Articles in 2006

If behaviour arises from interactions between genes and the environment, in what sense is it hardwired?

Japan's mission to collect a sample from a distant asteroid looks to have ended in failure. Ichiko Fuyuno investigates how the setback will affect Japan's struggling space programme.

Thanks are due to researchers who act as referees, as editors resolve their often contradictory advice.

The harlequin frogs of tropical America are at the sharp end of climate change. About two-thirds of their species have died out, and altered patterns of infection because of changes in temperature seem to be the cause.

Korean scientist did not clone a human embryo but did clone a dog.

Campaigners hope re-examination of evidence will undermine capital punishment.

Magnetic field lines are known to reorganize themselves in plasmas, converting magnetic to particle energy. Evidence harvested from the solar wind implies that the scale of the effect is larger than was thought.

A number of fatal brain diseases are linked to misfolded proteins, an effect researchers are mimicking in the lab. But as they generate new versions of these malformed molecules, could they be creating a monster? Roxanne Khamsi finds out.

Research on embryonic stem cells holds huge promise for understanding and treating disease. Many people oppose such research on religious and ethical grounds, but two new methods may bypass some of these objections.

Why did Hwang fake his data, how did he get away with it, and how was the fraud found out?

Experts divided on whether H5N1 bird flu will gain ability to spread between people.

Industrial chemists are borrowing techniques from drug researchers to track down materials with desirable properties. Andrea Chipman reports.

Living terrestrial vegetation emits large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. This unexpected finding, if confirmed, will have an impact on both greenhouse-gas accounting and research into sources of methane.

Could viruses have invented DNA as a way to sneak into cells? John Whitfield investigates.

Do our only cloned primates come from the lab of Woo Suk Hwang's colleague?

Neuroscientist who helped to make sense of sense.