This press release contains:
Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Harvesting wet energy
Stem cells from Parkinson’s disease patients
And finally… Rearranging the bird tree of life
Mention of papers to be published at the same time
Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Harvesting wet energy
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1454
A method that harvests energy from moving liquid droplets is reported this week in Nature Communications. This method for the collection and storage of energy may provide a cheap and environmentally friendly alternative to batteries.
The cost and pollution associated with electrical batteries is currently limiting the performance of portable electronic devices such as mobile phones. Although environmentally friendly, portable high-power energy harvesting – by converting mechanical energy into electricity - has so far been hampered by poor conversion rates. Tom Krupenkin and Ashley Taylor overcome this problem by developing a mechanical-to-electrical conversion method based on reverse electrowetting.
The technique is based on moving microscopic liquid droplets within thin dielectric films, and is capable of reaching high power densities that rivals those of conventional batteries.
CONTACT
Tom Krupenkin (University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI, USA)
Tel: +1 608 890 1948; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Stem cells from Parkinson’s disease patients
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1453
The production of induced pluripotent stem cells from the skin cells of a Parkinson’s disease patient mimic the features of the disease reports a paper published in Nature Communications this week. These cells can be used to study the disease more accurately and may aid in the identification of compounds that can reduce the expression of proteins responsible for the disease.
Michael Devine, Tilo Kunath and colleagues, used skin cells from a patient with familial Parkinson’s disease that carries elevated copies of the gene alpha-synuclein. The cells were used to generate induced pluripotent stem cells that could then be differentiated into neurons. The resulting neurons produced twice the amount of alpha-synuclein compared to cells from an unaffected family member, demonstrating that features of the disease were retained in the neurons. These cells may aid in the discovery of the mechanisms that lead to Parkinson’s disease and may permit the identification of compounds that can reduce alpha-synuclein levels.
CONTACT
Michael Devine (University College London, UK)
Tel: +44 7866 437 690; E-mail: [email protected]
Tilo Kunath (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Tel: +44 131 650 5868 E-mail: [email protected]
[3] And finally… Rearranging the bird tree of life
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1448
Parrots are the closest living relatives of passerines – or perching birds – reports a paper in this week’s Nature Communications. This new phylogenetic relationship suggests that birdsong could have evolved in the common ancestor of parrots and passerines 30 million years earlier than previously thought.
Alexander Suh and colleagues studied gene inheritance and relatedness in bird evolution during the Mesozoic Era, 250 to ~65 million years ago. According to this data it is likely that vocal learning evolved in the parrot and passerine ancestor, which places the emergence of vocal learning of songbirds at least 30 million years earlier than what is suggested by previous evidence.
CONTACT
Alexander Suh (University of Münster, Germany)
Tel: +49 251 835 2132; E-mail: [email protected]
Papers to go live at the same time and with the same embargo…
[4] Bethe-hole polarization analyser for the magnetic vector of light
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1430
[5] Spatio-temporal focusing of an ultrafast pulse through a multiply scattering medium
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1434
[6] Discovery of lost diversity of paternal horse lineages using ancient DNA
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1447
[7] Evidence of superdense aluminium synthesized by ultrafast microexplosion
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1449
[8] Freely orbiting magnetic tweezers to directly monitor changes in the twist of nucleic acids
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1450
[9] Nanomechanical DNA origami ‘single-molecule beacons’ directly imaged by atomic force microscopy
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1452
[10] Active sampling and decision making in Drosophila chemotaxis
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1455
[11] A stem-group cnidarian described from the mid-Cambrian of China and its significance for cnidarian evolution
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1457
[12] Anatomically modern Carboniferous harvestmen demonstrate early cladogenesis and stasis in Opiliones
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1458
[13] Direct visualization of microtubules using a genetic tool to analyse radial progenitor-astrocyte continuum in brain
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1460
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
Adelaide: 6
Canberra: 7
Hawthorn: 7
CHINA
Shandong: 11
CZECH REPUBLIC
Libechov: 2
FRANCE
Paris: 5
Toulouse: 5
GERMANY
Berlin: 6, 12
Leipzig: 3, 6
Münster: 3
Oldenburg: 4
JAPAN
Hamamatsu: 7
Miyazaki: 9
Osaka: 9
Tokyo: 9
Tsukuba: 2
NEW ZEALAND
Dunedin: 6
SOUTH KOREA
Andong: 11
Chungnam: 4
Daejeon: 11
Incheon: 11
Seoul: 4, 11
SPAIN
Barcelona: 5, 10
Seville: 6
THE NETHERLANDS
Delft: 8
UNITED KINGDOM
Edinburgh: 2
London: 2, 12
Oxford: 5
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Alabama
Auburn: 3
California
Menlo Park: 7
Stanford: 7
IIlinois
Argonne: 7
Massachusetts
Cambridge: 12
North Carolina
Chapel Hill: 13
New Jersey
Princeton: 10
Texas
Houston: 2, 4
Wisconsin
Madison: 1
PRESS CONTACTS…
From North America and Canada
Neda Afsarmanesh, Nature New York
Tel: +1 212 726 9231; 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
Rachel Twinn, Nature, London
Tel: +44 20 7843 4658; E-mail: [email protected]
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