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Volume 402 Issue 6762, 9 December 1999

Opinion

  • The apparent failure of a Mars probe underscores NASA's difficulties in pursuing planetary exploration. Planetary scientists must be allowed to build a credible programme of missions on the bedrock of continuing public support.

    Opinion

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News

  • PARIS

    The therapeutic promise of human embryonic stem cell science may prompt France to lift its ban on embryo research.

    • Declan Butler
    News

  • LONDON

    Cyprus, Estonia, Lithuania and Slovenia achieved the highest success rate of 11 countries seeking European Union membership in funding applications to the Framework Five Programme.

    • Natasha Loder
    News

  • WASHINGTON

    The US National Institutes of Health could provide funding for research on human embryonic stems as early as spring if new guidelines are formally approved.

    • Paul Smaglik
    News

  • LONDON

    A Ukrainian marine biologist facing criminal charges over his role in international research projects is to be honoured at a reception by the American Association of the Advancement of Science held to recognise of the plight of persecuted scientists.

    • Natasha Loder
    News

  • MUNICH

    Berlin officials have decided to focus research directly supported by Germany's new capital on twelve key areas — including genomics — identified by an expert panel as reflecting the city's scientific strengths

    • Quirin Schiermeier
    News

  • EVRY, FRANCE

    Controversy surrounds a FF1 billion (US$ million) French research initiative to generate economic benefits from the post-sequencing phase of the human genome project.

    • Declan Butler
    News

  • TOKYO

    Japan is to link 10 independent nuclear fusion research institutes into a single network intended to boost collaboration between universities and government-run institutes fusion research.

    • Asako Saegusa
    News

  • MUNICH

    European proponents of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor have launched a campaign to win public and political support for its construction.

    • Alison Abbott
    News
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News Analysis

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News in Brief

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Correspondence

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Commentary

  • If governments are to define deception as research misconduct, science deserves clarity and rigour in the definition.

    • Louis M. Guenin
    Commentary
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Book Review

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Millennium Essay

  • Nuclear weapons stockpiles still represent the biggest threat to civilization.

    • Paul Doty
    Millennium Essay
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Futures

  • Widespread egg donation has led to a generation of superkids.

    • Nicola Griffith
    Futures
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News & Views

  • Matter waves can now be amplified in the same way that a laser amplifies light. Such matter-wave amplifiers will be essential for future developments in atom optics, and may be the basis of better and brighter atom lasers.

    • Kristian Helmerson
    News & Views

  • Alzheimer's disease is characterized by the accumulation of aggregated tau protein. These aggregates are thought to form because hyperphosphorylation of tau causes it to dissociate from the microtubules to which it normally binds, and the tau molecules can then bind to one another. The cyclin-dependent kinase-5 (Cdk5) is suspected to be the kinase that hyperphosphorylates tau, and a new study reveals how Cdk5 might do this.

    • E. Mandelkow
    News & Views

  • A process known as fragmentation is how erupting magma from a volcano breaks up into fine particles and ash, and it determines the type of eruption — gentle or violent — that occurs. Theoretical and laboratory studies show that treating magma as a brittle material can explain its behaviour at the point of fragmentation, when it is transformed from a foam into a gassy spray.

    • Dork Sahagian
    News & Views

  • Animal populations might cycle because they are linked to the population of a predator or prey species, or because their reproduction has become synchronized, so that crowded generations have few offspring, which have many offspring, and so on. Work with the water fleaDaphniaand its algal prey shows what ecological factors drive and damp the population cycles in these species.

    • James P. Grover
    News & Views

  • The Gulf Stream transports heat from low latitudes through the Gulf of Mexico and on to the northern Atlantic Ocean. Work involving oxygen-isotope analysis of foraminifera shows that, at the time of the Last Glacial Maximum around 21,000 years ago, the Gulf Stream's flow was about 35% weaker than it is today. A cold climate, then, seems to have coincided with reduced northerly transfer of heat.

    • Jean-Claude Duplessy
    News & Views

  • Glutamate is best known for its function in nervous transmission, where it is secreted from nerve terminals and acts as an extracellular excitatory neurotransmitter. There is now evidence that glutamate also has an intracellular function. It has been found to be involved in preparing secretory granules for release from the insulin-secreting β-cells of the pancreas.

    • Patrik Rorsman
    • Erik Renström
    News & Views

  • Could a particle accelerator destroy the world? Fears that the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven in the United States could trigger an unforeseen disaster have been allayed by two studies that show the risk of worldwide catastrophe to be truly negligible.

    • Sheldon L. Glashow
    • Richard Wilson
    News & Views

  • The areas of the brain responsible for early processing of sensory information have a systematic anatomical organization, allowing the topographies of the various sensory features to be mapped. Higher cortical processing centres were not thought to be organized in this way. But recordings made in monkeys using a unique electrode array reveal a functional organization for one of the highest cortical-processing areas in the brain — the hippocampus.

    • Howard Eichenbaum
    News & Views

  • Microtubule-based motor proteins, such as dynein and kinesin, can transport organelles around the cell. But many of these motors were originally identified for reasons other than this. A direct assay for organelle transport has now been devised, however, and initial tests using it have identified two hitherto unknown kinesins in the slime mouldDicytostelium discoideum.

    • Christopher Surridge
    News & Views

  • Our understanding of planet formation is surprisingly incomplete, so new ideas are always welcome. Computer simulations suggest that the giant planets formed together in a narrow region of our Solar System, and ended up in their present orbits after chaotic interactions. Another computer simulation proposes that the birth of one giant planet in the disk around a young star could trigger the formation of others.

    • Renu Malhotra
    News & Views

  • The task of ranking scientists according to their citations by other scientists could be made easier when all research is published on the Internet. In the future it should be possible to analyse the citation index in greater detail, revealing cases of self or mutual citation.

    • David Jones
    News & Views
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Brief Communication

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Addendum

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Erratum

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Correction

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Article

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Letter

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New on the Market

  • The last New on the Market before Christmas… but no last-minute gift ideas.

    New on the Market
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