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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.457 NO.7228 DATED 22 JANUARY 2009
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Climate change: Warming across Antarctica
Neuroimaging: fMRI sees what monkeys will think next
Climate: Spring forwards
Astrophysics: Cold streams formed early galaxies
Optical systems: Tinkering with light on a tiny scale
And finally… Print your own circuit?
· Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
· Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Climate change: Warming across Antarctica (pp 459-462)
Scientists address one of the hottest questions in climate research in Nature this week, showing that overall, the Antarctic continent has warmed over the past 50 years. Until now, incomplete records led researchers to believe that the continent’s entire interior may be cooling whilst the peninsula warms.
The warming of the Antarctic has been uncertain owing to the lack of continuous temperature records across the whole continent. Eric Steig and colleagues use existing weather station records combined with recent satellite measurements and statistical models to provide a fuller picture of the continent’s temperature from 1957 to 2006. The team shows that temperatures have risen by approximately half a degree in this period, with the greatest warming occurring in winter and spring, despite the autumn cooling in East Antarctica. The warming of the peninsula and West Antarctica is related to changes in atmospheric circulation and declines in sea ice in the pacific sector of the Southern polar ocean.
Accurately forecasting Antarctic temperatures will need an improved description of the interaction between sea ice and changes in the atmosphere.
CONTACT
Eric Steig (University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA)
Tel: +1 206 685 3715; E-mail: [email protected]
Drew Shindell (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Science, New York, NY, USA) Co-author paper [1]
Tel: +1 212 678 5605; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Neuroimaging: fMRI sees what monkeys will think next (pp 475-479; N&V)
For several decades functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used as a non-invasive technique for tracking neural activity and discovering what parts of a brain are active during which activities. A paper published in Nature this week suggests that this approach may show not only which parts of the brain are currently active but also those that will be needed for what the brain thinks it will do next.
fMRI of brain activity relies on the notion that increases in blood flow in the brain are directly correlated with neuronal activity in that brain region. Aniruddha Das and Yevgeniy Sirotin show that this is not always the case. Screening monkeys, the team observe that, although some fMRI signals do correspond with actual brain activity, there is also increased blood flow in other, less active regions. In particular, the authors saw increases in blood flow in the monkey’s visual cortex, even in complete darkness, when the animals were expecting a visual task to begin. This indicates that increases in blood flow may occur in anticipation of the brain areas needing to be used in the very near future and could demonstrate the prediction of expected energy consumption.
The mechanisms by which the brain anticipates its future activity and the signals involved in communicating such a prediction are yet to be uncovered. Nonetheless, this work challenges the generally accepted understanding of how blood flow is controlled in the brain and opens up the possibility that other exceptions to the model that blood flow is directly related to neuronal activity may exist to confound simplistic interpretations of fMRI experiments.
CONTACT
Aniruddha Das (Columbia University, New York, NY, USA)
Yevgeniy Sirotin (Columbia University, New York, NY, USA)
To contact the authors:
Karin Eskenazi (Department of Communications, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA)
Tel: +1 212 342 0508; E-mail: [email protected]
David Leopold (National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 301 594 0582; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Climate: Spring forwards (pp 435-440; N&V)
Spring may be coming sooner than you think. Compared with the early half of the twentieth century, the seasons on land are starting earlier and the winter–summer temperature differences are becoming less extreme, a Nature paper reports. It is thought that the changes are due to human influence on climate.
Alexander Stine and colleagues compared seasonal temperature trends from the first and second half of the twentieth century. The spring rise and autumn drop in temperatures are happening around 1.7 days earlier than before, and the difference between summer and winter temperatures has decreased, at least over land — over the oceans the situation is less clear. The recent trends are highly anomalous and cannot be explained by natural variability, the authors say.
CONTACT
Alexander Stine (University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 510 643 4248; E-mail: [email protected]
David Thomson (Queen's University, Kingston, Canada) N&V author
Tel: +1 613 533 2426; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Astrophysics: Cold streams formed early galaxies (pp 451-454; N&V)
Many of our Universe’s young and active star-forming galaxies grew as cold streams of gas flowed into them, a study in this week’s Nature suggests.
It was previously thought that most bursts of star formation resulted from violent mergers between galaxies, but this theory does not explain how they retain their properties and shape. The idea that they formed from a smooth flow of gas explains how their rotating disc configuration has remained intact, Avishai Dekel and colleagues report. The model also accounts for how young galaxies produce stars at high rates.
CONTACT
Avishai Dekel (The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel)
Tel: +972 2 6584100; E-mail: [email protected]
This author will be based at the University of California, Santa Cruz (USA) from 17th January:
Tel: +1 831 212 2679
Reinhard Genzel (Max-Planck Institut for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany) N&V author
Tel: +49 89 30000 3281; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Optical systems: Tinkering with light on a tiny scale (pp 455-458)
Manipulating light on a subwavelength scale with surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs), in which optical signals are carried along a surface in the form of collective electron motions, has been substantially enhanced thanks to a new device revealed in this week’s Nature. The resonant microcavities, designed to efficiently confine SSPs, are expected to affect fundamental quantum optics and influence the development of all-optical logic circuits.
Optical microcavities — chip-based devices for storing photons — have been made before. But Kerry Vahala and colleagues have coated a high-quality optical microcavity with a thin layer of noble metal so that it can store SSPs. They demonstrate that the device coupled to an optical waveguide allows light to be converted to specific SSP modes, enabling a new way to manipulate light on a chip-based platform.
The authors say their device represents a 30-fold improvement over past surface plasmonic cavity work.
CONTACT
Kerry Vahala (California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 626 395 2144; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] And finally… Print your own circuit? (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 21 January 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 22 January, but at a later date. ***
A new type of semiconductor that brings the prospect of powerful printable electronic circuits even closer is reported in this week’s Nature.
Antonio Facchetti and colleagues have developed a printable plastic semiconductor that uses electrons to conduct electricity. The inexpensive, chemically stable, naphthalene-based polymer can be made easily at room temperature using readily obtainable solutions. It can be used as a component in transistors and is compatible with a broad range of printing and processing technologies.
The electron-transporting plastic semiconductor differs from other printable plastic semiconductors which operate by conducting positive charges, but is fully compatible with them. The two types of semiconductor could be readily combined to make powerful ‘complementary’ circuits.
CONTACT
Antonio Facchetti (Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA)
Tel: +1 847 491 3295; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[7] The nature of the globular- to fibrous-actin transition (pp 441-445)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***These papers will be published electronically on Nature's website on 21 January 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 22 January, but at a later date. ***
[8] Cdc14 inhibits transcription by RNA polymerase I during anaphase
DOI: 10.1038/nature07652
[9] AIM2 recognizes cytosolic dsDNA and forms a caspase-1-activating inflammasome with ASC
DOI: 10.1038/nature07725
[10] AIM2 activates the inflammasome and cell death in response to cytoplasmic DNA
DOI: 10.1038/nature07710
[11] A micro-architecture for binocular disparity and ocular dominance in visual cortex
DOI: 10.1038/nature07721
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.
FRANCE
Gif-sur-Yvette: 4
Paris: 4
GERMANY
Bonn: 9
Garching: 4
Ludwigshafen: 6
Munich: 8
ISRAEL
Jerusalem: 4
JAPAN
Nagoya: 7
Sayo: 7
SINGAPORE
Singapore: 6
SOUTH KOREA
Daejeon: 5
SPAIN
Candelaria: 8
SWITZERLAND
Zurich: 4
UNITED KINGDOM
London: 8
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Alabama
Birmingham: 8
California
Berkeley: 3, 5
Pasadena: 5
Colorado
Boulder: 1
Illinois
Skokie: 6
Maryland
Greenbelt: 1
Massachusetts
Cambridge: 3, 9
Worcester: 9
Missouri
St Louis: 5
New York
New York: 1, 2
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia: 10
University Park: 1
Rhode Island
Bristol: 1
South Carolina
Charleston: 11
Washington
Seattle: 1
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From North America and Canada
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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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