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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.457 NO.7225 DATED 01 JANUARY 2009
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Astronomy: Location, location, location
Astrophysics: Nature goes 3D
Commentary: How Dark is Your Sky?
Online: Evolution gems
Nanotechnology: Trapping and transport on a tiny scale
Cancer: Cell-cycle restriction helps leukaemia stem cells keep going
Quantum physics: Squeezed to the limit
Oncology: Hijacked pathway contributes to cancer spread
And finally… The power of reputation
· 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.
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· 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
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[1] Astronomy: Location, location, location (pp 41-50)
Nature looks back at 18 years of cutting-edge space science with the Hubble Space Telescope this week, as the International Year of Astronomy gets under way.
Originally launched in 1990 as a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, the telescope has revolutionized the fields of astronomy and cosmology, and captured the public’s imagination with its images, thanks to its prime location outside the Earth’s atmosphere. Julianne Dalcanton reviews the advances made possible by this versatile space telescope and discusses its future capabilities.
The Hubble Space Telescope has a unique position in space, resulting in a dramatic increase in its resolution in comparison with telescopes down on the ground. The telescope’s deep, clear views are not masked by the Earth’s turbulent atmosphere, giving it unprecedented resolution when imaging the brightness and structure of astrophysical objects. These advantages have dramatically changed our understanding of astronomy — from tracing the life cycle of stars to demonstrating the role of black holes in galaxy formation and testing fundamental models of the expansion of the Universe.
CONTACT
Julianne Dalcanton (University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA)
Tel: +1 206 685 2155; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Astrophysics: Nature goes 3D (pp 63-66; N&V)
Nature gains an extra dimension this week with its first three-dimensional, interactive PDF. The paper describes a new method for analysing 3D maps of molecular clouds, shedding light on the role of gravity in star formation, and readers can view and rotate maps of molecular clouds.
Alyssa Goodman and colleagues borrowed technology from medical imaging to analyse data cubes of molecular clouds, where the x and y axes represent the plane of the sky, and the third dimension (z) is velocity.
Molecular clouds, also known as stellar nurseries, give birth to stars. The study shows that gravity is important on all scales, from low-density regions to dense cores of gas and dust. Previous simulations of star formation have not included gravity on scales outside the dense cores, so this study suggests future simulations would be wise to do so.
CONTACT
Alyssa Goodman (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 617 495 9278; E-mail: [email protected]
Ralph Pudritz (McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada) N&V author
Tel: +1 905 525 9140 ext 23180; E-mail: [email protected]
Commentary: How Dark is Your Sky? (pp 27)
Astronomers have been pushing to reduce light pollution near observatories for decades. But the benefits of reducing light waste and the unintended, sometimes subtle, consequences of losing a clear view the night sky are things that could affect us all.
In a Commentary in Nature this week, Malcolm Smith explains how the scientists are finding unlikely allies in this cause among conservationists, lighting engineers and even health professionals.
“Although challenging, we can work together to reduce the form of pollution and energy waste that is, arguably, the most easily mitigated,” Smith says.
CONTACT
Malcolm Smith (Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in La Serena, Chile)
Tel: +56 51 205 204; E-mail: [email protected]
Online: Evolution gems
This week Nature will fulfil the task set by an Editorial it ran last year. The journal urged scientists and their institutions to ‘spread the word’ and highlight reasons why scientists can treat evolution by natural selection, in effect, as an established fact. “Between now and the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth on 12 February 2009, every science academy and society with a stake in the credibility of evolution should summarize evidence for it on their website and take every opportunity to promote it.” (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7175/full/451108b.html)
Nature will host online a freely accessible resource, written by its staff, for any biologist (or others) who wishes to explain to students, friends or loved ones just what is the evidence for evolution by natural selection. The resource, entitled ’15 evolutionary gems’, summarizes 15 lines of evidence from papers published in Nature over the past 10 years or so. The evidence is drawn from the fossil record, from studies of natural and artificial habitats, and from studies of molecular biological processes.
“Scientists take evolution as a basis for their understanding of the world, but may not be aware of the strong evidence that has accumulated in its favour,” says Philip Campbell, Editor-in-Chief of Nature. "In a year in which Darwin is being celebrated amid uncertainty or even hostility about his ideas among citizens, being aware of the incontrovertible evidence for those ideas is all the more important. We hope this document will help."
The document will be found here: http://www.nature.com/evolutiongems
For media information please contact:
Ruth Francis (Head of Press, Nature, London, UK)
Tel: +44 20 7843 4562; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Nanotechnology: Trapping and transport on a tiny scale (pp 71-75)
A new technique for trapping and transporting nanoscale particles using light is revealed in this week’s Nature. The method could lead to new ways of building nanostructures and hands-off approaches for manipulating and studying nanoparticles, including proteins, DNA and quantum dots.
David Erickson and colleagues condensed the energy of a laser beam within nanoscale channels or ‘waveguides’, and used these high-intensity optical fields to capture and move dielectric nanoparticles and DNA molecules. The new technique allows particles just tens of nanometres in size to be manipulated, in a significant advance on similar techniques, such as optical tweezers, that operate mainly on the microscale.
The ability to manoeuvre nanoscale particles is critical to the development of active nanosystems. Here the team uses near-field optical forces, such as those used in optical traps, to trap the nanoparticles, and scattering forces to transport them. This is an advantage over other near-field trapping techniques that can trap but not manipulate matter.
CONTACT
David Erickson (Cornell University, Ithaca, USA)
Tel: +1 626 710 0113; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Cancer: Cell-cycle restriction helps leukaemia stem cells keep going (pp 51-56)
A protein that aids the survival of cancer-causing stem cells is described in this week’s Nature. The study boosts our understanding of leukaemia and may help the development of new anti-cancer therapies.
Leukaemias are fuelled by rogue cancer stem cells that can divide asymmetrically to produce more cancer stem cells and other more specialized cancerous cells. Pier Giuseppe Pelicci and colleagues show that leukaemia-associated oncogenes trigger DNA damage in blood stem cells. The cell cycle inhibitor p21 is then upregulated, temporarily preventing the cancer stem cells from proliferating and giving them time to repair the damage. This means the same cancer stem cells can, in theory, go on to reseed the cancer.
Most cancer therapies focus on killing rapidly dividing cancer cells, and are not designed to kill any quiescent or slowly dividing cancer stem cells that may exist. The study indicates that p21 could be a viable anti-cancer target. If the p21-dependent DNA repair is blocked, the slowly proliferating leukaemia stem cells should eventually become exhausted and die.
CONTACT
Pier Giuseppe Pelicci (Istituto Europeo di Oncologia, Milan, Italy)
Tel: +39 02 5748 9868; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Quantum physics: Squeezed to the limit (pp 67-70; N&V)
Quantum uncertainty has been squeezed to the limit in an optical system. The method should aid the development of high precision instruments, such as atomic clocks and gravity-wave detectors.
Quantum measurements are subject to an uncertainty that is usually distributed equally between pairs of complementary properties, such as position and momentum. But a technique known as 'squeezing' can be used to reduce the uncertainty of one desired property at the expense of increasing that of the other.
In this week's Nature, Lynden Shalm and colleagues described a method that squeezes a composite optical system to its fundamental limit. They overlap three photons in an optical fibre and then manipulate their spin. The resulting composite particle, known as a 'triphoton', is 'squeezed' as far as it can go.
CONTACT
Krister Shalm (University of Toronto, Canada)
Tel: +1 647 278 8493; E-mail: [email protected]
Geoff Pryde (Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia) N&V author
Tel: +61 7 3735 7894; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] Oncology: Hijacked pathway contributes to cancer spread (pp 102-106; N&V)
Lung cancer cells hijack immune system signalling pathways to stimulate metastasis, a Nature paper suggests. The finding indicates new targets for cancer therapy.
Metastatic lung cancer cells secrete a protein, called versican that activates debris-scavenging macrophages and stimulates bone marrow cells to produce the inflammatory protein TNF-alpha. This enhances metastatic growth, Michael Karin and colleagues report. Components of this signalling pathway could be blocked to slow metastasis spread, the authors suggest.
CONTACT
Michael Karin (University of California, San Diego, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 858 534 1361; E-mail: [email protected]
Alberto Mantovani (Istituto Clinico Humanitas, Milan, Italy) N&V author
Tel: +39 02 8224 2444; E-mail: [email protected]
[7] And finally… The power of reputation (pp 79-82; N&V)
It rarely pays to punish, especially when reputation is involved. The reassuring finding is reported in a paper published in this week’s Nature.
Given the amount of punishment we humans like to dish out, you might expect that this strategy would have its payoffs and promote cooperation. Not so, say Hisashi Ohtsuki and colleagues, who use a game theory model to explore the circumstances that promote punishment.
In their model, individuals observe the interactions between others and assess their reputation under various social norms — players can cooperate, punish or opt out. They find that punishment is only a successful strategy under a narrow set of parameters including the reliability of reputation and the spread of gossip.
CONTACT
Hisashi Ohtsuki (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan)
Tel: +81 90 5724 7756; E-mail: [email protected]
Manfred Milinski (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Ploen, Germany) N&V author
Tel: +49 4522 763 254; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[8] Seismic evidence for overpressured subducted oceanic crust and megathrust fault sealing (pp 76-78)
[9] Chaperonin complex with a newly folded protein encapsulated in the folding chamber (pp 107-110)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***These papers will be published electronically on Nature's website on 31 December 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 01 January, but at a later date. ***
[10] Calcium flickers steer cell migration
DOI: 10.1038/nature07577
[11] The Fas–FADD death domain complex structure unravels signalling by receptor clustering
DOI: 10.1038/nature07606
[12] Pyrrolysyl-tRNA synthetase–tRNAPyl structure reveals the molecular basis of orthogonality
DOI: 10.1038/nature07611
[13] Casein kinase 1a governs antigen-receptor-induced NF-kB activation and human lymphoma cell survival
DOI: 10.1038/nature07613
[14] Photon capture and signalling by melanopsin retinal ganglion cells
DOI: 10.1038/nature07682
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.
AUSTRIA
Salzburg: 11
CANADA:
Kelowna: 2
Toronto: 5
Vancouver: 8
CHINA
Beijing: 10
FRANCE
Paris: 13
GERMANY
Heidelberg: 1
ITALY
Milan: 4
Perugia: 4
JAPAN
Fukuoka: 7
Kawaguchi: 7
Kumamoto: 13
Tokyo: 7, 12
Yokohama: 12
NETHERLANDS
Amsterdam: 9
Groningen: 9
SOUTH KOREA
Chungju: 6
TAIWAN
Taipei: 6
UNITED KINGDOM
London: 9
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
Berkeley: 8
La Jolla: 6, 11
San Diego: 11
Connecticut
New Haven: 12
Florida
Jupiter: 6
Iowa
Iowa City: 10
Maryland
Baltimore: 14
Frederick: 13
Massachusetts
Boston: 2, 14
Cambridge: 2, 7
New York
Ithaca: 3
Virginia
Ashburn: 14
Washington
Seattle: 1
Wisconsin
Madison: 8
PRESS CONTACTS…
From North America and Canada
Katherine Anderson, Nature New York
Tel: +1 212 726 9231; E-mail: [email protected]
Katie McGoldrick, Nature Washington
Tel: +1 202 737 2355; E-mail: [email protected]
From Japan, Korea, China, Singapore and Taiwan
Mika Nakano, Nature Tokyo
Tel: +81 3 3267 8751; E-mail: [email protected]
From the UK/Europe/other countries not listed above
Jen Middleton, Nature London
Tel: +44 20 7843 4502; E-mail [email protected]
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