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Summaries of newsworthy papers: An overflowing hot Jupiter, Lipid link to asthma?, Marine sediments go electric, Nanocrystals made to order and Let them all eat cake

WWW.NATURE.COM/NATURE This press release is copyright Nature. VOL.463 NO.7284 DATED 25 FEBRUARY 2010 This press release contains: · Summaries of newsworthy papers: Palaeoclimate: Tropical cyclones and climate feedback Astronomy: An overflowing hot Jupiter Immunology: Lipid link to asthma? Biogeochemistry: Marine sediments go electric Materials science: Nanocrystals made to order And finally… Let them all eat cake · Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo · Geographical listing of authors Editorial contacts: While the best contacts for stories will always be the authors themselves, in some cases the Nature editor who handled the paper will be available for comment if an author is unobtainable. Editors are contactable via Ruth Francis on +44 20 7843 4562. Feel free to get in touch with Nature's press contacts in London, Washington and Tokyo (as listed at the end of this release) with any general editorial inquiry. 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The Nature journals press site is at http://press.nature.com · PDFs for the Articles, Letters, Progress articles, Review articles, Insights and Brief Communications in this issue will be available on the Nature journals press site from 1400 London time / 0900 US Eastern time on the Friday before publication. · PDFs of News & Views, News Features, Correspondence and Commentaries will be available from 1400 London time / 0900 US Eastern time on the Monday before publication PICTURES: While we are happy for images from Nature to be reproduced for the purposes of contemporaneous news reporting, you must also seek permission from the copyright holder (if named) or author of the research paper in question (if not). HYPE: We take great care not to hype the papers mentioned on our press releases, but are sometimes accused of doing so. If you ever consider that a story has been hyped, please do not hesitate to contact us at press@nature.com, citing the specific example. 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 [1] Palaeoclimate: Tropical cyclones and climate feedback (pp 1066-1070; N&V) More frequent cyclones in the tropical Pacific during the early Pliocene altered the distribution of warm water at the Equator, leading to permanent ‘El Niño’ conditions during that epoch, suggests a paper in Nature. The relationship between tropical cyclones and climate has been a subject of much debate. A major unresolved issue is how the warm conditions of the early Pliocene (3–5 million years ago) were maintained, given that carbon dioxide concentrations were very similar to those of today. Alexey Fedorov and colleagues combine a hurricane model and coupled climate model to investigate the early Pliocene — an epoch that many consider the closest analogue to future greenhouse conditions. They identify a positive feedback between hurricanes and the upper-ocean circulation. Shallow parcels of water are churned up and heated by the cyclone as they travel towards the Equator, and then resurface in the eastern equatorial Pacific as part of the ocean wind-driven circulation. Hurricanes were probably frequent in the central Pacific — an area with few hurricanes today — and this hurricane activity probably strengthened the warming in the eastern equatorial Pacific, which in turn further increased hurricane frequency. This positive feedback can potentially lead to multiple climate states — one with permanent El Niño-like conditions and strong hurricane activity, and the other corresponding to modern climate with a cold eastern equatorial Pacific. CONTACT Alexey Fedorov (Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA) Tel: +1 203 432 3153; E-mail: alexey.fedorov@yale.edu Ryan Sriver (The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA) N&V author Tel: +1 574 5140848; E-mail: rsriver@psu.edu [2] Astronomy: An overflowing hot Jupiter (pp 1054-1056) A recently discovered extrasolar planet is losing its atmosphere to its host star, according to a paper published in Nature this week. Shu-lin Li and colleagues have analysed the properties of WASP-12b, a gas-giant planet larger than Jupiter, but orbiting so close to its star that its orbital period is only 26 hours. The planet’s radius — 1.8 times that of Jupiter — is unexpectedly large, compared with most gas giants of similar mass and orbital period. Although WASP-12b is strongly heated by its host star, this energy source is not sufficient to explain the planet’s inflated size. Li and colleagues note that WASP-12b’s close orbit (only 3.1 stellar radii) means that it is subjected to extremely large tidal forces. These forces will be dissipated in the body of the planet, providing an energy source for the planet’s large volume. In fact, from the amount of stellar light blocked by the transiting planet, the authors infer that WASP-12b’s atmosphere is escaping the planet’s gravitational field, and flowing towards the host star. The authors predict that this tidally stripped planetary gas is forming a tenuous disk around the star, which should emit detectable infrared radiation. CONTACT Shu-lin Li (Peking University, Beijing, China) Tel: +86 10 64877268; E-mail: lisl.shulin@gmail.com [3] Immunology: Lipid link to asthma? (pp 1048-1053; N&V) The Orm family of proteins help regulate cellular levels of biologically important lipids called sphingolipids, a Nature paper suggests. It’s thought that the findings may boost our understanding of childhood asthma. Orm proteins have a key role in sphingolipid homeostasis, Jonathan S. Weissman and colleagues show. Changes in ORM gene expression result in dysregulation of sphingolipid levels, and result in the toxic accumulation of lipids in cells. Previous studies have implicated one ORM gene, ORMDL3, in childhood asthma. So the results of this study raise the testable hypothesis that altered sphingolipid metabolism may contribute to the development of childhood asthma. CONTACT Jonathan Weissman (University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA) Tel: +1 415 502 7642; E-mail: weissman@cmp.ucsf.edu Joost Holthuis (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) N&V author Tel: +31 30 253 6630; E-mail: j.c.holthuis@uu.nl [4] Biogeochemistry: Marine sediments go electric (pp 1071-1074; N&V) A naturally occurring electrical circuit has been observed in marine sediments, coupling chemical reactions at the sediment surface to others within. Electric currents, apparently mediated by microbes, provide a previously unrecognized connection between spatially separated processes, with potentially wide implications for biogeochemistry and microbial ecology. Oxidation and reduction reactions, involving the loss and gain of electrons, dominate biogeochemical processes. Typically, electron transfer is thought to take place through chemical reactions, either in the environment or inside living cells. In an exception to this rule, some bacteria are able to exchange electrons with their surroundings — a capability used in engineered systems such as microbial fuel cells. This has led to the suggestion that such extracellular electron transfer might play an important role in global biogeochemical cycles. In this week’s Nature, Lars Peter Nielsen and colleagues provide evidence for such a role. In laboratory experiments on natural marine sediments, the authors demonstrate the flow of electric current across vertical distances of more than a centimetre, coupling the reduction of oxygen at the surface with the oxidation of hydrogen sulphide and organic carbon at depth. This natural electric current may thus allow two separate populations of bacteria to share their labour: those at the surface breathe oxygen for all, while those at depth eat for all. CONTACT Lars Peter Nielsen (University of Aarhus, Denmark) Tel: +45 6020 2654; E-mail: biolpn@biology.au.dk Kenneth Nealson (University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA) N&V author Tel: +1 213 821 2271; E-mail: knealson@usc.edu [5] Materials science: Nanocrystals made to order (pp 1061-1065) A new synthesis strategy for controlling the properties of ultra-small nanocrystals is reported in this week’s Nature. Xiaogang Liu and colleagues show that the size, symmetry and optical properties of luminescent NaYF4 nanocrystals can be tuned by adjusting the concentration of lanthanide ions incorporated into the crystal lattice. Inorganic nanocrystals doped with lanthanide ions (for example, erbium or ytterbium) are used for optical upconversion in applications such as fluorescent imaging of biological materials. When illuminated with near-infrared light, the crystals emit visible light. The NaYF4 crystals studied by Liu’s team can adopt cubic or hexagonal symmetry: the hexagonal crystals emit light more efficiently, but synthesizing them with the ultra-small dimensions useful for applications has till now required hazardous reaction materials, high temperatures and long reaction times. Liu and colleagues show that introducing larger lanthanide ions, such as gadolinium, into the NaYF4 lattice favours the hexagonal structure. Moreover, by varying the identity and concentration of these larger ions, both crystal size and the colour of light emitted can be varied. The authors suggest that the new method, which works at lower temperatures with shorter reaction times, should be readily extendable to other lanthanide-doped nanocrystal systems, with applications ranging from bioimaging to three-dimensional displays. CONTACT Xiaogang Liu (National University of Singapore, Singapore) Tel: +65 65161352; E-mail: chmlx@nus.edu.sg [6] And finally… Let them all eat cake (pp 1089-1091) The brain’s reward circuitry is sensitive to the equality of a situation, and reacts to advantageous and disadvantageous situations both personally and socially. The findings, published in this week's Nature, provide the first direct neurological evidence of people’s aversion to unequal situations. Social scientists have used behavioural and anthropological evidence to suggest that humans have an aversion to social inequality. John O’Doherty and colleagues show direct neural evidence for this idea by monitoring neural responses in the striatum and prefrontal cortex of participants taking part in a monetary game. At the beginning of the game, one person in each pair was given a larger endowment than the other, with both participants being aware of this disparity. The team found that during subsequent monetary transfers to each participant, neuronal activity was greater in these ‘high-pay’ people when money was given to the ‘low-pay’ person rather than to themselves. The opposite pattern of activity was seen in the low-pay participants. The authors note that these reward circuits responded to both advantageous and disadvantageous inequality, depending on whether the participant was a high-pay or low-pay subject, therefore supporting the popular social science hypothesis for why people react to inequality. CONTACT John O’Doherty (California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA) Tel: +1 626 395 5981; E-mail: jdoherty@hss.caltech.edu ALSO IN THIS ISSUE… [7] Exploring the thermodynamics of a universal Fermi gas (pp 1057-1060; N&V) [8] An essential role for XBP-1 in host protection against immune activation in C. elegans (pp 1092-1095) ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION ***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 24 February at 1800 London time / 1300 US Eastern time (which is also when the embargo lifts) 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 25 February, but at a later date. *** [9] Compensatory evolution in mitochondrial tRNAs navigates valleys of low fitness DOI: 10.1038/nature08691 [10] Antagonistic coevolution accelerates molecular evolution DOI: 10.1038/nature08798 [11] An intrinsic vasopressin system in the olfactory bulb is involved in social recognition DOI: 10.1038/nature08826 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. CHINA Beijing: 2 DENMARK Aarhus: 4 Odense: 3 Silkeborg: 4 FRANCE Paris: 7 GERMANY Dresden: 3 Magdeburg: 11 Munich: 11 IRELAND Dublin: 6 JAPAN Tochigi: 11 Tsukuba: 4 SAUDI ARABIA Thuwal: 5 SINGAPORE Singapore: 5 SPAIN Barcelona: 9 SWITZERLAND Zurich: 3 UNITED KINGDOM Cambridge: 10 Dundee: 10 Edinburgh: 11 Liverpool: 10 Oxford: 10 Roslin: 11 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA California Pasadena: 6 San Francisco: 3 Santa Cruz: 2 Stanford: 3 Connecticut New Haven: 1 Massachusetts Cambridge: 1, 8 Michigan Ann Arbor: 9 New Jersey Newark: 6 Washington Seattle: 3 PRESS CONTACTS… From North America and Canada Neda Afsarmanesh, Nature New York Tel: +1 212 726 9231; E-mail: n.afsarmanesh@us.nature.com From Japan, Korea, China, Singapore and Taiwan Mika Nakano, Nature Tokyo Tel: +81 3 3267 8751; E-mail: m.nakano@natureasia.com From the UK Rebecca Walton, Nature London Tel: +44 20 7843 4502; E-mail: r.walton@nature.com About Nature Publishing Group (NPG): Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is a publisher of high impact scientific and medical information in print and online. 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