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Table of Contents

Volume 531 Number 7595 pp413-544

24 March 2016

About the cover

This issue features a special on the ‘circular economy’, a term coined by Swiss architect-engineer Walter Stahel, who has been a leader in developing the concept of sustainability as applied to industrialized economies. In a Comment piece, Stahel outlines the key principles of a ‘waste-free’ world: reuse, repair, remanufacture and upgrading. The ultimate goal, he writes, is to recycle atoms. John Mathews and Hao Tan track China’s progress towards a circular economy, a process that needs to be tracked using more sophisticated metrics, they suggest. In a third Comment, developmental psychologist Bruce Hood asks why we hoard possessions to enhance our social status and highlights the need to make recycled goods more socially desirable. Finally, Books & Arts focuses on how eco-design can make circular economy principles work. Cover art: Viktor Koen

This Week

Editorials

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  • Cultural conundrum

    The Chinese government’s professed commitment to transparency and responsiveness has had a rocky start. That bodes ill for the desire to attract the best science brains from around the world.

  • Siren call

    Now that gravitational waves have been discovered, it is time to put them to use.

  • Power of the pen

    Scientists must unite to stop Turkey from removing the right to freedom of expression.

World View

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Seven Days

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    News in Focus

    Features

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    comment

    • The circular economy

      A new relationship with our goods and materials would save resources and energy and create local jobs, explains Walter R. Stahel.

    • Make recycled goods covetable

      To reduce consumption and waste we must overcome our squeamishness about repurposing pre-owned possessions, says Bruce Hood.

    • Circular economy: Lessons from China

      The country consumes the most resources in the world and produces the most waste — but it also has the most advanced solutions, say John A. Mathews and Hao Tan.

    Books and Arts

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    • Circular economy: Getting the circulation going

      In linear economics, objects of desire from skyscrapers to paperclips are waste waiting to happen. Now, linearity is reaching the end of the line: designers are looking to the loop and redefining refuse as resource.

    Careers

    Features

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    • Management: When jobs go wrong

      Having to dismiss lab members is not easy, but there are ways to make the process less painful for all involved.

      • Chris Woolston

    Career Briefs

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    naturejobs job listings and advertising features

    Futures

    research

    Articles

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    • Direct synthesis of Z-alkenyl halides through catalytic cross-metathesis

      • Ming Joo Koh
      • Thach T. Nguyen
      • Hanmo Zhang
      • Richard R. Schrock
      • Amir H. Hoveyda

      One shortcoming of olefin metathesis has been that acyclic alkenyl halides could not be generated efficiently and stereoselectively; but now halo-substituted molybdenum alkylidene species are shown to be able to participate in high-yielding olefin metathesis reactions that afford acyclic 1,2-disubstituted Z-alkenyl halides.

      See also

    • Lytic to temperate switching of viral communities

      • B. Knowles
      • C. B. Silveira
      • B. A. Bailey
      • K. Barott
      • V. A. Cantu
      • A. G. Cobián-Güemes
      • F. H. Coutinho
      • E. A. Dinsdale
      • B. Felts
      • K. A. Furby
      • E. E. George
      • K. T. Green
      • G. B. Gregoracci
      • A. F. Haas
      • J. M. Haggerty
      • E. R. Hester
      • N. Hisakawa
      • L. W. Kelly
      • Y. W. Lim
      • M. Little
      • A. Luque
      • T. McDole-Somera
      • K. McNair
      • L. S. de Oliveira
      • S. D. Quistad
      • N. L. Robinett
      • E. Sala
      • P. Salamon
      • S. E. Sanchez
      • S. Sandin
      • G. G. Z. Silva
      • J. Smith
      • C. Sullivan
      • C. Thompson
      • M. J. A. Vermeij
      • M. Youle
      • C. Young
      • B. Zgliczynski
      • R. Brainard
      • R. A. Edwards
      • J. Nulton
      • F. Thompson
      • F. Rohwer

      An analysis of 24 coral reef viromes challenges the view that lytic phage are believed to predominate when the density of their hosts increase and shows instead that lysogeny is more important at high host densities; the authors also show that this model is consistent with predator–prey dynamics in a range of other ecosystems, such as animal-associated, sediment and soil systems.

      See also

    • Deletions linked to TP53 loss drive cancer through p53-independent mechanisms

      • Yu Liu
      • Chong Chen
      • Zhengmin Xu
      • Claudio Scuoppo
      • Cory D. Rillahan
      • Jianjiong Gao
      • Barbara Spitzer
      • Benedikt Bosbach
      • Edward R. Kastenhuber
      • Timour Baslan
      • Sarah Ackermann
      • Lihua Cheng
      • Qingguo Wang
      • Ting Niu
      • Nikolaus Schultz
      • Ross L. Levine
      • Alea A. Mills
      • Scott W. Lowe

      The loss of the TP53 gene is often involved in the development of human cancer; here, the deletion of other genes in the vicinity is shown also to contribute to cancer progression in a mouse model.

    Letters

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    • Acceleration of petaelectronvolt protons in the Galactic Centre

      • HESS Collaboration

      Deep γ-ray observations of the Galactic Centre with arcminute angular resolution show traces of petaelectronvolt protons within the central ten parsecs of our Galaxy; the accelerator of these particles could have provided a substantial contribution to Galactic cosmic rays in the past.

    • Lunar true polar wander inferred from polar hydrogen

      • M. A. Siegler
      • R. S. Miller
      • J. T. Keane
      • M. Laneuville
      • D. A. Paige
      • I. Matsuyama
      • D. J. Lawrence
      • A. Crotts
      • M. J. Poston

      Polar hydrogen deposits on the Moon provide evidence that its spin axis has shifted; analysis of the locations of these deposits and of the lunar figure suggests that the shift occurred as a result of changes in the Moon’s moments of inertia caused by a low-density thermal anomaly beneath the Procellarum region.

      See also

    • Modes of surface premelting in colloidal crystals composed of attractive particles

      • Bo Li
      • Feng Wang
      • Di Zhou
      • Yi Peng
      • Ran Ni
      • Yilong Han

      Incomplete premelting at the edges of monolayer colloidal crystals is triggered by a bulk solid–solid phase transition and truncated by a mechanical instability that induces homogeneous bulk melting of the crystal; these observations challenge existing theories of two-dimensional melting.

    • On-surface synthesis of graphene nanoribbons with zigzag edge topology

      • Pascal Ruffieux
      • Shiyong Wang
      • Bo Yang
      • Carlos Sánchez-Sánchez
      • Jia Liu
      • Thomas Dienel
      • Leopold Talirz
      • Prashant Shinde
      • Carlo A. Pignedoli
      • Daniele Passerone
      • Tim Dumslaff
      • Xinliang Feng
      • Klaus Müllen
      • Roman Fasel

      Synthesis of atomically precise zigzag edges in graphene nanoribbons is demonstrated using a bottom-up strategy based on surface-assisted arrangement and reaction of precursor monomers; these nanoribbons have edge-localized states with large energy splittings.

    • The past, present and future of African dust

      • Amato T. Evan
      • Cyrille Flamant
      • Marco Gaetani
      • Françoise Guichard

      Variability in North African dust dispersal, which affects air quality and the amount of radiation reaching the ground, is captured by the wind patterns over the Sahara; climate models suggest a downward trend in dust concentration with increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

    • Nuclear DNA sequences from the Middle Pleistocene Sima de los Huesos hominins

      • Matthias Meyer
      • Juan-Luis Arsuaga
      • Cesare de Filippo
      • Sarah Nagel
      • Ayinuer Aximu-Petri
      • Birgit Nickel
      • Ignacio Martínez
      • Ana Gracia
      • José María Bermúdez de Castro
      • Eudald Carbonell
      • Bence Viola
      • Janet Kelso
      • Kay Prüfer
      • Svante Pääbo

      Nuclear DNA sequences from Middle Pleistocene Sima de los Huesos hominins show they were more closely related to Neanderthals than to Denisovans, and indicate a population divergence between Neanderthals and Denisovans that predates 430,000 years ago.

    • Visualization of immediate immune responses to pioneer metastatic cells in the lung

      • Mark B. Headley
      • Adriaan Bins
      • Alyssa Nip
      • Edward W. Roberts
      • Mark R. Looney
      • Audrey Gerard
      • Matthew F. Krummel

      Tracing the fate of circulating tumour cells by intravital two-photon lung imaging shows that tumours produce microparticles as they arrive and these migrate along the lung vasculature and are mostly taken up by interstitial myeloid cells, in a process that contributes to metastatic seeding; a minor subset of microparticles is engulfed by conventional dendritic cells, which are thought to contribute to the initiation of an anti-tumour immune response in lung-draining lymph nodes.

    • Melanoma addiction to the long non-coding RNA SAMMSON

      • Eleonora Leucci
      • Roberto Vendramin
      • Marco Spinazzi
      • Patrick Laurette
      • Mark Fiers
      • Jasper Wouters
      • Enrico Radaelli
      • Sven Eyckerman
      • Carina Leonelli
      • Katrien Vanderheyden
      • Aljosja Rogiers
      • Els Hermans
      • Pieter Baatsen
      • Stein Aerts
      • Frederic Amant
      • Stefan Van Aelst
      • Joost van den Oord
      • Bart de Strooper
      • Irwin Davidson
      • Denis L. J. Lafontaine
      • Kris Gevaert
      • Jo Vandesompele
      • Pieter Mestdagh
      • Jean-Christophe Marine

      A known oncogene, MITF, resides in a region of chromosome 3 that is amplified in melanomas and associated with poor prognosis; now, a long non-coding RNA gene, SAMMSON, is shown to also lie in this region, to also act as a melanoma-specific survival oncogene, and to be a promising therapeutic target for anti-melanoma therapy.

    • The amino acid sensor GCN2 controls gut inflammation by inhibiting inflammasome activation

      • Rajesh Ravindran
      • Jens Loebbermann
      • Helder I. Nakaya
      • Nooruddin Khan
      • Hualing Ma
      • Leonardo Gama
      • Deepa K. Machiah
      • Benton Lawson
      • Paul Hakimpour
      • Yi-chong Wang
      • Shuzhao Li
      • Prachi Sharma
      • Randal J. Kaufman
      • Jennifer Martinez
      • Bali Pulendran

      The GCN2 kinase is shown to have a protective role in the regulation of intestinal inflammation during amino acid starvation in a mouse model of colitis.

    • PGC1α drives NAD biosynthesis linking oxidative metabolism to renal protection

      • Mei T. Tran
      • Zsuzsanna K. Zsengeller
      • Anders H. Berg
      • Eliyahu V. Khankin
      • Manoj K. Bhasin
      • Wondong Kim
      • Clary B. Clish
      • Isaac E. Stillman
      • S. Ananth Karumanchi
      • Eugene P. Rhee
      • Samir M. Parikh

      PGC1α protects against kidney injury by upregulating enzymes that enhance nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) and driving local accumulation of the fatty acid breakdown product β-hydroxybutyrate, which leads to increased production of the renoprotective prostaglandin E2.

    Corrigenda

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