Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Volume 403 Issue 6769, 3 February 2000

Opinion

  • A global agreement on the terms of trade in genetically modified organisms is a victory for common sense. But it also reflects the pragmatic recognition that few would gain from a prolonged trade war over the issue.

    Opinion

    Advertisement

Top of page ⤴

News

  • The US National Ignition Facility has one support from both nuclear weapon scientisis and advocates of fusion energy after developing the first device to ignite a controlled fusion reaction.

    • Colin Macilwain
    News
  • LIVERMORE, CALIFORNIA

    Bruce Tarter, the director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, will announce a major reorganization of the laboratory aimed to counter criticism that it has mismanaged the construction of a huge laser facility being built there.

    • Colin Macilwain
    News
  • TOKYO

    A subcommittee of the Council for Science and Technology, Japan's principal science policy-making body, is poised to submit a proposal to the government endorsing human embryonic stem cell research.

    • David Cyrano
    News
  • LONDON

    A controversy surrounding Oxford zoology professor Roy Anderson deepened last week with the news that he has stepped down temporarily from his responsibilities as governor of the Wellcome Trust.

    • Natasha Loder
    News
  • SYDNEY

    Sir Gustav Nossal, a leading immunologist and former president of the Australian Academy of Science, has been appointed Australian of the Year.

    • Peter Pockley
    News
  • PARIS

    The ambitions of IBM to become a major player in genomics took a step forward last week when the company joined a consortium set up to produce a map of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).

    • Declan Butler
    News
  • WASHINGTON

    Negotiators from 130 countries have reached agreement on a Biosafety Protocol that will require exporters of genetically-modified organisms to identify them as such.

    • Colin Macilwain
    News
  • BERLIN

    Nazi-era documents from the files of Adolf Butenandt, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biochemistry and later head of the Max Planck Society, will be opened for the first time this week.

    • Alison Abbott
    News
Top of page ⤴

News in Brief

Top of page ⤴

Correspondence

Top of page ⤴

Book Review

Top of page ⤴

Millennium Essay

  • The vigour of every discipline depends on people of broad vision.

    • Frederick Seitz
    Millennium Essay
Top of page ⤴

Futures

Top of page ⤴

News & Views

  • The most mysterious sort of lightning is ball lightning — glowing spheres of light that float in air. A new theory claims to explain nearly all the properties of these unusual balls of fire.

    • Graham K. Hubler
    News & Views
  • Before a honeybee can start to go out foraging, it must get to know the area around the hive. Bees do this by taking ‘orientation flights’, which apparently allow them to learn local landmarks. These flights are shaped like a hairpin — straight out and straight back — and get longer and faster as the bee becomes more familiar with the area.

    • Thomas Collett
    News & Views
  • The scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) allows us to ‘see’ atoms directly. Seven years ago STM pictures of a ‘quantum corral’ — a circle of iron atoms on a copper surface — revealed what happens when electron waves are confined within a cavity. The latest STM images are of an elliptical corral, in which the signature of an atom at one focus is clearly sensed at the other ‘empty’ focus.

    • Eric Heller
    News & Views
  • Using DNA microarray technology, it is now possible to screen large numbers of genes for their activity, or lack of it, under various conditions. With this approach, patients with a disease known as diffuse large B-cell lymphoma can be divided into two groups which have markedly different prospects of survival. The hope is that improved treatments will follow.

    • Anton Berns
    News & Views
  • When new plants are introduced into an environment, they can cause havoc for native species. For instance, American robins nesting in the alien honeysuckleLonicera maackiiare more likely to lose their young to predators, perhaps because their nests are closer to the ground. Another example, that of unwanted grasses invading golf courses, suggests that natural methods might be used to control exotic plants.

    • Peter D. Moore
    News & Views
  • Knowing how contaminant dissolved in rainfall will behave on its way through a catchment area has clear practical uses. One such study has been carried out in mid-Wales using an innocuous marker, the sodium chloride blown inland in sea spray. The authors find that a non-fractal input (in rainfall) is turned into a fractal output (in stream water). One conclusion is that contaminant flushing from a watershed will take more time than usually expected.

    • Colin P. Stark
    • Marc Stieglitz
    News & Views
  • Most slowly progressive neurodegenerative diseases begin long before clinical symptoms appear, making it difficult to predict who will succumb to them. Some genetic tests are available, but the first behavioural indicator of disease has now been identified for one neurodegenerative disorder, Huntington's disease. People who carry the affected gene but do not yet show symptoms have an impaired ability to point accurately at targets up to seven years before symptoms begin.

    • John C. Rothwell
    News & Views
  • The fundamental time scale of chemical reactions is set by the internal vibrations of the reacting molecules, which are incredibly fast — lasting a few 10–100 femtoseconds. So short laser pulses are needed to observe or control such reactions in real time. Since the development of the femtosecond laser, the active control of molecular dynamics has greatly advanced, for example when selecting the product of a branching reaction.

    • Stuart A. Rice
    News & Views
  • Graphite fluoride is the most water-repellent compound known. Daedalus once devised a mist-proof plastic using this substance, and now plans to extend the principles involved to wood, leather and other organic materials.

    • David Jones
    News & Views
  • Olivier Kahn: Magnetochemist who helped create a new approach to inorganic chemistry.

    • Peter Day
    News & Views
Top of page ⤴

Brief Communication

Top of page ⤴

Corrigendum

Top of page ⤴

Article

Top of page ⤴

Letter

Top of page ⤴

Erratum

Top of page ⤴

New on the Market

Top of page ⤴
Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Quick links