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Nature Publishing Group (NPG) will launch a new primary research journal, Nature Climate Change, in October 2009.
Climate change is one of the key issues of the twenty-first century. Nature Climate Change will bring together scientific observation and models with work reporting on our understanding of how human society affects climate change, and vice versa. The journal's coverage will extend into socio-economic research as well as the natural sciences, with the aim of putting the research it publishes into a wider scientific, economic and political context.
Like its sister titles, Nature Climate Change will seek to publish the best research from around the world and will have a strong online component. The journal will provide in-depth coverage of all aspects of the Earth’s changing climate, including studies of the impacts of climate change as well as climate change itself.
Publishing Director David Swinbanks said that the journal “will for the first time extend the reach of a Nature-branded journal into the social as well as natural sciences and provide authoritative, much needed, information on climate change to a broad public audience as well as to the many research communities studying climate change and its impact".
Nature Climate Change will be the newest journal in physical-sciences titles launched by NPG over the past five years. Nature Geoscience, which launched in January 2008, covers the entire spectrum of the Earth Sciences, and will continue to include research on understanding the complex scientific mechanisms behind a planet’s changing climate.
The Nature physical-science journals, like their sister titles in life sciences and medicine, provide a home for high quality research and commentary, many in fast-growing fields such as climate change and nanotechnology.
NPG is currently recruiting for a Chief Editor for Nature Climate Change and will announce further information about the journal before the end of the year.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 26, 2008
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In the latest article in Nature's Horizons series, which are visions of the scientific future, Nobel laureate Paul Nurse explores the agenda for treating organisms, at any level, as information machines (Nature 454, 424-426; 2008). It's his belief that one great challenge for biology is to isolate, in particular within cells, the modules by which information of many types - whether genetic or environmental in ultimate origin - is coded, propagated and interpreted, and how cells are organized so as to process such information. To read this article and the other Horizons, visit the Horizons web focus.
Horizons articles present experts' visions of the foreseeable future of a research theme. The articles are commissioned by Nature's editors, and usually published without peer review, given Nature's intention of capturing a respected individual perspective. The articles are intended to anticipate the future, but also to influence it.
Previously published Horizons:
A systematic look at an old problem
Thomas B. L. Kirkwood
Chemistry for everyone
Peter Murray-Rust
Building better batteries
M. Armand & J.-M. Tarascon
Evolution of anatomy and gene control
Georgy Koentges
Wiring up quantum systems
R. J. Schoelkopf & S. M. Girvin

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 18, 2008
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Nature Publishing Group presents a Collection on Neurotechniques, which includes original Research, Progress and Review articles as well as Research Highlights from Nature Methods and Nature Reviews Neuroscience. This collection aims to inspire and provoke thought by drawing attention to groundbreaking advances in technology that hold great promise for the pursuit of answers to long-standing questions, such as how brain regions are connected, what contributions single neurons and populations of neurons make to behaviour and cognition, and what role cell dysfunction has in neurological disorders. This collection is freely available until November 2008. It also contains a library of links to articles published by Nature Publishing Group journals on the topic.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 04, 2008
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Via press release, the British Library is making 1,500 journals available for immediate download. A huge variety of titles will be added on 1 June 2008, ranging from science, medicine and technology to politics, history, anthropology and literature. The move is in response to customers' growing need for instant digital access to research material.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 28, 2008
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Last week's Insight collection of articles in Nature (453,301–351;2008) is on the theme of regenerative medicine. The capacity of most tissues to regenerate derives from stem cells, but there are many barriers to the use of stem-cell-based therapies in the clinic. Such therapies, however, have the potential to improve human health enormously, and knowledge gained from studying cells in culture and in model organisms is now laying the groundwork for a new era of regenerative medicine.
Nature's web focus on Regeneration brings together content from Nature and Nature Reports Stem Cells to highlight where we are with the basic science, and the challenge of making medicine from stem cells, whether derived from adult tissue, reprogrammed cultured cells or embryos. The web focus also features a podcast and links to online resources.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 28, 2008
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Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and the American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) have announced a new publishing partnership in which NPG will publish ACG’s official publication, the American Journal of Gastroenterology, starting in January 2009.
With an Impact Factor of 5.608 (Thomson, 2007), the American Journal of Gastroenterology is the highest-ranked clinical journal in gastroenterology. The journal is led by Editors-in-Chief Dr Joel E. Richter, of Temple University, and Dr Nicholas J. Talley of the Mayo Clinic in Florida.
Aimed at practicing clinicians, articles published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology deal directly with the disorders seen most often in patients. The journal brings a broad-based, interdisciplinary approach to the study of gastroenterology, including articles reporting on current observations, research results, methods of treatment, drugs, epidemiology and other topics relevant to clinical gastroenterology.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 22, 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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The preliminary website for Nature Chemistry is now live. As well as providing more detailed information about the journal, the site will be updated each week with three new research highlights about exciting chemistry papers that have caught the attention of the editors.
The chemistry@nature.com portal has also undergone a significant overhaul. As well as offering a list of current chemistry-related content across Nature Publishing Group titles, the portal includes a research collection that brings together chemistry papers published in Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Materials, Nature Methods, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Protocols and Nature Reviews Drug Discovery since 2001.
Nature Chemistry also made a big splash at the Spring 2008 American Chemical Society in New Orleans – even though some journal staff ended up driving there from Washington DC just hours after getting off a transatlantic flight – but that is another story which can be found on the Sceptical Chymist blog! The Nature Chemistry labcoats were rated as the best giveaway at the meeting’s exposition – the first one went to Teresa, an undergraduate student from Iowa, who had been stranded with the Nature Publshing Group team in Dulles airport and survived the 1,133-mile, 17-hour roadtrip that followed.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 28, 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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Nature Milestones in Spin was published yesterday, 28 February 2008. Nature Milestones in Spin is a presentation from Nature Physics that focuses on ground-breaking technologies and advances in 'spin' — the idea that elementary particles possess intrinsic angular momentum, which substantially affects their behaviour. This Nature Publishing Group supplement tells the story through a series of 'milestones' marking the significant developments through the twentieth century to the present day.
Read the content free online for 6 months or order your free print copy . (There is a limited number of printed copies, which will be dispatched on a first-come, first-served basis.)
The rest of the Nature Milestones series, which highlights key discoveries that have shaped different scientific fields and enables the wider recognition of them by nonspecialists, can be seen here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 29, 2008
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Philip Campbell, Editor in Chief of Nature, writes (Nature 451, 643; 2008):
"When Nature asked a group of experts to offer their visions of the future, we were aware that such a project can have its pitfalls. Experts can get things drastically wrong — although, as Arthur C. Clarke noted, this usually occurs when they assert what is not possible. When they say what is possible, they can be inspiringly right.
With such inspiration in mind, these five Horizons articles (listed below) offer a sense of what our authors believe should happen over the next few years. The collection is in no way comprehensive — we simply wanted to deliver a mix of fundamental and applied science, with the writers articulating their unrefereed agendas for their disciplines."
The five Horizons articles, all in the 7 February 2008 issue of Nature:
A systematic look at an old problem
As life expectancy increases, a systems-biology approach is needed to ensure that we have a healthy old age.
Thomas B. L. Kirkwood pp 644-647
Chemistry for everyone
Moves by chemists to help computers access the scientific literature have boosted the drive to make scientific information freely available to all.
Peter Murray-Rust pp 648-651
Building better batteries
Researchers must find a sustainable way of providing the power our modern lifestyles demand.
M. Armand and J.-M. Tarascon pp 652-657
Evolution of anatomy and gene control
Evo-devo meets systems biology.
Georgy Koentges pp 658-663
Wiring up quantum systems
The emerging field of circuit quantum electrodynamics could pave the way for the design of practical quantum computers.
R. J. Schoelkopf and S. M. Girvin pp 664-669

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 25, 2008
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At Nature Publishing Group, we are often in a position of celebrating birthdays across a full range of ages, from Nature itself (139 on 4 November this year) to our youngest anniversarian, Nature Network, one year old today. In its brief span, the network has become host to a huge range of forums, groups, blogs and event notifications, some created by staff but the vast majority by users -- scientists, students, and (to quote the Editor Emeritus of Nature, Sir John Maddox) camp-followers.
Today, my shapshot shows me that the most vibrant discussions are on the role of money in Indian science; the quality of writing as a factor in the peer-review process; and nanotechnology trends predicted for this year. Tomorrow, these will be different, but equally stimulating. And fun -- check out Stripped Science, the blog of PhD student Viktor Poór, for a regular dose of science cartoons, this week with a birthday theme. Anyone can join the network, it is all free, so please do visit and meet others in a similar field, or with similar interests, to yourself.
Nature Network shares anniversaries of various kinds with the element Lawrencium, Dolly the sheep, Alexander Graham Bell, James Cook and, of course, St Valentine. The network almost, but not quite, shares a birthday with a person very closely connected with Nature in its earliest days -- Charles Darwin (who would have been 199 on Tuesday of this week, 12 February). In celebration of that anniversary, and of Nature Network's own much younger achievement, I reproduce a small part here of Matt Brown's lovely blog article about a walk through Darwin's London (complete with Google map):

"Walking up Lower Regent Street you might want to take a detour into Leicester Square. In Darwin’s day, No. 28—on the eastern side of the square—was the headquarters of the Zoological Society of London and the site of a zoological museum. On 4 January 1837, Darwin handed over 80 mammals and 450 birds collected during his Beagle trip. These included the now-famous Galapagos finches, specimens that ornithologist, artist and taxonomist John Gould was quick to describe as 'an entirely new group, containing 12 species.' "

I highly recommend reading the whole of this delightful combination of essay and guided tour. Happy birthday, indeed, Nature Network. I look forward to 199 (or more) lively years of your existence.

Update: See this posting at Nature Network for a brief history and some highlights of the first year.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 14, 2008
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Nature Publishing Group is now publishing the American Journal of Hypertension (AJH). The journal publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed articles in the fields of hypertension and related cardiovascular disease under the editorship of Michael Alderman, MD, and now has a new look, both in print and online. In celebration of the move to NPG, the online content of the journal is free site is free until 31 January. AJ H provides a forum for scientific inquiry of the highest standard and publishes articles on basic sciences, molecular biology, clinical and experimental hypertension, cardiology, neurophysiology and more. Visit AJH online to read the full aims and scope of the journal, including the guidelines for authors and for peer-reviewers.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 31, 2008
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Although it seems like yesterday to the editors, an entire year has passed since the launch of Nature Photonics in January 2007. To celebrate, the editors have created a web focus with selected highlights from the first 12 issues, which is available free to registered users until the end of May 2008. This content comprises an assortment of reviews, primary research papers, News and Views pieces, interviews and commentaries, showing the broad coverage that Nature Photonics has successfully achieved. In 2007, the journal published research papers reporting exciting results in topics spanning from quantum optics, plasmonics, photonic crystals, metamaterials and silicon photonics through to terahertz science, biophotonics and free-electron lasers, and many other areas besides.
Nature Photonics birthday editorial (Nature Photonics 2, 61; 2008).
Nature Photonics birthday web focus (free to registered users until 31 May 2008).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 31, 2008
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Nature Clinical Practice Cardiovascular Medicine is pleased to announce the launch of a new Clinical Research section. It plans to publish its first original research articles in mid-2008.
Valentin Fuster, Editor-in-Chief of the journal, writes: “Our goal is to serve the community of clinical cardiologists, and demand for this expansion has come from its members. By adding outstanding original clinical research to the latest review content, we can provide everything a busy cardiologist needs to keep up to date with advances in the field. Feedback from our contributors and readers has told us that they want a journal that not only provides timely and succinct analysis of recent advances to ease reading workload, but that they also want original research of the highest quality. We agree and aim to satisfy that demand.”
The field of cardiology is very fast-moving and there is an immense amount of research published each week. Nature Clinical Practice Cardiovascular Medicine will present only well-chosen, robust research and it will review the rest. Filtering is key – we filter all the research published each week by scanning the literature and reviewing salient issues, and will filter our original research submissions to provide only strong, clinically relevant papers. Instructions for authors are available here; the online submission page for the journal is here; find out more about the journal here; or you can contact the research editor by email for further information about submissions of original clinical research papers on the development of new technologies or methodologies that improve understanding of cardiovascular disease or impact on diagnosis or management; new information on clinical outcomes and economics from clinical trials; and new approaches to promote cardiovascular health. A free sample issue is available here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 18, 2008
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Bone Marrow Transplantation has published a special issue on myeloma, edited by Ray Powles, Kenneth Anderson, Jean Luc Harrousseau and Bhawna Sirohi, and freely available online. This special issue follows the recent approval of three new targeted therapies for myeloma. It gives guidance on how the sequence of treatments and supportive therapy can be combined to optimize the patient's treatment pathway, to produce prolonged normal symptom-free survival.
About the journal: Bone Marrow Transplantation publishes high quality, peer reviewed original research that addresses all aspects of basic biology and clinical use of haemopoietic stem cell transplantation. The broad scope of the journal thus encompasses topics such as stem cell biology (for example, kinetics and cytokine control), transplantation immunology (for example, HLA and matching techniques, translational research, and clinical results of specific transplant protocols). Bone Marrow Transplantation publishes 24 issues a year and has an impact factor of 2.621. The guide to authors, including a link to the online submission web page, can be found here. Information for peer-reviewers and about peer-review can be found here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 17, 2008
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The Neuroscience Gateway has moved to a new URL, www.neuroscience-gateway.org. Building on the success of the gateway, developed in collaboration with the Allen Institute for Brain Science, Nature Publishing Group is now expanding the gateway in new directions. Please update your bookmarks to the Allen Brain Atlas.
The site will continue to provide updates about the latest research, news and events, and will soon be including new features reflecting recent trends in neuroscience research. We hope you'll continue to find the Gateway a useful tool to track progress in neuroscience, and we'll provide more news about the site's development in the coming months.
We welcome suggestions and feedback from the neuroscience community, both at the Neuroscience Gateway and at Action Potential, NPG's neuroscience blog. We also encourage neuroscientists and others interested in the field to join the free neuroscience group on Nature Network, in which editors Noah Gray and Kathryn Devaney run an interactive journal club and host other discussions on what’s new in neuroscience research and publishing.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 11, 2008
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Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and the Society for Mucosal Immunology (SMI) have launched a new journal - Mucosal Immunology (see previous Nautilus posts in February 2007 and June 2007). Dr Brian Kelsall of the National Institutes of Health is editor-in-chief of the journal, the first issue of which is now available online. To mark the launch, all content in the inaugural issue is available free of charge.
Mucosal Immunology is now accepting submissions of papers discussing all aspects of immunity and inflammation involving mucosal tissues. Consult the guide to authors and submit your paper.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 11, 2008
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Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and BioCentury Publications, Inc announce a new electronic publication, SciBX, that will distill and analyse newly published life-science research to help the translation of academic science into commercial products. The preview edition of SciBX (for Science-Business eXchange) is available from the organisation's website: the publication will be distributed to subscribers every Thursday, starting on 31 January 2008.
SciBX will evaluate hundreds of high-impact, peer-reviewed scientific articles every week and select the most commercially relevant findings that merit deeper analysis. This multidisciplinary approach will provide scientific context, identify potential commercial impact and describe the next steps required to translate the newest laboratory developments into innovative healthcare solutions.
According to Medline, more than 600,000 articles were added to its database in 2006 alone. SciBX will filter this flood of scientific data, and analyse key findings within the most current scientific and business context. It will be an indispensable resource for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, business development specialists, drug discovery and development teams, venture capitalists and other investment professionals who wish to identify new projects and potential new partners, to find enabling technology, and to be aware of competitive advances.
Please download the free preview edition of SciBX , which contains sample articles, including:
- Analysis – Providing in-depth review of new research findings and an essential understanding of the next steps required to transform these developments into commercial value.
- The Distillery – Filtering and classifying the important current research papers in biotechnology, life science and chemistry, the Distillery goes beyond the abstract to explain the science, its commercial relevance, licensing status and identify companies known to be working in the area.
Further information about the publication, the team producing it and the companies supporting it can be found at the SciBX website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 09, 2008
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From this month (January 2008), Nature Publishing Group is publishing the journal Obesity on behalf of The Obesity Society. The journal is re-launching with a new look and new editorial team, led by Editor in Chief Dr Richard N. Bergman, Chairman of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California and holder of the Keck Endowed Chair in Medicine.
Obesity aims to increase knowledge, foster research and promote better treatment for people with obesity and their families. The journal publishes important, peer-reviewed, original scientific articles, as well as relevant review articles, commentaries, and public health and medical developments. The journal is ranked in two ISI categories, Endocrinology & Metabolism and Nutrition & Dietetics, and has an impact factor of 3.491.
See the journal website for guide to authors and information about submitting papers.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 09, 2008
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The historic moments in modern science reported in Nature can now be explored online. The archive of the first 80 years (1869-1949) of the journal Nature, the world's foremost weekly scientific journal, is now live. Every article published in Nature, back to volume 1, issue 1 is now available online.
Nature’ s archive reveals a wealth of treasures from the first years of the journal, including the first observation of X-rays (Wilhelm Röntgen, 1896), the discovery of the electron (J.J. Thomson, 1897), the first fossil evidence that humans originated in Africa (Raymond Dart, 1925), and the discovery of the neutron (James Chadwick, 1932).
Containing more than 4,000 issues and an estimated 180,000 articles, the 1869-1949 archive completes the digitization of Nature. The project has taken 5 years to complete, beginning with the launch of the 1987-1996 archive in 2003. There is a special web feature, The history of the journal Nature, featuring timelines, video interviews and profiles of all Nature 's (surprisingly few) Editors since the journal was founded.
In places, Nature’s early archive reads like science fiction, with its foretelling of science and technology we take for granted today. The forensic use of fingerprints in solving crime was suggested as early as 1880: "When bloody finger-marks or impressions on clay, glass &c., exist, they may lead to the scientific identification of criminals." Scotland Yard introduced fingerprint identification in 1901, based on an 1892 book by Francis Galton. Motion-capture photograph pioneer Edward Muybridge suggested the development of the ‘photo finish’ in Nature in 1880. Lamenting the 'dead heat' in horse racing, he asked why officials would not "avail themselves of the same resources of science" and employ up to 20 cameras to decide the rightful outcome of races. It would be more than 50 years before the ‘photo finish’ became widely used in sport.
Articles in the Nature archive 1869-1949 are available as PDFs of the original journal article, with HTML abstracts. Access is by site license for institutions, or articles can be purchased individually.
A selection of Nature’s "greatest hits", including the article by Dart, and Watson and Crick’s 1953 paper that deciphers the structure of DNA, are featured in A century of Nature, some of which is free for a limited time.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 08, 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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Nature's latest Insight collection of reviews, Proteins to proteomes (Nature 450, 963-1009; 2007) is freely available online. Proteins are the most diverse and versatile set of biological macromolecules, having crucial roles in all biological processes. Now that whole complements of proteins (proteomes) for many cell types have been identified, we can begin to address the central question of how the innumerable protein functions are integrated so that a living cell interacts coherently with its environment. The Insight collection of five reviews covers vibrant areas of research in the 'protein world', journeying from single-protein dynamics, to functional proteomics and drug discovery, via new technological developments in structural, computational, evolutionary and cellular biology.
The Insight supplement is available here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 17, 2007
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Nature Geoscience, whose first print/online edition will be published in January 2008, has published its first papers -- as advance online publications. Among these are a Commentary by Martin Visbek, "From climate assessment to climate services", who writes "If we fully embrace past assessment and ongoing future projections of regional climate change as the task of integrated climate services, the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change] can be relieved of the duty of providing up-to-date assessments of climate change. This would allow the panel to move to the decadal assessments that best suit its primary task: reviewing emerging scientific knowledge and best practices to evaluate global climate change."
Also just-published are Letters by Parsons et al., on quiet zones in the San Andreas fault; and by Beerling et al. on cold intervals in the "greenhouse world" of the Mesozoic.
Nature Geoscience is accepting manuscripts that report new research in the Earth and planetary sciences, aimed at a broad interdisciplinary audience of geoscientists. View the complete Guide to Authors here. Submit your papers via the journal online submission system here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 14, 2007
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Via email from my colleague Henry Gee:
Futures from Nature is an anthology of 100 very short stories from Nature’s award-winning back-page Futures SF series … and it’s published today [13 November 2007], as a hardback from Tor, at 25 [US] dollars (or about two bob on old money), so with the usual discounts, they’re practically paying you to take it away. It's the ideal festive gift for the constipated, insomniac trekkie in your life.
As well as stories from journalists, scientists and writers trying SF for the very first time, Futures from Nature is a parade of SF greats, featuring stories from the likes of Arthur C. Clarke, Frederik Pohl, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Kim Stanley Robinson, Dan Simmons, Alastair Reynolds, Charles Stross, Peter F. Hamilton, Vonda McIntyre and many more.
Here’s what Publisher’s Weekly said in their starred review: “Each vignette centers on a wondrous or devastating or simply mind-boggling what if, carried to an unsettlingly original logical conclusion—or left spinning in an extraterrestrial mental orbit… a perfect volume to awaken startling new thoughts on old SF themes, giant leaps into the future in delectably palatable tiny packages.”
Actually, I lied. The anthology doesn’t contain 100 stories, but 101. I wrote one extra, just for the book. Not that this alone makes the book an essential purchase, but, you know, every Greatest Hits package has to have its Bonus Track.

See here for the Amazon UK listing, and here for the Amazon US listing.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 13, 2007
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The need for data storage is enormous, and is expected to increase even further in the near future as new technologies such as on-demand television or high-definition video make it to the consumer. This Nature Materials Insight, published in the November 2007 issue, aims to capture the dynamic research efforts that span the wide range of related disciplines. The Insight is free online to registered users until 31 December 2007.
This Insight contains a collection of Review articles, together with a Commentary, that span the wide range of disciplines related to information storage. One of this year’s physics Nobel laureates, Albert Fert, reviews the recent advances in spintronics that, starting with his Nobel work, allow for dramatic advances in hard-drive technology. In an intereview, Intel’s