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After languishing in recent years, the vision of a research community operating effectively at a European level is being actively pursued. Larger member states should give it their support.
The fall-out from case of alleged systematic scientific fraud in Germany is proving even more damaging than expected for the country's clinical research community.
An Oxford epidemiologist wrongly accused of winning support for a readership post through a relationship with her head of department has received an apology.
A collision between two gold nuclei, hurling in opposite directions around a 2.4 mile ring, has opened a bit to simulate conditions during the first few microseconds after the Big Bang.
It is the world's biggest medical research charity and it exerts a huge influence over UK science policy. But is the Wellcome Trust becoming a victim of its own success, asks Natasha Loder.
Studies of neurally inspired silicon circuits are showing how networks of neurons can select and multiply input signals. They may also provide alternative ways to build computers modelled on biology.
Unlike tissues such as skin and liver, the adult brain has long been thought to have little capacity for self-repair. But new results indicate that, after cells in the cortex are damaged, undifferentiated cells from other regions of the brain may be recruited to replace them.
An ecological battle between shrimps is underway in the Netherlands. The nativeGammarus duebeni has been threatened first by a species from North America and now by Dikerogammarus villosus, an invader from eastern Europe.
The importance of left- and right-handedness in nature is such that scientists have often wondered about its origins. The first use of a magnetic field to bias a chemical reaction in favour of one mirror-image product provides a possible explanation.
For over a century, geneticists studying the fruitflyDrosophila have been using classical ‘forward’ genetics to find out which genetic changes produce specific physical characteristics. We may now have the necessary tools for ‘reverse’ genetics, too.
Semiconductor nanostructures known as ‘quantum dots’ are often described as artificial atoms. Researchers are now building quantum dots that interact strongly with light, because they may form the basis of a new generation of lasers.
Genetic transformation technology could be a way of controlling malaria by creating strains of mosquito that cannot transmit the parasite; at the least, such strains will provide a tool for investigating parasite-insect interaction. A transformation system has now been devised for one species of mosquito,Anopheles stephensi.
How small-scale (10–25-km diameter) spiral structures are created on the sea surface is poorly understood. From a study of 400 photographs of such spirals taken from space, it seems that turbulence generated at the boundary of two water masses in relative motion is often the driving force.
A polymer material laced with tiny particles of explosive could have many uses. When detonated it will expand suddenly into a solid structure, which could be used to block pipes or developed into a new type of air bag.
Kent R. Wilson — inspiring architect of laser chemistry who developed techniques to probe the molecular dynamics of chemical and biochemical reactions.
