Volume 397 Issue 6717, 28 January 1999

A moratorium on clinical trials of animal transplants is justified.

london

Governments should consider sequencing the genes that could be contained in biological weapons, according to Craig Venter, co-founder of a company which plans to sequence the whole human genome by 2001.

paris

The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, a political body representing 40 European countries, is expected to endorse a moratorium on clinical trials of xenotransplantation.

london

Women scientists spend more of their time doing interdisciplinary research than their male counterparts, yet are less likely than men to be team players, according to the results of a survey due to be published next month.

washington

The US National Cancer Institute devoted only 1 per cent of a $2.4 billion budget in 1997 on cancer research in minorities and the poor, according to a report from the Institute of Medicine.

munich

The German pharmaceutical and chemical company BASF is to embark on a major research joint venture with the Swedish seeds breeding company Svalöf Weibull.

washington

US life science societies are calling for a 15 per cent increase in the budget of the National Institutes of Health in the year 2000.

tokyo

Earthquake research in Japan should focus on basic research into the mechanisms of earthquakes instead of predict when they will occur, according to an advisory body to the Japanese prime minister.

TOKYO

China has announced plans for tough regulations to clamp down on 'false' earthquake warnings in order to prevent panic and mass evacuations of cities.

anaheim, california

The Clinton administration will propose a $366 million increase in the government's investment in new information technology and its applications to research.

los angeles

The US National Academy of Sciences is likely to warn federal agencies against attempting to measure the output of their research by using performance indicators that foster ‘non-productive’ efforts on the part of researchers.

london

Opposition in Britain to genetic modification in agriculture was dealt a severe blow this week with the publication of two influential reports, which conclude that the technology poses negligible risks to human health and the environment.

barcelona

The Spanish government has dismissed Esperanza Aguirre, minister of education and culture, in a move widely welcomed in educational circles.

washington

Conservation measures designed to balance the interests of endangered species and land developers are often based on inadequate scientific data, according to a review of government-sanctioned Habitat Conservation Plans.

sydney

There has been an escalation in the dispute between the Australian government and Unesco over a large uranium mine being developed in a World Heritage Area.

In the wake of the tragic suicide of a US graduate student, research universities need to adopt a different system of monitoring the quality of graduate students' supervision. Anonymous evaluation could be the answer.

The number of harmful mutations that arise in each generation has been measured, and it is surprisingly high. This supports one theory of why evolution favours sexual reproduction, but the consequences for human health are unclear.

A new type of organic solid-state laser is promised by research into zeolitic microcrystals. By trapping individual organic dye molecules in the nanometre cavities of the zeolite, researchers have been able to produce microlasers only 8 μm in diameter. Such tiny lasers could be used as bright pixels for displays or in optical sensing and communication.

Most vertebrates have left (L)-right (R) asymmetry around the midline with, for example, the liver on the right side of the body and the stomach on the left. We can now see how the early symmetry of the embryo is broken to develop this asymmetry. It turns out that cilia concentrate critical L-R determinants to one side of the node, an important source of patterning signals in the early embryo.

New measurements of polarized radio emission from a barred spiral galaxy have allowed researchers to determine the galactic magnetic field, and to link it to interstellar gas flow in the bar region. Their results suggest that magnetic stress may be an efficient way of fuelling the supermassive black hole thought to exist in the active galactic nucleus of many galaxies.

From remote measurements taken by an aircraft over the Arctic, it seems that bromine (chemical species of which destroy ozone) may occur in significant amounts in the troposphere there. It is thought that natural processes at the sea- or ice-surface create the bromine in molecular form, and the authors propose a mechanism whereby it is lofted into the troposphere. How important tropospheric bromine might be globally remains to be seen.

Ever since the creation of the first Bose-Einstein condensate in 1995, physicists have been dreaming up ways to explore their macroscopic quantum properties — now they want to make them spin. New calculations of a rotating Bose gas predict what these spinning condensates would look like.

For a year now, marine biologists have been gathering data from a new satellite-borne sensor that delivers information on the distribution and abundance of phytoplankton in the world's oceans. The instrument is known as the Sea-Viewing Wide-Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS), and in December last year oceanographers met to take stock of the results it has provided.

Thin, soapy films can be created because, if a region suddenly thins, surface tension rises and hauls it back to a safe thickness. Daedalus wants to apply this principle to glass, to allow the creation of an ultra-thin glass film that could be used for glazing, to produce unscratchable, unbreakable windows, or even for making books with glass pages.

The inventor of the term ‘black hole’, John Wheeler, has a gift for memorable phrases. ‘Getting its from bits’ is another of his creations. It refers not to an object, but to a vision of a world derived from pure logic and mathematics. That vision has to a remarkable extent been embodied in modern physics — here is a progress report.

Recent additions to the market for lab automation equipment include barcode-based processors and further refinements of LIMS — lab information systems.