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The US Senate is expected to vote on legislation that would ban cloning by the end of this month. Supporting cloning for research is both right and in the national interests of the United States.
More than 2,000 experts will be involved in a four-year effort to survey the health of the world's ecosystems and threats posed by human activities. Virginia Gewin profiles the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.
Using short magnetic pulses, neuroscientists are reaching into the human skull and temporarily altering volunteers' brain activity. Marina Chicurel takes an induction course.
We can hope that the term 'palaeophosphatometry' won't catch on. The approach it describes has nonetheless delivered a plausible — if partial — answer to one of the main questions about Earth's history.
As plant life diversified during evolution there would have been intense competition for light, making the ability to twist and climb advantageous. A subcellular filamentous network can create the twist seen in climbing plants.
The conundrum of how an animal's metabolic rate is related to its size continues to exercise biologists. A possible solution that takes into account differences during rest and exercise deserves attention.
A device has been invented that produces radiation in the terahertz range. It is a considerable feat of semiconductor fabrication, and could be used in a wide range of applications.
Pollen analysis is a valuable tool in helping to reconstruct past climatic conditions. Such studies can be informative on local as well as regional scales, as findings with fossil spruce pollen in Maine show.
Chromosomes adopt their well-known form only at a certain phase in the cell-division cycle, just before they separate. But the proteins that help shape chromosomes also seem to be at work earlier on.