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.
Science policymakers worldwide are waking up to the opportunities of ‘the Grid’ — a supercomputing network transforming many disciplines. But it poses new organizational challenges for researchers and their institutions.
One of the main organisations working for cuts in US greenhouse gas emissions says that targets specified in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol are unrealistic and will have to be re-negotiated.
Britain’s Wellcome Trust is contributing £8.8 million to a project to provide a single reference map of the human genome on which the predicted function and structure of gene sequences could be anchored.
Growing delays in high tech US patent applications should be addressed by letting the United States Patent and Trademark keep all the fees that it raises, according to a US Congressman.
Information technology, bioinformatics, nanotechnology and post-genomic research are all set for a funding boost from the UK government. They are some of the areas of interest identified by the UK research councils in their bid for a share of the extra spending on science announced last week.
Challenges to the use of DNA testing kits in court cases could be ended by the decision of a leading supplier to make public proprietary information about the kits.
Complaints about excessive bureaucracy and delays in obtaining research funds from the European Commission have been endorsed by an independent advisory panel.
A better balance in the contributions to joint projects of researchers from industrialized and developing countries could be achieved by an international code of professional ethics, says the head of a French research agency.
Where is it best to hunt for genes that underlie cancer and heart disease? Isolated populations such as Iceland's, or ethnic melting pots like the United States? And what are the technological challenges, asks Alison Abbott.
Complex systems, such as the Internet, are surprisingly resistant to random errors. But a new study warns against complacency — the feature that makes the Internet immune to accidents also makes it vulnerable to attack.
'Checkpoints' ensure the accuracy of the process by which duplicated chromosomes are segregated into two new cells during cell division. A new checkpoint that operates early on in the chromosome-separating process has now been identified.
Massive releases of methane from the ocean floor are increasingly being implicated in global climate perturbation in the past. The latest example comes from an episode of severe climatic and oceanic change that occurred around 180 million years ago.
The Notch signalling pathway is involved in establishing spatial boundaries in tissues during development. The ability of Notch to respond to its signalling partners is modified by a protein called Fringe, and we now know why: Fringe acts as a glycosyltransferase, adding carbohydrate chains to Notch.
Nutrients favouring certain types of phytoplankton over others can influence levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Silica is one such nutrient. The case is now put that a change in its availability accounted for a rise in atmospheric CO2 at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum.
The highly siderophile ('iron loving') elements such as platinum and palladium are more abundant in Earth's mantle than certain lines of evidence suggest they should be. New work lends support to the idea that this comparative enrichment in the mantle stems from meteorites.
Last week Daedalus proposed a method of measuring brain activity from the magnetic activity of sodium ions in nerve cells. He is now developing a nuclear magnetic psychometric hat, which may reveal the region-specific brain activity associated with subconscious thoughts.
Studies of stem cells will help in understanding the development and function of organs in mammals. They may also offer a way of treating diseases ranging from liver failure to Parkinson's disease.
