)
The dazzling luminosity of massive stars means that they are the only type of young star we can observe in distant galaxies, but they are very rare. Their masses can be over 100 times greater than those of the myriad of small stars normally produced when a gas cloud collapses. A paper in this week’s Nature has hit upon the cloud conditions necessary to foster the formation of massive stars — and these could explain why such stars are so unusual.
Mark Krumholz and Christopher McKee find that there is a threshold gas density that provides the conditions required for massive star formation, and pinpoint how densities above that threshold can be achieved.
In regions where a lot of stars are forming, the energy they release heats up the rest of the gas and generally keeps its density from reaching the threshold, meaning that only less massive stars will form. Only in those rare cases where the density exceeds the threshold does the gas collapse into massive stars.
CONTACT
Mark Krumholz (Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA)
Tel: +1 609 258 2303; E-mail: [email protected]
Christopher McKee (University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA) Co-author
Tel: +1 510 642 0805; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Monsoons: Completing the record (pp 1090-1093; N&V)
A high-resolution, absolute-dated record of the strength of the East Asian monsoon is presented in Nature this week. The record, taken from cave deposits, stretches back for 224,000 years, and may serve as a benchmark for correlating other climate records.
Scientists use ‘speleothems’ — cave mineral deposits such as stalactites and stalagmites — to obtain proxy records of past climate change. These deposits contain oxygen and carbon isotopes, which can be used to track changes in factors such as rainfall, temperature and vegetation over time. Previous studies of speleothems have begun to build up a picture of how the East Asian monsoon has changed in the past and what factors affect its strength, but there are still gaps in the record.
Hai Cheng and colleagues produced an oxygen isotope record from 12 stalagmites in Sanbao cave, central China, which completes a Chinese-cave-based record of monsoon history over the past two interglacial–glacial cycles. The record shows that the monsoon responds directly to Northern Hemisphere summer solar radiation on orbital timescales and indicates that the duration and pacing of so-called ‘Chinese interstadials’ — millennial-scale strong-monsoon events — are affected by ice sheet size.
CONTACT
Hai Cheng (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA)
Tel: +1 612 624 9598; E-mail: [email protected]
Jonathan Overpeck (University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 520 622 9065; E-mail: [email protected]
Commentary: Malaria’s billion-dollar moment
Funding for malaria control in the developing world has risen by a factor of ten in as many years, finally presenting real opportunities to make inroads against a disease that still kills more than a million people each year, mostly children. Mark Grabowsky of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria writes in a commentary this week that with this opportunity comes increased responsibility to coordinate spending. He lays out his plan, which includes integrating prevention programmes into other health efforts, better distribution of existing treatments and perhaps most importantly, surveillance of the approaches and their effects. Without an annual spend of US$10 million on surveillance, he writes, “the billion-dollar malaria effort is flying blind”.
Also in this issue are two news features focusing on malaria. One relates the long struggle to bring what may be the first malaria vaccine from the lab to large-scale clinical trials, while the other follows Zambia’s mosquito hunters as they try to understand the dynamics of the disease and assess their country’s chances of dramatically reducing its impact.
CONTACT
Mark Grabowsky (The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Geneva, Switzerland)
Tel: +41 22 791 5943, E-mail: [email protected]
For background information on features please contact:
Michael Hopkin (Senior Reporter, Nature, London)
Tel: +44 7843 4594; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Ecology: Locating what’s in the larder (pp 1098-1102)
Predators in the wild may have problems locating their prey, especially when it is sparsely distributed in a large, changeable landscape. A paper in this week’s Nature investigates how marine predators get around this problem, by analysing their movements while hunting in the open ocean.
David Sims and colleagues show that a predator’s chance of success is greatly increased if it adopts a type of motion known as a ‘Lévy walk’. In Lévy walks, the animal moves in short bursts, with occasional long leaps. The researchers attached electronic data-logging tags to 31 large predators drawn from seven species — including sharks, bony fishes, sea turtles and penguins — and monitored the pattern of their diving movements when searching for prey in the sea.
It turns out that these patterns are similar for each animal, so perhaps Lévy-like walks are widely deployed by marine hunters. The team also found that using this search strategy made predators more successful. They say that their results may help to explain how animals redistribute in response to a shift in resources resulting from habitat modification due to, for example, climate change or fisheries’ activities.
CONTACT
David Sims (Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, Plymouth, UK)
Tel: +44 1752 633 227; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Materials science: An engineering material toughens up (pp 1085-1089)
It goes without saying that high-performance structural engineering materials need to be strong and pliable. Bulk metallic glasses are a new class of materials that are attracting attention because of their high strength and toughness, but they also tend to be brittle. A paper in this week’s Nature describes how their mechanical properties can be optimized by forming a composite that is both ductile and among the toughest known materials.
Douglas Hofmann and colleagues create their composite from semi-solid slurries of metallic-glass-forming alloys. They carefully incorporate inclusions known as dendrite structures so that these are uniformly dispersed and their dimensions controlled — somewhat analogous to the way in which incorporated rubber particles are used to toughen plastic.
The properties of the newly designed composite put this type of material on a par with titanium or steel alloys for toughness, opening up a wider range of applications for bulk metallic glasses.
CONTACT
Douglas Hofmann (California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 626 395 4774; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] And finally… Donning a disguise outside the theatre (pp 1103-1106)
Most predators shun dangerous snakes, which are often flamboyantly marked to warn them off. Cunningly, edible snakes may take advantage of this ruse by disguising themselves as a poisonous variety. Why then should the mimicking species be found far removed from areas frequented by the genuine article? A paper in this week’s Nature has come up with an explanation.
George Harper and David Pfennig studied the DNA of the deadly coral snake Micrurus fulvius and of its harmless copy, the scarlet kingsnake Lampropeltis triangulum elapsoides, both of which are found in the eastern United States and are brightly coloured with exotic ring patterns. They found genetic evidence indicating that male kingsnakes in particular disperse hundreds of kilometres away from coral-snake regions, probably in an attempt to broaden their mating horizons.
However, once there, their disguise turns out to be of limited value — the local predators are unfamiliar with the dangerous model snake and so enjoy picking off the most conspicuously coloured mimics. This can lead to the rapid breakdown of mimicry where coral snakes are absent.
CONTACT
George Harper (Hendrix College, Conway, AR, USA)
Tel: +1 501 450 1359; E-mail: [email protected]
David Pfennig (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA) Co-author
Tel: +1 919 962 6958; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[7] Autophagy fights disease through cellular self-digestion (pp 1069-1075)
[8] Backbone structure of the infectious e15 virus capsid revealed by electron cryomicroscopy (pp 1130-1134)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***These papers will be published electronically on Nature's website on 27 February 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 them on this release to avoid multiple mailings they will not appear in print on 28 February, but at a later date. ***
[9] CO2 regulator SLAC1 and its homologues are essential for anion homeostasis in plant cells
DOI: 10.1038/nature06720
[10] SLAC1 is required for plant guard cell S-type anion channel function in stomatal signalling
DOI: 10.1038/nature06608
[11] UNC93B1 delivers nucleotide-sensing toll-likereceptors to endolysosomes
DOI: 10.1038/nature06726
[12] Dendritic cell PAR1–S1P3 signalling couples coagulation and inflammation
DOI: 10.1038/nature06663
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
Adelaide: 4
Darwin: 4
Hobart: 4
AUSTRIA
Vienna: 1
CHINA
Hong Kong:
Nanjing: 3
Shanxi: 3:
ESTONIA
Tartu: 10
FINLAND
Helsinki: 10
JAPAN
Fukuoka: 9
Iwate: 9
Tokyo: 7, 9
UNITED KINGDOM
Bristol: 10
Exeter: 4
London: 4, 10
Lowestoft: 4
Plymouth: 4
St Andrews: 4
Swansea: 4
York: 4
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Arkansas
Conway: 6
California
Berkeley: 2
La Jolla: 10, 12
Pasadena: 1, 5
Santa Cruz: 2
Hawaii
Honolulu: 4
Indiana
West Lafayette: 8
Massachusetts
Cambridge: 8, 11
Michigan
Ann Arbor: 7
Minnesota
Minneapolis: 3
New Jersey
Princeton: 2
New York
Bronx: 7
New York: 1
Pennsylvania
Spring House: 12
Texas
Dallas: 7
Houston: 8
PRESS CONTACTS…
For North America and Canada
Katie McGoldrick, Nature Washington
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
Katherine Anderson, Nature London
Tel: +44 20 7843 4502; E-mail [email protected]
About NPG
Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd, dedicated to serving the academic, professional scientific and medical communities. NPG's flagship title, Nature, was first published in 1869. Other publications include Nature research journals, Nature Reviews, Nature Clinical Practice and a range of prestigious academic journals including society-owned publications. NPG also provides news content through [email protected]. Scientific career information and free job postings are offered on Naturejobs.
NPG is a global company with headquarters in London and offices in New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston, Tokyo, Paris, Munich, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Delhi, Mexico City and Basingstoke. For more information, please go to www.nature.com.
