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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.461 NO.7264 DATED 01 OCTOBER 2009
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Seismology: Measuring fault strength
Applied chemistry: Pore over reaction
Atmospheric chemistry: Reach for the clouds
And finally… Vive la resistance!
· Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
· Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Seismology: Measuring fault strength (pp 636-639)
Powerful earthquakes may have an influence on the strength of distant faults around the world, suggests a paper in Nature this week. The study reveals a technique for continuously monitoring the strength of a fault at depth, which may lead to more accurate earthquake forecasts.
Fault strength is a fundamental property of seismically active zones, and its changes over time can affect the likelihood of failure and the ultimate triggering of earthquakes. Until now there has been no means of monitoring this important property directly.
Taka’aki Taira and colleagues analyse 20 years of seismic data from the Parkfield area of the San Andreas fault, the most closely observed earthquake zone in the world. They propose that changes in two key properties can be used as a proxy for fault strength; seismic scattering, which indicates stress-induced migration of fluids, and changes in repeating microearthquake sequences. The data reveal two clear occasions where long-term changes in fault strength seem to have been triggered remotely — by the 2004 Sumatra–Andaman and the 1992 Landers earthquakes.
The authors speculate that such large events should produce a temporal clustering of global seismicity, a hypothesis that appears to be supported by the unusually high number of large earthquakes occurring in the three years following the 2004 Sumatra–Andaman earthquake.
CONTACT
Taka’aki Taira (University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 510 642 8504; Email: [email protected]
[2] Applied chemistry: Pore over reaction (pp 633-635; N&V)
A new type of material may give researchers the opportunity to ‘watch’ the structural transformations that occur during chemical reactions, a feat that has so far proved hard to achieve. The discovery is described in this week’s Nature.
Makoto Fujita and colleagues have designed a porous network material in which standard chemical transformations proceed within the pores, enabling X-ray ‘snapshots’ of different stages of the reaction.
They demonstrate proof-of-principle using the simple reaction between an amine and an aldehyde — the amine is embedded in the porous network and the aldehyde is then added. The reaction generates a normally very-short-lived intermediate product that is trapped within the pore and so can be ‘captured’ by X-ray. Raising the temperature then drives the reaction to its natural end point.
CONTACT
Makoto Fujita (University of Tokyo, Japan)
Tel: +81 3 5841 7259; Email: [email protected]
Seth Cohen (University of California, San Diego, CA, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 858 822 5596; Email: [email protected]
[3] Atmospheric chemistry: Reach for the clouds (pp 607-613)
Despite decades of research, many open questions remain regarding meaningful climatic relationships between clouds, aerosol and rainfall. In a review in Nature this week, Bjorn Stevens and Graham Feingold propose that the difficulties in finding the answers to those questions reflect in part a failure to take into account processes that minimize the response of clouds and precipitation to aerosol changes.
Atmospheric aerosol particles are crucial to the existence of clouds as we know them. It is thought that the aerosol can affect the ability of clouds to form precipitation and in turn affect cloudiness. But how, in detail, do clouds — and through them the radiative forcing of the global climate system — depend on the aerosol?
The problems are due to a failure to account for the many processes that act to buffer cloud and precipitation responses to aerosol perturbations. To counter this research needs to focus on understanding specific regimes of aerosol, cloud and precipitation.
CONTACT
Bjorn Stevens (Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie, Hamburg, Germany)
Tel: +49 40 41173 421; Email: [email protected]
Graham Feingold (NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Boulder, CO, USA)
Tel: +1 303 497 3098; Email: [email protected]
[4] And finally… Vive la resistance! (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08472
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 30 September 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 01 October, but at a later date. ***
Cheats and ‘cheater-resistance’ seem to go hand-in-hand, a study of social amoebae in this week’s Nature suggests. The study may help explain how cooperative behaviour is maintained in the face of cheating.
Individual social amoebae must cooperate to build the fruiting bodies through which they reproduce. As with all societies, this is highly susceptible to cheats who reap the benefits but don't contribute to the cost. In this paper, Gad Shaulsky and colleagues isolate mutant amoebae strains that can resist cheats.
The ‘resisters’ are easily selected for in populations of randomly mutated social amoebae that contain ‘cheaters’. And cheater-resistance appears a noble strategy because the resister does not necessarily exploit the other strains, and so preserves cooperation.
CONTACT
Gad Shaulsky (Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA)
Tel: +1 713 798 8082; Email: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[5] Universality of galactic surface densities within one dark halo scale-length (pp 627-628)
[6] Robust Self/Non-self Discrimination between Neurites Requires Thousands of Dscam1 Isoforms (pp 644-648)
[7] Discovery of Atg5/Atg7-independent alternative macroautophagy (pp 654-658)
[8] Membrane-bound but not Secreted Fas Ligand Is Essential for Fas-Induced Apoptosis and Prevention of Autoimmunity and Cancer (pp 659-663)
[9] Cooperative binding of two acetylation marks on a histone tail by a single bromodomain (pp 664-668)
[10] Substrate Interactions and Promiscuity in a Viral DNA Packaging Motor (pp 669-673)
[11] A Human 5’-Tyrosyl DNA Phosphodiesterase That Repairs Topoisomerase-Mediated DNA Damage (pp 674-678)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***These papers will be published electronically on Nature's website on 30 September 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 October, but at a later date. ***
[12] A secreted complement control-related protein ensures acetylcholine receptor clustering
DOI: 10.1038/nature08430
[13] Ammonia oxidation kinetics determines niche separation of nitrifying Archaea and Bacteria
DOI: 10.1038/nature08465
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
Victoria: 8
BELGIUM
Ghent: 5
Burxelles: 5
EGYPT
Cairo: 11
FRANCE
Grenoble: 9
Paris: 12
GERMANY
Bonn: 5
Hamburg: 3, 9
ITALY
Trieste: 5
JAPAN
Osaka: 7
Tokyo: 2, 7
NETHERLANDS
Leiden: 5
SOUTH KOREA
Pohang: 2
SPAIN
Barcelona: 9
UNITED KINGDOM
Brighton: 11
St. Andrews: 5
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
Berkeley: 1, 10
Los Angeles: 3, 6
San Francisco: 10
Colorado
Boulder: 3
District of Columbia
Washington: 1
Illinois
Chicago: 12
Minnesota
Minneapolis: 10
New York
New York: 6
Texas
Houston: 1, 4
Washington
Seattle: 13
PRESS CONTACTS…
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Tel: +1 212 726 9231; E-mail: [email protected]
For Japan, Korea, China, Singapore and Taiwan
Mika Nakano, Nature Tokyo
Tel: +82 3 3267 8752; E-mail: [email protected]
For the UK/Europe/other countries not listed above
Ruth Francis, Nature London
Tel: +44 20 7843 4562; E-mail [email protected]
Jen Middleton, Nature London
Tel: +44 20 7843 4502; E-mail: [email protected]
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