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When an infectious disease appears to be in decline, the agent that causes it tends to disappear from the biomedical research agenda. As recent events have revealed, that can be a mistake.
Harvard University is planning to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a new natural history museum, an expanded faculty and extra facilities for scientific research and teaching.
The mysterious relationship between legume-type plants and the nitrogen-fixing bacteria they harbour is to be investigated in a Japanese genome-sequencing project.
Lately, international arms control has looked like a cause fast falling out of fashion. Memories of the cold war are fading, the population thinks about nuclear danger less, and, in the United States, the new administration of George W. Bush expresses more interest in missile defence systems than in arms control agreements.
Consumer panic has disrupted German meat markets after the discovery of a small number of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) cases in German-born cattle. As the government attempts to get a grip on the crisis, the agriculture and health ministers have lost their jobs, and food-supply regulation and research are set for a major shake-up.
Does an outbreak of poliomyelitis in the Caribbean caused by a mutated vaccine mean that plans to complete the disease's eradication must be reworked? Tom Clarke considers the evidence.
Telecommunications companies have paid a heavy price for their share of the radio spectrum. So they have been quick to exploit 'multiple antennas' that can increase transmission rates in urban areas.
The molecular mechanisms underlying the link between obesity and diabetes have been elusive. A new protein, christened 'resistin', can now be added to the panoply of factors that may be involved.
Isotope studies furnish evidence of the source of CO2 in certain natural-gas reserves, and of the long-term retention of such gas in unexpected environments such as ancient continental crust.
RNA silencing allows cells to block invading viruses or mobile DNAs. An RNA-cleaving enzyme involved in the first step of silencing has now been identified.
'Ring species' occur when one species grades into two at the overlap of a circular population distribution. Good examples are rare, but one case has now passed some rigorous tests.
How does the brain group some or other set of features — say of cats or of dogs — into a general category? Astonishingly, it seems that such information can be represented at the single-neuron level.
Water is a common but unusual liquid. Precise measures of the arrangement of molecules in water may help us to better understand some of its peculiar properties.
Science's unpredictability has not prevented a group of invited scientists from being farsighted about future possibilities in fundamental research and its applications. Anticipation is one thing, vision quite another. Geneticists and others are relishing the prospect of the maps and inventories that are to come, and the inevitable Insights into organismal development and function, relationships between species and between kingdoms, and the evolutionary past. But where's the new vision? And what sorts of visions are driving other parts of biology and other sciences towards new discoveries and technologies?
