Age of long sediment cores from Lake Baikal

The new BDP-98 drill core of the Baikal Drilling Project is a key palaeoclimate record in continental Asia because globally sensitive sedimentary records of such length and continuity are very rare. Kashiwaya et al. have attempted signal processing of the BDP-98 average grain-size record, but in constructing their age model they excised a 100-metre interval from the 600-metre section, stating that it is "erroneous". On the basis of our lithological studies, we consider that this excision is unjustified.     

The 'Higgs' amplitude mode at the two-dimensional superfluid/Mott insulator transition

Spontaneous symmetry breaking plays a key role in our understanding of nature. In relativistic quantum field theory, a broken continuous symmetry leads to the emergence of two types of fundamental excitation: massless Nambu-Goldstone modes and a massive 'Higgs' amplitude mode. An excitation of Higgs type is of crucial importance in the standard model of elementary particle physics, and also appears as a fundamental collective mode in quantum many-body systems. Whether such a mode exists in low-dimensional systems as a resonance-like feature, or whether it becomes overdamped through coupling to Nambu-Goldstone modes, has been a subject of debate. Here we experimentally find and study a Higgs mode in a two-dimensional neutral superfluid close to a quantum phase transition to a Mott insulating phase. We unambiguously identify the mode by observing the expected reduction in frequency of the onset of spectral response when approaching the transition point. In this regime, our system is described by an effective relativistic field theory with a two-component quantum field, which constitutes a minimal model for spontaneous breaking of a continuous symmetry. Additionally, all microscopic parameters of our system are known from first principles and the resolution of our measurement allows us to detect excited states of the many-body system at the level of individual quasiparticles. This allows for an in-depth study of Higgs excitations that also addresses the consequences of the reduced dimensionality and confinement of the system. Our work constitutes a step towards exploring emergent relativistic models with ultracold atomic gases.     

A theory of power-law distributions in financial market fluctuations

Insights into the dynamics of a complex system are often gained by focusing on large fluctuations. For the financial system, huge databases now exist that facilitate the analysis of large fluctuations and the characterization of their statistical behaviour. Power laws appear to describe histograms of relevant financial fluctuations, such as fluctuations in stock price, trading volume and the number of trades. Surprisingly, the exponents that characterize these power laws are similar for different types and sizes of markets, for different market trends and even for different countries--suggesting that a generic theoretical basis may underlie these phenomena. Here we propose a model, based on a plausible set of assumptions, which provides an explanation for these empirical power laws. Our model is based on the hypothesis that large movements in stock market activity arise from the trades of large participants. Starting from an empirical characterization of the size distribution of those large market participants (mutual funds), we show that the power laws observed in financial data arise when the trading behaviour is performed in an optimal way. Our model additionally explains certain striking empirical regularities that describe the relationship between large fluctuations in prices, trading volume and the number of trades.     

Experimental demonstration of quantum memory for light

The information carrier of today's communications, a weak pulse of light, is an intrinsically quantum object. As a consequence, complete information about the pulse cannot be perfectly recorded in a classical memory, even in principle. In the field of quantum information, this has led to the long-standing challenge of how to achieve a high-fidelity transfer of an independently prepared quantum state of light onto an atomic quantum state. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate a protocol for such a quantum memory based on atomic ensembles. Recording of an externally provided quantum state of light onto the atomic quantum memory is achieved with 70 per cent fidelity, significantly higher than the limit for classical recording. Quantum storage of light is achieved in three steps: first, interaction of the input pulse and an entangling field with spin-polarized caesium atoms; second, subsequent measurement of the transmitted light; and third, feedback onto the atoms using a radio-frequency magnetic pulse conditioned on the measurement result. The density of recorded states is 33 per cent higher than the best classical recording of light onto atoms, with a quantum memory lifetime of up to 4 milliseconds.     

BCL6 enables Ph+ acute lymphoblastic leukaemia cells to survive BCR-ABL1 kinase inhibition

Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) are widely used to treat patients with leukaemia driven by BCR-ABL1 (ref. 1) and other oncogenic tyrosine kinases. Recent efforts have focused on developing more potent TKIs that also inhibit mutant tyrosine kinases. However, even effective TKIs typically fail to eradicate leukaemia-initiating cells (LICs), which often cause recurrence of leukaemia after initially successful treatment. Here we report the discovery of a novel mechanism of drug resistance, which is based on protective feedback signalling of leukaemia cells in response to treatment with TKI. We identify BCL6 as a central component of this drug-resistance pathway and demonstrate that targeted inhibition of BCL6 leads to eradication of drug-resistant and leukaemia-initiating subclones.     

The study of macromolecular complexes by quantitative proteomics

We describe a generic strategy for determining the specific composition, changes in the composition, and changes in the abundance of protein complexes. It is based on the use of isotope-coded affinity tag (ICAT) reagents and mass spectrometry to compare the relative abundances of tryptic peptides derived from suitable pairs of purified or partially purified protein complexes. In a first application, the genuine protein components of a large RNA polymerase II (Pol II) preinitiation complex (PIC) were distinguished from a background of co-purifying proteins by comparing the relative abundances of peptides derived from a control sample and the specific complex that was purified from nuclear extracts by a single-step promoter DNA affinity procedure. In a second application, peptides derived from immunopurified STE12 protein complexes isolated from yeast cells in different states were used to detect quantitative changes in the abundance of the complexes, and to detect dynamic changes in the composition of the samples. The use of quantitative mass spectrometry to guide identification of specific complex components in partially purified samples, and to detect quantitative changes in the abundance and composition of protein complexes, provides the researcher with powerful new tools for the comprehensive analysis of macromolecular complexes.     

Germline mutations and sequence variants of the macrophage scavenger receptor 1 gene are associated with prostate cancer risk

Deletions on human chromosome 8p22-23 in prostate cancer cells and linkage studies in families affected with hereditary prostate cancer (HPC) have implicated this region in the development of prostate cancer. The macrophage scavenger receptor 1 gene (MSR1, also known as SR-A) is located at 8p22 and functions in several processes proposed to be relevant to prostate carcinogenesis. Here we report the results of genetic analyses that indicate that mutations in MSR1 may be associated with risk of prostate cancer. Among families affected with HPC, we identified six rare missense mutations and one nonsense mutation in MSR1. A family-based linkage and association test indicated that these mutations co-segregate with prostate cancer (P = 0.0007). In addition, among men of European descent, MSR1 mutations were detected in 4.4% of individuals affected with non-HPC as compared with 0.8% of unaffected men (P = 0.009). Among African American men, these values were 12.5% and 1.8%, respectively (P = 0.01). These results show that MSR1 may be important in susceptibility to prostate cancer in men of both African American and European descent.