Life Versus the Volcanoes | Telling Hexanes Apart | For Good Measure | A Touchy Subject | The Master Switch for Itch? | Spleen Knockout Explained | Folding Too Slow, Off You Go | Malaria Cloak and Dagger | Sensing Tension | Sugar Aversion | CMV Breaks All the Rules | Quelccaya Ice Cap | The Strength of Impurities | Hollowing Out Metal Oxide Nanoparticles | Keeping Coordinated | Going Off-Target

Engineering: Lithium Batteries in the Afterlife | Cell Biology: Little and Large | Psychology: Lean In for Equality | Biochemistry: A Turn-On for Kinases | Education: Drawing to Learn | Genetics: Tagging New Genes | Physics: Wedging in Plasmons

Combining Cancer Immunotherapy Drugs Shows Promise

Author: Colin Norman

In science news around the world, five Asian countries gained observer status to the Arctic Council, the Kepler spacecraft can no longer point in a specified direction, and a new report says that the risk H7N9 avian influenza virus poses to humans is "unusually serious."

Scientists have now confirmed a long-held suspicion: Penguins prefer to swim because being both a diver and a flyer is costly and inefficient. And researchers have determined that French King Louis XVI carried genetic risk factors for diabetes, obesity, and bipolar disorder.

The Institute of Medicine calls into question recommendations advising people to consume less sodium, reviving a passionate debate.

Author: Kai Kupferschmidt

Two researchers who coined the phrase mental time travel, using past memories to construct visions of the future that may never come true, insisted that animals couldn't do it. But now, one of them is changing his tune.

Author: Michael Balter

Abundant but mysterious molecules called long noncoding RNAs have long puzzled scientists, but some now think they could be influencing the shape of chromatin.

Author: Elizabeth Pennisi

Analyses of DNA of Latinos in South Florida traced their African, European, and South American ancestries.

Author: Elizabeth Pennisi

The National Science Foundation rebuffed a request from the chairman of the House of Representatives science committee for reviewer comments that helped the agency decide to fund five projects in the social sciences.

Author: Jeffrey Mervis

The most dramatic progress has been made on the twin prime conjecture and Goldbach's conjecture in more than a century and a half of trying.

Author: Dana Mackenzie

The U.S. Department of Energy has funded a series of energy innovation hubs to tackle big energy challenges from start to finish. But their future is uncertain.

Author: Adrian Cho

Wolves in an iconic predator-prey study are not producing pups, leaving scientists to confront a genetic rescue—or the project's demise.

Author: Christine Mlot

Authors: Hugo Bornatowski, Raul Rennó Braga, Jean Ricardo Simões Vitule

Author: Jaboury Ghazoul

Author: Jason M. Tylianakis

Authors: Nicholas F. Fitz, Andrea A. Cronican, Iliya Lefterov, Radosveta Koldamova

Authors: Ashleigh R. Price, Guilian Xu, Zoe B. Siemienski, Lisa A. Smithson, David R. Borchelt, Todd E. Golde, Kevin M. Felsenstein

Authors: Ina Tesseur, Adrian C. Lo, Anouk Roberfroid, Sofie Dietvorst, Bianca Van Broeck, Marianne Borgers, Harrie Gijsen, Diederik Moechars, Marc Mercken, John Kemp, Rudi D’Hooge, Bart De Strooper

Authors: Karthikeyan Veeraraghavalu, Can Zhang, Sean Miller, Jasmin K. Hefendehl, Tharinda W. Rajapaksha, Jason Ulrich, Mathias Jucker, David M. Holtzman, Rudolph E. Tanzi, Robert Vassar, Sangram S. Sisodia

Authors: Gary E. Landreth, Paige E. Cramer, Mitchell M. Lakner, John R. Cirrito, Daniel W. Wesson, Kurt R. Brunden, Donald A. Wilson

Vicedo's examination of the history of attachment theory and the concept of "mother love" illustrates the impact prevailing preconceptions have on efforts to draw social lessons from biology.

Author: Ben Harris

A listing of books received at Science during the week ending 17 May 2013.

Field-based evidence suggests that guidelines against economic rewards to motivate blood donors should be reconsidered.

Authors: Nicola Lacetera, Mario Macis, Robert Slonim

Genetic evolution may have been driven by cultural innovations during the emergence of modern humans.

Authors: Simon E. Fisher, Matt Ridley

Proteins that take too long to fold are tagged with sugar to stop their failed attempts and remove them from the cell's folding compartment. [Also see Report by Xu et al.]

Authors: Bertrand Kleizen, Ineke Braakman

Accurate distances to compact binary stars help establish a clear understanding of accretion disk evolution. [Also see Report by Miller-Jones et al.]

Author: M. R. Schreiber

Geothermal energy production is increasing across the world, but challenges remain.

Authors: Joseph N. Moore, Stuart F. Simmons

A chemical method allows the composition of oxide nanocrystals to be changed while maintaining their size and shape uniformity. [Also see Report by Oh et al.]

Authors: Maria Ibáñez, Andreu Cabot

Identification of a surface protein in Plasmodium falciparum reveals how it can escape detection by the mosquito immune system. [Also see Report by Molina-Cruz et al.]

Authors: Nisha Philip, Andrew P. Waters

A vaccine that protects against SIV in monkeys elicits a new kind of T cell response. [Also see Research Article by Hansen et al.]

Authors: Nilu Goonetilleke, Andrew J. McMichael

The French Nobel laureate ushered in the field of molecular genetics by defining the regulated cellular pathway that translates DNA into proteins.

Authors: Lucy Shapiro, Richard Losick

Climate change triggered by massive volcanism set the stage for the era of dinosaurs.

Authors: Terrence J. Blackburn, Paul E. Olsen, Samuel A. Bowring, Noah M. McLean, Dennis V. Kent, John Puffer, Greg McHone, E. Troy Rasbury, Mohammed Et-Touhami

A record from the Quelccaya ice cap in Peru shows the variability of climate in the tropical Andes.

Authors: L. G. Thompson, E. Mosley-Thompson, M. E. Davis, V. S. Zagorodnov, I. M. Howat, V. N. Mikhalenko, P.-N. Lin

SS Cygni is much closer than previously thought, removing a major challenge to our understanding of accretion theory. [Also see Perspective by Schreiber]

Authors: J. C. A. Miller-Jones, G. R. Sivakoff, C. Knigge, E. G. Körding, M. Templeton, E. O. Waagen

An active, addressable pressure-sensitive device facilitates high-resolution tactile imaging.

Authors: Wenzhuo Wu, Xiaonan Wen, Zhong Lin Wang

Thermally driven ordering of solute atoms can lead to an unexpected strengthening of a metal alloy.

Authors: J. F. Nie, Y. M. Zhu, J. Z. Liu, X. Y. Fang

A porous material shows preliminary promise for enhancing a separations process central to gasoline production.

Authors: Zoey R. Herm, Brian M. Wiers, Jarad A. Mason, Jasper M. van Baten, Matthew R. Hudson, Pawel Zajdel, Craig M. Brown, Norberto Masciocchi, Rajamani Krishna, Jeffrey R. Long

Hollow mixed-metal oxide nanoparticles can be made by replacing the metal cations through redox reactions in solution. [Also see Perspective by Ibáñez and Cabot]

Authors: Myoung Hwan Oh, Taekyung Yu, Seung-Ho Yu, Byungkwon Lim, Kyung-Tae Ko, Marc-Georg Willinger, Dong-Hwa Seo, Byung Hyo Kim, Min Gee Cho, Jae-Hoon Park, Kisuk Kang, Yung-Eun Sung, Nicola Pinna, Taeghwan Hyeon

Natriuretic polypeptide b is the primary neurotransmitter in TRPV1-expressing, itch-sensitive afferent nerve fibers.

Authors: Santosh K. Mishra, Mark A. Hoon

Some German cockroaches find glucose both sweet and bitter, which allows them to avoid baited traps.

Authors: Ayako Wada-Katsumata, Jules Silverman, Coby Schal

A rare human disorder, characterized by the absence of a spleen at birth, is associated with mutations in a ribosomal protein.

Authors: Alexandre Bolze, Nizar Mahlaoui, Minji Byun, Bridget Turner, Nikolaus Trede, Steven R. Ellis, Avinash Abhyankar, Yuval Itan, Etienne Patin, Samuel Brebner, Paul Sackstein, Anne Puel, Capucine Picard, Laurent Abel, Lluis Quintana-Murci, Saul N. Faust, Anthony P. Williams, Richard Baretto, Michael Duddridge, Usha Kini, Andrew J. Pollard, Catherine Gaud, Pierre Frange, Daniel Orbach, Jean-Francois Emile, Jean-Louis Stephan, Ricardo Sorensen, Alessandro Plebani, Lennart Hammarstrom, Mary Ellen Conley, Licia Selleri, Jean-Laurent Casanova

Proteins that fail to fold up properly after many tries are tagged with mannose and voted off the island. [Also see Perspective by Kleizen and Braakman]

Authors: Chengchao Xu, Songyu Wang, Guillaume Thibault, Davis T. W. Ng

A protein implicated in oncogenesis is found to be critical for DNA replication in plants and animals.

Authors: Dominik Boos, Mona Yekezare, John F. X. Diffley

A surface protein of Plasmodium falciparum ookinetes allows them to evade the complement-like responses of Anopheles gambiae. [Also see Perspective by Philip and Waters]

Authors: Alvaro Molina-Cruz, Lindsey S. Garver, Amy Alabaster, Lois Bangiolo, Ashley Haile, Jared Winikor, Corrie Ortega, Ben C. L. van Schaijk, Robert W. Sauerwein, Emma Taylor-Salmon, Carolina Barillas-Mury

A structural analysis reveals that a wide range of sulfa drugs inhibit neurotransmitter biosynthesis.

Authors: Hirohito Haruki, Miriam Grønlund Pedersen, Katarzyna Irena Gorska, Florence Pojer, Kai Johnsson

A piconewton (pN) tension gauge reveals that less than 12 pN suffices to activate Notch.

Authors: Xuefeng Wang, Taekjip Ha

A weekly roundup of information on newly offered instrumentation, apparatus, and laboratory materials of potential interest to researchers.