Volume 395 Issue 6700, 24 September 1998

Academic life scientists are currently well-funded, but they need to develop better advocacy skills in order to exert some influence over issues related to their work.

london

Britain's main bioethics advisory panel has warned against the over-enthusiastic use of genetic screening for complex mental diseases.

washington

The Council for Responsible Genetics is contesting two experiments proposed by French Anderson, a pioneer of gene therapy.

paris

The French government has announced plans for a multi-billion dollar regional development project for higher research and education.

washington

The US Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) is being pressed to do more to represent the views of the individual investigators on professional issues.

paris

The greater Paris area, the main loser in recent national schemes to expand research and higher education, is about to see a reversal in its fortunes.

paris

Discussion of the geographical distribution of research is likely to be stimulated by a map of these factors at the European level.

new delhi

The Indian government has withdrawn permission for the independent World Commission on Dams to hold a set of public hearings in India.

tokyo

Japan is studying the possibility of developing a reconnaissance satellite after last month's firing of a North Korean missile over Japanese territory into the Pacific Ocean.

washington

Ground controllers have regained control of the errant Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), raising hopes that its scientific use could resume within the next two months.

washington

A dozen well-placed technical staff and a new external advisory board could revive the scientific and technical capabilities of the US Department of State, according to the National Academy of Sciences.

munich

The much-criticized Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (EC) has been given an explicit mission to support European Union policies and bring itself ‘close to the needs of EC citizens’.

munich

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has released new pictures of a spiral galaxy 400 million light years from Earth.

london

Britain's life scientists want the government to double the value of a doctoral student's stipend and add an optional foundation year to three-year PhD programmes.

paris

The French government is so set up a national coordinating committee for research in the life sciences, attached to the ministry of national education, research and technology.

The discovery of specimens of the coelacanth,Latimeria chalumnae, in Indonesian waters raises questions about the geographical distribution and conservation status of this remarkable fish.

The system called L1551 IRS5 is a binary star in the process of forming. Around each star is a small disk of gas and dust that may be turning into planets. The disks are so massive that planets might form in a completely different way from planets in our Solar System.

When times are hard, cells are sometimes forced to gather food from their own interiors. They can also use this mechanism - known as autophagy - to get rid of old or unwanted cell components. This process has now been dissected at a molecular level, and, surprisingly, the pathway by which it occurs is very similar to that used by ubiquitin, a protein that targets other proteins for destruction.

Complex fluids, with some variation in their component particles, can separate into more than one phase. New universal equations describe how the properties of these daughter phases depend on the parent phase, an insight that will be applicable to fields as diverse as petroleum refining and toiletries, and the design of paints, coatings and plastics.

The ovary in a fruitfly bears follicles that each contain an oocyte and its attendant nurse cells. The oocyte is always found at the posterior pole of the follicle, but how is it positioned there? Two studies show that the cells in the follicle sort themselves out according to the levels of a protein called E-cadherin that they express.

Certain meteorites contain microscopic diamonds of astrophysical as well as mineralogical interest, thought to have formed before the Solar System condensed. Now, two classes of pre-solar diamond have been distinguished, implying that they come from at least two different environments.

Whereas some nematode worms are solitary, preferring to feed alone, others feed together in large clumps. This behavioural difference has now been pinned down to just one protein, NPR-1, a homologue of human neuropeptide-Y receptors. What's more, solitary and sociable worms differ by a single amino acid in this protein.

Cellular cargo is transported around the cell in small vesicles that are pinched off the donor membrane and then fuse with the target cell. Fusion is mediated by the interaction of proteins -- found on both the vesicle and target membranes -- called SNAREs. The structure of the core fusion complex has now been solved, and changes our ideas about how this process occurs.

Basalts include horizontal sheets of coarser grain. These sheets may be explained by the peculiar melting and crystallizing properties of the rock - in-between 25 and 35% crystalline, basalt has a three-dimensional network of solid crystals that is porous and can be crushed, forcing out the fluid remainder, which could go on to form the coarser-grained layers.

Did life begin on Earth near the surface, where sunlight can be harvested? Or at subsurface hydrothermal systems? Contributions from both environments might have been required, according to a study that shows how ammonia could have been produced in large quantities at hydrothermal vents.

Tuberous plants store starch grains in their roots, and these roots provide the staple diet for the people of many tropical countries. But when were these roots first domesticated and used as food plants? Using a clevertechnique - looking for starch grains on the surfaces of prehistoric stone tools - this question has been answeredfor one plant, manioc, in Panama. And the answer is about 7,000 years ago.

Imagine the clarity of sound that you could get with a loudspeaker containing no moving parts at all. This is the idea behind Daedalus' ‘Paraspeaker’, which exploits the fact that the oxygen found in air is paramagnetic. The Paraspeaker will simply be a large, magnetic coil, to which the air is attracted and compressed. By varying the magnetic field at an audio frequency, the pressure will vary in sympathy.

Pioneer of biomedical polymers

What a piece of work is Man! But not in some relentlessly dull anatomy books of the nineteenth century, when ‘style’ was falling out of fashion. Or perhaps Henry Gray thought the wonders of the body spoke for themselves.

The hooks and needles of molecular biology include some of the items found here — DNA and plasmid isolation kits, vectors, enzymes and labels — as well as the loom of the trade, an automated purification workstation. compiled by Brendan Horton from information provided by the manufacturers.

Academic research provides the basis for many commercial ventures; investors are confident that they will go on reaping the rewards. But it must be remembered that scientific knowledge is the property of all, not just the few.