Table of contents
Volume 402 Number 6761supp ppC7-C88
In this issue (2 December 1999)
foreword
Tales of the expected pC7
Forecasting the future in science is fun but often hopelessly misleading. This publication, commissioned by all the Nature journals, focuses on future developments about which we can be reasonably confident and which will have an impact on the lives of all of us.
Philip Campbell
impacts
How common are habitable planets? pC11
The Earth is teeming with life, which occupies a diverse array of environments; other bodies in our Solar System offer fewer, if any, niches that are habitable by life as we know it. Nonetheless, astronomical studies suggest that many habitable planets may be present within our Galaxy.
Jack J. Lissauer
timescales
Keeping time pC17
Philip Ball
Circadian clocks pC17
Sara Abdulla
The challenge of conservation pC17
Henry Gee
impacts
'Earth system' analysis and the second Copernican revolution pC19
Optical magnification instruments once brought about the Copernican revolution that put the Earth in its correct astrophysical context. Sophisticated information-compression techniques including simulation modelling are now ushering in a second 'Copernican' revolution. The latter strives to understand the 'Earth system' as a whole and to develop, on this cognitive basis, concepts for global environmental management.
H. J. Schellnhuber
Genetics and general cognitive ability pC25
General cognitive ability (g), often referred to as 'general intelligence', predicts social outcomes such as educational and occupational levels far better than any other behavioural trait. g is one of the most heritable behavioural traits, and genes that contribute to the heritability of g will certainly be identified. What are the scientific and social implications of finding genes associated with g?
Robert Plomin
timescales
Flashes in femtoseconds pC30
Philip Ball
Arrhythmias pC30
Sara Abdulla
Does the past have a future? pC30
Henry Gee
impacts
The neurobiology of cognition pC35
Perhaps the deepest mysteries facing the natural sciences concern the higher functions of the central nervous system. Understanding how the brain gives rise to mental experiences looms as one of the central challenges for science in the new millennium.
M. James Nichols and William T. Newsome
The future of evolutionary developmental biology pC41
Combining fields as diverse as comparative embryology, palaeontology, molecular phylogenetics and genome analysis, the new discipline of evolutionary developmental biology aims at explaining how developmental processes and mechanisms become modified during evolution, and how these modifications produce changes in animal morphology and body plans. In the next century this should give us far greater mechanistic insight into how evolution has produced the vast diversity of living organisms, past and present.
Peter W. H. Holland
From molecular to modular cell biology pC47
Cellular functions, such as signal transmission, are carried out by 'modules' made up of many species of interacting molecules. Understanding how modules work has depended on combining phenomenological analysis with molecular studies. General principles that govern the structure and behaviour of modules may be discovered with help from synthetic sciences such as engineering and computer science, from stronger interactions between experiment and theory in cell biology, and from an appreciation of evolutionary constraints.
Leland H. Hartwell, John J. Hopfield, Stanislas Leibler and Andrew W. Murray
Feeding the world in the twenty-first century pC55
The gains in food production provided by the Green Revolution have reached their ceiling while world population continues to rise. To ensure that the world's poorest people do not still go hungry in the twenty-first century, advances in plant biotechnology must be deployed for their benefit by a strong public-sector agricultural research effort.
Gordon Conway and Gary Toenniessen
timescales
Physics at the Planck time pC61
Philip Ball
The speed of computers pC61
Philip Ball
Lifespan extension pC61
Sara Abdulla
impacts
The future of public health pC63
Public health deals with the health and well-being of the population as a whole and its achievements over the past century, especially in the richer countries, have been truly impressive. What direction should public health take in the future?
Barry R. Bloom
Computing 2010: from black holes to biology pC67
By 2010, a click on the PC on your desktop will suffice to call up instantly all the computing power you need from what by then will be the world's largest supercomputer, the Internet itself. Supercomputing for the masses will trigger a revolution in the complexity of problems that are tackled, whole disciplines will go digital and, rather than spending time collecting their own data, scientists will organize themselves around shared data sets.
Declan Butler
Transitions still to be made pC73
A collection of many particles all interacting according to simple, local rules can show behaviour that is anything but simple or predictable. Yet such systems constitute most of the tangible Universe, and the theories that describe them continue to represent one of the most useful contributions of physics.
Philip Ball
timescales
Adapting to climate change pC79
Philip Ball
The shape of the cosmos pC79
Henry Gee
impacts
Science's new social contract with society pC81
Under the prevailing contract between science and society, science has been expected to produce 'reliable' knowledge, provided merely that it communicates its discoveries to society. A new contract must now ensure that scientific knowledge is 'socially robust', and that its production is seen by society to be both transparent and participative.
Michael Gibbons
Plus çá change pC86
For the past couple of centuries the penchant for prediction has been prevalent at century turns. How much have evaluations of scientific discovery and predictions for future advancement changed since those of the science commentators at the end of the last century?
J. L. Heilbron and W. F. Bynum
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