This Week in Science

Editor summaries of this week's papers.
Science 5 September 2008: 1268.
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Editorial:
Scientific Publishing Standards

Bruce Alberts
Science 5 September 2008: 1271.
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Editors' Choice

Highlights of the recent literature.
Science 5 September 2008: 1272.
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Gordon Research Conferences

Science 5 September 2008: 1366-1373.
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Science Podcast

Science 5 September 2008: 1374.
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NEW PRODUCTS

Science 5 September 2008: 1374.
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News of the Week

GENETIC PRIVACY: Whole-Genome Data Not Anonymous, Challenging Assumptions

Jennifer Couzin
Science 5 September 2008: 1278.
Summary: The discovery that a type of genetic data that is widely shared and often posted online can be traced back to individuals has prompted the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Wellcome Trust to strip some genetic data from their publicly accessible Web sites and NIH to recommend that other institutions do the same. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

PLANT SCIENCE: China Plans $3.5 Billion GM Crops Initiative

Richard Stone
Science 5 September 2008: 1279.
Summary: Confronted with land degradation, chronic water shortages, and a growing population, the Chinese government later this month is expected to roll out a $3.5 billion R&D initiative on genetically modified plants. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

CANCER GENETICS: A Detailed Genetic Portrait of the Deadliest Human Cancers

Jocelyn Kaiser
Science 5 September 2008: 1280-1281.
Summary: Three studies published this week, two of which are being published online by Science, have given researchers their most detailed look so far at the genetic mutations that underlie the deadliest of human cancers: pancreatic cancer and the brain tumor glioblastoma. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

NEUROSCIENCE: Hippocampal Firing Patterns Linked to Memory Recall

Greg Miller
Science 5 September 2008: 1280-1281.
Summary: Two studies appearing in this week's issue of Science--one with rats (p. 1322) and one with people undergoing surgery for intractable epilepsy--suggest that patterns of neuron firing in the hippocampus are also involved in recalling past experiences. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

MATHFEST 2008: Shapeshifting Made Easy

Barry Cipra
Science 5 September 2008: 1282.
Summary: At MathFest 2008, computational geometers demonstrated a general procedure for turning an arbitrary dissection of a polygon into a so-called hinged dissection. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

MATHFEST 2008: Sweet Inspiration

Barry Cipra
Science 5 September 2008: 1282-1283.
Summary: At MathFest 2008, geometers announced that they'd found a more efficient way to wrap spherical chocolates, helping to alleviate global warming and the resulting chocolate-melting problem. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

MATHFEST 2008: A Royal Squeeze

Barry Cipra
Science 5 September 2008: 1283.
Summary: In a talk at MathFest 2008, a mathematician described a variant on the nonattacking queens problem in which he and his collaborators added pawns to the board and proved that each additional pawn permits an extra queen, provided that the board is large enough. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

MATHFEST 2008: Taking the Edge Off

Barry Cipra
Science 5 September 2008: 1283.
Summary: A quartet of researchers at MathFest 2008 demonstrated the densest packing for five circles on a torus by treating it as a square whose edges are connected. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

ScienceScope

Science 5 September 2008: 1281.
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Random Samples

Science 5 September 2008: 1275.
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Newsmakers

Science 5 September 2008: 1277.
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News Focus

PSYCHOLOGY: Investigating the Psychopathic Mind

Greg Miller
Science 5 September 2008: 1284-1286.
Summary: With a mobile brain scanner and permission to work with inmates in New Mexico state prisons, Kent Kiehl hopes to understand what goes awry in the brains of psychopathic criminals. Full Text »|   PDF »|   Podcast Interview »|  

LARGE HADRON COLLIDER: The Overture Begins

Adrian Cho
Science 5 September 2008: 1287-1289.
Summary: Next week, physicists at the European particle physics lab, CERN, will fire up the world's biggest atom smasher. Expectations are sky-high, but discoveries may still be years away. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

LARGE HADRON COLLIDER: Researchers, Place Your Bets!

Adrian Cho
Science 5 September 2008: 1288.
Summary: Many physicists are speculating about what the Large Hadron Collider might find. And some are even willing to put their money where their favorite theoretical models are and wager on their expectations. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

LARGE HADRON COLLIDER: Bracing for a Maelstrom of Data, CERN Puts Its Faith in the Grid

Daniel Clery
Science 5 September 2008: 1289-1291.
Summary: Researchers have hammered out new networking tools to store the Large Hadron Collider's instrument readings and make them available to physicists worldwide. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

LARGE HADRON COLLIDER: Is the LHC a Doomsday Machine?

Daniel Clery and Adrian Cho
Science 5 September 2008: 1291.
Summary: As the Large Hadron Collider prepares to carry its first beam next week, a handful of physicists and others have proposed an array of dangerous entities that could be created in the minuscule fireball of a particle collision--and some have even filed injunctions attempting to stop the machine from being switched on. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

Letters

 Reading Between the Number Lines

Rafael E. Núñez;, Véronique Izard, Stanislas Dehaene, Pierre Pica, and Elizabeth Spelke
Science 5 September 2008: 1293-1294.
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 The Risks of Pigging Out on Antibiotics

Rebecca Goldburg, Steven Roach, David Wallinga, and Margaret Mellon
Science 5 September 2008: 1294.
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 Battle of the Bugs

Roy D. Sleator and Colin Hill
Science 5 September 2008: 1294-1295.
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 DOE Should Keep Education in Mind

Lorenz A. Kull
Science 5 September 2008: 1295.
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 Corrections and Clarifications

Science 5 September 2008: 1295.
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 Call for an Objective DOE Decision

Constantine Cassapakis
Science 5 September 2008: 1295.
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Books et al.

PUBLIC HEALTH: The Tobacco Strategy Entrenched

Carl F. Cranor
Science 5 September 2008: 1296-1297.
Summary: The author describes the prevalence and effectiveness of industry efforts to promote doubt and fan controversy in order to undermine research that supports public health and environmental regulations. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

THE GONZO SCIENTIST: Chasing the Biggest Shadow of All

John Bohannon
Science 5 September 2008: 1297.
Summary: The Gonzo Scientist joins a team of scientists to chase an eclipse in Mongolia. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

Books Received

Science 5 September 2008: 1297.
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Policy Forum

MEDICINE: Life Cycle of Translational Research for Medical Interventions

Despina G. Contopoulos-Ioannidis, George A. Alexiou, Theodore C. Gouvias, and John P. A. Ioannidis
Science 5 September 2008: 1298-1299.
Summary: From the initial discovery of a medical intervention to a highly cited article is a long road, and even this is not the end of the journey. Full Text »|   PDF »|   Supporting Online Material »|  

Perspectives

GENETICS: Enhancing Gene Regulation

Gregory A. Wray and Courtney C. Babbitt
Science 5 September 2008: 1300-1301.
Summary: Bioinformatic approaches reveal functional changes and the evolution of regulatory sequences that control gene expression. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

ASTRONOMY: The Universe Measured with a Comb

Sebastian Lopez
Science 5 September 2008: 1301-1302.
Summary: A technique for wavelength calibration promises to revolutionize observational astrophysics, in areas including planet searches and cosmology. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

MEDICINE: The Cart Before the Horse

Janet D. Rowley and Thomas Blumenthal
Science 5 September 2008: 1302-1304.
Summary: Chimeric RNAs, transcribed from malignancy-associated chromosomal translocations, can also arise from RNA trans-splicing in normal cells. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

BIOCHEMISTRY: An Enzyme Assembly Line

Janet L. Smith and David H. Sherman
Science 5 September 2008: 1304-1305.
Summary: Fatty acid synthases and related megaenzymes are highly adaptable to new functions as a result of their modular architecture. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

MICROBIOLOGY: How to Infect a Mimivirus

Hiroyuki Ogata and Jean-Michel Claverie
Science 5 September 2008: 1305-1306.
Summary: Large DNA viruses such as the giant Mimivirus can be infected by smaller viruses. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

PHYSICS: An End to the Drought of Quantum Spin Liquids

Patrick A. Lee
Science 5 September 2008: 1306-1307.
Summary: After decades of searching, several promising examples of a new quantum state of matter have now emerged. Full Text »|   PDF »|  

Review

Flood or Drought: How Do Aerosols Affect Precipitation?

Daniel Rosenfeld, Ulrike Lohmann, Graciela B. Raga, Colin D. O'Dowd, Markku Kulmala, Sandro Fuzzi, Anni Reissell, and Meinrat O. Andreae
Science 5 September 2008: 1309-1313.
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Brevia

Shadow Enhancers as a Source of Evolutionary Novelty

Joung-Woo Hong, David A. Hendrix, and Michael S. Levine
Science 5 September 2008: 1314.
Some developmentally important genes can be regulated via two enhancers, one located nearby and the other, a "shadow" enhancer, 10 to 20 kilobases away. Abstract »|   Full Text »|   PDF »|   Supporting Online Material »|  

Research Articles

The Crystal Structure of a Mammalian Fatty Acid Synthase

Timm Maier, Marc Leibundgut, and Nenad Ban
Science 5 September 2008: 1315-1322.
A high-resolution structure of mammalian fatty acid synthase reveals that this enzyme is derived from an iterative polyketide synthase and has five active catalytic domains. Abstract »|   Full Text »|   PDF »|   Supporting Online Material »|  

Internally Generated Cell Assembly Sequences in the Rat Hippocampus

Eva Pastalkova, Vladimir Itskov, Asohan Amarasingham, and György Buzsáki
Science 5 September 2008: 1322-1327.
As rats perform a memory task, cells in their hippocampus fire in self-generated sequences that correspond to and presage the animals' subsequent choices. Abstract »|   Full Text »|   PDF »|   Supporting Online Material »|  Podcast Interview »|  

Reports

Experimental Test of Self-Shielding in Vacuum Ultraviolet Photodissociation of CO

Subrata Chakraborty, Musahid Ahmed, Teresa L. Jackson, and Mark H. Thiemens
Science 5 September 2008: 1328-1331.
The anomalous variation of oxygen isotopes in early meteorites is produced by excited states during photodissociation of carbon monoxide, not by self-shielding, as was thought. Abstract »|   Full Text »|   PDF »|   Supporting Online Material »|  

Identification of Active Gold Nanoclusters on Iron Oxide Supports for CO Oxidation

Andrew A. Herzing, Christopher J. Kiely, Albert F. Carley, Philip Landon, and Graham J. Hutchings
Science 5 September 2008: 1331-1335.
High-resolution microscopy showed that the most effective catalytic gold species on an iron oxide support were those forming bilayer clusters of just 10 atoms. Abstract »|   Full Text »|   PDF »|   Supporting Online Material »|  

Laser Frequency Combs for Astronomical Observations

Tilo Steinmetz, Tobias Wilken, Constanza Araujo-Hauck, Ronald Holzwarth, Theodor W. Hänsch, Luca Pasquini, Antonio Manescau, Sandro D'Odorico, Michael T. Murphy, Thomas Kentischer, Wolfgang Schmidt, and Thomas Udem
Science 5 September 2008: 1335-1337.
Accurate spectroscopy of the sun with a laser frequency comb shows that it can improve astronomical observations and may yield direct evidence of the universe’s expansion. Abstract »|   Full Text »|   PDF »|   Supporting Online Material »|  

Regional Synthesis of Mediterranean Atmospheric Circulation During the Last Glacial Maximum

J. Kuhlemann, E. J. Rohling, I. Krumrei, P. Kubik, S. Ivy-Ochs, and M. Kucera
Science 5 September 2008: 1338-1340.
Published online 31 July 2008 [DOI: 10.1126/science.1157638] (in Science Express Reports)
A three-dimensional reconstruction of atmospheric temperatures in the Mediterranean during glacial times is analogous to one of winter during the Little Ice Age. Abstract »|   Full Text »|   PDF »|   Supporting Online Material »|  

Kinematic Constraints on Glacier Contributions to 21st-Century Sea-Level Rise

W. T. Pfeffer, J. T. Harper, and S. O'Neel
Science 5 September 2008: 1340-1343.
Evaluation of glacier dynamics implies that melting of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets could raise sea level by up to 2 meters by 2100, although a rise of 0.8 meters is more likely. Abstract »|   Full Text »|   PDF »|   Supporting Online Material »|  Podcast Interview »|  

Apobec3 Encodes Rfv3, a Gene Influencing Neutralizing Antibody Control of Retrovirus Infection

Mario L. Santiago, Mauricio Montano, Robert Benitez, Ronald J. Messer, Wes Yonemoto, Bruce Chesebro, Kim J. Hasenkrug, and Warner C. Greene
Science 5 September 2008: 1343-1346.
A resistance factor known to protect mice from retroviral infection is unexpectedly identified as Apobec3, a deoxycytidine deaminase that controls somatic hypermutation. Abstract »|   Full Text »|   PDF »|   Supporting Online Material »|  

Human-Specific Gain of Function in a Developmental Enhancer

Shyam Prabhakar, Axel Visel, Jennifer A. Akiyama, Malak Shoukry, Keith D. Lewis, Amy Holt, Ingrid Plajzer-Frick, Harris Morrison, David R. FitzPatrick, Veena Afzal, Len A. Pennacchio, Edward M. Rubin, and James P. Noonan
Science 5 September 2008: 1346-1350.
When transferred to a mouse, a conserved regulatory element that has been positively selected in humans is robustly expressed at the base of its developing thumb and wrist. Abstract »|   Full Text »|   PDF »|   Supporting Online Material »|  

Wnt3a-Mediated Formation of Phosphatidylinositol 4,5-Bisphosphate Regulates LRP6 Phosphorylation

Weijun Pan, Sun-Cheol Choi, He Wang, Yuanbo Qin, Laura Volpicelli-Daley, Laura Swan, Louise Lucast, Cynthia Khoo, Xiaowu Zhang, Lin Li, Charles S. Abrams, Sergei Y. Sokol, and Dianqing Wu
Science 5 September 2008: 1350-1353.
The interaction of the signaling molecule Wnt to its receptor triggers accumulation of a lipid regulator, which stimulates phosphorylation of the receptor and cellular responses. Abstract »|   Full Text »|   PDF »|   Supporting Online Material »|  

Helical Structures of ESCRT-III Are Disassembled by VPS4

Suman Lata, Guy Schoehn, Ankur Jain, Ricardo Pires, Jacob Piehler, Heinrich G. Gottlinger, and Winfried Weissenhorn
Science 5 September 2008: 1354-1357.
Published online 7 August 2008 [DOI: 10.1126/science.1161070] (in Science Express Reports)
A protein responsible for the final separation of daughter cells or budding viruses forms heteromeric complexes on the inside of the membrane to regulate the abscission step. Abstract »|   Full Text »|   PDF »|   Supporting Online Material »|  

A Neoplastic Gene Fusion Mimics Trans-Splicing of RNAs in Normal Human Cells

Hui Li, Jinglan Wang, Gil Mor, and Jeffrey Sklar
Science 5 September 2008: 1357-1361.
A chimeric messenger RNA generated in a tumor by a DNA rearrangement is also, unexpectedly, expressed in healthy cells, a result of splicing together two separate messenger RNAs. Abstract »|   Full Text »|   PDF »|   Supporting Online Material »|  

Germline Allele-Specific Expression of TGFBR1 Confers an Increased Risk of Colorectal Cancer

Laura Valle, Tarsicio Serena-Acedo, Sandya Liyanarachchi, Heather Hampel, Ilene Comeras, Zhongyuan Li, Qinghua Zeng, Hong-Tao Zhang, Michael J. Pennison, Maureen Sadim, Boris Pasche, Stephan M. Tanner, and Albert de la Chapelle
Science 5 September 2008: 1361-1365.
Published online 14 August 2008 [DOI: 10.1126/science.1159397] (in Science Express Reports)
In patients with colorectal cancer, one allele of the transforming growth factor–gene produces less messenger RNA and thus less protein, a likely contributor to disease risk. Abstract »|   Full Text »|   PDF »|   Supporting Online Material »|  

Technical Comments

Comment on "Fire-Derived Charcoal Causes Loss of Forest Humus"

Johannes Lehmann and Saran Sohi
Science 5 September 2008: 1295.
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Response to Comment on "Fire-Derived Charcoal Causes Loss of Forest Humus"

David A. Wardle, Marie-Charlotte Nilsson, and Olle Zackrisson
Science 5 September 2008: 1295.
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