News Feature in 2006

Costa Rica's flagship conservation institute needs help. Can a new deal with industry save it? Rex Dalton investigates.

The Sun occasionally hurls streams of particles towards Earth, where they can wreak havoc with satellites. Predicting these solar storms is hard, but some physicists believe we're about to face the biggest bout of solar flares in years. Stuart Clark reports.

The idea of genes as beads on a DNA string is fast fading. Protein-coding sequences have no clear beginning or end and RNA is a key part of the information package, reports Helen Pearson.

Prevailing wisdom says the adult brain cannot learn to see if it had no visual stimulation during childhood, but blind people in India seem to be breaking all the rules. Apoorva Mandavilli reports.

Among their many talents, bacteria are the world's best electrochemists, creating a life-powering flow of electrons in a startling range of conditions. In the first of two features, Nick Lane asks what limits, if any, constrain this ability. In the second, Charlotte Schubert meets the people trying to put this microbial ingenuity to practical use.

The Arctic is the bellwether of climate change, which shows up there first and fastest. Quirin Schiermeier visits ecologists struggling to keep up.

To correctly ‘play’ the DNA score in our genome, cells must read another notation that overlays it — the epigenetic code. A global effort to decode it is now in the making, reports Jane Qiu.

Does the respected US National Institutes of Health meet the needs of young postdoc researchers? Jacqueline Ruttimann investigates.

Elias Zerhouni has one of the biggest jobs in biomedical research — running the massive US National Institutes of Health. But is he leading the agency up the right path? Erika Check examines his tenure.

Facing a moral dilemma in the lab? No reason to panic. Helen Pilcher meets the academic troubleshooters who promise a quick answer to any ethical problem.

Archaeologists are bringing past worlds vividly to life on the computer screen. But are the high-tech graphics helping science, or are they just pretty pictures? Michael Bawaya takes a look.

Geophysicists are racing to understand a recently discovered phenomenon deep in the Earth. David Cyranoski joins them.

In 1906, a great earthquake destroyed San Francisco, and galvanized US seismologists. Naomi Lubick looks back at the event that changed the country's geological scene.

In a world of declining biodiversity, botanical gardens are coming into their own — both as storehouses of rare plants and skills, and increasingly as centres of molecular research. Emma Marris reports.

Multicellular creatures can be battlegrounds for competing populations of cells. Claire Ainsworth learns how this way of looking at an individual is feeding into immunology and cancer biology.

The floods are getting worse in Tuvalu. As scientists argue over climate change and struggle to measure rising seas, Samir S. Patel meets the locals of this tiny island nation.

The global future of nuclear power may rest in large part on local politics, reports Geoff Brumfiel.

Once touted as too cheap to meter, nuclear power has become too costly to build. But the economics may be shifting, finds Jim Giles.

The two Roger Pielkes can be obstructionist pains in the neck, say their colleagues. So why is this likeable father–son pair such a welcome addition to the debate on global climate change? Kendall Powell clears the air.