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Stormy negotiations are expected during the third meeting of parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which opens in Kyoto in ten days time. But optimists hope that significant agreement can still be reached.
The past decade has seen the rapid growth of bioethics as a focal point of public concern over new technologies. Nature's correspondents report on the ways in which the bioethics movement has developed around the world.
The emerging economies of the Pacific Rim of Asia are applying research assessment to boost the quantity and quality of their research, while Japan is just awakening to the need for such processes. But cultural obstacles have led to diverse approaches across the region.
Physicists have long been keen to harness the energy of thermonuclear fusion. The next planned step is a major international project to build an experimental reactor, ITER. But the project has recently been running into a quagmire of technical, economic and political uncertainties that will require all the efforts of its supporters to overcome.