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Young European immunologists should benefit from demographic shifts if they can wait long enough for the opportunities to materialize, says Helen Gavaghan.
Foundations and philanthropists are injecting new life into vaccine and drug development, especially for AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, says Diane Gershon.
'Pro-life' groups define the beginning of human life as the union of sperm and egg, and equate the harvesting of human embryonic stem cells to homicide. But our biological understanding lends little support to these views.
Italy is a major economic power, but it underachieves in research. Alison Abbott examines attempts to reform the nation's scientific institutions — and considers their prospects under the new government of Silvio Berlusconi.
By monitoring the activity of up to a hundred brain cells at once, neuroscientists are gaining new insights into brain function and paving the way for fully functioning prosthetic limbs. Marina Chicurel reports.
A new sort of anticancer drug, designed to suppress the wayward protein that causes a type of leukaemia, is under the spotlight. Biological detective work has now revealed how this cancer becomes resistant to the drug.
The interstellar medium is mainly hydrogen gas, which is thought to cool to form clouds of molecular hydrogen. But the discovery of a large cloud of cold atomic hydrogen overturns that belief.
The traditional view is that, when a cellular protein becomes linked to a modifying group known as ubiquitin, it's curtains for that protein. But non-destructive functions for ubiquitin are now emerging.
Mats of photosynthetic microorganisms known as cyanobacteria generate molecular hydrogen. If they were doing so earlier in Earth's history, the effect on the evolution of the atmosphere could have been profound.
Plasma cells are a key part of the immune system, secreting antibodies to ward off invaders. The discovery of a protein required for the production of plasma cells will give immunologists a better idea of how they develop.
Conventional wisdom says that superconductivity and magnetism are incompatible bedfellows. So the idea of iron as a superconductor is ruled out — or is it?
During cell division, a series of checkpoints make sure that events are proceeding normally. The latest checkpoint to be discovered monitors the actin cytoskeleton, ensuring that it is organized correctly.
This week Daedalus embarks on an especially ambitious scheme – inventing an entirely different chemistry. Its products are characterized by their random molecular structure.
