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Nature press release for 3 January issue

January 07, 2002

[415039] PHYSICS: NEW STATE OF MATTER (pp39-44; N&V)
Physicists in Germany have made a new type of matter - a patterned fluid - by trapping globules of a quantum liquid in a regular array of dimples. This takes the study of ultracold matter literally into a new phase.
Immanuel Bloch of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit'¤t in Munich, and MPI für Quantenoptik in Garching, Germany, and co-workers loaded a Bose-Einstein condensate (an ultracold vapour of rubidium atoms that act en masse) into a three-dimensional light interference pattern generated by several laser beams. The condensate underwent a reversible quantum phase transition as the intensity of the lasers increased, report Bloch and colleagues in this week`s Nature. The superfluid, with each atom spread out over the entire lattice, becomes an insulating phase with exact numbers of atoms localized at individual lattice sites.

The properties of this patterned fluid, pictured on this week`s cover, have implications for quantum computing and other uncharted areas, explains Henk T. C. Stoof of Utrecht University, The Netherlands, in an accompanying News and Views article.
CONTACT:
Immanuel Bloch tel +49 89 2180 3704, e-mail imb@mpq.mpg.de
Henk T. C. Stoof tel +31 30 253 1871, e-mail h.t.c.stoof@phys.uu.nl

[415037] ECOLOGY: PLANTS HAVE A TASTE FOR TERMITES (pp36-37)
Carnivorous pitcher plants that rely on hapless insects falling into their slippery pitchers for food were thought to have no choice over what kind of insect they might end up digesting.

But in a Brief Communication to this week`s Nature, Marlis Merbach at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, and colleagues report on a pitcher plant from Borneo that eats only one group of termite. The plant maintains its fussy eating habit by enticing termites towards the edge of the pitcher, which sports a tempting rim of tasty white hairs that the termites seem to find irresistible.
This is the first case of a carnivorous plant offering its own tissue to secure a meal, the authors claim. It seems to work though, as one pitcher was seen consuming 22 termites per minute.
CONTACT:
Marlis Merbach tel +49 69 8570 2021, e-mail merbach@zoology.uni-frankfurt.de

[415045] LIFELINES: CANCER DEFENCE IMPLICATED IN AGEING (pp45-53; N&V)
Too much of a cancer-preventing protein leads to premature ageing in mice, researchers have found in this week's Nature. The result suggests that the body may have to strike a balance between preventing cancer and succumbing to old age.
Lawrence Donehower of Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, and colleagues created mutant mice in which the p53 protein is hyperactivated. p53 is one of the cell`s key lines of defence, halting cell division, repairing DNA damage and triggering cell death.
As expected, the mice developed far fewer tumours than their normal counterparts, but they did not live longer. Their average lifespan was 96 weeks, compared with 118 weeks for normal mice - a reduction of nearly 20%. The symptoms of the mutant mice included weight and muscle loss, hunched backs and brittle bones, and their wounds took longer to heal.
This is the first time that p53 has been implicated in ageing. The team suspect the excess p53 stunts the division of stem cells that normally replenish tissues such as skin and bone in adults.
"These results raise the disturbing possibility that the genotoxic agents used to treat cancer in young individuals might accelerate age-related disorders later on," suggest Gerardo Ferbeyre of the Université de Montréal, Canada, and Scott W. Lowe of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York, in an accompanying News and Views article about the background and implications of this work.
CONTACT:
Lawrence Donehower tel +1 713 798 3594, e-mail larryd@bcm.tmc.edu
Scott W. Lowe tel + 1 516 367 8406, e-mail lowe@cshl.edu

[415065] EVOLUTION: BIODIVERSITY DEPLETION COULD BE PERMANENT (pp65-68)
The widespread depletion of biodiversity by humans could be "permanent on multi-million-year timescales", proposes James W. Kirchner of the University of California, Berkeley, in this week`s Nature. His analysis of long-term trends in the fossil record suggests that intrinsic speed limits constrain how rapidly species` diversification rates can accelerate in response to pulses of extinction.

Kirchner concludes that biodiversity is slow to recover. "If the continuing human-caused extinction episode turns out to be comparable to those in the fossil record, my analysis shows that diversification rates are unlikely to accelerate enough to keep pace", he says.
CONTACT:
James W Kirchner tel +1 510 643 8559, e-mail kirchner@seismo.berkeley.edu

[415054] SPACE: BIG BANG CONSTRAINED (pp54-57; N&V)
Based on the measurement of the helium isotope, 3He+, in the Milky Way, T. M. Bania of Boston University, Massachusetts, and colleagues have derived a new estimate for the upper limit for the abundance of the isotope relative to hydrogen in the nascent Universe produced by the Big Bang.
The density of baryons in the Universe can be estimated from these new measurements: they comprise only about four per cent of the total needed to `close the Universe` (to imply that it won`t expand forever). The most common baryons are the neutrons and protons of everyday matter.

Recent evidence, based on ripples in the cosmic microwave background, indicates that our Universe is closed. The rest of the closure density seems to be provided by mysterious dark matter and the effect of a cosmological constant.
In an accompanying News and Views article, Corinne Charbonnel of the Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees, Toulouse, France describes this work as "a major advance based on heroic radio observations".
CONTACT:
Thomas Bania tel +1 617 353 3652, e-mail bania@bu.edu
Corinne Charbonnel tel +33 5 61 33 27 87, e-mail corinne.charbonnel@obs-mip.fr

[415071] EVOLUTION: MULTIPLE MATES LESSEN INBREEDING RISK (pp71-73)
Mating is an energetically costly business for females, making promiscuity a mysterious choice. Females that mate with multiple partners may do so to avoid inbreeding, a new study of crickets suggests.
        When female crickets mate only with siblings, fewer of their eggs hatch than when they mate with both siblings and non-siblings, Tom Tregenza and Nina Wedell of the University of Leeds, UK, report in this week`s Nature.

        "If similar effects occur in other species, inbreeding avoidance may be important in understanding the prevalence of multiple mating," the duo concludes.
CONTACT:
Tom Tregenza tel +44 1132 333084, mobile 07980 366415, e-mail t.tregenza@leeds.ac.uk

[415073] BRAIN: SIGHT TEACHES BRAIN ABOUT SOUND SPACE (pp73-76; N&V)
Play an interesting sound to an owl that was raised wearing prism spectacles, and the bird turns its head not to the sound`s source but to where the source would be if seen through the spectacles. The bird has a skewed mental map of sound space. The map, in the bird's midbrain, is shaped by visual experience that is translated into topographic, point-to-point instruction by another part of the brain called the optic tectum, report Peter Hyde and Eric Knudsen of Stanford University, California, in this week`s Nature.

"From the point of view of fundamental mechanisms of learning and plasticity, the real excitement is what can be done with this signal, now that it is known where it comes from," says Catherine Carr of the University of Maryland, College Park, in an accompanying News and Views article.
CONTACT:
Eric Knudsen tel +1 650 723 5492, e-mail eknudsen@stanford.edu
Catherine Carr tel +1 301 405 2085, e-mail cc117@umail.umd.edu

[415036] ECOLOGY: WHITES WANDER FURTHER AND DIVE DEEPER (pp35-36)
Although white sharks are found worldwide, they were thought to stick to coastlines and not to wander far from their home territories. But a Brief Communication in this week`s Nature reveals that white sharks wander further and dive to much greater depths than previously thought.
Tracking sharks is difficult - they are fast swimmers and don`t spend much time at the surface like sea mammals - so Barbara Block of Stanford University and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Pacific Grove, California, and colleagues used `pop-up` satellite tags to log their movements. The tags, which record depth, temperature and light intensity (and therefore day length), detach from the sharks at a pre-set date and beam their data to a satellite once they arrive at the surface.
Although Block`s team tagged only six sharks, their data represent a comprehensive assessment of the white shark`s ecological niche. They found that sharks in the North Pacific spend almost half their time cruising the open ocean, where they dive to depths of over 300 metres. Whether they roam so extensively for feeding or breeding purposes is yet to be determined.
CONTACT:
Barbara Block tel +1 831 655 6236, e-mail bblock@stanford.edu

[415035] AND FINALLY: LIARS ABOUT FACE (p35)
Bare-faced liars may be caught by their concealed blushing, suggest researchers in this week`s Nature reporting a new method of lie detection.
James Levine of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and colleagues used high-definition thermal imaging of the face to find out whodunnit. Volunteers were randomly assigned to commit a mock crime - stabbing a mannequin and then robbing it of money - before answering the question "Did you steal the $20?"

Blood flow increases around the eyes when the offenders lie, the team showed: they correctly pinpointed over 80% as either guilty or innocent. This detection rate is comparable to existing `polygraph` techniques, which simultaneously measure blood pressure, breathing rate and sweating.
Unlike polygraph testing, which requires time and an expert to interpret data, thermal imaging could be used remotely for mass screening, the authors suggest, for example in airport or building security.
CONTACT:
James Levine tel +1 507 255 8076, e-mail levine.james@mayo.edu

Nature Publishing Group Reference