Articles in 2006

It's a time of change for Nature's venture into speculative fiction.

Competition and cooperation in meerkat reproduction.

Two assessments of the refereeing process highlight challenges for journals.

This year has been a rollercoaster, both personally and professionally. I've left a relationship, bought a flat and started writing a popular-science book. I've participated in a choir competition and a ski trip to Slovakia. And somewhere in between, I've managed to finish a PhD.

Offset schemes are a small but potentially useful addition to the carbon balance sheet.

So long, and thanks for all the sausages.

The Pentagon is sinking millions of dollars into developing the next generation of supercomputers — and plans to let non-military scientists and engineers share the benefits. Heidi Ledford reports.

Monitoring of the flow of an ice sheet in Antarctica finds that the surface velocity oscillates by as much as 20 per cent every two weeks: the spring-to-neap tidal cycle seems to be the cause. Although the mechanism through which these tides couple to ice flow has yet to be elucidated, these observations caution against the use of velocity measurements over limited periods to infer long-term changes in flow rate.

Gigantic cosmological γ-ray bursts have fallen into a dichotomy of long and short bursts, each with a very different origin. The discovery of an oddball burst calls for a rethink of that classification.

Should males and females be kept together to avoid triggering virgin birth in these endangered reptiles?

The development of lactose tolerance in sub-Saharan Africa is a fascinating tale of genetic convergence, reports Erika Check.