Volume 391 Issue 6664, 15 January 1998

washington & munich

France is considering taking part in a proposed US spacecraft expedition to collect samples of Martian rock and return them to Earth.

paris

A graduate student who appears to have manipulated the results of her doctoral thesis to correspond to the conclusions she was seeking is to be investigated by France's Atomic Energy Commission and its national research agency, the CNRS.

montreal

The separatist government of Quebec has bent its sovereignty principles to obtain some of the C$800 million of research infrastructure funding being offered by the federal government.

london

The United Nations' biological diversity convention needs to strengthen its scientific advisory body, delegates from member countries concluded when they met in London.

cape town

South Africa has declared 1998 to be the ‘Year of Science and Technology’. The programme will be launched by President Nelson Mandela in Cape Town next month.

washington

Science in the United States will enjoy healthy funding growth next year, following a decision by the Clinton administration to bow to pressure from scientific societies and their supporters in the Senate.

london

The government agency that registers Britain's charitable organizations has been criticized for licensing a medical research charity that took £250,000 from the public and spent 80 per cent of this sum on "administrative costs".

washington

Spectacular details of the auroral curtains of ultraviolet light around Saturn's north and south poles have been observed for the first time by the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph on board the Hubble Space Telescope.

rome

The southern Italian region of Puglia is to provide the expensive drug somatostatin free to cancer patients, even though the drug has no proven efficacy in most cancers.

berlin

Germany's best-known piece of scientific architecture, the Einstein tower, was damaged by fire last week after a spark ignited solvent being used in renovation work.

Plans by a Chicago embryologist to clone a human being have renewed pressure for swift action to ban the practice in the United States. But scientists warn that an ill-drafted law could stifle genuine research.

Females of many species prefer mates with extravagant traits. Studies of stalk-eyed flies show that, in this case at least, such preference is linked to suppression of a selfish gene that influences the sex ratio of offspring.

The paradox of the so-called ‘high-nitrate, low-chlorophyll’ parts of the ocean is that although the most important nutrient, nitrate, is available, phytoplankton productivity remains limited. Evidence that lack of iron is responsible has been the centre of research attention for the past few years. But silicate, which diatoms use to make their shells, is now also implicated as a limiting factor — at least in that part of the eastern Pacific in which the latest studies were carried out.

TheHox genes encode a class of transcription factors that are thought to be crucial for specification of body plans. This means that they are of interest to both developmental and evolutionary biologists, and differences in the expression of these genes could explain the evolution of animal phyla. In general, invertebrates have only one Hox gene cluster, whereas vertebrates usually have four, leading to the prediction that the number of clusters increases with increasing complexity. But a new study casts doubt on this theory, showing that the zebrafish may actually have six Hoxgene clusters.

Synthetic-aperture radar can be used by satellites to map movements in the surface of the Earth -- at faults, near volcanoes or on glaciers. A new refinement of the technique exploits the varying ‘look’ angles of ascending and descending satellite orbits to make full 3D maps of glacier flow. This method can be used, for example, to directly measure volume changes of ice sheets.

Where do the Solar System's heavy elements come from? We have know for decades that many of the elements heavier than iron must have been formed in Supernovae. But it now appears impossible to produce all the so called ‘r-process’ isotopes in a single type of supernova. Instead, those r-process isotopes with a mass number less than about 134 probably come from rare events involving accreting white dwarfs; and the more common core-collapse supernovae take over for heavier isotopes.

Replication of the genome is one of the most fundamental of biological activities, hence the interest in the mechanism by which the enzymes concerned -- the polynucleotide polymerases -- carry out the process. The co-crystal structures of the DNA polymerase that replicates bacteriophage T7, and of theBacillus stearothermophilusDNA polymerase large fragment, provide significant insights into the catalytic mechanism, fidelity and processivity of DNA polymerases.

Smart materials, which can change their physical properties, enable a building to adjust its environment to the prevailing conditions. A new addition to their number is the switchable window -- a sandwich of glass, thin metal-hydride films and some medium for delivering hydrogen gas, which can be reversibly converted from reflecting to transparent states. When the technology has improved to allow electronic switching, instead of requiring direct pumping of gas, such switchable windows might be used in energy-conscious building design -- and for the lazy, they would make a good alternative to curtains.

Tumour-suppressor genes such asp53 serve as potent buffers against uncontrolled cell multiplication and cancer. But it now seems that they do not work alone. Another tumour-suppressor protein, p33^ING1, has been found to form a direct complex with p53. And it seems that each of the proteins requires the other to exert its inhibitory effects.

All of us contain billions of benevolent bacteria, living in complex ecologies in the skin and gut, for example. How is the harmony maintained between selfish species in these communities? Daedalus believes that balance is maintained by subtle chemical signalling -- a set of gentlemen's agreements. By studying and mimicking the chemistry of these agreements, DREADCO will devise a new way of curing infections, gently restoring equilibrium instead of killing off all bacteria and hoping that the old equilibrium is restored.

Andy Goldsworthy sets out to explore some of the recurring forms in the world around us, using a variety of media drawn from nature itself — snow and sand, twigs and thorns.