Volume 391 Issue 6670, 26 February 1998

Worries about failure to replicate Dolly are premature but stimulating.

paris

An inquiry into the activities of a laboratory of France's biomedical research agency is likely to take a new turn following a request from two scientists at the laboratory that their names be removed from a key paper currently being considered for publication.

paris

The Scottish researcher who cloned Dolly the lamb will carry out further experiments to clarify the lamb's origin following a challenge to Dolly's authenticity.

washington

The international organisation that coordinates the work of genome researchers is calling for scientists to retain the ability to gather more information about DNA samples from subjects' medical records.

london

A new organization representing the professional interests of academic medicine is to be set up in Britain in an effort to raise the public profile of the biomedical sciences.

tokyo

Japan's trade ministry is beginning to shift its focus away from supporting basic towards more applied research.

munich

Germany and Austria are engaged in a struggle over how non-genetically engineered foods should be defined and labelled.

sydney

The 110-year-old Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science elected a new council last week, two months after the previous council resigned en masse.

washington

The Clinton administration will exempt landowners who help preserve natural habitat from paying additional expenses or obligations under species protection laws.

washington

Biodiversity research in the United States needs a boost as it will lead to a healthier environment, which will strengthen the economy, an influential panel of scientists says.

washington

The United States is not ready to build any more new particle accelerators, two separate panels of scientists have told the government.

london

Britain's dwindling band of nuclear physicists are to lose their protected status within the science budget.

Lack of provision in the Biological Weapons Convention for monitoring and verifying compliance has long been a worry. But negotiations for such provision have been given new momentum by recent events in Iraq.

Life insurers claim they stand to lose unless allowed access to applicants' genetic information, but consumers insist such data should remain out of bounds. Could both sides be right?

Cirrus clouds warm the Earth. Their formation is incompletely understood, but recent studies hint that they can evolve from jet contrails. This is an unsuspected, but possibly important, effect of human activity on climate — offering a new way to study the processes involved.

How do plants stop themselves from being eaten by herbivores? As well as using conventional weapons — such as spines and stinging hairs — they may use chemical deterrents (toxins) or employ biological protection (aggressive, territorial ants). In one new study the authors find that, by producing toxins, plants can force grazers to seek out alternative food sources. And in a second, the authors calculate that a plant invests between 0.6 and 5% of its total productivity in its defence mechanism.

The body has many repetitive electrical activities — such as brain waves — that depend on the rhythmic firing of neurons. This is achieved, in part, by the action of T-type calcium channels, inappropriate activity of which can lead to epileptic seizures. Understanding of how these channels work should now be advanced with the cloning of one T-type subunit, known as α1G. And this could lead to the development of agents that treat hypertension by specifically blocking these channels.

If you stand above a cloud, you will see bright coloured rings around your shadow. These ‘glory’ rings are most commonly seen around the shadow of an aeroplane. What causes this strong backscattering of light by droplets of water? It has been hard to isolate the glory rays from other scattered components — but this has now been done using ultra-short laser pulses and timing the arrival of components that take different paths thought the drop. This experiment confirms the idea that glory is caused by interference between surface waves on the water droplets.

Millipedes evade predators by ejecting a toxic substance from glandular sacs found all over their bodies, except along the first five segments. Yet the larva of the phengodid beetle can evade this defence, and kill the millipede. How? It turns out that the larva grabs the millipede around the neck, injecting a lethal dose of regurgitated gastric fluid. The millipede is paralysed before it has a chance to activate its defences, leaving the larva free to feast in safety.

Millipedes evade predators by ejecting a toxic substance from glandular sacs found all over their bodies, except along the first five segments. Yet the larva of the phengodid beetle can evade this defence, and kill the millipede. How? It turns out that the larva grabs the millipede around the neck, injecting a lethal dose of regurgitated gastric fluid. The millipede is paralysed before it has a chance to activate its defences, leaving the larva free to feast in safety.

Different types of fatty acid and carbohydrate are metabolized at different rates, but what about protein? In the first study of its kind, one group has looked at the effect of milk proteins — whey protein and casein — on whole-body protein metabolism. They find that when people are given whey protein, the concentration of amino acids in the blood plasma increases, and there is a concomitant increase in protein synthesis. But a casein meal leads to a much slower accumulation of amino acids, and only a slight increase in protein synthesis.

Learning and memory are dependent on synaptic plasticity, through long-lasting changes in synaptic strengths. The two well-characterized forms of plasticity are long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD). But one group has now discovered a completely different form of plasticity. Whereas LTP and LTD modulate the strength of synapses in a synapse-specific manner, the new form represents a more general regulation of the total synaptic strength of a neuron. And because it is bidirectional, it could have interesting computational properties.

A hallmark of human type 2 diabetes is hyperglycaemia — an excess of glucose in the bloodstream. Normally, the pancreatic β-cell compensate for this by secreting more insulin, but this fail-safe mechanism seems to malfunction in patients with the condition. Now, by generating mice that lack the insulin-receptor substrate-2 (IRS-2) gene, one group has shown that IRS-2 may be responsible for both increased insulin resistance and reduced insulin compenation. The knockout mice develop a syndrome that closely resembles human type 2 diabetes and, importantly, they have fewer β-cells than wild-type mice.

Last week Daedalus proposed that a municipal Hibernatorium could see pensioners safely through the winter months at a greatly reduced cost to the State. His plan was to maintain them at a low temperature, stopping their hearts yet keeping the blood pumping around the body by rhythmic pressure applied to the limbs. But it seems that pensioners may not be the only beneficiaries — similar technology could be used to preserve prisoners, unrequited lovers, and even those wishing to sleep peacefully through religious revivals or social revolutions.

Electrical engineer and co-founder of SONY.

William Latham is working to establish a place for computers in the world of art. He sets the design rules to be followed and his program generates images in a process that could be called a simulation of evolution in action.

This week's product update features tools for the cell biologist, including electroporation and transfection systems, transcription and translation kits, new fluorescent markers and reagents for neuroscience. compiled by Brendan Horton from information provided by the manufacturers.