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Volume 397 Issue 6715, 14 January 1999

Opinion

  • Cultural, institutional, conceptual and linguistic barriers are being overcome as physicists and biologists recognize the scientific stimulus they can gain from each other. The United States is showing the way.

    Opinion

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News

  • new delhi

    A rocket scientist who was falsely charged with spying five years ago has issued a $250,000 suit against the government of the state of Kerala and the central government in New Delhi.

    • K. S. Jayaraman
    News

  • munich

    The planned opening of a controversial 20 MW research reactor being built near Munich could depend on the outcome of discussions being held this week by Germany's new coalition government on its nuclear policy.

    • Alison Abbott
    News

  • tokyo

    The University of Tokyo has announced plans to set up a research centre to study the 'Big Bang' model of the origins of the universe from both observational and theoretical perspectives.

    • Asako Saegusa
    News

  • washington

    Leaders of the Human Genome Project have rejected a proposed memorandum of understanding between the US Department of Energy the private corporation established last May by geneticist Craig Venter to sequence the genome.

    • Colin Macilwain
    News

  • washington

    A two-day conference on in utero gene therapy has concluded last that many significant scientific and ethical questions remain to be answered before the practice can or should be attempted in humans.

    • Meredith Wadman
    News

  • washington

    A leading US senator is questioning whether the National Institutes of Health can effectively spend the $2 billion, 15 per cent increase it received in the current fiscal year.

    • Meredith Wadman
    News

  • washington

    A dispute over proposed commercial development in southern Arizona threatens to end years of peaceful coexistence between astronomers and land developers in the state.

    • Tony Reichhardt
    News

  • washington

    The US Environmental Protection Agency has asked an expert panel to review possible health and environmental problems associated with the 'oxygenates' added to automobile fuel to help curb air pollution.

    • Tony Reichhardt
    News

  • moscow

    Two researchers in the Russian Academy of Sciences have warned that a new tax code currently being discussed in the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, “could kill Russian science rather than support it”.

    • Carl Levitin
    News
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News in Brief

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Correspondence

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News & Views

  • The first opening of the Bering Strait would have had profound biogeographical and climatic consequences. The date of that event is now firmly pushed further back in time.

    • Andrei Sher
    News & Views

  • To maintain the integrity of the genome, nuclear division (mitosis) must not occur if the DNA is damaged. To prevent this, Cdc25, an essential regulator of mitosis, is inactivated, and we now know how. DNA damage activates Chk1, which adds a phosphate group to Cdc25. This creates a binding site for Rad24, which then transports Cdc25 out of the nucleus where it cannot drive the cells into mitosis.

    • Jonathon Pines
    News & Views

  • The broad spectra of radioactive β-decay energies led to the discovery of the neutrino in the 1930s. There was also speculation that the shape of the spectrum could be used to measure a possible neutrino mass. In 1991, it was predicted that there should be ripples in the spectra called ‘β-environmental fine structure’ or BEFS. These ripples have been measured in a new experiment, which may eventually transcend the massive-neutrino controversy in that BEFS can be used to probe the atomic structure of many solids.

    • Wolfgang Stoeffl
    News & Views

  • To survive in the wild it's important to be able to distinguish particular sounds from the background noise. But how do animals do this? A study of animal noises and their responses to them indicates that a phenomenon known as 'comodulation masking release' may be responsible for filtering naturally occurring sounds.

    • Brian C. J. Moore
    News & Views

  • The first step in signalling through the transforming growth factor (TGF)-β pathway involves phosphorylation of either Smad2 or Smad3 by an activated type-I receptor kinase. How do TGF-β, the receptor and the Smad manage to meet up? The answer is a newly discovered ‘anchor’ protein termed SARA, which recruits the Smads to the TGF-β receptor.

    • Peter ten Dijke
    • Carl-Henrik Heldin
    News & Views

  • Mouse brain cells can grow and divide in vitro. This prompts Daedalus to suggest that the hit-and-miss business of psychoactive drug design could be transformed by experiments on cultured brain cells in a petri dish. That would reduce the need for tests on animals and humans.

    • David Jones
    News & Views
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Scientific Correspondence

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Book Review

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Review Article

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Article

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Letter

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New on the Market

  • The year's first crop of new products is eclectic as ever, including a clutch of HPLC columns, a trio of high-speed cameras and a pair of gloves. compiled by Brendan Horton from information provided by the manufacturers. c b B H f i p b t

    New on the Market
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