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© Newswise.
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Nature Press Release for the 27 November Issue
[1] Health and Medicine: Ecstasy cools down (pp403-404) Mice lacking a key protein stay cool after being given the recreational drug ecstasy, according to a Brief Communication in this week's Nature. The discovery may lead the way to counteracting the potentially lethal hyperthermia induced by this drug. Most ecstasy-related deaths occur because the body overheats. In turn, skeletal muscle breaks down and organs fail. Mice lacking the mitochondrial protein UCP-3 heat up less after they have been injected with ecstasy, say Jon Sprague and colleagues. The animals also survive doses that kill some normal rodents. UCP-3 is found in skeletal muscle, where it is thought to regulate body temperature. The same molecule may mediate the temperature rise that occurs after ecstasy ingestion, the authors speculate.
[2] Language: Speaking in tongues (pp435-439: N&V) Anatolian farmers may have uttered the first Indo-European words around 8,000 years ago, according to a study in this week's Nature. The roots of Indo-European languages are hotly debated. Russell D. Gray and Quentin D. Atkinson borrowed tools from evolutionary biology to analyse 87 tongues, including English, Lithuanian and Gujarati. The languages arose between 8,000 and 9,500 years ago, the researchers conclude. This fits well with the notion that Indo-European speech originated in farming communities in Anatolia, in what is now Turkey, at around this time. The findings contradict an opposing, prominent theory suggesting that nomadic Kurgan horsemen spread a prototype Indo-European language some 6,000 years ago. The research is discussed further in an accompanying News and Views article by David B. Searls.
[3] Chemistry: Plastics under pressure (pp424-428) A new class of plastics can be reshaped under pressure. The recyclable materials, described in this week's Nature, maintain their desirable properties even while they are remoulded. Anne M. Mayes and colleagues made their 'evergreen' plastics from a mix of two polymers. Under a few hundred atmospheres of pressure, the clear solid softens and can be moulded into useful shapes and forms. Most plastics need heat for softening. High temperatures not only gobble up energy, they can also cause polymer components to break up and lose their useful properties. This limits the number of times they can be recycled. But these new materials can be processed over and over again at room temperature without any signs of degradation. [4] Technology: Super cell sorter (pp421-424) A new sorting machine can separate cells or suspensions using light alone. The prototype, described in this week's Nature, could evolve into an inexpensive component for 'lab-on-a-chip' systems for use in physical and biomedical research centres. M. P. MacDonald and colleagues have produced a microfluidic system that sorts cells using light. Particles stream through an extended and interlinked three-dimensional optical lattice that can be adjusted to sort the particles by size or refractive index. The technology could rival FACS — fluorescence-activated cell sorting. FACS is commonly used to separate out biological cells or colloidal suspensions but only works on fluorescent particles. The new system is simple to use, has a sorting efficiency of over 96% and should be useful for a very wide range of matter.
[5] Earth: New ocean ridge (pp405-412: N&V) A new class of ocean ridge has been discovered. The find, reported in this week's Nature, challenges current thinking on seafloor spreading mechanisms. Henry J. B. Dick and colleagues investigated the Southwest Indian and Arctic ridges, underwater mountain ranges where new crust is formed. They describe a new ultraslow-spreading class of ocean ridge with specific morphological characteristics that differ from those of the previously recognized fast- and slow-spreading counterparts. Ultraslow ridges spread at a rate of about 12 millimetres per year. Uniquely, they have long segments without volcanic activity, and such segments can occur at any angle relative to the spreading direction. The issue is discussed further in an accompanying News and Views article by Jason Phipps Morgan.
[6] Health and Medicine: Arthritic clue (pp454-460) A single mutation in one gene can trigger autoimmune arthritis in mice, according to research in this week's Nature. The study may help us to understand the causes and molecular mechanisms of some forms of human rheumatoid arthritis. Shimon Sakaguchi and colleagues studied SKG mice, a strain of mice that spontaneously develop chronic arthritis. The animals have a mutation in the ZAP-70 gene that affects T-cell signalling. Reactive T cells that would normally be lost during development remain, triggering joint inflammation. Rheumatoid arthritis afflicts about 1% of the world population. Four out of 160 human patients tested positive for similar mutations. This suggests that ZAP-70 mutations may trigger rheumatoid arthritis in 2.5% of cases. The cause of the disease at large remains unknown. The study highlights the complex nature of autoimmune diseases. Genetics and the environment are likely to contribute to disease progression, the authors speculate.
[7] Materials: Solid charge conductor (pp428-432) A new class of solid material has a porous, inorganic framework and fast, mobile ions that can carry charge. The discovery, reported in this week's Nature, could aid the design of future batteries and electrochemical sensors. Solid conductors of charge may offer a safer, leak-proof alternative to the liquid electrolytes found in most batteries. Pingyun Feng and colleagues constructed a series of sulphides and selenides that contain high concentrations of positively charged metal ions inside a porous framework. When the material is placed between electrodes, the ions can move around and carry charge — even at room temperature. This feature, and the fact that the material's cages can accommodate a range of substrates, should prove useful when trying to develop materials for electrochemical sensors and light-sensitive catalysts.
[8] And Finally…: Neptune gets pushy (pp419-421;N&V) The Kuiper belt may have formed closer to the Sun and then been pushed out by Neptune, according to research in this week's Nature. The Kuiper belt is a collection of icy bodies orbiting at the edge of our Solar System. The region is enigmatic because, in order for the objects that are there to have formed, the region must originally have had 100 times more mass than it has today. The Kuiper belt either lost mass after it formed, or it was created closer to the Sun where more mass was available. Harold F. Levison and Alessandro Morbidelli provide evidence for the latter. They demonstrate that the Kuiper belt formed about 5 billion kilometres from the Sun. As Neptune migrated outwards early in the history of the Solar System, it pushed the Kuiper belt a further 2 billion kilometres out to its current resting place, they say. "The original Kuiper belt region could in fact have been virtually empty and subsequently only a small amount of mass was deposited there," says Rodney Gomes in an accompanying News and Views article.
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE… [9] An atypical haem in the cytochrome b6f complex (pp413-418; N&V) AHEAD OF PRINT PUBLICATION… ***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 26 November at 1800 London time / 1300 US Eastern time as part of our AOP (ahead of print) programme. Although we have included it on this release to avoid multiple mailings it will not appear in print on 27 November, but at a later date.*** ***The embargo on this paper only has already been lifted, so it may now be reported at any time*** [17] Emergence of a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate from a Fermi gas GEOGRAPHICAL LISTING OF AUTHORS… The following list of places refers to the whereabouts of authors on the papers numbered in this release. For example, London: 4 - this means that on paper number four, there will be at least one author affiliated to an institute or company in London. The listing may be for an author's main affiliation, or for a place where they are working temporarily. Please see the PDF of the paper for full details. AUSTRIA FRANCE JAPAN NEW ZEALAND UNITED KINGDOM UNITED STATES OF AMERICA California Nature Publishing Group is a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Macmillan is an international publisher serving the information and education community as well as publishing fiction and non-fiction. PLEASE CITE NATURE AND OUR WEBSITE www.nature.com/nature AS THE SOURCE OF THE FOLLOWING ITEMS. IF PUBLISHING ONLINE, PLEASE CARRY A HYPERLINK TO http://www.nature.com/nature
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