Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Biologists must become more aware that their work could be abused to develop weapons of mass destruction. But it should not have taken the disturbing events of recent weeks to bring this debate to the fore.
Game theory has been used to study problems from nuclear warfare to animal behaviour. Now physicists are extending it into the quantum realm, opening a new range of potential applications. Erica Klarreich reports.
Too many conservation projects are failing because of ignorance about the behaviour of endangered species. This is why the natural world needs ethologists, says Jonathan Knight.
Opals do it, even biomolecules do it, so why can't self-assembly be harnessed to create photonic crystals with near-perfect order? A new technique shows that absolute order may not require absolute control.
Using genetic approaches and a filamentous fungus, molecular biologists have found further evidence of an intimate relationship between genomes and the histone proteins that evolved to package them.
In a plasma, a charged particle attracts a cloud of oppositely charged particles that modifies its behaviour. The first direct observations of this ultrafast 'dressing' process confirm key tenets of quantum kinetic theory.
Certain variable immune proteins affect an animal's choice of mate. In some species, females pick males with proteins as dissimilar as possible to their own. Studies of sticklebacks now reveal another mechanism.
Non-equilibrium processes, such as heat conduction in a bar of metal, remain poorly characterized at the microscopic level. Detailed analysis of simple models can introduce a new degree of understanding.
In response to a protein that is linked to inflammation, cells either die or survive. Some molecular sleuthing has shed light on how the balance is tipped towards survival.
Limited energy resources and increasing environmental pollution are driving the development of flexible technological solutions that involve alternative means of energy supply and storage. This Insight illustrates how the search for cleaner, cheaper, smaller and more efficient energy technologies has been driven by developments in materials science and engineering.
