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Copyright : Booksworm --- Summaries of newsworthy papers: > Telling quantum and relativistic time apart > Forgetting memories --- 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. ------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Telling quantum and relativistic time apart DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1498 A test for distinguishing between the quantum and relativistic interpretations of time is proposed in Nature Communications this week. This could pave the way to measuring how quantum effects alter the general relativistic notion of time. According to general relativity, time flows at different rates depending on the geometry of space-time. While this has been precisely verified by experiments, it has never been tested when quantum effects are relevant. Magdalena Zych and colleagues devise such a test for a particle with an evolving internal degree of freedom– in effect a quantum clock – and predict that its behaviour in a gravitational potential can only be explained using the general relativistic notion of time. Because quantum mechanics and general relativity are based on different premises, this proposal could have far-reaching implications for physicists’ understanding of their interplay. CONTACT Magdalena Zych (University of Vienna, Austria) Tel: +43 1 4277 72583; E-mail: magdalena.zych@univie.ac.at ------------------------------------------------------------- [2] Forgetting memories DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1515 Rewarding memories, related to food addiction, can be erased in rats through training suggests research published this week in Nature Communications. These findings may in future have important implications for the treatment of drug addiction. Memory reconsolidation, or the reactivation of a memory followed by extinction is known to erase fear memories. Jonathan Lee and colleagues show that this procedure can also erase food memories in rats. Rats were trained to poke their noses into a feeder to receive food; this was associated with a light stimulus. To reactivate the memory, for 10 minutes the rats still received the light stimulus but did not receive the food,. The team found that when this procedure was carried out over a 60-70 minute period the memory was extinguished. With further research, these findings may be translatable to a clinical setting. CONTACT Jonathan Lee (University of Birmingham, UK) Tel: +44 121 414 2607; E-mail: j.l.c.lee@bham.ac.uk ------------------------------------------------------------- [3] Proliferating versus differentiating stem and cancer cells exhibit distinct midbody-release behaviour DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1511 [4] Superconductivity at 5 K in alkali-metal-doped phenanthrene DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1513 [5] Field-effect reconfigurable nanofluidic ionic diodes DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1514 [6] Engineering modular and orthogonal genetic logic gates for robust digital-like synthetic biology DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1516 ********************************************************************************************************** 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 Vienna: 1 CHINA Anhui: 4 FRANCE; Paris: 6 GERMANY Dresden: 3 UNITED KINGDOM Birmingham: 2 London: 6 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Connecticut New Haven: 5 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 Rachel Twinn, Nature, London Tel: +44 20 7843 4658; E-mail: r.twinn@nature.com 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.

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