Nautilus

Taken from the Editorial in the November issue of Nature Chemical Biology (5, 863; 2009):
In the past decade, chemical biology has expanded to embrace increasingly diverse research areas at the interface of chemistry and biology. Nature Chemical Biology has strived to highlight this aspect of chemical biology by publishing papers that apply chemical and biological approaches to achieving a greater mechanistic understanding of biological systems. The field also offers small molecules and tools that can be used to manipulate chemical and biological systems with unprecedented molecular precision. Given these basic and applied aspects, chemical biology has naturally resonated with fields that rely upon integrated chemical and biological insights. No field has been more affected than drug discovery.
This synergy was highlighted at the third Nature Chemical Biology symposium Chemical Biology in Drug Discovery, held on 19–20 September 2009 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The organizers were Paul Workman (Cancer Research UK Centre for Cancer Therapeutics at The Institute of Cancer Research, UK), Giulio Superti-Furga (Center for Molecular Medicine, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria), Brian Shoichet (University of California, San Francisco, USA), and Joanne Kotz (Nature Chemical Biology, USA)
Though the symposium focused primarily on the ways that chemical biology will shape the science of drug discovery, it was clear that chemical biologists, who are equipped with a substantial toolbox of 'pathfinder compounds', chemical methods and other technologies, represent a new generation of talented interdisciplinary scientists who will bring fresh insights to the drug discovery culture. Pharmaceutical companies should make every effort to integrate chemical biology programs and scientists into their portfolios to promote innovation in chemical biology for drug discovery.
A primary aim of the Nature Chemical Biology symposium series has been to nucleate discussions among scientists who share common interests but approach these scientific areas from different perspectives or with divergent tools. We look forward to bringing together other groups at the frontiers of chemical biology, and we welcome suggestions for future symposium topics.

Nature Chemical Biology:
Journal home page.
About the journal's web site.
Focuses and supplements.
Guide for authors and peer-reviewers.
About the editors.
Contact the journal.

Nature Conferences main index.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 17, 2009
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Nature Reviews Molecular and Cell Biology presents a free poster on the productions and actions of small RNAs (ribonucleic acids), by V. Narry Kim and Mikiko C. Siomi. Recent progress in cloning, deep sequencing and bioinformatics have revealed an astounding landscape of small RNAs in eukaryotic cells. Small (20–30-nucleotide) RNAs, in association with Argonaute-family proteins, target messenger (m)RNAs and chromatin, and thereby keep both the genome and the transcriptome under extensive surveillance. The poster depicts our current understanding of the processing pathways of eukaryotic small RNAs and their possible mechanisms of action, and accompanies the Review article 'Biogenesis of small RNAs in animals' by V. Narry Kim, Jinju Han and Mikiko C. Siomi in the February issue of Nature Reviews Molecular and Cell Biology (10, 126-139; 2009).

High-resolution PDF of the poster.
Futher reading about productions and actions of small RNAs.
Nature Reviews Molecular and Cell Biology article series on post-transcriptional control.
See also Nature's Insight on RNA silencing, in the 22 January issue (Nature 457, 395-433; 2009). This collection of five Review articles is free to access online.
Nature Publishing Group RNAi (RNA interference) gateway.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 28, 2009
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Nature Reviews Molecular and Cell Biology presents a special Focus on mechanotransduction — on a range of topics from how cells sense mechanical forces in different tissues to how these mechanical forces are transduced into biochemical signals — in development, normal physiology and disease. Cells sense their physical three-dimensional environment — properties of the extracellular matrix, neighbouring cells and physical stress — by translating mechanical forces and deformations into biochemical signals. In turn, these signals can adjust cellular and extracellular structure. This mechanosensitive feedback modulates cellular functions as diverse as proliferation, differentiation, migration and apoptosis, and is crucial for organ development and homeostasis. Any molecular defect that interrupts or alters this chain of mechanical sensing and subsequent cell signalling events could perturb the normal cellular function and potentially lead to diverse diseases such as loss of hearing, cardiovascular disease, muscular dystrophy and cancer.
The Focus is free to access for the month of January 2009.
See also Milestones in Cytoskeleton, and request a free print copy here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 12, 2009
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Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and Thomson Reuters are holding a joint seminar on publishing excellence and how to correctly interpret journal citation data on 23 January 2009 in Sydney, Australia. This seminar will go into detail about the use and misuse of impact factors along with a presentation by senior editor Leslie Sage on how to get published in Nature.
Four speakers will present on the following:
Antoine Bocquet, Associate Director, NPG Asia-Pacific:
Growth of Nature Publishing Group
Dr Leslie Sage, senior editor, physical sciences, Nature :
How to publish a paper in Nature
Dr Berenika M Webster, strategic business manager, Thomson Reuters Scientific, Asia Pacific:
About use and misuse of impact factor and other citation metrics
Dr Dugald McGlashan, associate publisher, Asian journals, NPG:
Developments in author and reader services in a changing publishing landscape
This seminar is free to attend and open to those interested in publishing in Nature titles and journal citation data.
See here for more information, details of the venue, and to reserve your place.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 08, 2009
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Published on 1 December, Nature Milestones in Cytoskeleton is a collaboration from Nature, Nature Cell Biology and Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, focusing on ground-breaking advances in cytoskeleton research. Developments in the past 60 years range from the discovery of actomyosin to the identification of molecular motors, and from fluorescence analogue cytochemistry and differential interference contrast microscopy to single-molecule in vitro assays and optical traps.
Milestones are a series of specially written articles, which highlight the most influential discoveries in the field of cytoskeleton over the past 60 years, as described in an Editorial. Nature Milestones in Cytoskeleton also comprises a collection of selected review articles, a timeline of key discoveries, and an online-only library of recent research papers and review-type articles from Nature Publishing Group.
Free print copies of the Milestones in Cytoskeleton suppliement are available to order (the supplement is being distributed with the December 2008 issues of Nature Cell Biology and Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, so subscribers of these journals do not need to request a copy).
See also Nature's web focus on the 50th anniversary of the first report of muscle crossbridges, published online in 2004. A few print copies of the reprint of the two 1954 papers are available: if you would like one, please leave your name and mailing address in the comments field to this post, or send an email to authors@nature.com.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 04, 2008
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The activation of a single neuron in the brain may be enough to help restore muscle activity in the arms of paralysed patients with spinal cord injuries. Chet T. Moritz, Steve I. Perlmutter and Eberhard E. Fetz report their research in Nature (doi:10.1038/nature07418) showing that a potential treatment for paralysis resulting from spinal cord injury is to route control signals from the brain around the injury by artificial connections. These results are the first demonstration that direct artificial connections between cortical cells and muscles can compensate for interrupted physiological pathways and restore volitional control of movement to paralysed limbs.
The implications of this research are covered by Nature News in a story that is free to access online. The authors discuss their work in this week's Nature Podcast.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 16, 2008
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Development of an effective HIV/AIDS vaccine and new drugs to treat established disease remain an urgent and pressing need. To conquer the enormous challenge demands a far better understanding of the biology of the virus, its interaction with infected cells, and the response of the immune system, than is currently at our disposal. A Nature web focus presents a selection of recent research papers in Nature that advance our knowledge in this regard. Click here to access selected content free online.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 14, 2008
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This month (October 2008) Nature Reviews Microbiology publishes a Focus on Symbiosis . Microbial symbioses include beneficial, harmful and neutral relationships and are important in animal and plant health, immunity and disease, as well as in ecology and the environment. The special Focus issue of Nature Reviews Microbiology highlights exciting advances in understanding of partnerships between organisms and their environments.
Topics covered include manipulation of insects by endosymbiotic bacteria, marine chemosynthetic symbioses, the ancient arbuscular mycorrhiza, model symbiosis systems, the highly distinctive features of gut microbiotas and how they have evolved, and a glimpse of how experimental approaches will shape the future of this fascinating field. These Reviews and Perspectives highlight this emerging and important field. The accompanying library collates the most recent relevant original Research articles, News & Views and Reviews from across Nature Publishing Group.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 09, 2008
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Via e-mail from Arnaud Berghmans of Deloitte Belgium on behalf of Augusto Burgueño of the Research Directorate-General of the European Commission:
Deloitte is conducting, on behalf of the European Commission, a survey on Internet-based services in support of the research process. So far, responses have been received from more than 3,500 EU researchers. As a benchmark, Deloitte would like to get the opinion of researchers already using the Internet for research and is asking readers of this website for their help by taking the survey.
About the survey
With this survey, the European Commission would like to find out which Internet-based resources (such as websites, wikis, social networks, mailing lists, bulleting boards, chat rooms, etc) the research community at large currently uses when carrying out research, and which ones it would be willing to use in the future.
The survey has six sections corresponding to the following phases of a research project: (1) Generate, elaborate and refine ideas; (2) Find partners; (3) Set up the research project; (4) Seek funding; (5) Run the research project; and (6) Exploit results. Each section has 3 questions.
The results of this survey will help the European Commission better understand what Internet-based services could in the future facilitate the participation of the research community in the European research and innovation programmes.
The questionnaire is anonymous and responses are aggregated for analysis. It takes ten minutes to complete.
Upon request, the survey results can be shared.
Link to the survey is here

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 01, 2008
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In the third of Nature's election-themed podcasts available online, the journal looks at where US innovation policy might go under a new president. You can listen or read a trascript at the journal's podcast index page. In the latest podcast, Stephen Ezell of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation says that "substantial amounts of research into basic science must occur before we can ever reach technology and therefore government has a substantial role to play in being a funder of basic and applied research in the United States. When you look at a great number of US companies and industries, specific companies like Google, like (UNCLEAR 14:18), like Oracle, these were all companies that got their initial funding from basic government grants for research in science and technology. Extending and increasing the amount of government funding for research is one of the most important things the next administration can do." The panel goes on to discuss how research could be funded and possible mechanisms for promoting US competitiveness in the global sphere. William Bates of the Council of Competitiveness compares the presidential candidates: "Senator Obama has been very explicit in endorsing doubling of the research budget. Senator McCain speaks about the importance of research, but I think he has been a little more hesitant to embrace a specific doubling goal of the research agencies. They're certainly talking about it and that's a big step in the right direction." Hear or read more via the Nature podcast index.

An archive of the Nature Podcasts, which are all free, can be found here. Each week, Nature authors talk about their newly published papers, on topics ranging from craters formed by asteroid collision, tsunami risk in the Bay of Bengal, the sequence of the grapevine genome, a mouse with obsessive compulsive disorder, a new species of ape, and many more.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 24, 2008
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On Monday 22 September, the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology will be running their first consultation session, A Vision for Science and Society, in the virtual world of Second Life, at Second Nature Island. (Time: 1850 – 2000 GMT/1050 – 1200 PDT.) The UK Government has issued a new consultation document entitled A Vision for Science and Society. The resource centre for woman is keen to ensure that issues of gender equality are part of the agenda and are holding a series of focus groups to discuss the topic. Monday’s event will be held entirely in Second Life and all are very welcome to attend. It will be just over an hour long and will involve informal discussion in small groups on some of the issues. You do not have to have read the report, and men and women are equally welcome. The event is free, but you are asked to book in advance to give them an idea of numbers. You can book by email or telephone. See the UK Resources for Women website for further details.

Another event next week is taking place in the real world (first life) and simultaneously in Second Life. Scientific researchers and web2.0: social notworking? at the British Library in London on Wednesday 24 September from 1800 to 2030 GMT, and is organized by Sarah Kemmitt. This free event is the second in the BL’s quarterly café scientifique exploring varied topical issues in science. Timo Hannay, the Publishing Director of nature.com, will introduce the subject followed by a discussion with the audience. This provocative title aims to stimulate discussion on the following questions: is Web 2.0 all about attitudes or technologies?; what can Web 2.0 do for your research?; as a scientist, are there good reasons for getting involved beyond social ‘notworking’?; and web 3.0: another buzzword or a semantic revolution for science on the web? There is a lively discussion group on Nature Network in which aspects of these topics have been debated in the run-up to the evening. This event is free but pre-registration is required. For those interested who cannot attend in person, details of the Second Life parallel alternative are here.

Several further scientific events are scheduled in Second Life in the next few weeks. Some highlights include:
Sunday 10 February: Darwin Day Monkey Parade
Tueesday 11 February: “Nano-science and the Quantum World” talk on Nanotech Island.
Monday 18 February: “Manatee conservation and classification” talk on Second Nature
Thursday 21 February: George Monbiot talk on climate change on Second Nature.
Friday 22 February: talk by Dr David Grinspoon, an astrobiologist from the Denver Museum of Science & Nature.
Further details and links to the calendar of events can be found here.

See the website Second Nature for more information about Nature's island in Second Life, where there is a video introduction and tutorial for first-time users, and much other information about Second Nature and the events there. If you are familiar with Second Life, you can go directly to Second Nature by visiting this link.
There is a Nature Network Second Life group for those interested in using this virtual world for scientific activities.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 18, 2008
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Pluripotent cells offer great promise for the future of regenerative medicine. However, cells with pluripotent potential are difficult or impossible to isolate from patients, which makes methods for experimentally induced pluripotency in readily available somatic cells invaluable. Accompanying the September issue of Nature Reviews Molecular and Cell Biology, and free to access online, is a poster by Christopher Lengner and Rudolf Jaenisch, which compares and contrasts the properties of pluripotent embryonic stem cells with those of laboratory-generated pluripotent cells.
In the same issue of the journal is a related Essay, The promise of human induced pluripotent stem cells for research and therapy, by Shin-ichi Nishikawa, Robert A. Goldstein and Concepcion R. Nierras (Nature Reviews Molec. Cell Bio. 9, 725-729; 2008) The abstract:

Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells are human somatic cells that have been reprogrammed to a pluripotent state. There are several hurdles to be overcome before iPS cells can be considered as a potential patient-specific cell therapy, and it will be crucial to characterize the developmental potential of human iPS cell lines. As a research tool, iPS-cell technology provides opportunities to study normal development and to understand reprogramming. iPS cells can have an immediate impact as models for human diseases, including cancer.

See also the Nature Reviews collection of articles on stem cells, which is free to access online for six months.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 28, 2008
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Nature Network's Berlin group, run by Philipp Selenko, is organizing a series of dinners during the Twentieth International Genetics Conference (to be held in Berlin from 12 to 17 July). The dinners are free to attend and are intended to provide the opportunity to meet some of the distinguished scientists who are speaking at the conference in a relaxed atmosphere.
Friday 11 July: Oliver Smithies & Mario Capecchi, winners of the 2007 Nobel prize in Medicine ’for their discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells.’
Monday 14 July: Elisa Izaurralde & Frank Uhlmann, respectively Max Planck Director at the MPI for Developmental Biology in Tuebingen and group leader at the Cancer Research UK Institute in London. Elisa works on various aspects of RNA biology whereas Frank is interested in the functional properties of eukaryotic cell division.
Tuesday 15 July: Eric Lander, Peer Bork & Dinshaw Patel.Eric is the Founding Director of the Broad Institute of the MIT; Peer is the Scientific Coordinator of the EMBL Stuctural Biology and Bioinformatics Program. The two are internationally known for their pioneering work in deciphering the DNA/RNA sequence space. Dinshaw runs a structural biology laboratory at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Institute in NYC where he has unraveled some key features of RNA and DNA molecules, most recently those of siRNAs.
Wednesday 16th July: Rudi Jaenisch & Barry Dickson discuss issues about model organisms in science. Rudi is at the Whitehead Institute in Boston and a distinguished expert in mouse genetics and embryonic stem-cell biology. Barry is the Scientific Director of the Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna, and known for his work in on axon guidance in Drosophila . He has recently embarked on a journey to unravel the molecular principles of complex animal behaviour.

All dinners will start at 7 p.m. and take place at the Meierei, Kollwitzstrasse 42, Prenzlauer Berg.
Philipp writes "We hope that you are as excited as we are about the program and that many of you will show up for those special events!" For further information (including travel directions), please see the Nature Network Berlin forum; if you have any additional questions, you can contact Philipp via email.
Nature Network Berlin has set up a shared Google calendar for these and other Berlin-related events.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 08, 2008
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Cigarette smoking is the leading preventable cause of death and disease in the United States. Understanding the genetic and pharmacological factors surrounding nicotine and other substances of abuse will lead to insight into ways to prevent psychological dependence and addiction A special web focus, presented by Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, is a compilation of some key articles from Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, Nature Medicine, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Neuropsychopharmacology and The Pharmacogenomics Journal on smoking, nicotine and addiction; many of them free to access online. Examples of featured articles include:
Development of Procedures for Early Human Screening of Smoking Cessation Medications
KA Perkins, C Lerman, ML Stitzer, CA Fonte, JL Briski, JA Scott & KNR Chengappa.
Contingency Management: Utility in the Treatment of Drug Abuse Disorders
ML Stitzer & R Vandrey.
Smoked Marijuana as Medicine: Not Much Future
H Kalant.
Clinical Pharmacology of Nicotine: Implications for Understanding, Preventing, and Treating Tobacco Addiction
NL Benowitz.
By Now, “Harm Reduction” Harms Both Science and the Public Health
AI Leshner.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 27, 2008
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Molecular Therapy presents a special web focus, gathering together top articles on RNAi originally published in Molecular Therapy, Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Reviews Genetics, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, British Journal of Cancer and other NPG journals, free to access for a limited time. This collection covers latest research on the development of RNAi-based tools for drug target and gene function analysis as well as work describing the development of the technology for therapeutic applications.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 20, 2008
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The journal Heredity is publishing a special issue on experimental evolution, under the guest editorship of Graham Bell. The goal of experimental evolution is to understand the mechanics of adaptation by observing the outcome of natural selection in simplified laboratory microcosms. The experimental approach allows us to study fundamental features of evolution such as the fixation of beneficial mutations, the extent of specialization, the repeatability of adaptation and the effect of sex. The May issue of Heredity marks the great expansion of the field in recent years. It features mainly work on microbial and viral systems concerned with the genetic basis of adaptation, and the complications introduced by conflicting sources of selection and complex social interactions.
Visit the Heredity website to read the articles, all free to access.
Editorial: Experimental evolution
G Bell
Reviews
The spread of a beneficial mutation in experimental bacterial populations: the influence of the environment and genotype on the fixation of rpoS mutations
T Ferenci
Predicting evolution from genomics: experimental evolution of bacteriophage T7
J J Bull and I J Molineux
Experimental evolution: Experimental evolution and evolvability
N Colegrave and S Collins
The tragedy of the commons in microbial populations: insights from theoretical, comparative and experimental studies
R C MacLean
Experimental evolution of plant RNA viruses
S F Elena, P Agudelo-Romero, P Carrasco, F M Codoñer, S Martín, C Torres-Barceló and R Sanjuán
Kin selection and the evolution of virulence
A Buckling and M A Brockhurst.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 06, 2008
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A key priority in translational cancer research is the discovery of molecular biomarkers that improve the early diagnosis of cancer and guide cancer prognosis, including the design and assessment of new therapeutic avenues. A Nature Insight in the current issue (Nature 452, 547-589; 3 April 2008) highlights key approaches for the discovery and validation of cancer biomarkers, at the level of DNA, RNA and protein analysis. It also focuses on non-invasive imaging tools and serum analyses that will be important in detecting tumours and monitoring the course of cancer therapy. Translating these advances into personalized cancer care will entail challenges far beyond the scientific discovery and validation strategies. We hope that the articles in this Insight not only bring together key aspects of the translational research into cancer biomarkers but also draw attention to associated issues such as trial design, tissue collection and regulatory requirements. This Nature Insight is freely available online for six months.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 03, 2008
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Via Hilary Spencer, Nature Precedings has just introduced some new features.
Comment notifications: authors can opt to receive notification when new comments are added to their Nature Precedings document by checking a box during the submission process. Commenters can also opt to receive notification of when someone responds to their comment.
Watermarks on PDFs: the DOI (or Handle) and date of posting are now embedded in all PDFs on Nature Precedings. By embedding the identifier in the document, readers can correctly reference or cite the document, even when they have received the document via email or accessed it via a “deep-link”.
Document thumbnails serve as a memory aid and preview; they can also be embedded in blogs and webpages.
Please join the Nature Precedings group on Nature Network to receive updates and make suggestions about the site, as well as to join the conversations between Hilary, Timo Hannay and Nature Precedings users and authors.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 12, 2008
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The latest in Nature's Insights series is Cardiovascular disease (Nature 451; 21 February 2008), the most common cause of death worldwide and becoming even more prevalent as the population ages. New therapeutic targets are being identified as a result of emerging insights into disease mechanisms, and new strategies are also being tested, possibly leading to new treatment options. Improving diagnosis is also crucial, because by detecting disease early, the focus could be shifted from treatment to prevention. This Insight collection of an Editorial and eight Review and Progress articles is freely accessible online.
Editorial: Cardiovascular disease
Michael Basson
Reviews and Progress articles:
Translating molecular discoveries into new therapies for atherosclerosis
Daniel J. Rader & Alan Daugherty
Triggers, targets and treatments for thrombosis
Nigel Mackman
Tackling heart failure in the twenty-first century
James O. Mudd & David A. Kass
A genetic framework for improving arrhythmia therapy
Björn C. Knollmann & Dan M. Roden
Stem-cell therapy for cardiac disease
Vincent F. M. Segers & Richard T. Lee
The developmental genetics of congenital heart disease
Benoit G. Bruneau
The search for new cardiovascular biomarkers
Robert E. Gerszten & Thomas J. Wang
Imaging of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease
Javier Sanz & Zahi A. Fayad
An index of all Nature's Insightscollections is available here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 04, 2008
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Respiratory diseases, including allergies, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, are a major public health burden worldwide.The latest WHO statistics (2007) estimate that 300 million people worldwide have asthma, 210 million people have this type of pulmonary disease, and millions of people are affected by allergies. Each year, 250,000 people die of asthma. The prevalence of these diseases is increasing, and there is a continued need for new and improved therapies. A March 2008 Focus issue of Nature Reviews Immunology highlights the latest advances in our understanding of the immune bases of these respiratory diseases and how this knowledge can be translated into effective treatment strategies, in five review articles and four research highlights. All Focus articles are freely available online for the month of March.
See here for a listing of all previous focuses at the journals Nature Immunology and Nature Reviews Immunology.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 04, 2008
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The International Society for Nephrology (ISN) Nephrology Gateway is being completely redesigned this month (March 2008), with many new interactive features. Since its initial launch in 2005, the gateway has become an important online resource for nephrologists worldwide, including many educational projects, and providing links to news and literature, ISN contact information and membership highlights, a conference centre with announcements, and career resource links. The ISN is one of Nature Publishing Group’s valued society partners, with more than 8,000 members worldwide. The gateway also supports the ISN's membership service activities, connecting nephrologists with information and each other to improve patient care.
The latest addition to the site is the ISN Network, where nephrologists can log in, create a profile, set up discussion groups and participate in online forums. There is already a special discussion group on the ISN Network for all those involved in editing and publishing the journal Kidney International.
More enhanced search features within the gateway will soon follow these initial features.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 03, 2008
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Four Nature Network bloggers feature in an anthology of selected science blog posts of 2007, Open Laboratory 2007. Out of more than 450 nominated entries, 52 were chosen for publication, including these from Nature Network bloggers:
Deanne Taylor, a research scientist with the Harvard School of Public Health, describes what changes need to be made to boost faculty diversity in science.
Kristin Stephan, a Tufts graduate student, discusses how difficult, but necessary, it is for PhD students in grad school to learn about careers outside academic science.
Henry Gee writes about how his 9-year-old daughter's Asperger's syndrome might help her become a good scientist.
Jennifer Rohn, a postdoc at University College London, documents in a series of four posts her return to the lab and academic science after four years as a journal editor. Required reading for anyone contemplating a career change.
In a short review of the book in Nature's 24 January issue (Nature 451, 401; 2008), Nature's Books and Arts editor Joanne Baker wrote: "If you are overwhelmed by the surge in science-related blogging and don't know where to start, then this compilation may help you steer a course through the sea of perspectives on offer — or inspire you to start a blog yourself."
The book is available either as a PDF or a printed paperback, from Lulu.com.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 08, 2008
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One of the longest, and longest-lasting, Nature Network discussions in which I have participated is called "High Impact made by famous ones", started in October 2007 by a graduate student known as "Universal research" as part of the "Ask the Nature editor" forum.
The forum, incidentally, is hosted by the editors of Nature Network, and is for scientists who want to learn more about getting their work published in Nature and the Nature journals, and about careers in scientific editing, straight from the editors of these journals. You are welcome to join the group and post your questions.
Returning to the discussion thread about those "famous ones". The Nature and Nature journal editors who regularly handle manuscript submissions provide their answers to a wide range of questions, including whether being well-known or having a stellar track-record is more likely to get your mansucript sent for peer-review or published (answer: no); blinding of the peer-review process (double-blinding gets an airing, but Nature journal editors explain why they feel the system of single-blinding is best for scientists); duplicate publication (or "salami slicing" as it is often known); and independence of editors from those whose work is being considered.
This thread may not be the longest or the oldest that I have ever seen, but it is certainly among the most focused and useful for authors, and I highly recommend you read it for a unique insight into the editors' thought-processes. If you are at the start of your publishing career as a scientist, you are likely to find this forum very helpful. We welcome you there.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 30, 2008
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The latest journal in the Nature family, Nature Geoscience, introduces a section called Backstory, to celebrate the passion and endurance that geoscientists bring to their work. Each month, there is a question-and-answer piece at the back of the journal or on the journal's website. Because earth scientists like to know exactly where a story is set, each backstory shows the globe from a different perspective, centred on the location of the field work.
Here are some examples from the current (January 2008) issue:
Drillship on ice (Nature Geoscience 1, 76; 2008).
Kate Moran and Jan Backman took an ice-hardened drillship, two icebreakers and two helicopters to the high Arctic to recover many million-year-old sediments from the Lomonosov Ridge. The goal of the Arctic Coring Expedition was to reconstruct the past 60 million years of environmental change in the Arctic by recovering the first-ever long sediment core of deep-sea marine sediments from the Arctic Ocean. The site on the Lomonosov Ridge was chosen by the authors because it has a thick sequence of sedimentary layers covering its crest, which they thought should hold a record of the Arctic's past climate.
Midnight glacier hikes (Nature Geoscience 1, E1; 2008.)
Tim Bartholomaus and Suzanne and Bob Anderson hauled 25 kilograms of equipment over 25 kilometres in 25 hours to get a handle on glacier flow without breaking the bank. Glaciologists and geomorphologists are always looking for the best natural experiments to study the processes acting to shape a landscape. Glacier sliding is key to erosion at the glacier bed. In Kennicott Glacier, Alaska, the authors found an ideal natural experiment to probe the role of glacier hydrology in setting basal motion.
Plates under the sea (Nature Geoscience 1, E2; 2008.)
Using sophisticated multibeam imaging equipment aboard a French Navy vessel, Marc Fournier and colleagues mapped the structure of the enigmatic Owen fracture zone underneath the Arabian Sea. The region where the Arabian, Indian and Somalian tectonic plates meet — a triple junction — is probably the only such feature in the oceanic domain that had not been surveyed with modern oceanographic instruments. Before these authors' expedition, there was very little information regarding its precise location and geometry, although this triple junction can potentially shed light on the history of the break-up of the African plate and the formation of the Arabian plate.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 07, 2008
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Two collections of Essays appeared in Nature last year epitomizing the 'big issues' facing science and society -- Connections and Science and Politics . You can now download free digital editions (PDFs) of both these essay series in a simple, one-click operation at the links in the previous sentence.
The Connections series addresses how researchers, from cell biologists to quantum physicists, are struggling to work out how systems involving large numbers of interacting entities work as a whole. In this collection of essays, scientists explain how a systems approach, in parallel with the reductionism that dominated twentieth-century science, promises to yield fresh insight, and in some cases, to challenge the most widely held concepts of their field.
In the nine Science and Politics essays, experienced advisers on science policy to the US, UK and Swedish governments, as well as other senior scientific advisors, reflect on the highs and lows of being at the intersection of science and society. Do scientists devalue their advice to government by emphasizing uncertainty, the series asks, or is there a need for greater humility when science meets public disquiet?
These essays make stimulating reading -- I enjoyed each one in the weekly issue of Nature. If you missed them, I encourage you to download these PDF editions for reading at your leisure.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 04, 2008
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Nature China's "Recommendation of the month" award has been won by Timon Cheng-Yi Liu at the South China Normal University in Guangzhou. He has won a free subscription to Nature for recommending the paper: The phosphothreonine lyase activity of a bacterial type III effector family. Timon writes: "Pathogenic bacteria can inject into host cells virulence factors via the so-called type III machinery. Li et al. describe a family of bacterial virulence factors that have a previously unknown phosphothreonine lyase activity that can remove the phosphate from signaling mitogen-activated protein kinase family members involved in innate immunity. This family of effectors is important in the virulence of a variety of animal and plant bacterial pathogens, including Shigella, Salmonella, and Pseudomonas syringae". You can add your comments about the paper here.
If you would like to recommend a paper reporting high-quality research in any scientific or medical discipline originating from mainland China and Hong Kong for inclusion in Nature China, you can do so here. Nature China aims to highlight the best research being produced in Hong Kong and mainland China. Every week, its editors survey the scientific literature to identify the best recently published papers from the region, and provide short summaries. The choices are sorted into categories to provide a useful study and research resource. Readers can rank and comment on the chosen papers. In the case of research published in Nature journals, access to the original article is provided.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 12, 2007
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Nature Biotechnology and Nature Reviews Drug Discovery announce a joint web focus, Antivirals, hosting a collection of Reviews, Research Highlights and Commentaries covering the science and business of antiviral drug research and development, highlighting innovative approaches and lessons learned from decades of antiviral drug development, as well as identifying key issues for future antiviral drug discovery and potential solutions. The web focus also includes an online library of recent research papers and review content from other Nature Publishing Group journals. All articles, and selected content from the library, are freely available from December 2007 until June 2008.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 10, 2007
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With a combination of genetic tricks and fancy proteins, Jean Livet et al. in the current issue of Nature (450, 56-62; 2007) report their work in which they have colourfully labelled hundreds of individual neurons with distinctive hues to create a "brainbow". The authors have labelled neurons with approximately 90 different colour combinations, providing a significant step towards modelling how the nervous system works normally and in diseased brains.
As well as reading the paper, you can listen to this week's free Nature Podcast to find out more, and read the Nature editors' summary of the work here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 02, 2007
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Milestones in DNA Technologies (October 2007) is a collaboration from Nature, Nature Methods and Nature Reviews Genetics, focusing on ground-breaking technologies and advances in the analysis of DNA. Developments in the last 50 years range from the first Sanger sequences to the latest next-generation chemistry, and from the earliest methods of DNA separation to transgenic organisms and specific gene replacement in human cells.
You can request a free print copy here. In addition, the full content of DNA Technologies, plus further articles and features, is freely available online from October 2007 for six months. The table of contents listing is here. You can also see here for a timeline of milestones in DNA technologies.
Index of all Nature Publishing Group's Milestones publications.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 19, 2007
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Have you ever seen something in Nature — be it a research paper, news story or an editorial — that you thought deserved far more attention that it received? We value your opinion, so we've launched a website, 'Best of Nature ', that allows readers to nominate, vote for and discuss content from Nature's past. Please vist, and tell us what we may have missed while compiling the 'History of the Journal Nature ', a newly launched website which explores Nature's history back to the first issue in 1869, and of which more later.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 18, 2007
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The world's population is ageing rapidly. The effects of this change in demographics are predicted to touch on many facets of human life. Not least, because the health of older people deteriorates with time. Nature's latest in its "collections" series draws together recent articles on the process of ageing, and the connections that exist between growing older and disease.
You can read the collection online, where it is free-access, or order a free print copy.
A collection of articles on the same subject, the Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology web focus on ageing, can be seen here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 28, 2007
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To mark a decade of significant progress in the increasingly important discipline of marine microbiology, the October issue of Nature Reviews Microbiology features a special focus on the topic.The issue contains a collection of articles that highlight the latest advances in marine microbiology and how they are leading to a new understanding of biodiversity, ecology and biogeochemistry. The topics covered range from recent advances in our understanding of marine ecology and metagenomics to the remote sensing of microorganisms and ecological modelling. This issue also features the marine viruses that are believed to shape microbial ocean communities, and addresses the question of microbial abundance in the extremely harsh conditions of the deep ocean biosphere.
From 13 September 2007, these articles are available free to download owing to the generous support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Agouron Institute. This special issue is also accompanied by a Web Focus that draws together relevant articles published in journals across the Nature Publishing Group.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 17, 2007
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Ricardo Vidal of the University of Algarve, Portugal, has made a badge which can be seen below and at his Nature Network blog: My Nature Network Blog Badge

Ricardo blogs both on Nature Network and at My Biotech Life. If, like Ricardo, you have a blog on the Network and a blog elsewhere, you can copy his badge and use it on your external blog so that your readers can click to your Network blog.
See here for more information about blogs on Nature Network. If you like the posts you read and would like to set up your own blog there, simply click on the "request a blog" button on the right of the page. Nature Network blogs are indexed in Technorati (a major blog search engine and ranking system) and are added to Postgenomic, Nature Publishing Group's science blog aggregator. Use the Network to spread your scientific words, as well as to join groups that share your interests and to make new contacts.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 12, 2007
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What do Eric Lander, Frank Wilczek, James Randi and Martha Stewart have in common? Answer: they were all attendees at the second Science Foo Camp from 3 to 5 August, co-organized by Nature Publishing Group, O'Reilly Media and Google, and hosted at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California.
The 'Foo Camp' format has been pioneered by O'Reilly, a publisher of computing books and organizer of technology conferences, as an antidote to the often overly restrictive nature of formal conferences, where most of the best conversations seem to happen in hallways and during coffee breaks rather than at the main sessions. Foo is self-organizing, unpredictable and rather anarchic - but also quite wonderful.
For fuller accounts, see Henry Gee's End of the Pier Show blog on Nature Network, this Edge essay by George Dyson and Timo Hannay's account on Nascent. There is lots of other blog coverage which can be accessed from this summary page .

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 13, 2007
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The Summer 2007 issue of Nurture, the magazine for past and present Nature journal authors,has been mailed to authors who have published original research papers in a Nature journal or a Review article in the Nature Reviews journals -- and, crucially, who have provided us with details of their addresses via the manuscript submission system -- in the past year. The current issue features articles by and about authors and editors from the Nature journals; news of our latest interactive web publications Nature Precedings, Nature China, Nature Reports Stem Cells and Nature Reports Climate Change; how to use RSS feeds in PubMed searches; about Nature Network London and how you can participate; debate on Nature's history, Nature's journal club; the latest from Macmillan Science books, and more -- including poetry.

If you haven't published a paper in a Nature journal in the past year, we cannot send you a printed copy because of our limited print run: nevertheless, you can read Nurture free of charge as a digital edition. Please follow this link for instructions on how to access the digital version, or if you are familiar with the system, please go directly to the digital edition of the magazine here.

Whether you read the print or the digital format, we hope that you enjoy our latest news and views for authors: past, present and future.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 07, 2007
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Over the next 10 months, Nature is publishing 5 free audio shows specifically for the chemistry community, including interviews with Nobel prizewinners, updates on nanotechnology research and more. Each show features important research from the Nature journals as well as interviews with scientists, in-depth commentary, location reports and analysis from journalists covering chemistry around the world. You can download the latest podcast from this page, which also provides links to previous chemistry podcasts. Alternatively, you can subscribe by RSS feed.
To receive updates on the chemistry podcasts, as well as the latest chemistry research from the Nature journals, you can sign up here for our chemistry email alert.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 06, 2007
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In today's era of start-ups, spin-offs and university–industry collaborations, it pays to be knowledgeable about patents and how they can help. So starts the Editorial in the new issue of Nature Photonics (1, 355; 2007)

"All too often scientists are deterred from patenting by misconceptions about how expensive or time-consuming the process might be. True, the cost of filing and maintaining a patent has to be considered carefully, but the financial or commercial benefits may be worth it."

Read on at the Nature Photonics website.

Further information about patents in photonics is provided in the Commentary "Patenting photonics research" by Andrew Fearnside later in the issue (Nature Photonics 1, 357-359; 2007).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 03, 2007
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News from the Neuroscience Gateway: The Allen Institute for Brain Science has released an upgrade to the Allen Brain Atlas, offering improved browsing and navigation and enhanced data mining. Updates to the Atlas application include:
NeuroBlast, a blast search tool that allows users to easily retrieve a list of genes with expression patterns similar to a gene of interest.
Easy Browsing and Quick View options that allow users to quickly access and browse raw data and data summaries by gene or brain structure.
Improved navigation allows users to synchronize raw data images with corresponding anatomic reference plates from the Allen Reference Atlas.
The Neuroscience Gateway, a comprehensive source for the latest research, news and events in neuroscience and genomics research, is a collaboration between the Allen Institute for Brain Science and Nature Publishing Group. The Allen Brain Atlas is a freely available scientific resource developed by the Allen Institute, which provides maps of the expression of approximately 20,000 genes in the mouse brain. Together, the Neuroscience Gateway and the Allen Brain Atlas are new tools to help researchers navigate neuroscience and genomics research. See more details about the Allen Brain Atlas here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 21, 2007
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If you’ve wondered about starting your own blog, have a look at Nature Network, where scientists of all kinds are blogging. It is free, quick and simple to set up the blog, and you’ll find yourself connected with researchers and others with overlapping interests.
You can see who is blogging at Nature Network by going to the blog index and reading whichever blogs catch your interest. Recent posts from all the blogs are featured on the blog index page, so that's another way to see what's truly current. Here are a few posts that I’ve enjoyed reading this week:
In her blog Mind the Gap, Jennifer Rohn records what it’s like to return to the bench after a spell in the science literary scene running the LabLit website. The post In which I rejoice in muscle memory is a vivacious description of planning her first experiment since her long break. "With due consideration of my long hiatus, I showed what I thought was a ridiculously stripped-down plan to the lab’s two leading experts on Drosophila cell culture RNAi: a pilot tissue culture experiment with a mere eight samples. I waited expectantly as the Ph.D. student studied my scribbles. But then he slowly started shaking his head. “Your first experiment in four years?” he said dubiously. “Only four wells, maximum. Get rid of half of this.” "
Attila Csordas, whose Network blog is called Science Hacker, looks at the role of comic books in science popularization. Cartoons are terrific education tools, writes Attila, as well as howtoons, cartoons showing kids of all ages “How To” build things. "What about cartoons for scientists? After all, experimental results, short communications and complete articles could be presented in a cartoon way, let us just juxtapose the figures of an article with good graphics and build a story upon them." Nature 's synthetic biology cover and online comic in its issue of 24 November 2005 being a good example.
In her Network blog Time for a Change, Linda Cooper suggests that "there's a better way to write a scientific article. Currently, published articles are unnecessarily difficult to read and researchers need to be trained in how to write about their research." Here she explains why the active voice, useful transitions and clear subjects help readers. The post at the link takes a paragraph from the Allen Brain Atlas part by part, providing an original, a descontstruction and a revised version of each section. Head on over and tell her which you think is best.
These are just three of the many lively blogs on the Nature Network. Check it out, and have a go yourself.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 15, 2007
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In its June Editorial, which is freely available, Nature Chemical Biology (3, 297;2007) reports on new online features to enhance interdisciplinary communication and to increase the accessibility of chemical information for readers.

Most published chemical content is traditionally contained in the schemes, figures and tables of scientific papers. Authors also use abbreviations, acronyms or numbering schemes to identify specific molecules. Though these shorthand notations simplify the presentation of chemical information, they tend to make chemical papers less accessible to the general reader. This is a concern for chemical biology articles, which are intended to attract an interdisciplinary audience. Moreover, since the advent of the Internet, the way by which scientists acquire scientific information has changed. Though some scientists continue to read journal articles in print, most turn to the online HTML and PDF versions of published manuscripts. This expanded use of electronic resources offers an excellent opportunity to make chemical information more accessible and user-friendly to readers of scientific papers.

The Editorial provides details of the resources now available to authors and readers, and asks for your evaluation of what has been done so far, and your 'wish list' for new chemical or biological functionality that will foster communication and collaboration between researchers at the interface of chemistry and biology.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 30, 2007
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Three Correspondence letters in this week's Nature (447, 142; 2007) all concern information on the web, in rather different ways.
Mark Gerstein and colleagues raise the oft-discussed question of structured abstracts in journal articles: that is, an abstract that contains bold headings to introduce the text. The difference here, though, is that the structured abstract is for digital publication, and would use a web standard such as XML or OWL, to allow automated literature mining.
In another letter, Douglas Crawford highlights the Human RefSeq database as a standard for genes that have more than one name: a common occurrence. Associations between genes can only be made accurately when the gene and all its synonyms can be correctly identified. If genes in a publication were identified via RefSeq, genomic analysis would be more likely to identify genes of common interest
Finally for this week, Quentin Wheeler and Frank Krell comment on a Commentary in Nature's Linnaeus special issue. They say that mandatory online registration of taxonomic names should accompany any new species description, to ensure true accessibility and knowledge.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 10, 2007
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The latest edition of Nurture, the magazine for Nature journal authors, is now out, featuring articles on authors and editors from the Nature journals, our latest new journal Nature Photonics, Nature's new News and Views Q/A format, Second Nature (Second Life), highlights from Nature's history, the new online publications Nature Reports Avian Flu and Nature Network Boston, how to write a bestselling science book, Nature Structural and Molecular Biology's service for 3D protein structure visualization, and more.

Authors have a degree of curiosity about what goes on at the journal after their paper is submitted. Nurture is intended to give authors an inside look at our procedures, and to tell them about services we offer. What happens after you submit your work? Why do we issue a press release and how is it created? What happens when your paper is featured in News and Views or in the international press? How do we decide what services to introduce? What are the editors like?

We hope that Nurture will help to reveal some of the processes that happen behind the veil of the Nature journals, and will convey something of what it is like having a paper published in one of them. We also hope that Nurture is an entertaining read.

The print edition of Nurture is sent to Nature journal authors who have published a paper in the past year, so if you fall into this category, you should be receiving your copy soon if you haven't already. It is also available free of charge as a digital edition, which you can obtain by clicking on the underlined part of this sentence.

Please let us know what you think of Nurture, either in the comments here or via email. What would you like to read about in future issues? Please send us your feedback about your experiences as a published author in the Nature journals, or your suggestions for content. Letters on the topic of authorship can be submitted for publication in Nurture, by email.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 09, 2007
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To celebrate its fifteenth birthday year, Nature Genetics, in partnership with the Wellcome Trust, announces a conference covering research strategies progressing from genome-wide association studies to untangling the mechanisms of common diseases. The Genomics of Common Diseases conference will take place from 7 to 10 July 2007 at The Wellcome Trust Conference Centre, The Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, UK.
The availability of genome-wide association studies has started to redefine the genetic architecture of common diseases, and over the next three to five years will reveal new susceptibility genes for a wide range of these disorders. This is shifting the strategic emphasis of common disease genetics, from identification of susceptibility genes to understanding of mechanisms and potential applications. The following topics are on the programme:
>The state of the art in genome-wide association studies across a range of common diseases
>The transition from knowledge of susceptibility genes to understanding of mechanism
>Population genetics, genome evolution and structural variation in common disease genetics
>The usefulness of risk prediction based on genetic and other available tests
>Ethical, legal and social implications of personal genetic information.

In the meantime, don't forget the Question of the Year: What would you do if it became possible to sequence the equivalent of a full human genome for only $1,000? So far, 28 genetics researchers have provided their answers on the Question of the Year website. More answers will be added until October, so contact Nature Genetics if you work in this field and have your own suggestion.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 27, 2007
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While on the subject of neuroscience, this week's (26 April) free podcast from Nature, "A new study of old brains", features an analysis of two damaged brains, preserved in a museum since the nineteenth century, which could force neuroscientists to rethink the area where language resides in the brain. Two brains in which Paul Broca, the French anatomist and surgeon, originally identified 'Broca's area' -- the brain's speech-processing centre -- have been scanned using magnetic resonance imaging. Oddly, the new scans show that Broca's original patients didn't have damage in Broca's area after all. Read the full story at news@nature.com.
Also discussed in this week's podcast are new studies reported in Nature on lowering inhibitions in addiction; wing shape in swifts; iron and carbon sequestration; the perfect pint; and how invasive species gain ground.
An archive of Nature podcasts and their transcripts, all freely available, is on this web page.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 26, 2007
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Last week, Nature announced its 2007 awards for scientific mentoring, in this editorial (subscription required: 446, 584; 5 April 2007). Nature is this year inviting nominations of outstanding scientific mentors in South Africa. The closing date for nominations is 31 May and we will announce the winners on 21 September 2007. The Editor-in-Chief of Nature, Dr Philip Campbell, will present the awards at a special event in Cape Town.

Further details about the awards, including how to make a nomination, the process, the prizes and the judges, can be found here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 16, 2007
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For most journals, adequate space for methods is taken for granted. Nature now presents a new format to its papers that removes a longstanding shortcoming in this respect. From now on, all Nature papers requiring methods sections will be able to include all the necessary detail.
The full methods are published online only. The printed version contains a summary of up to 300 words, with a reference to the full online version. A key point is that the new online methods sections are not only sufficient for researchers wishing to replicate the work (a longstanding complaint about past Nature papers) but are also integral to the HTML (full text) and online PDF versions of the paper. (For completeness, both online versions also contain the methods summary in the print version.)
One of this week’s (5 April issue) Articles, an exciting paper on targeted fast optical interrogation of neural circuitry, represents the inauguration of this format. If you are thinking of submitting your own work to Nature, you might like to take a look at how these "methods" are displayed in the three versions of the Article: full-text online, PDF online and PDF print. Here is the full-text (HTML) version, in which the full methods run on after the end of the main paper (the paper's references are all together in one list and indexed). Here is the online PDF version, in which the full methods appear at the end of the main paper with their associated references. And if you look at the printed issue: 5 April vol 446, pages 633-669 (2007), you can see that the “full methods” are not there (but readers are directed to the online version).
We are delighted to be able to offer this service to authors. We hope you will be pleased, too.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 05, 2007
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There is a post on Cosmic Blog about journals' embargo policies, specifically those of the journals Nature and Science. Donald Kennedy, Editor-in-Chief of Science, is quoted from a talk he gave at a conference "Best practices: covering science in cyberspace" earlier this month. Dr Kennedy suggested that print versions of papers in future might be much shorter and "user-friendly", with the full account, complete with multimedia, appearing online only.

"It's going to create a problem for the people who try to manage science news," Kennedy said. "My guess is that the embargo system will either be abandoned, in which case it'll be a free-for-all ... [or] it's certainly likely that embargoes will be shortened, and the distribution of news to mainstream news media - which used to happen in clumps so that embargoes for an entire clump could be organized - is going to happen in driblets. So there will have to be a more confusing embargo environment."

Nature's embargo policy can be found here, and an article about how its press office operates is here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 26, 2007
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Each week, Nature's author page features "making the paper", a behind-the-scenes look at one of the research papers in the current issue. This week's (446, xi; 22 March 2007) featured author is Jeffrey Moore, a coauthor of the Letter "Biasing reaction pathways with mechanical force" (page 423), which describes a molecule that undergoes chemical reaction in response to stress.

From the "making the paper" article: " 'Self-healing' materials that can automatically repair their daily wear and tear could produce lenses that never scratch or cars that always look new. In 2001, Jeffrey Moore and his colleagues Scott White and Nancy Sottos at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, described one such self-healing polymer. Into the basic polymer material were embedded tiny capsules filled with liquid monomer. When the material was broken, the capsules ruptured, releasing monomers into the crack, where a catalyst induced their formation into new polymer to repair the break.
Moore and his colleagues wanted to find ways of promoting this repair without having to add a catalyst. They thought they could create molecules that would undergo the desired reaction in response to the physical stress itself. The idea that mechanical force can induce a chemical reaction has been around for years, but so far scientists had only used such force to break bonds. "If you can use mechanical force to break bonds, why not do something more interesting, like creating a reactive intermediate that might alter the material in useful ways," says Moore. "We did not see any fundamental limitations."
Read more about making the paper, in print or online, in the 22 March issue of Nature.
See here for a freely available video stream of the mechanically morphing molecules.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 22, 2007
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As previously announced on Nautilus, Nature Publishing Group is launching a web portal to keep abreast of the best research emerging from China.

Cell biology research in China is a relatively young plant that has been growing apace with the country's rapid global development. Indeed, the plant is also increasingly bearing fruit — not just in the shape of new and well-equipped research facilities such as the SIBS's Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, which would not be out of place in Shanghai's famous architectural show room along the Huangpu River, but also in terms of high profile papers. China's publication rate in peer reviewed journals has risen eightfold in the past decade to rival that of the UK and Japan. Importantly, the number of papers with in excess of 20 citations has also risen tenfold, although in terms of absolute levels they remain in the hundreds, and biomedical science represent less than 20% of mainland China's high-impact papers. We have also noticed a similar tenfold rise in submissions from China to this journal over the past seven years, which we hope will be reflected in a proportional representation in print. However, to put things into perspective, current submissions from China amount to 2% of total submissions to Nature Cell Biology.

For over ten years Nature Publishing Group has maintained the Nature Japan Gateway, which provides Japanese language access to content across the Nature titles, as well as jobs advertisements to over 120,000 registrants who can chose from fifteen customized e-mail alerts. More recently, similar gateways for Korea and China were launched, and despite the considerably lower number of registrants, these services already receive high web-traffic.

The new Nature China portal has a dedicated Hong Kong-based editor, who will provide accessible short summaries in English and Chinese to a weekly updated selection of top research papers across all fields and across the literature from mainland China and Hong Kong. The site also allows users to recommend papers, and the community is encouraged to comment and vote on these papers as part of a global virtual journal club. In addition, there will be an open-access archive linking to papers from China published across the Nature journals in the last five years. The site has a local mirror, which will provide Chinese readers with efficient access to the articles featured.

So whether you are a researcher in China or simply interested in Chinese science, do sign up to the weekly e-mail alert and contribute your selection of the best research China has to offer when the full site launches in late April.

Republished from Nature Cell Biology 9, 233 (2007) ; doi:10.1038/ncb0307-233b

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 07, 2007
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Nature Cell Biology has this month been counting the average number of words in its own papers and in those in other comparable journals:

"Nature Cell Biology articles contain an average 9,006 words (7,903 in the main paper), with 11.5 figures (6.4 in the main paper) composed of 46.9 individual panels (26.8 in main paper). Compare this to The Journal of Cell Biology — 9,472 words average text length (9,248 in main paper), 10.1 figures (8.4 in the paper) with 31 panels (24.9 in the paper); or Cell — 11,042 words (10,188 in paper), 11.7 figures (6.7 in paper) with 48.3 panels (33.5 in paper). Importantly, Cell papers contain approximately the same amount of data as Nature Cell Biology articles, and The Journal of Cell Biology papers contain somewhat less. Cell papers contain 229 words per display panel, whereas Nature Cell Biology articles contain 192 and The Journal of Cell Biology papers are 5% longer than Nature Cell Biology articles. Of course, Nature Cell Biology letters are shorter (5,961 words and 8.0 figures, of which 4.7 are in the main paper, and 33.5 panels with 25 in the main paper), but articles represent approximately 30% of our papers, and we will not cut down a paper to letter format if this damages the contents."
(The data are based on ten randomly sampled recent papers from each journal. Text counts exclude figure legends.)
See here for full text of this Editorial.
Nature's new long methods sections were discussed on this blog last week.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 05, 2007
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Nature Publishing Group has launched a new web-based publication, Nature China. Nature China seeks to highlight the best scientific research published in Mainland China and Hong Kong in one convenient portal. AstraZeneca, as sponsor, will support the website for the next two years. In the past decade, the output of research papers from China in the Thompson ISI database has soared from 10,000 papers a year to more than 80,000, which is the same numerical level as the United Kingdom and Japan. The number of very high impact papers (citations in excess of 20) from China has increased ten-fold to several hundred. Nature China is dedicated to highlighting the best research from mainland China and Hong Kong, to provide scientists from around the world with a convenient portal into research drawn from across the scientific and medical literature in all disciplines.
The website is currently in beta form as an archive is built extending back over the past six years to provide short summaries of some of the best research articles published from China in Nature journals and other leading scientific publications since 2000. In the case of Nature journals, access to the original full text articles is also provided. Once the archive is complete in April, each week thereafter, Nature China editors will select the best recently published research and provide a summary of the results. Readers can also recommend papers to be included in Nature China and vote/comment on those suggestions. The best of these, chosen by the site's users, will be included within the Nature China archive.
Futher explanation about Nature China can be found on the site's "frequently asked questions" page.

This month's featured papers on Nature China.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 16, 2007
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The solution to the November 2006 Nurture crossword is shown on the "continue readng" page of this post. The prize, a copy of The Science of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, published by Macmillan Science books, was won by Marc Swisdak of the US Naval Research Laboratory. Congratulations, Marc.
Readers who have not seen the crossword and wish to attempt it can download the digital edition of Nurture free of charge.
The crossword was set by Sian Lewis.

The solution follows:

Continue reading "Nurture crossword solution" »

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 05, 2007
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