Uptake of glutamate into synaptic vesicles by an inorganic phosphate transporter

Previous work has identified two families of proteins that transport classical neurotransmitters into synaptic vesicles, but the protein responsible for vesicular transport of the principal excitatory transmitter glutamate has remained unknown. We demonstrate that a protein that is unrelated to any known neurotransmitter transporters and that was previously suggested to mediate the Na(+)-dependent uptake of inorganic phosphate across the plasma membrane transports glutamate into synaptic vesicles. In addition, we show that this vesicular glutamate transporter, VGLUT1, exhibits a conductance for chloride that is blocked by glutamate.     

Development of the circum-antarctic current

Deep-sea drilling in the Southern Ocean south of Australia and New Zealand shows that the Circum-Antarctic Current developed about 30 million years ago in the middle to late Oligocene when final separation occurred between Antarctica and the continental South Tasman Rise. Australia had commenced drifting northward from Antarctica 20 million years before this.     

20th-century industrial black carbon emissions altered Arctic climate forcing

Black carbon (BC) from biomass and fossil fuel combustion alters chemical and physical properties of the atmosphere and snow albedo, yet little is known about its emission or deposition histories. Measurements of BC, vanillic acid, and non-sea-salt sulfur in ice cores indicate that sources and concentrations of BC in Greenland precipitation varied greatly since 1788 as a result of boreal forest fires and industrial activities. Beginning about 1850, industrial emissions resulted in a sevenfold increase in ice-core BC concentrations, with most change occurring in winter. BC concentrations after about 1951 were lower but increasing. At its maximum from 1906 to 1910, estimated surface climate forcing in early summer from BC in Arctic snow was about 3 watts per square meter, which is eight times the typical preindustrial forcing value.