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Volume 394 Issue 6689, 9 July 1998

Opinion

  • Natural history museums face an unprecedented opportunity as central players in biodiversity research. They and their financial supporters need to match fine words with appropriate actions.

    Opinion

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News

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News Analysis

  • The choice of a new director for the International Medical Research Centre in Gabon is crucial for the future of an institution which has been criticized as lacking relevance and falling far short of its potential.

    • Declan Butler
    News Analysis
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News in Brief

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Briefing

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Correspondence

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News & Views

  • Many theoretical models have been developed to study the conditions under which unrelated individuals should cooperate or not cooperate. But such behaviour is rarely ‘all or nothing’, and new mathematical models allow the optimal level of cooperation to be determined.

    • Laurent Keller
    • H. Kern Reeve
    News & Views
  • Galaxy clusters must trap large quantities of dark matter, and we expect it to be sharply concentrated near their centres. But using a new method for interpreting the effects of gravitational lensing, a much smoother and less centrally concentrated distribution of dark matter is inferred in one cluster. This could produce insights into the mechanisms governing galaxy-cluster formation, or even be a clue to the nature of dark matter.

    • August E. Evrard
    News & Views
  • Cell movement is mediated by dynamic networks of actin — monomers of actin polymerize into filaments near the plasma membrane. How are these actin structures organized? Two groups have found that a seven-protein complex, containing the actin-related proteins Arp2 and Arp3, is responsible for initiating and organizing an actin-based dynamic meshwork that forms protrusions at the leading edge of motile cells.

    • Laura M. Machesky
    • Michael Way
    News & Views
  • High-temperature superconductors need to be doped with elements that donate charge-carrier. By changing the dopant cation, the superconducting transition temperature can be changed markedly. Why? It is due to lattice strains, caused by disorder in the cation size. This solves a ten-year old puzzle — but leaves open the question of the microscopic mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity.

    • R. J. Cava
    News & Views
  • Fossils of very old — Devonian — ancestors of the centipedes and millipedes have been found only in the Northern Hemisphere. That situation changes with the discovery and description of two specimens from Australia; the oldest one dates to almost 400 million years ago. The new fossils raise issues about the biogeography of this group of arthropods, and also plausibly become the oldest-known remains of Australian land animals.

    • Tim Lincoln
    News & Views
  • Dendritic spines are small, actin-rich structures that protrude from the sides of dendrites, and receive excitatory inputs to the brain. Using a clever piece of video imaging, one group has found that each spine seems like a tiny, writhing sack of actin filaments, struggling to escape. This movement depends on polymerization of the actin, and it may be involved in synaptic plasticity, contributing to the formation of so-called ‘perforated synapses’.

    • Frances A. Edwards
    News & Views
  • Switches in the glacial-interglacial cycle are linked to climatic change, which is one reason for wanting to know more about them. The history of such switches can in part be traced by estimating sea level, which reflects the amount of water locked up in ice sheets. A study that uses the Red Sea as a gauge now takes estimates of lows in sea level back 500,000 years, well beyond the last glacial period.

    • John Chappell
    News & Views
  • If electronic devices are to be shrunk from the current micrometre length scale all the way down to the single-atom or molecule scale, we need to know how such tiny constructions will behave. Electrical measurements have now been made on the smallest electronic components possible — single metal atoms. They show that the conductivity depends on the number of valence electrons available in each atom.

    • Lydia L. Sohn
    News & Views
  • The first brain waves to be observed were measured at a frequency of ten cycles per second — that is, 10 Hz. Since then, waves have been detected at frequencies of 5, 40 and 200 Hz. But what do they do? One group has found that the 40-Hz waves are involved in a feedback-inhibition mechanism for coding 'events' (such as memories) in the brain. Another group has studied the 200-Hz waves, and they conclude that synchronization of neuron firing, which causes these waves, is due to gap junctions between nearby axons.

    • John Lisman
    News & Views
  • Last week, Daedalus planned to grow carbon nanotubes on a catalytic anode with circular reaction sites. Now, he wants to generalize the idea by making the reaction template more complicated. A hexagonal lattice of reaction sites, for example, would grow carbon honeycomb. Strong and light for structural purposes, carbon honeycomb could also be used as an insulator, a one-dimensional conductor, a molecular sieve or an absorbent.

    • David Jones
    News & Views
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Retraction

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News & Views

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Science and Image

  • Biologists such as Nancy Lane are venturing into previously unexplored and strangely beautiful realms of the cell, using sophisticated microscopes allied with familiar, age-old visual techniques.

    • Martin Kemp
    Science and Image
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Scientific Correspondence

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Book Review

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Article

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Letter

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