News Feature in 2001

Theatre seemed the ideal way for US bioprospectors working in Mexico to tell local people about their work. But did the plays distract attention from the involvement of commercial interests? Rex Dalton reports.

The vehicles of the future will almost certainly be powered by hydrogen. But no one is sure exactly how to get drivers to kick their fossil-fuel habit. Mark Schrope weighs up the options.

Is BSE lurking in sheep, but masked by scrapie? Reliable and fast tests that can tell the diseases apart are urgently needed, says Declan Butler.

From the results of an annual Alaskan betting contest to sightings of migratory birds, ecologists are using a wealth of unusual data to predict the impact of climate change. John Whitfield rummages in the archives.

The next president of Germany's Max Planck Society is putting aside a glittering research career in developmental biology to wrestle with politics, ethics and budgets, says Alison Abbott.

Increasingly, the drugs giants are outsourcing research in drug discovery to start-up companies. Tom Clarke and Helen Pearson analyse an emerging trend, and ask what both sides expect to gain.

Is it possible to predict when nations are about to descend into internal conflict? The US Central Intelligence Agency thinks so, and has spent millions of dollars on a controversial research programme. Robert Adler reports.

Canada's new Perimeter Institute is planning to apply the risk-taking approach of venture capitalism to the pursuit of theoretical physics, says David Spurgeon.

Newts grow new legs, Hydra new heads. These remarkable creatures may hold clues for researchers developing human cellular therapies. But the connections are only now starting to be made. Helen Pearson reports.

Game theory has been used to study problems from nuclear warfare to animal behaviour. Now physicists are extending it into the quantum realm, opening a new range of potential applications. Erica Klarreich reports.

Too many conservation projects are failing because of ignorance about the behaviour of endangered species. This is why the natural world needs ethologists, says Jonathan Knight.

In the early 1990s, a chance finding in a Japanese laboratory introduced the world to carbon nanotubes. Today, interest in the tubes is still growing. Philip Ball reports on a decade of discovery.

While their contemporaries in other countries zip from postdoc to postdoc, young French scientists struggle to find work. Sally Goodman reports.

Leading virologists plan to thwart emerging strains of influenza by creating a global laboratory to keep tabs on this ever-changing virus. Alison Abbott reports.

Cosmologists have already created entire universes within computers. Now astrophysicists are focusing on the fine details of asteroid collisions and supernovae. Govert Schilling investigates.

As the 'war on terrorism' unfolds, some politicians are calling for controls on the availability of encryption software. But many computer scientists claim such moves would play into the terrorists' hands. David Adam reports.

Will the European Union's member states ever put the goal of continental cohesion in science ahead of their individual national interests? Quirin Schiermeier considers the prospects for creating a 'European Research Area'.

Researchers working on molecular self-assembly have never lacked ambition, but their dreams of producing commercially viable devices always looked like a distant goal. That may be about to change, says Philip Ball.

For over a quarter of a century, planetary scientists have believed that water helped to shape the surface of Mars. Now one geophysicist is trying to prove them wrong. Larry O'Hanlon reports.

The Nobels mark their centenary this week. Their prestige is unquestioned, but does the way in which winners are selected reflect the way science is done in the twenty-first century? Trisha Gura investigates.