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Volume 413 Issue 6853, 20 September 2001

Prospects

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Regions

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Opinion

  • Last week's attacks in New York and Washington were an offence against fundamental values that merits a well-targeted response, helped by science. But enhanced contacts with Islamic colleagues should also be pursued.

    Opinion
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News

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News in Brief

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News Feature

  • Developmental biologists and cell biologists have long ploughed their separate furrows. But now these two disciplines are coming together in unexpected and exciting ways, says Helen Pearson.

    • Helen Pearson
    News Feature
  • Over the coming decade, exploration of Mars may reveal whether or not life ever existed on the red planet — but only if the missions can avoid detecting any microbes they bring with them, says Tom Clarke.

    • Tom Clarke
    News Feature
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Correspondence

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Book Review

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Words

  • Serious treatments of science in fiction can be illuminating for both scientists and non-scientists.

    • Susan Gaines
    Words
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Concepts

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News & Views

  • Whales must have evolved from land-based mammals, but fossil evidence of some of the steps in between has been patchy. Newly discovered skeletons with legs fill in the gaps.

    • Christian de Muizon
    News & Views
  • One of the dirty little secrets of physics is that there is no generally accepted explanation of the basic laws of friction. An advance in the theory of cracks will stimulate fresh thinking on the question.

    • David A. Kessler
    News & Views
  • In plant roots, different cell types are organized in a well-defined pattern: each cell knows exactly where it is and what it should do. A molecule that tells cells where they are has now been discovered.

    • Sarah Hake
    News & Views
  • The search for materials that lose electrical resistance — that is, become superconducting — at ever higher temperatures continues to pay dividends.

    • Paul Grant
    News & Views
  • Flocking, herding, swarming: call it what you will. But when you're somebody's lunch there's safety in numbers, even when the predator is an aquatic plant.

    • Peter D. Moore
    News & Views
  • Using optical fibres, experimentalists have confirmed that a physical version of déjà vu — whereby a system returns to its original state — does occur with light waves.

    • Nail N. Akhmediev
    News & Views
  • The finely balanced activity of enzymes and their regulators keeps the cell-division cycle under control. A newly discovered molecule that ensures the timely destruction of one regulator is mutated in some cancer cells.

    • Michael Schwab
    • Mike Tyers
    News & Views
  • Daedalus is hunting for the gene for the human soul. Once found, the way will be open for several experiments, all of them controversial.

    • David Jones
    News & Views
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Brief Communication

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Progress

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Article

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Letter

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