Category Archives: NPG special content

NPG special content

Videos of 2009 chemistry Nobel laureate meeting at Lindau

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Are you watching the Nobel laureates on Nature Video? Each year, hundreds of young researchers from around the world meet with Nobel prizewinning scientists on Lindau Island in Germany. In 2009 it was the turn of the chemists, and Nature Publishing Group was there to capture moments of this unique meeting of minds on film.

Nature Video presents five short films on chemistry plus a special film feature on climate change. Join laureates and young researchers as they discuss the future of medicine, consider the ethics of nanotechnologies, plan new collaborations, and seek ways to avoid dangerous climate change. The videos are archived as they are published and can be accessed at this Nature Video Lindau page:

24 August: an introduction to the LIndau meetings and the films

27 August: breaking down Alzheimer’s with Aaron Ciechanover

3 September: nanotechnology, use and misuse with Harry Kroto

10 September: smart drugs and sneaky microbes with Peter Agre

17 September: seeing green with Roger Tsien and Richard Ernst

24 September: catalysts and collaborations with Richard Schrock

1 October: climate change: The two-degree target

Nature Chemistry report of the 2009 meeting.

Films of the 208 Lindau Nobel laurate meeting, on physics.

Nature Physics report on the 2008 meeting.

Multimedia at Nature.

Nature announces News Briefing

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Nature‘s news coverage is evolving with this week’s launch of News Briefing — a two-page digest of the key events shaping the scientific enterprise in the past week. With coverage encompassing policy decisions, funding announcements, market trends and business deals, News Briefing offers a complete overview of the developments that affect anyone working in science. The section also features a calendar to highlight important events, reports and initiatives occurring in the forthcoming week.

From the Editorial announcing the new section (Nature 460, 1057; 2009, free to read online):

“Science is inextricably linked with the messy details of politics and commerce, and it is vital for today’s researchers to be aware of how political and business decisions can steer their research programmes — and indeed how their research can affect society. Similarly, policy-makers require the perspective that science can provide on the likely outcomes of their decisions. Yet it is all too easy to miss something important in the torrent of news that pours down on us every day.

By gathering all of the important events in one place, ”https://www.nature.com/news/2009/090826/full/4601062a.html">News Briefing aims to plug that gap. In doing so, it complements Research Highlights (example here), which for the past four years has brought you our editors’ selections of the most interesting research results from beyond the pages of Nature. Both sections will guide you to longer analytical pieces and exclusives in the main news section or online at https://www.nature.com/news. Apart from breaking daily news stories, our news website also carries stories from the print edition before they make it onto paper, getting analysis and information to our subscribers as soon as possible."

Feedback from readers is welcome here or via email.

Nature Insight and podcast on metalloproteins

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The latest Nature Insight (460, 813-862; 2009 – free to access online for six months from publication date) is on metalloproteins — proteins containing metal atoms or clusters — which are involved in a wide range of important biological processes. The articles in this Insight review recent advances in our understanding of metalloproteins, including how enzymes containing complex metal clusters metabolize small gaseous molecules, how proteins containing iron–sulphur clusters are assembled, and how enzymes containing a single metal ion catalyse the halogenation of small organic molecules. This Nature Insight is accompanied by a special podcast on metalloproteins, which features interviews with several of the authors.

More Nature Insights.

More Nature podcasts.

The Middle and The End at The EMBO Journal

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‘The Middle & The End’ is an EMBO Journal review series of free- or open-access articles focusing on different facets of centromere and telomere biology. The specialization of centromeres and telomeres, the middle and end regions of eukaryotic chromosomes, respectively, is reflected at numerous levels, such as chromatin, gene regulation, signalling or cellular function. Nine review articles, combined in this web focus The Middle & The End, and published in print over several issues of The EMBO Journal, summarize current understanding of these aspects of chromosome biology, especially in the light of recent advances, demonstrating parallels as well as differences in the function and organization of centres and ends.

The EMBO Journal home page.

The EMBO journal editorial process.

Guide for authors.

Editors and editorial board.

Convergence research, systems and synthetic biology at EMBO reports

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EMBO reports’ latest web focus reconciles life sciences and social sciences in a series of articles on Convergence Research. To view and access the full list of articles, which are freely available for the month of August, please visit the Convergence Research web focus. This series of thought-provoking articles highlights research that aims to reconcile genomics with the social sciences and the humanities, introducing readers to multi- and transdisciplinary developments taking place in this field. The articles explore the ethical, legal and social issues surrounding genomics research, present the results from a wide range of projects, and/or critically analyse the future of convergence research in language accessible to a broad scientific readership. The articles were published in consecutive issues of EMBO reports between February and July 2009.

While visiting the journal, you might like to take a look at the 2009 EMBO reports Special Issue on Systems and Synthetic Biology, bringing together the ideas and opinions of leading researchers and commentators who spoke at the 2008 joint EMBO/EMBL Science & Society conference. This special issue, which is only available online, makes these broad and ever-changing research areas more accessible to experts and lay-persons alike.

Small is beautiful for science start-ups

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Venture funding is declining quickly and is unlikely to bounce back. But less money means lower expectations — good news for smaller science start-ups, says John Browning in an Essay in today’s issue of Nature (460, 459; 2009 – free to access online for one week from publication date). From the Essay:

Given the lacklustre returns of traditional investment strategies, venture capitalists are also looking to do more with less. Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape Communications and a pillar of the Silicon Valley establishment, recently co-launched a venture firm that plans to invest as little as $50,000 per start-up — far less than the $3 million considered to be a minimum by many venture capitalists. Although it is early days, efforts such as this might reshape venture capitalism. Without the weight of Googlesque expectations on their shoulders, companies that might have joined the ranks of the living dead could start to look lively. A start-up focused on a non-blockbuster drug or diagnostic test might now find itself with an attractive niche market, garnering the attention of venture capitalists who would usually have avoided this type of limited-growth company.

Smaller investments will force entrepreneurs to work harder — no more plush offices or fridges stocked with designer fruit juice. But, because the returns demanded by investors are proportional to the amounts put in, smaller investments also reduce the pressure on companies and allow them to become more flexible in their business strategies. And that is what entrepreneurship needs most.

The full article is here.

Four new Horizons published in Nature

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Nature 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 the journal’s intention of capturing a respected individual perspective. The articles are intended to anticipate the future, but also to influence it. On publication of the first set of Horizons, Philip Campbell, Editor of Nature, wrote: “I hope that these visions will inspire and maybe even encourage some to adjust their research ambitions as a result. Inspired by them ourselves, we’ll be publishing more Horizons in the future.” In its 9 July 2009 issue, Nature published the following four articles, all of which can be accessed online via the Horizons archive page.

The possibility of impossible cultures

Marc D. Hauser

Insights from evolutionary developmental biology and the mind sciences could change our understanding of the human capacity to think and the ways in which the human mind constrains cultural expressions.

Nature 460, 190–196 (9 July 2009).

Synthesis at the molecular frontier

Paul A. Wender & Benjamin L. Miller

Driven by remarkable advances in the understanding of structure and reaction mechanisms, organic synthesis will be increasingly directed to producing bioinspired and newly designed molecules.

Nature 460, 197–201 (9 July 2009).

Biomarkers in psychiatry

Ilina Singh & Nikolas Rose

The use of biomarkers to predict human behaviour and psychiatric disorders raises social and ethical issues, which must be resolved by collaborative efforts.

Nature 460, 202–207 (9 July 2009).

Toxicology for the twenty-first century

Thomas Hartung

The testing of substances for adverse effects on humans and the environment needs a radical overhaul if we are to meet the challenges of ensuring health and safety.

Nature 460, 208–212 (9 July 2009).

Previous Horizons articles, including articles by Thomas Kirkwood on ageing, Peter Murray-Rust on chemistry and Paul Nurse on life, logic and information, are archived here.

Nature Reviews Microbiology free poster on hepatitis C virus

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Inhibition of the replicative cycle of hepatitis C virus

Richard Bethell, George Kukolj and Peter W. White

Nature Reviews Microbiology, June 2009.

It is estimated that 170 million people globally are infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV). Chronic HCV infection can result in the development of liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma, and therefore represents a substantial public health problem. Current drugs against HCV have poor safety profiles and limited effectiveness, especially against HCV genotype 1. As a result, there is considerable interest in identifying specific inhibitors of HCV replication that could be used either as an adjunct to current therapy or in place of it. A free poster from Nature Reviews Microbiology summarizes the replicative cycle of HCV and the principal targets for specific antiviral agents that are currently being developed.

Download a high-resolution PDF of the poster here.

Further reading (PDF).

Nature Reviews Microbiology website.

A guide to Nature Reviews Microbiology.

About the journal.

Focus on protein folding in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology

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The art of paper folding is a useful way to illustrate some concepts about protein folding in the cell, according to June’s issue of Nature Structural and Molecular Biology. “When all goes well, you end up with a beautiful and functional structure. When things go wrong (misfolding), you may get a crumpled mess that needs to be smoothed out (unfolding) to try to start the process over again (refolding), or you may just give up and feed it to the shredder for recycling (degradation). Some unfolded or misfolded conformations can aggregate and generate forms that are difficult to degrade, akin to a pile of sheets glued together, and cause cellular toxicity or death. In fact, defects in protein folding have been linked to a number of pathologies where such aggregates (amyloids) are observed, including neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases, although what the toxic species are remains to be determined.”

Many of these concepts are covered in the Reviews and Progress articles that comprise a Nature Structural and Molecular Biology Focus on protein folding (free to read online), with an emphasis on recent developments in the field. Online features of the Focus include an annotated collection of ‘Classics’ —landmark papers that shaped and guided research. This compilation provides a historical perspective on how the field has progressed. The journal editors have also asked researchers about their views on where the field is going—the ‘big questions’ that still await answers and the technical developments that will make answering those questions possible; you can read these in ‘Looking ahead’. And you can browse a library of recent papers on protein folding published in the Nature journals.

About Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.

The Two Cultures, fifty years on

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Cross-posted at Nature Network.

Its attack on poverty and arrogance is what makes C. P. Snow’s ‘two cultures’ lecture relevant 50 years on, according to a Nature Editorial published today (Nature 459, 10; 2009). Three Essays in the same issue of the journal look back on the lecture and its effects. In Dissecting The Two Cultures (Nature 459, 32; 2009), Martin Kemp contends that the real enemy of understanding is not the ‘two cultures’ identified by Snow, but specialization in all disciplines. Georgina Ferry (Nature 459, 34; 2009) suggests that today’s division lies between optimists and pessimists rather than between scientific and literary intellectuals. And Nature’s Books and Arts Editor, Joanne Baker, introduces a passage from Extract from Science and Government by C. P. Snow (Nature 459, 36; 2009). This month’s Editorial in Nature Physics (5, 309; 2009) also discusses the impact of the ‘two cultures’ concept.

The boundaries between the arts and the sciences — and between the sciences themselves — that Snow identified have long since been removed. But other challenges remain. Snow would not have approved of the narrow-mindedness of some researchers who consider the significant costs of their work to be no more than their due from society, nor of their blind resentment when its value is questioned. What Snow urged in particular was an awareness of the problems of poor countries — and of putting scientists at the disposal of solving those problems, for reasons both moral and strategic. The disparities between rich and poor countries may have shrunk since Snow’s time, but are still unacceptably large. Snow’s overriding message — whether about awareness of artistic and scientific experience, or about the applied sciences, or about ‘remediable suffering’ — was that the best and the brightest should not be blinkered. That message still has resonance.

All three C. P. Snow articles in this issue of Nature and linked here are free to access online until Thursday 14 May (the Editorial is permanently free access), so let us know your views on the opinions expressed in them. As usual, contributions to the Nature Network online forum will be considered for publication in Nature as Correspondence contributions.