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With a federal election due in Australia this year, the two main political parties are vying over how best to stimulate the growth of biotechnology. But the quest for a knowledge-intense economy requires long-term investment and management.
Can a bowlful of cold atoms help physicists simulate some of the most extreme conditions in the Universe? Philip Ball goes on the trail of the laboratory-scale black hole.
The confused nomenclature of genetics is blighting the field — some genes have multiple names whereas unrelated genes often share a common moniker. Helen Pearson examines attempts to bring order to the chaos.
Potassium channels can be closed by a process known as inactivation — this is, for instance, how nerve cells regulate firing frequency. Events involved in inactivation are now revealed in unprecedented detail.
The potato famine of 1845–1846 had a devastating effect on Ireland. DNA analysis of herbarium specimens has allowed identification of the strain of plant pathogen responsible.
Cells cannot survive without telomeres, the sequences that cap the ends of chromosomes, so cancer cells activate a telomere-generating enzyme. Studies of yeast now hint that they have a second way to make telomeres.
As devices shrink, tiny wires that conduct electrons ballistically — without scattering — have exciting applications. Carbon nanotubes can now do this over hundreds, even thousands, of nanometres, with stunning results.
Images from ground-based telescopes can be improved with adaptive optics. With this technique the images can even rival those produced by the Hubble space telescope.
The theory of how atoms and molecules diffuse and collide to form clusters and droplets is incomplete. A new approach can predict the growth of thin films on a surface.
By adapting rubber cables used to slow aircraft landing on aircraft-carriers, Daedalus predicts that a slowly contracting rubber could find more mundane uses.
