Volume 403 Issue 6768, 27 January 2000

London

Annual stipends for British research students should be increased by more than a third, even if this means decreasing the overall number of research students, according to a report published last week.

Paris

Plans to launch a global web site for the scientific literature, headquartered in Europe, have been unanimously endorsed at a closed meeting of representatives of research organizations, commercial publishers and the European Commission in Heidelberg.

San Diego

The National Science Foundation is slated to get its largest annual increase ever under a proposal by President Bill Clinton to increase the US research budget by $2.8 billion next year.

Washington

Yale University is to spend $500 million on constructing and renovating its science and engineering facilities over the next six to eight years to boost its reputation in those disciplines.

Washington

Following four years of negotiations between US National Institutes of Health and E.I. DuPont, NIH-funded scientists now have free use of the ‘OncoMouse’ techniques for creating mice susceptible to tumours.

Montreal

The Medical Research Council of Canada and Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies have announced significant increases for the second phase of a joint research programme, which has quadrupled its research activity since 1993.

Tokyo

A new centre and its director will face the challenge of co-ordinating research on the application of single nucleotide polymorphisms in an inter-ministerial initiative to propel Japan's struggling genome research to international competitiveness.

Tokyo

Shuji Nakamura, who surprised physicists around the world when he announced the development of blue light-emitting diodes a few years ago, is leaving from Japan to take up an academic position in the United States.

Washington

The first patents on the technology used to clone Dolly the sheep were issued last week, three years after its inventors published news of Dolly's birth.

Washington

A survey to be published next week will reveal the whereabouts of more than 300 million potentially valuable human tissue samples archived in the United States.

New Delhi

A $500 million annual increase in funding for Indian science and technology promised by prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee will be used to boost basic research, modernise laboratories, and launch new technology missions.

Washington

Gary Ellis, director of the Office for Protection from Research Risks at the National Institutes of Health is likely to find himself out of a job in the coming months, when the office is dissolved and reconstituted in the Office of Health and Human Services.

London

Roy Anderson, a professor of zoology at the University of Oxford and the director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for the Epidemiology of Infectious Disease, has been suspended on full pay following formal complaints from two female members of staff.

Science is playing an increasing part in many decisions made by the UK Parliament, and probably in other legislation. What are the implications?

Does the structure of the English language reflect the structure of the mind?

To truly understand ageing, we must look beyond the diseases of old age.

The discovery of extraterrestrial life was the key event of the third millennium.

A protein long thought to inhibit the growth of regenerating nerve axons has at last been identified and cloned. This discovery could be an important step towards promoting nerve regeneration after stroke or spinal-cord injury.

On the evidence gleaned from polar ice cores, it seems that climate – or at least temperature – has not varied greatly during the interglacial period that still holds sway today. A different picture emerges from indicators of hydrological conditions in East Africa. This record, which goes down to decadal resolution and spans 1,000 years, shows marked natural variability and will help inform studies of future climate change.

The Sun's energy is used by plants for photosynthesis, but excess energy is dangerous. So, plants contain protective mechanisms to dissipate excess energy during bright sunlight, transferring the unwanted energy to light-absorbing pigments. This process is now being dissected at the molecular level, and one group has identified a particular component in the light-harvesting apparatus that has a unique, energy-dissipating function.

What's hot in mineralogy? A citation analysis of papers published between 1990 and 1996 tackles this question. The results show that zeolites accumulated the most attention, which is perhaps not surprising – like the next four minerals in the list they have important industrial applications. Indeed, one overall conclusion to be drawn from the analysis is that mineralogy is a mature discipline, one more concerned with applications than fundamental discoveries.

Single photons can be detected in the visible and near-infrared range, but not so easily at longer wavelengths, such as the far-infrared. A detector that uses a single-electron switch can now detect individual photons in the far-infrared. Such a detector will be of interest to astronomy, biochemistry and atmospheric research.

Rice agriculture is projected to expand by up to 70% over the next 25 years, and is likely to mean much more intensive use of ammonium-based nitrogen fertilizers. That is a worry because rice paddies are one of the main sources of methane (a greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere, and increased emissions would be undesirable. It seems, however, that extra ammonium may stimulate soil bacteria that oxidize methane, and so reduce emissions.

Understanding singularity formation (the classic example is the creation of black holes) can give insights into a broader class of problems than was originally expected. For instance, a study of the special properties of violent jets produced when a tub of viscous liquid is shaken up and down will interest engineers trying to limit the damage caused by certain types of collapsing bubbles.

The topic of intelligence is of perennial interest and the subject of many unanswered questions. If intelligence has been so important in human evolution, for instance, why does it vary so much among people today (at least according to IQ tests)? And is there a unitary trait of general intelligence, g, or is the modular view of the mind a better way of tackling the phenomenon? These and other issues came under debate at a meeting last December.

Axial Seamount is an underwater volcano that lies on a seafloor-spreading centre off the west coast of southern Canada. It is being intensively studied, both through continuous monitoring by instruments at or near the site and through ship-borne ‘event response’ visits by scientists. The most recent burst of volcanic activity at Axial Seamount happened early in 1998, and eight papers now describe the scientific findings.

Following last week's prediction of a gene for consciousness, Daedalus proposes to create a drug that will block the protein encoded by such a gene. ‘Nothingness’ - the ultimate dissociative anaesthetic - will abolish awareness while leaving subjects able to respond and behave, to outward appearances, completely normally.

A radiation-driven ecosystem on Jupiter's moon is not beyond the bounds of possibility.

A round-up of lab information management systems and automation.

When biology met engineering, they created a new field for scientists who don't want to be hedged into one discipline.