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Volume 395 Issue 6699, 17 September 1998

Opinion

  • For years Italy's research council has suffered from scientific direction tainted by political considerations. Changes now in train carry risks that the next generation of Italian scientists will be similarly betrayed.

    Opinion

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News

  • london

    Pictorial -- as well as the physical - copies of Dolly the cloned sheep will in future need special permission from the Roslin Institute in Scotland.

    • Ehsan Masood
    News
  • washington

    The US Department of Energy is facing a crisis in overseeing its research programmes as its most experienced technical staff leave and others queue up to retire.

    • Colin Macilwain
    News
  • washington

    The main US government sponsor of the Human Genome Project is planning to finish sequencing the human genome by 2003, two years ahead of its original target.

    • Meredith Wadman
    News
  • washington

    Most scientists remain sceptical of the existence of 'snowball comets', small, watery comets the size of houses, which are claimed to enter the Earth's atmosphere every few seconds.

    • Tony Reichhardt
    News
  • munich

    Germany's parliament has approved a DM500 million increase in next year's education and research budget just weeks before federal elections.

    • Quirin Schiermeier
    • Alison Abbott
    News
  • munich

    The heads of Europe's national research councils are to consider a proposal to pool part of their funds for reallocation to particular European-level research programmes.

    • Alison Abbott
    News
  • moscow & london

    The appointment of a new prime minister, and a promise to release a portion of unpaid salaries are unlikely to ease the hardship facing Russian scientists.

    • Carl Levitin
    • Ehsan Masood
    News
  • moscow

    The hopes of an ailing Russia are riding on Yevgeny Primakov, the country's new prime minister, a former economist, journalist, middle eastern expert, spymaster, and diplomat.

    • Carl Levitin
    News
  • washington

    . US professional scientific societies are challenging a government policy that they claim is harming research by selectively punishing investigators who work with animal models.

    • Meredith Wadman
    News
  • tokyo

    Japanese scientists are voicing concerns over the government's decision to reorganize national research institutes attached to science-related ministries.

    • Asako Saegusa
    News
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News in Brief

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Correspondence

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News & Views

  • Can animals remember where and when events happened? A study of birds that hoard and then retrieve their food shows that they can, and may ultimately provide clues about how human memories are formed.

    • Kathryn Jeffery
    • John O'Keefe
    News & Views
  • A magic square is an arrangement of numbers in which all the rows and columns add up to the same total, the magic constant. But some are more magic than others, having other extraordinary properties, and 'most perfect' squares are at the top of the hierarchy. There is now a method of constructing all most-perfect magic squares.

    • Martin Gardner
    News & Views
  • The outer membranes of certain bacteria contain lipopolysaccharide (LPS). This is a glycolipid that can induce the host's immune system to produce cytokines, which, if left unchecked, can lead to septic shock and death. The human receptor for LPS has now been identified as a protein called Toll-like receptor 2, and theDrosophilahomologue of this protein is already known to be involved in defence against fungal infections.

    • Craig Gerard
    News & Views
  • Can nuclear material, compressed hard enough, turn into a still denser substance known as quark matter? We may be able to find out using existing particle accelerators, according to a study that applies the theory of phase changes to Bohr's liquid drop model of the nucleus.

    • Frank Wilczek
    News & Views
  • When DNA is damaged, repair systems exist to remove lesions and fill in gaps. So when that DNA is replicated, the original sequence will be passed on to daughter cells. ButEscherichia colicontains proteins that do just the opposite -- they reduce replication fidelity. The study of these proteins should now be easier, thanks to in vitrosystems developed by two groups, that reconstitute this so-called error-prone repair.

    • Myron F. Goodman
    News & Views
  • Beneath the southwest Pacific Ocean, the Pacific tectonic plate is being subducted beneath the Australian plate. But at one point subduction seems to be being impeded by a large seamount. A newly proposed explanation of an 800-km-long trough that runs east across the Pacific Plate from the 'sticking point' is that it is a stress-induced crack, although it could also be an extinct spreading centre.

    • Tim Lincoln
    News & Views
  • The 'RNA world' hypothesis is the idea that, early in Earth's history, entities capable of replicating themselves used RNA (ribozyme) rather than protein catalysts. Much work on ribozymes involves looking for different catalytic properties in selection experiments. The latest results show ribozymes to be capable of a highly sophisticated feat -- creation of the glycosidic bond that joins a sugar to a base to make a nucleotide.

    • Michael P. Robertson
    • Andrew D. Ellington
    News & Views
  • The transcription factor NF-κB is activated in response to, among other things, stress. Normally, NF-κB is repressed by a protein called IκB which, in turn, is switched off by two protein kinases. Two studies now add another piece to the pathway, by showing that the interaction between all of these players could be facilitated by 'docking' proteins, which act as a kind of scaffolding.

    • Claus Scheidereit
    News & Views
  • By irradiating a thin film of liquid monomer, Daedalus plans to create the perfect glued joint. Each charged particle that flies through the monomer will leave a single straight polymer chain behind it that is fixed to the two surfaces, and each polymer bridge will contract into a natural tangle to pull the joint tight.

    • David Jones
    News & Views
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Science and Image

  • Clinicians screening patients for diseases such as breast cancer have to let a machine do much of the seeing for them. Theoretical modelling of the processes involved can help to ensure that reliable images are generated.

    • 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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Erratum

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Letter

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