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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.458 NO.7238 DATED 02 APRIL 2009
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Climate change: ‘Sunken’ CO2 dissolves away
Astrophysics: Possible signature of dark matter detected
Geology: Melting mantle plumes and island formation
Physics: All in a spin
· 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: ‘Sunken’ CO2 dissolves away (pp 614-618; N&V)
If carbon dioxide (CO2) is ever to be safely stored deep in the ground, it’s important to understand the long-term effects of such geological storage. A Nature study of CO2 phase removal in natural gas fields now suggests that most ‘buried’ CO2 simply dissolves.
Chris Ballentine, Stuart Gilfillan and colleagues used noble gas and carbon isotope tracers to identify and quantify the principal mechanism of CO2 phase removal in nine natural gas fields from North America, China and Europe, which provide a natural analogue for assessing the geological storage of anthropogenic CO2 over millennial timescales. The find that dissolution in formation water is the major sink for CO2, and that geological mineral fixation has only a minor role as a trapping mechanism in natural gas fields.
CONTACT
Chris Ballentine (University of Manchester, UK)
Tel: +44 161 275 3832; E-mail: [email protected]
Stuart Gilfillan (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Tel: +44 131 650 7010; E-mail: [email protected]
Werner Aeschbach-Hertig (University of Heidelberg, Germany) N&V author
Tel: +49 6221 546 331; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Astrophysics: Possible signature of dark matter detected (pp 607-609)
The PAMELA satellite experiment has recorded a rise in the ratio of positrons to electrons in the energy range suggested to be associated with the decay of dark matter particles.
Dark matter is the unseen substance that accounts for most of the mass of our Universe and the presence of which can be inferred from gravitational effects on visible matter. When dark matter particles are annihilated after contact with anti-matter, they should yield a variety of subatomic particles, including electrons and positrons. In this week’s Nature, Piergiorgio Picozza and colleagues report a positron to electron ratio that systematically increases in a way that could indicate dark matter annihilation, although the positron source could equally well be a pulsar.
CONTACT
Piergiorgio Picozza (University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy)
Tel: +39 06 202 2926; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Geology: Melting mantle plumes and island formation (pp 619-622)
The mantle plume that formed the Galapagos Islands has cooled by 60–120 °C since the Cretaceous period according to work published in Nature this week. The research provides the first petrological evidence to back up the idea that the source of oceanic island basalts is cooler than that of large igneous provinces such as ocean plateaus and continental flood provinces.
Claude Herzberg and Esteban Gazel examine the composition of Galapagos-related lavas, and conclude that the Galapagos mantle plume has cooled from the Cretaceous period to present time. When combined with other observations, the results indicate that the mantle plumes that generated large igneous provinces in the Permian to Palaeocene periods were hotter and melted more extensively than those that generated modern ocean islands, such as the Galapagos.
Previous studies have indicated much lower eruption rates for oceanic island basalts compared to large igneous provinces, but until now quantitative comparisons of mantle temperature and degree of melting for the related sources have been lacking. The researchers believe this brings closer a better understanding of the life cycle of mantle plumes.
CONTACT
Claude Herzberg (Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, USA)
Tel: +1 732 445 3154; E-mail: [email protected]
Esteban Gazel (Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, USA)
Tel: +1 732 445 2124; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Physics: All in a spin (pp 610-613; N&V)
A new method enables researchers to control the collective spin of all the electrons in a two-dimensional gas. The technique, reported in this week’s Nature, may find use in emerging ‘spintronic’ devices, which seek to store and transfer information using the charge and spin state of electrons.
Electrons moving in a semiconductor experience a lattice of charged atoms flying past, making their spin direction fluctuate wildly. Jake Koralek and colleagues have found a way to balance this spin-destabilizing effect, by applying an external electric field to the semiconductor. They find that the collective spin of the entire gas of electrons, rather than that of each individual particle, then emerges as a new conserved quantity.
CONTACT
Jake Koralek (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 303 903 9077; E-mail: [email protected]
Jaroslav Fabian (University of Regensburg, Germany) N&V author
Tel: +49 941 943 2031; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[5] Structure of the connexin 26 gap junction channel at 3.5A° resolution (pp 597-602)
[6] Early assembly of the most massive galaxies (pp 603-606)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***These papers will be published electronically on Nature's website on 01 April 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 02 April, but at a later date. ***
[7] Structural basis for leucine-rich nuclear export signal recognition by CRM1
DOI: 10.1038/nature07975
[8] Autophagy regulates lipid metabolism
DOI: 10.1038/nature07976
[9] Detection and trapping of intermediate states priming nicotinic receptor channel opening
DOI: 10.1038/nature07923
[10] Syk kinase signalling couples to the Nlrp3 inflammasome for anti-fungal host defence
DOI: 10.1038/nature07965
[11] Evolutionary diversification in stickleback affects ecosystem functioning
DOI: 10.1038/nature07974
[12] Structural basis for assembly and disassembly of the CRM1 nuclear export complex
DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1586:
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.
CANADA:
Toronto: 1
Vancouver: 11
CHILE
Santiago: 6
CHINA
Wuhan: 1
GERMANY
Bonn: 10
Munich: 10
Siegen: 2
HUNGARY
Budapest: 10
ITALY
Bari: 2
Florence: 2
Frascati: 2
Naples: 2
Rome: 2
Trieste: 2
JAPAN
Hyogo: 5
Kyoto: 5
Osaka: 5
Tokyo: 8
PORTUGAL
Porto: 6
RUSSIA
Moscow: 2
St Petersburg: 2
SOUTH AFRICA
Cape Town: 6
Durban: 6
SWEDEN
Stockholm: 2
SWITZERLAND
Lausanne: 10
Lucerne: 11
UNITED KINGDOM
Edinburgh: 1, 6
Liverpool: 6
London: 10
Manchester: 1, 6
Portsmouth: 6
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Arizona
Tucson: 6
California
Berkeley: 1, 4
Davis: 6
Livermore: 6
Santa Barbara: 4
Santa Clara: 4
Stanford: 4
Idaho
Moscow: 11
Minnesota
Rochester: 9
Missouri
St Louis: 11
New Jersey
Piscataway: 3
Princeton: 4
New York
Bronx: 8
Texas
Dallas: 7
Houston: 1
Utah
Salt Lake City: 9
Virginia
Arlington: 1
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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