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As data analysis shifts towards protein expression and structure determination, demands for standardization and ease of access are leaving bioinformaticians scrambling to keep their skills up to date, says Helen Gavaghan.
Courses to teach bioinformatics are starting to spring up all over North America. But the interdisciplinary nature of the subject means that there is a severe lack of experienced instructors, so the quality may vary between programmes, warns Potter Wickware.
Japan's government is belatedly realizing that it needs to increase funding for training in bioinformatics, says Robert Triendl. But lack of specialists in the field could hinder the country's efforts.
A broader vision of a pan-European research enterprise will remain just that until the continent's nation states become more imaginative in their approaches to collaboration.
As the 'war on terrorism' unfolds, some politicians are calling for controls on the availability of encryption software. But many computer scientists claim such moves would play into the terrorists' hands. David Adam reports.
Will the European Union's member states ever put the goal of continental cohesion in science ahead of their individual national interests? Quirin Schiermeier considers the prospects for creating a 'European Research Area'.
Ancient Egyptians used sophisticated combinations of natural substances to embalm the human body. Over time, they modified their recipes to balance quality of preservation with cost and availability of materials.
The structures of crystals, from metals to proteins, have successfully been explored with X-rays. An ultrafast switch turns this idea around and uses a crystal to control the timing of X-ray pulses.
The Wnt family of proteins is a large one. Various combinations of its members control all sorts of developmental processes, including, it now seems, a pathway involving cell adhesion.
Phase transitions occurring at a temperature of absolute zero — quantum phase transitions — are hard to measure. A new type of quantum phase transition is now predicted to occur in two dimensions, rather than three.
The 'how, where and when' of possible Neanderthal coexistence with Cro-Magnons, and their extinction, continue to exercise a varied community of researchers. The latest interpretations of the fossil and archaeological records were aired at two meetings.
