WWW.NATURE.COM/NATURE
This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.462 NO.7273 DATED 03 DECEMBER 2009
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Astronomy: A supernova explosion with a difference
Opinion: Can technology save the world?
Biology: The fasting Fox protein
Climate: History of the East African monsoon
Opinion: Nature welcomes two new columnists
Physics: Magnetic mimic
And finally… Nutritional balance is key to longer life
· 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.
Warning: This document, and the Nature papers to which it refers, may contain information that is price sensitive (as legally defined, for example, in the UK Criminal Justice Act 1993 Part V) with respect to publicly quoted companies. Anyone dealing in securities using information contained in this document or in advanced copies of Nature’s content may be guilty of insider trading under the US Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
The Nature journals press site is at http://press.nature.com
· 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
PICTURES: While we are happy for images from Nature to be reproduced for the purposes of contemporaneous news reporting, you must also seek permission from the copyright holder (if named) or author of the research paper in question (if not).
HYPE: We take great care not to hype the papers mentioned on our press releases, but are sometimes accused of doing so. If you ever consider that a story has been hyped, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected], citing the specific example.
PLEASE CITE NATURE AND OUR WEBSITE www.nature.com/nature AS THE SOURCE OF THE FOLLOWING ITEMS. IF PUBLISHING ONLINE, PLEASE CARRY A HYPERLINK TO http://www.nature.com/nature
[1] Astronomy: A supernova explosion with a difference (pp 624-627; N&V)
A supernova explosion observed in 2007 appears to be an example of a particularly violent type of supernova, long-predicted to occur, but not seen until now. Observations reported in this week’s Nature suggest that the object, SN 2007bi, formed when an extremely massive star underwent a nuclear explosion triggered by the conversion of photons into electron–positron pairs.
Stars with initial masses between about 10 and 100 times that of our Sun (10–100 MSun) end their lives in core-collapse supernovae. When nuclear fusion ceases, the star’s iron core collapses to form a neutron star or black hole, with the sudden release of gravitational energy leading to a supernova explosion. By contrast, stars of more than about 140 MSun are predicted to develop oxygen cores of relatively low density, in which energetic photons interact with atomic nuclei to form electron–positron pairs. The loss of photons, and hence of radiation pressure, leads to a violent contraction, and then to a runaway nuclear explosion known as a pair-instability supernova.
Avishay Gal-Yam and colleagues present observations of SN 2007bi that are best explained by a pair-instability supernova. In particular, the extreme luminosity of the explosion, and its evolution in time, seem to require a progenitor star with a core mass of about 100 MSun — implying a total mass of at least 200 MSun. Such massive stars, which can survive only in a metal-poor environment like the host galaxy of SN 2007bi, are thought to have been common in the early Universe; thus, pair-instability supernovae may have been important in the Universe’s early evolution.
CONTACT
Avishay Gal-Yam (Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel)
Tel: +972 8 934 2063; E-mail: [email protected]
Norbert Langer (University of Bonn, Germany) N&V author
Tel: +49 228 73 3656; E-mail: [email protected]
Opinion: Can technology save the world? (pp 568-571)
Diplomatic attention at the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen next week is focused on targets for cutting carbon emissions. Two Opinion pieces in Nature look beyond the bargaining to the low-energy technologies that will be needed to achieve emissions reductions.
Isabel Galiana and Christopher Green suggest that rather than horse-trading over emissions targets, governments should make long-term commitments to invest in energy-technology research and development — financed by a slowly rising ‘carbon tax’ to promote low-carbon technologies over the next century. We need an energy-technology revolution, say Galiana and Green, and it has not yet started.
Gert Jan Kramer and Martin Haigh also believe that transforming the global energy supply is the key to lowering emissions. But they argue that proposals to ‘repower’ the world in a decade are unrealistic because of limits to the rate at which low-carbon energy technologies can be deployed. Governments need to design specific policies that can accelerate technology deployment and to take more action on the demand side to increase efficiency and curtail energy consumption.
CONTACT
Isabel Galiana (McGill University, Montreal, Canada)
Tel: +1 514 655 8824; E-mail: [email protected]
Christopher Green (McGill University, Montreal, Canada)
Tel: +1 514 398 4830; E-mail: [email protected]
Gert Jan Kramer (Shell Global Solutions International, Amsterdam, Netherlands)
E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Biology: The fasting Fox protein (pp 646-650)
The brain protein Foxa2 has a key role in regulating food intake, a mouse study in this week’s Nature suggests. Strategies that boost brain levels of the protein could improve levels of physical activity and overall health in the population, the authors speculate.
Foxa2 directly regulates expression of two proteins, orexin and melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH) in the lateral hypothalamic area or ‘feeding centre’ of the brain, Markus Stoffel and colleagues show. After a meal, insulin signalling renders Foxa2 ineffective, and as a result orexin and MCH production ceases.
But mice with Foxa2 permanently switched on express more orexin and MCH, eat more, move more and have increased metabolism and improved insulin sensitivity. And turning Foxa2 on in the brains of obese mice increases lean body mass, reduces fat levels and improves glucose homeostasis. So Foxa2 appears to act as a metabolic sensor in the brain, where it integrates metabolic signals, food-seeking behaviour and physiological responses.
CONTACT
Markus Stoffel (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
Tel: +41 44 633 45 60; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Climate: History of the East African monsoon (pp 637-641)
The East African monsoon has been less affected on millennial timescales by climate variability originating at high latitudes than the other monsoon systems of the world. A paper in Nature this week reveals that this is probably due to cycles in solar radiation affecting the region, which kept it moist when other areas were experiencing drought.
External climate forcings — such as solar radiation — generate different responses in different regions. Documenting this variability is therefore critical for understanding how such forcings influence regional climate over time. High quality data exist for high and low latitudes, but climate proxies from the tropics are scarce, particularly from regions in the path of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, where the trade winds converge to produce a monsoonal climate of alternating wet and dry seasons.
Dirk Verschuren and colleagues analyse two hydrological proxies taken from a lakebed on the slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro. The 25,000-year sediment record shows that monsoon rainfall in East Africa varied in cycles of about 11,500 years, in phase with orbitally controlled solar radiation forcing. They find that peak ice-age drought in equatorial Africa overlapped only partly with the Last Glacial Maximum at high latitudes, and the severe Younger Dryas drought in equatorial Africa ended abruptly within 200 years.
CONTACT
Dirk Verschuren (Ghent University, Belgium)
Tel: +32 9 264 5262; E-mail: [email protected]
Opinion: Nature welcomes two new columnists (p 566)
Nature has launched a regular new column within its Opinion section. ‘World View’ features the provocative and insightful views of two writers steeped in the world of research policy, who comment each month on the interactions between science and society.
Daniel Sarewitz, co-director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University, will look at US science policy from his base in Washington DC. His column appears in the first issue of each month. His inaugural column, in our 3 December issue, highlights a small, innovative approach in Massachusetts to regulating toxic chemicals that, he argues, is worthier of public support than the billions being poured into federal research programmes through the federal government’s economic stimulus package.
Colin Macilwain, based in Edinburgh, UK, tackles research policy from a European viewpoint, informed by his former positions as news editor of Research Fortnight, and as the news, business and editorials editor of Nature. His column appears in the third issue of each month. His inaugural column, published on 19 November, warned the European Union, which is currently developing its science-advisory apparatus, about the risks of ceding too much power to a cosy, unelected elite.
CONTACT
Daniel Sarewitz (Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA)
Tel: +1 202 446 0384, [email protected]
Colin Macilwain (Journalist, Edinburgh, UK)
E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Physics: Magnetic mimic (pp 628-632; N&V)
A methodology for creating strong synthetic magnetic fields for ultracold neutral atoms in the form of Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) is reported in this week’s Nature. This technique overcomes current limitations associated with the creation of synthetic magnetic fields, opening up new ways of studying fundamental phenomena such as the quantum Hall effect, which is needed for topological quantum computation.
BECs provide a controllable system in which to mimic physical phenomena associated with complex materials. However, their use is limited by the neutral charge of atomic BECs, given that many intriguing phenomena in complex systems arise from the interaction of charged particles in a strong magnetic field. In an attempt to get round this, previous studies rotated the BEC atoms to create synthetic magnetic fields, but rotating states can be unstable and result in weak magnetic fields.
Yu-Ju Lin and colleagues report a new technique: they optically synthesize much larger magnetic fields for BECs, avoiding the need for rotating states. The method could be used to generate sufficiently strong fields to reach the quantum Hall regime.
CONTACT
Yu-Ju Lin (National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, USA)
Tel: +1 301 975 8569; E-mail: [email protected]
Martin Zwierlein (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 617 324 4310; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] And finally… Nutritional balance is key to longer life (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08619
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 02 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 it on this release to avoid multiple mailings it will not appear in print on 03 December, but at a later date. ***
A full diet containing just the right mix of amino acids could help lengthen life without reducing fertility, a fruitfly study published in this week’s Nature suggests.
It’s well known that restricting food intake can increase the lifespan of various organisms, but it invariably reduces their fertility as well. Flies fed a restricted diet supplemented with the amino acid methionine lived a longer life without the associated drop in fertility, Linda Partridge and colleagues show. Upon further examination, they uncovered that both shortened lifespan during full feeding and reduced fertility during dietary restriction are caused by an imbalance in dietary amino acids. Although this study focuses on flies, the effects of dietary restriction are conserved from yeast to mammals, suggesting that one day we might be able to reap the benefits of dietary restriction by eating a diet with the right nutritional mix.
CONTACT
Linda Partridge (University College London, UK)
Tel: +44 20 679 2983; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[6] Forcing cells to change lineages (pp 587-594)
[7] Detection of Sequential Polyubiquitylation on a Millisecond Time-Scale (pp 615-619)
[8] Common dependency on stress for the two fundamental laws of statistical seismology (pp 642-645)
[9] Extraordinary Structured Noncoding RNAs Revealed by Bacterial Metagenome Analysis (pp 656-659)
[10] Hidden alternate structures of proline isomerase essential for catalysis (pp 669-673)
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.
BELGIUM
Brussels: 3
Ghent: 3
CANADA:
Kingston: 3
CHINA
Beijing: 1
FRANCE
Le Bourget-du-Lac: 8
Paris: 8
GERMANY
Potsdam: 3
ISRAEL
Jerusalem: 1
Rehovot: 1
ITALY
Pisa: 1
KENYA
Nairobi: 3
MEXICO
Mexico City: 4
NETHERLANDS
Amsterdam: 3
Den Burg: 3
Dourbes: 3
Groningen: 3
Utrecht: 3
RUSSIA
Moscow: 8
SWEDEN
Lund: 3
SWITZERLAND
Lausanne: 2
Zurich: 2, 3
UNITED KINGDOM
Belfast: 3
Lancaster: 3
London: 5
Nottingham: 3
Oxford: 1, 6
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Arizona
Tucson: 1
California
Berkeley: 1, 10
Los Angeles: 8
Pasadena: 1, 7
Santa Cruz: 1
Connecticut
New Haven: 9
Florida
Jupiter: 2
Maryland
Gaithersburg: 4
Massachusetts
Amherst: 3
Cambridge: 1
Waltham: 10
New York
Albany: 3
New York: 2
Rhode Island
Providence: 3
PRESS CONTACTS…
From North America and Canada
Neda Afsarmanesh, 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]
About Nature Publishing Group (NPG):
Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is a publisher of high impact scientific and medical information in print and online. NPG publishes journals, online databases and services across the life, physical, chemical and applied sciences and clinical medicine.
Focusing on the needs of scientists, Nature (founded in 1869) is the leading weekly, international scientific journal. In addition, for this audience, NPG publishes a range of Nature research journals and Nature Reviews journals, plus a range of prestigious academic journals including society-owned publications. Online, nature.com provides over 5 million visitors per month with access to NPG publications and online databases and services, including Nature News and NatureJobs plus access to Nature Network and Nature Education’s Scitable.com.
Scientific American is at the heart of NPG’s newly-formed consumer media division, meeting the needs of the general public. Founded in 1845, Scientific American is the oldest continuously published magazine in the US and the leading authoritative publication for science in the general media. Together with scientificamerican.com and 15 local language editions around the world it reaches over 3 million consumers and scientists. Other titles include Scientific American Mind and Spektrum der Wissenschaft in Germany.
Throughout all its businesses NPG is dedicated to serving the scientific and medical communities and the wider scientifically interested general public. Part of Macmillan Publishers Limited, NPG is a global company with principal offices in London, New York and Tokyo, and offices in cities worldwide including Boston, Buenos Aires, Delhi, Hong Kong, Madrid, Barcelona, Munich, Heidelberg, Basingstoke, Melbourne, Paris, San Francisco, Seoul and Washington DC. For more information, please go to www.nature.com.
