Nuclei are held together by the strong nuclear force, which acts against the electrostatic repulsion that pushes protons apart.
But calculating the interplay of these forces from first principles is complex, and theorists have devised instead several competing models to describe the structure of nuclei,
which describes the strong and weak nuclear forces and the electromagnetic force, leaves several basic questions unanswered.
The foxes on Mednyi Island one of Russia s Commander Islands in the Bering sea are a subspecies of Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) that may have remained isolated for thousands of years.
They screened for four common canine pathogens in foxes captured on Mednyi Island and in the pelts of museum specimens of Commander Island foxes.
and that the costs of such cases could force people to keep quiet in the face of legal threats.
since early 2011, has written a public letter stating that he was jailed for refusing to cooperate with Iranian military projects.
US$60-million battle to bring the first genetically modified (GM) animal to US dinner tables   a struggle that may be nearing its end.
the fish pose no significant environmental threat to the United states when grown in landlocked tanks,
Environmental groups are preparing to take the battle to consumers by fighting the sale of the fish in grocery stores across the country.
and gauge the environmental risk of the sterile fish escaping its tanks and successfully mating with wild salmon.
Yet even with regulatory approval, the battle over Aquabounty s salmon will be far from over.
Aquabounty s long struggle has discouraged other US companies from producing GM animals for food. Mark Walton, chief marketing officer at Recombinetics, an animal-biotechnology company in St paul, Minnesota, says that his company will focus initially on medical applications   using modified farm animals as disease models
Moreover, the authors say that diversity decreased at pesticide concentrations that European regulations deem environmentally protective.
It shows our risk assessments don't work, says Beketov. I think we should care about this
Considering pesticides along with other known threats to biodiversity may be crucial for halting species declines, she says.
from biologist Dave Goulson of the University of Sussex, UK, reviews the environmental risk posed by neonicotinoid insecticides2.
We can't think our job is done after the pre-application risk assessment, he says.
But rising emissions from agriculture and industry industry threaten to offset some of the gains from forest protection.
"There s a real danger of pushing people towards things with higher environmental impacts. The scant data available suggest that plastic wood typically a composite of waste wood and plastic exacts a higher climate-change cost than natural wood,
but not revolutionary, he says. Although no wine presses have been found at Massalia, Dietler thinks that it is only a matter of time before one turns up.
Marine-reserve veto Proposals to create two huge marine reserves in Antarctic waters were blocked by Russia on 16 Â July at an international meeting in Bremerhaven, Germany.
Plans put before the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR which oversees fishing activity in Antarctica,
The European Food safety Authority in Parma, Italy, concluded in May that maize (corn) seeds treated with fipronil pose a high acute risk to honeybees. ips trial approved On 19 july, Japan s health minister,
Turing is regarded as a hero of the Second world war for helping to break the German Enigma code.
reaching 4. 11 Â million in 2012, according to Home office data released last week. The 8%increase over 2011 figures was driven largely by greater use of genetically modified and other mutant animals.
28 july-1 august Scientists discuss conflicts between humans and wildlife at the 50th annual conference of the Animal Behavior Society in Boulder,
The virus poses no health threat to humans. The US Department of agriculture (USDA) had tried to keep PEDV and other diseases out of the country by restricting imports of pigs and pork products from certain nations, such as China.
US Department of agriculture"It s a real threat, says Lisa  Becton, a veterinary surgeon and director of swine health information at the National Pork Board, an industry group in Des Â
the lab imported the virus around 15 Â years ago from Asia, after a lengthy security-clearance process, in preparation for just such an outbreak.
The threat of cordgrass is especially acute on Chongming Island, home on its eastern end to the 24,000-hectare Shanghai Chongming Dongtan National Nature Reserve declared a region of international ecological importance by the Ramsar Convention, a global wetland-conservation treaty.
advocates warned that Europe risks becoming a scientific backwater as the rest of the world increasingly adopts the technology."
But in 2012, its makers, BASF Plant science in Limburgerhof, Germany, announced that, because of hostility to GM products in Europe,
and that many, including ones at risk of extinction, have never been collected. The findings, released on 22 july by the International Center for Tropical agriculture (CIAT) in Cali,
as well as in conflict-ridden regions such as Pakistan and Sudan. Ehsan Dulloo, head of conservation at Bioversity International, an agricultural-research organization in Rome, says that securing samples for placement in gene banks is important to protect species from destruction by natural calamities or war, for example.
Khoury notes, for instance, that wild relatives of the faba bean, found only in war-torn Syria,
Brosi says that his work adds weight to the argument that society should be more active in protecting pollinators.
owes more to simple physical forces than to the skill of bees, according to a new study.
along with then-provost Vistasp Karbhari, sought police protection for themselves from biologist Amy Bishop, without warning or protecting others.
The ban was enacted as a temporary measure to safeguard against accidental or intentional release of the virus. The moratorium was lifted on 10 july
California head The United states flagship public university system may soon have its first woman president.
the University of California announced its nomination of Janet Napolitano, US secretary of homeland security and former governor of Arizona,
But as an army of combines marches across the wheat fields of eastern Oregon, the mystery of the transgenic intruders is fresh in the minds of investigators at the US Department of agriculture (USDA),
which some have suggested could be activist sabotage.""We may never know who actually released it,
He says that any saboteur would have been taking a gamble that the GM wheat would be found.
The moratorium part of efforts to guard against accidental or intentional release of virus that could reintroduce the disease was lifted on 10 july
the risks and benefits of research proposals will be assessed by a joint advisory committee, and then the FAO and the OIE will decide on approvals.
thus decreasing the risk of reintroduction. Some 55 labs in 35 countries still hold some kind of rinderpest virus,
Conversely, the agencies plan to centralize stocks of vaccines in a few high-containment repositories in regions at highest risk of disease,
The FAO and the OIE are working on high-security protocols for shipping the virus and ways to ensure that autoclaves in labs holding it are certified to function at levels guaranteed to provide a 100%kill.
Biofuel counts towards that requirement if it produces a 35%emissions saving over fossil fuels, or 50%from 2017 onwards;
The battle does not end there: the main parliament will vote on the issue in September,
but at the same time it provides a tool to manage that risk, he says of the new study's results and methods.
raising both in this region puts the aquifer at risk of depletion. Americans and Europeans did not begin farming in the Great plains until the 1890s,
This raises the threat that H7n7 will reassort and become able to spread to humans.
Better surveillance of Chinese bird populations is needed to monitor the emergence of dangerous viruses such as H7n9,
David Morens, an influenza researcher and senior adviser at the US National institutes of health in Bethesda, Maryland, says that the evolutionary pathway that the viruses followed suggests that more surveillance
and better sanitation practices at poultry markets are crucial to monitoring risks to human health.
an epidemiologist at Columbia University in New york city, says that surveillance is not a foolproof solution.
Ample horns are a ram s ticket to reproductive success. During the breeding season, males fight for access to females,
In 1999, they finally produced a tasty variety that contained the Vf defence gene, bred in from an unappetizing relative.
Even armed with modern breeding techniques and 15 Â known defence genes in the apple family
instead used a gene gun to fire DNA-coated gold particles into plant cells. Some of that DNA is incorporated then into the genome.
In 2012, APHIS regulators invited Mackenzie to the organization s headquarters in Riverdale, Maryland, and questioned her about this hypothesis. APHIS eventually notified her that it would not regulate her plants a decision that Mackenzie says has accelerated her research
He notes that Agrobacterium inserts genes more efficiently than the gene-gun method. Although zinc-fingers are appealing for their specificity
If he had used a gene gun, he would have inserted DNA haphazardly and in a manner more likely to damage other sites in the genome yet this remains the unregulated method."
the US Air force Space Command announced on 12 Â August that it will shut down a key component of a network that monitors orbital debris and space objects.
The Air force Space Surveillance system dubbed the space fence, will close by 1 Â October. Two of the system s nine radar stations were deactivated in April.
Mucorice-ARP1 would have to be eaten regularly to ensure protection. Once you have engineered the rice,
Kokabee has said that he was pressured to cooperate in an Iranian military nuclear programme. This is the first time that the human-rights prize has been awarded to a person in prison.
Among the selected projects is a $33-million trial to test preventive treatments in at-risk adults (see Nature 489
However, they are not without their dangers, and, as the number of users in the United states alone reaches an estimated 2. 5 Â million,
Previous research has found that livestock workers are at high risk of carrying MRSA, compared to the general population2.
whether the spreading of MRSA through livestock puts the public at risk of infection. The study examined the incidence of infections in Pennsylvania,
but the authors say that the country does not have adequate surveillance in place to determine
if any, to recommend to NASA headquarters for further review. To secure funding from the space agency, the Kepler team will have to show that the studies could not be done by other telescopes.
but as a sentinel for near-Earth objects, including asteroids several hundred metres in diameter that might be on a collision course with Earth.
Forest management plans in a tanglein the middle of metropolitan San francisco stands an army and many Bay Area residents want it to stay garrisoned there.
and reduce the risk of the catastrophic fires that threaten lives and property, and pour carbon into the atmosphere.
"Our defences, pesticides and fungicides, are being asked to deal with larger and larger numbers of pests and diseases,
Expansion of pest populations into new territories increases the risk that these organisms will escape our control.
Among the biggest threats are fungi and oomycetes, similar but distinct groups of microbes, which cause plant diseases.
Garth Lenz/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013in'Oil spoils'by Garth Lenz, an aerial view shows the devastation caused by tar-sands mining in Alberta, Canada.
Fukuda spent 74 days in a small, specially constructed hut in the Far Eastern Federal district, Russia, waiting for this animal one of only around 300 Amur,
or governments seeking to offset their emissions by protecting DRC land. The project will start with the laser data collected by planes flying out of Kinshasa (see Leaf by leaf.
and to avoid conflict zones in the war-torn country. It is a daunting task that has required more than two years of planning."
says Paul  Olsen, a geologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New york,
The effort, funded by the US National Science Foundation and the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program, might also help to resolve a simmering dispute.
the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology today fulfilled its threat to retract a controversial paper claiming that a genetically modified (GM) maize causes serious disease in rats,
Alleged conflicts of interest are at the centre of the latest round of controversy. Lepage called for the resignation of  Anne Glover, who was appointed chief scientific adviser to the European commission two years ago and
Conflicts of interest with the European Food safety Authority (EFSA) in Parma, Italy, which is responsible for assessing the risks of GMOS,
"remain numerous, she added. The paper s retraction was the latest in a series of setbacks for SÃ ralini and his group.
and both the EFSA and Germany s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment In Berlin slammed the paper for providing inadequate data to support its conclusions
China battles army of invaderswhen China kicked open the doors to international trade in the late 1970s,
This has led to an"explosion of research says Wan Fanghao, an ecologist at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences Institute of Plant Protection in Beijing.
Wan is currently finalizing a $10-million, decade-long project funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology to study invasive species in agriculture and forestry.
because we are recording actual gunshots. We helped to expose, for example, that there was a lot more illegal hunting going on in Loango National park in Gabon than had been thought,
and the ones most at risk are those at the edges of their current range in Cameroon and the Central african republic.
and where protection needs to be increased. Again, acoustics could be one way to approach this,
Ask the guys patrolling areas that are much too large for the size of their force
In the meantime, really properly funding the operations of the guys putting their lives at risk patrolling areas would help.
ministers and scientists will discuss measures to fight poaching including national task forces, tougher legal action against ivory traffickers and greater use of the military against heavily armed poachers."
Using sound to combat elephant poacherssome positive outcomes from the CITES meeting are already being seen on the ground,
for example, is now prosecuting more people for ivory offences than in the past. And the United states which in a show of intent earlier this month publicly crushed 6 Â tonnes of ivory seized at its borders since 1989,
Closer to the front line, George Wittemyer of Colorado State university in Fort Collins, a conservation biologist who conducts research at the Samburu National Reserve in Kenya,
and the American College of Cardiology, advocate treating patients on the basis of their risk of cardiovascular disease,
and climate-change denial in schools. Reid, formerly director of the American Academy of Microbiology in Washington  DC, will replace retiring NCSE director Eugenie Scott,
water security and bioenergy. go. nature. com/cxmbqf
Departing head of biotech institute defends GM field trialsmaurice Moloney has led Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, UK,
because we weren t looking for conflict. We did all the risk assessments; we did all the things you have to do to get permission to go outside.
And we did. There was a bit of a backlash See'Rothamsted trial attacked'.'It was a much more noisy backlash than you would have imagined with the relatively few people involved,
the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed eliminating most artificial trans-fats forms of fat associated with increased heart risk from processed foods.
The two world wars, the Great depression and a 1987 international treaty on ozone-depleting chemicals put a surprising dent in the rate at
as they recovered after the Second world war. But Estrada and his colleagues found that it folllowed a reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions associated with economic downturns
Significant drops in emissions occurred during the First world war, the Great depression of the 1930s and the Second world war."
"When the wars end and you have large economic growth, the emissions of CO2 rise fast
and you have the onset of modern climate change, says Estrada. For the 1940-70 period, the way the paper shows how economic factors drove emissions down is"very nice,
"It s a careful examination and offers some strength to the argument that the change in accumulation rates of radiative forces in the atmosphere do influence temperature,
and conquer the world some 160 million years ago an evolutionary explosion described by Charles darwin as an"abominable mystery.
China and northern Australia (see Fruit threat). The outbreak in Jordan, reported on 29 Â October (F. Â A. Â Garcia et al.
Industrial farms growing a single Cavendish cultivar are at a high risk of Foc-TR4 infestation,
but the fungus poses less of a threat to the bulk of the bananas that provide a staple for some 400 Â million people worldwide.
and markets endophyte-hosting turf varieties that repel pest attacks without being toxic to animals.
so the plants don t turn up all their stress defences, says Rodriguez. Those findings led him to look for other endophytes optimized to tackle the problems likely to be caused to particular food crops by climate change (R.  S.  Redman et  al.
The country is considering loosening patent protections to improve access to cheaper, generic drugs, in line with moves in India and Brazil in recent years (see Nature 500,
Rabbit rescue China s moon rover has run into major trouble, according to a report on 25 january from state-run news agency Xinhua.
including issues of food and water security, and climate change. 3 february The World health organization releases its Third world Cancer Report, six years after its previous publication.
a population resurgent after 40 years of protection under the Endangered Species Act. More than 700 bears now roam the region, up from 136 in 1975,
But the US Fish and Wildlife Service is expected now to lift the legal safeguards, after a government advisory panel of wildlife officials endorsed delisting the bear last month.
saying that the government has estimated under  the threat that climate change poses to the bears food supply,
After two years, a district-court judge restored protection, citing concerns about the declining whitebark pine and its effect on the bears diet.
A reliance on meat heightens the risk that adult bears will come into contact with humans,
for example in choosing investment strategies from savings schemes that may not be available in the future.""Of course, much of the time we make errors,
10 16 january 2014industrial blast An explosion at a chemical plant in Japan on 9 Â January killed 5 and injured 12.
The blast at Mitsubishi Materials in Yokkaichi, about 300 Â kilometres west of Tokyo, occurred
The company is still investigating the cause of the explosion, but some reports suggest that residual chlorine
Pesticide risks On 8 Â January, the US Environmental protection agency announced the award of nearly US$500,
000 in grants for research to reduce the risks of pesticides, especially to bees. Scientists at Pennsylvania State university in University Park received funding to study alternatives to treating seeds with neonicotinoids,
) At Louisiana State university in Baton rouge, researchers will assess the long-term risks to bees from chemicals used in large-scale mosquito-abatement programmes.
Advertisements for the best-selling drug relied on studies showing that it also reduced the risk of stroke and heart attack.
and administer the US President s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Birx currently heads the AIDS programme at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. The PEPFAR programme,
A large fraction of respondents in Germany reported problems with job insecurity, compared with other regions (see chart.
Gun controls The US Department of health and human services proposed on 3 Â January that patient-privacy exemptions should be created
so that relevant mental-health records can be submitted to the national databases used to screen potential gun buyers.
So far, background checks have prevented the sale of more than 2 Â million firearms, according to the White house.
But some researchers who study firearms violence have called for better safeguards against gun ownership by those who are mentally ill (see Nature 496,412-415;
Turing s work in the Second world war helped to break the German Enigma cipher, and his concept of a universal Turing machine, a programmable system that stores and processes information, is considered a cornerstone of computer science (see Nature 482,441;
whose cameras will hitch a ride on the International Space station (see'Earth goes under video surveillance').
The biggest customers of conventional commercial imaging satellites are governments, in particular intelligence agencies and the military.
Anti-tobacco efforts have saved millions of lives around the globehalf a century after the US government sounded an influential alarm about the health dangers of smoking,
Military psychology Many mental-health programmes designed for the military and their families are not based on good science,
The US Department of defense needs to evaluate the psychological help it provides to veterans to ensure that its services are effective
The defence department sponsored the report to help to address the prevalence of psychological problems,
such as depression and anxiety, plaguing veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sea sickness Europe s seas are in poor health.
It is expected to include a request for a US$1 â billion fund to fight climate change. 5-7 march The Wellcome Trust biomedical charity hosts the Genomic Disorders 2014 conference in Cambridge, UK.
Last week, the first human case of H7n9 flu was detected in Jilin province in the far north of the country, raising a further risk of spread to North korea and Russia,
To specifically address the risk of H7n9 flu, Vietnam has banned the importation of poultry from China.
senior technical coordinator at the Vietnam branch of the Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal diseases, part of the Food and agriculture organization of the united nations.
But the surge in H7n9 flu cases highlights the continuing public-health and possibly pandemic threat that it poses.
and its geographical expansion is a reminder of the threat beyond China. Furthermore, although case numbers have shown signs of dropping in the past two weeks,
H7n9 surveillance is difficult in part because the virus causes only mild disease in poultry and thus spreads silently, with human cases typically the first warning of a poultry outbreak.
The difficulty of surveillance and of sampling China s huge poultry industry it produces 6 billion birds annually means that this is unlikely to be the full picture
Photoshotpoliticians vow to get tough on poaching A major political meeting in London has agreed to ramp up the fight against illegal wildlife trafficking
and Prevention and the Department of defense announced on 13 Â February that they will team up with 26 Â countries,
They established a Global Health Security Agenda that calls for countries to increase immunizations and share data.
the poachers are armed better â Â We re seeing increasing levels of violence, he said.
there was a sense at the meeting that the attention now being given to the subject might bring changes that will make a difference to animals currently under threat."
since the global ban on ivory came into force in 1989.""We are resolved to continue the fight against trafficking
and to remove any temptation to recover the seized ivory for black-market sales, said French environment minister Philippe Martin. UK animal research The british government says that it is committed still to cutting the number of animals used in research,
such as identifying at-risk people through mental-health screenings in hospital emergency departments, and preventing suicidal people from accessing firearms.
See page 131 for more. Wolf plan flawed The US government s proposal to weaken protection for grey wolves (Canis lupus) is not based on good science,
said an independent review panel on 7 Â February. The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) says that wolves in the lower 48 Â states no longer face extinction (see Nature 501,143-144;
leading the US National park service to consider importing new animals for a genetic rescue. Now, nature is intervening
) For Vucetich, genetic rescue is required not so much to maintain the continuity of the study as to preserve the ecosystem.
"A genetic rescue could set a precedent for intervention in other parks. Many scientists familiar with Isle Royale support genetic rescue, especially because human activity has contributed to the current population crash.
Climate change has led to the decreasing frequency of ice bridges. Canine parvovirus, probably caught from a domestic dog,
And in 2012, three wolves were found dead in an abandoned mining pit. Given this history of human influence,
and another five before federal bureaucracies approve a genetic rescue and a pack develops into a predation force.
He fears that a decade without significant moose predation would leave the fir trees devastated. Phyllis Green, superintendent of the Isle royale national park, is considering three alternatives:
or genetic rescue. She has initiated not a formal decision-making process, and will not commit to a timeline,
but a genetic rescue could set a precedent for interventions to counteract the effects of climate change in other parks.
Green knows that many scientists are in favour of genetic rescue, but she also hears from"wilderness-oriented advocates who urge her not to intervene."
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