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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.458 NO.7240 DATED 16 APRIL 2009
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Climate change: Study confirms possibility of catastrophic sea-level rise
Parasitology: New coats for old
Physics: Electrons go ballistic
Materials: Nanoribbons produced in abundance
· 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: Study confirms possibility of catastrophic sea-level rise (pp 881-884)
Melting ice sheets caused sea levels to rise rapidly and coral reefs to struggle at the end of the last interglaciation, a Nature paper suggests. The findings help to end controversy surrounding the timing and magnitude of this sea-level rise, and raises concerns that current global warming could yield similar rapid ice loss and catastrophic sea-level rise in the near future.
Paul Blanchon and colleagues studied the fossilized coral reefs of the northeast Yucatán peninsula, and found that during the last interglacial period, many reefs died and were replaced by new reefs on higher ground. This happened over an ecological timescale, and was caused by a rapid 2–3 metre jump in sea level that occurred around 121,000 years ago. The rapid rate and timing of this jump indicates that there was a period of swift ice loss during the warmest part of the last interglacial.
With growing evidence for contributions from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets to sea-level rise, the findings confirm the potential that continuing rapid ice loss could cause catastrophic sea-level rise by 2100. This is bad news for modern coral reefs, which are already suffering because of human activity.
CONTACT
Paul Blanchon (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Cancun, Mexico)
Tel: +52 998 87 10219 Ext. 126; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Parasitology: New coats for old (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature07982
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 15 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 it on this release to avoid multiple mailings it will not appear in print on 16 April, but at a later date. ***
A camouflage mechanism used by parasites to escape immune detection has been reproduced in the test tube for the first time, and is reported online this week in Nature.
Trypanosoma brucei is a parasite that causes sleeping sickness in humans and can be fatal if left untreated. The parasite hides from the immune system by periodically changing its protein coat so that it can no longer be recognized — a process known as variant surface glycoprotein (VSG) switching. It’s thought that this occurs mostly through gene conversion, whereby the parasite generates a new coat protein gene in place of the old one. F. Nina Papavasiliou and colleagues artificially recreated the process of VSG switching in the lab for the first time, to determine what instigates this gene swapping event.
Their results confirm the model that a spontaneous double-stranded break in DNA, upstream of the gene encoding the coat protein, is responsible for initiating switching. The idea is not new but the study establishes a system that scientists will now be able to use to manipulate the process. The findings could also help to establish how other disease-causing agents use VSG switching to elude immune detection.
CONTACT
F. Nina Papavasiliou (Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA)
Tel: +1 212 327 7857; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Physics: Electrons go ballistic (pp 868-871)
A new method for producing electron spin resonance that does not require external driving fields is reported in this week's Nature. The technique could find use in many areas, including medicine and quantum information.
Electron spin resonance, where the spins of unpaired electrons flip over, can be produced by high-frequency magnetic or electric fields. Joshua Folk and colleagues have devised a method, called 'ballistic spin resonance', that produces the same effect without the driving field.
In their system, electrons bouncing back and forth in micrometre-scale channels of a two-dimensional semiconductor structure undergo spin resonance through an effective magnetic field that arises owing to their spin–orbit interaction. The effective field oscillates owing to repeated reflections at the channel walls, with typical frequencies that are attractive for modern spin resonance applications.
CONTACT
Joshua Folk (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada)
Tel: +1 604 822 4334; E-mail: [email protected]
Lieven Vandersypen (Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Delft, Netherlands) N&V author
Tel: +31 15 2782469; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] & [5] Materials: Nanoribbons produced in abundance (pp 877-880; 872-876)
Two new high-yield methods for producing graphene nanoribbons are revealed in this week’s Nature. It’s thought that bulk quantities of the tiny strips could find use in the fields of electronics and composite materials.
Graphene nanoribbons are of interest because their electronic properties are tunable — they change from semiconductor to semimetal with increasing width. Both methods use multiwalled carbon nanotubes as their starting material then unzip the structures lengthways. Hongjie Dai and colleagues use plasma etching to unzip nanotubes partially embedded in a polymer film. James Tour and colleagues use a solution-based process, oxidizing nanotubes with permanganate in acid to form graphene oxide, then chemically reducing them to restore electronic conductivity.
Both techniques, described in two separate papers, produce straight-edged nanoribbons that are 100 nanometres or less in width. And the products are good quality, as demonstrated by their use in field-effect transistors.
CONTACT
Hongjie Dai (Stanford University, CA, USA) Author paper [4]
Tel: +1 650 723 4518; E-mail: [email protected]
James Tour (Rice University, Houston, TX , USA) Author paper [5]
Tel: +1 713 348 6246; E-mail: [email protected]
Mauricio Terrones (Potosino Institute for Scientific and Technological Research, San Luis Potosi, Mexico) N&V author
Tel: +52 444 834 2000 Ext. 7237; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[6] The dawn of the particle astronomy era in ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (pp 847-851)
[7] Kinetochore geometry defined by cohesion within the centromere (pp 852-858)
[8] Design of protein-interaction specificity gives selective bZIP-binding peptides (pp 859-864)
[9] An unusual mechanism of thymidylate biosynthesis in organisms containing the thyX gene (pp 919-923)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 15 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 it on this release to avoid multiple mailings it will not appear in print on 16 April, but at a later date. ***
[10] PEP1 regulates perennial flowering in Arabis alpine
DOI: 10.1038/nature07988
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:
Vancouver: 36
GERMANY
Cologne: 10
Kiel: 1
Regensberg: 3
ITALY
Catania: 6
JAPAN
Tokyo: 7
MEXICO
Cancun: 1
SINGAPORE
Singapore: 2
SPAIN
Madrid: 10
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
Menlo Park: 9
San Diego: 9
Stanford: 4
Colorado
Fort Collins: 6
Iowa
Iowa City: 9
Massachusetts
Cambridge: 8
Michigan
Ann Arbor: 9
New York
New York: 2
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia: 8
Texas
Houston: 5
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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