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The cover shows the Amundsen Sea, offshore of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. As Tyler Jones and his colleagues reveal in this issue, this region experienced a large change in year-to-year climate variability some 16,000 years ago. The Last Glacial Maximum saw ice cover vast areas of the Northern Hemisphere and this significantly influenced the climate of the Southern Hemisphere. The brightness and high altitude of the ice sheets altered the atmospheric pathways linking the tropics to West Antarctica by moving the location of tropical convection. Using water isotope data from a West Antarctic ice core, Jones and his colleagues traced the effects of this influence. They find that the interannual and decadal climate variability at high southern latitudes was almost twice as high during the Last Glacial Maximum as during the past 11,700 years of the warmer Holocene epoch. Through this they reveal the intimate climate linkages between the high latitudes, and the key role of the tropics as a climate mediator between the hemispheres. Cover image: Bradley R. Markle
Spectacular light shows in Earth’s atmosphere called pulsating auroras are directly linked to processes in space. After decades of research, the full chain of events that creates such auroras has been observed.
The rapid antidepressant activity of ketamine results from reversal of increased burst firing and synchronization in the lateral habenula in rat and mouse models of depression.
The transmembrane protein teneurin-3 is expressed in multiple topographically interconnected areas of the hippocampal region and acts in both projection and target neurons to control wiring specificity from CA1 to the subiculum.
Observations of a highly collimated, parsec-scale jet emitted from a massive young stellar object in the Large Magellanic Cloud indicate that jet launching and collimation are independent of stellar mass.
High-angular-resolution measurements allow the direct observation of the scattering of energetic electrons by chorus waves in the magnetosphere, which causes quasiperiodic electron precipitation that gives rise to pulsating aurorae.
A quantum-liquid state of spin–orbital-entangled magnetic moments is observed in the 5d-electron honeycomb iridate H3LiIr2O6, evidenced by the absence of magnetic ordering down to 0.05 kelvin.
Freezing on a spherical surface is shown to proceed by the sequestration of defects into 12 icosahedrally coordinated ‘seas’ that enable the formation of a crystalline ‘continent’ with long-range orientational order.
An Antarctic ice core reveals that, during the last ice age, the topography of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets shifted tropical Pacific convection eastward, increasing climate variability in the high southern latitudes.
Temperature variability decreased globally by a factor of four between the Last Glacial Maximum and the Holocene epoch, as a result of changes in the meridional temperature gradient.
A method for modelling time-varying dynamic stability in a natural marine fish community finds that seasonal patterns in community stability are driven by species diversity and interspecific interactions.
Wild Australian magpies (Cracticus tibicen dorsalis) living in large groups show increased cognitive performance, which is associated with increased reproductive success.
A working memory task in rats demonstrates that the posterior parietal cortex is a critical locus for the representation and use of prior stimulus information.
The transcription factor c-MAF is required for the generation of Helicobacter-specific regulatory T cells that selectively restrain pro-inflammatory TH17 cells; the absence of c-MAF in mouse regulatory T cells results in pathobiont-dependent inflammatory bowel disease.
In a mouse model of breast cancer, asparagine bioavailability strongly influences metastasis and this is correlated with the production of proteins that regulate the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, which provides at least one potential mechanism for how a single amino acid could regulate metastatic progression.
Formation of inter-organelle contacts between mitochondria and lysosomes, regulated by lysosomal RAB7 GTP hydrolysis, allows for bidirectional regulation of mitochondrial and lysosomal dynamics.
A crystal structure of DNMT3A and its regulatory partner DNMT3L bound to DNA reveals the mechanistic basis for DNMT3A-mediated DNA methylation and establishes its aetiological link to human disease.