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Statements by presidents of countries and societies highlight the concern that human genome data be publicly accessible, and quickly. The devil may lie in the emerging terms of public access to privately owned databases.
News that satellites of the global mobile telephone company Iridium are to be de-orbited and burnt up in the atmosphere as part of the bankruptcy agreement has inevitably ignited a private outbreak of Schadenfreude amongst radioastronomers.
A prominent biotechnology firm and a major US non-profit research institution are engaged in a patent infringement battle over mice being used to study Alzheimer's disease, a case with significant implications with neuroscientists.
The normally tranquil world of statistical physics and mechanics was rocked last week by a computer glitch that led to a temporary flurry of exchanges over nominations for the Boltzmann Medal, the field's most prestigious award that is given out once every three years.
Japan's parliament is expected to approve a new law later this month prohibiting the reimplantation into the uterus of human clones, chimeras, or ‘hybrids’ — but allowing experimentation with cloned embryos.
US space scientists are becoming increasingly alarmed about strict new government export control policies introduced in response to Congressional concern over the sale of missile technology to China.
The US company General Motors last week became the third major automobile manufacturer to withdraw from a lobbying group that has been leading opposition to the 1997 Kyoto accord designed to reduce global warming.
Shifting perceptions in Washington of the application of patent legislation to genetic information is reflected in the fact a controversial patent issued last month on the gene for a key HIV target protein might not have been approved under recently revised patent guidelines.
The Israeli government should attach fewer strings to the grants that it makes for research and development, according to Tel Aviv University economist Manuel Trajtenberg.
News that the largest single investment in science infrastructure in two decades is to be made at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories near Oxford has sparked bitter protests from a rival site.
Arguments used by French science minister Claude Allègre for cooperating with Britain to build a synchrotron rather than constructing a national source in France came under heavy fire from a parliamentary report last week.
A reanalysis of the wrist bones of early human fossils provides the first good evidence that humans evolved from ancestors who 'knuckle-walked', as chimps and gorillas do today.
Laser light can be used to trap atoms in cavities. With cool atoms and intense laser beams the optical force can be strong enough to overcome gravity. By using a microcavity made from high-quality mirrors it is now possible to trap an atom with a single photon.
Parkinson's disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder, and threatens more and more elderly people in the Western world. A model of this disease has now been developed in the fruitflyDrosophila melanogaster . This model should prove useful in understanding the pathology of the disease and, perhaps, in developing ways to treat it.
Identifying the sources behind the most energetic radiation to reach Earth — higher-energy gamma rays — is not easy. There now appears to be two distinct populations among these bright objects: those that are associated with the Galactic plane and those that lie in the solar neighbourhood.
Tools used to manipulate visible light are much harder to build for ‘hard’ X-rays, where the wavelength can be 5,000 times smaller. The first optical cavity for hard X-rays may never be used to make an X-ray laser, but may soon lead to the development of narrow band filters for X-ray radiation.
Membrane fusion takes place in myriad cellular processes, and requires proteins known as SNAREs to pin the fusing membranes together. Syntaxin is one such SNARE, and must be activated for membrane fusion to take place. The structure of syntaxin in complex with the protein nSec1 may help us to understand how activation of syntaxin occurs.
Vesicles — intracellular transport vehicles — need to move about within cells, but how they do this is not known. Structures resembling ‘comets’ made from the cytoskeletal protein actin are now thought to be involved in propelling vesicles around cells.
The microstructure of natural materials such as bone and wood makes them strong and tough. Chemists are also good at crystallizing fine particles, but a flexible adhesive is needed to bind them together. Daedalus thinks he has the answer.
