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The pharmaceutical industry's merger mania has done little to spur the innovation on which its future health will depend. Is it time to rethink the role of research within 'big pharma'?
Can taxonomy shed its dusty image and reinvent itself as a vibrant discipline for the Internet age? Virginia Gewin talks to the pioneers who are trying to turn this vision into reality.
If specific immune responses could be toned down without completely suppressing immunity, it would provide a boon for the treatment of transplant rejection, autoimmune disease and allergy. Erika Check reports.
The soft path seeks to improve the overall productivity of water use and deliver water services matched to the needs of end users, rather than seeking sources of new supply.
Application of a concept drawn from two areas of macromolecular chemistry shows how artificial binding sites that resemble those found in globular proteins can be made.
A biochemical link between certain congenital muscular dystrophies and the associated brain malformation known as cobblestone lissencephaly has been elusive. But it looks as if that link has been found.
In a stream of photons, the particles tend to bunch together, but electrons in a beam do the opposite. At last, this quantum effect for free electrons — the Hanbury Brown–Twiss anticorrelation — has been seen experimentally.
Our cells have a built-in mechanism for 'silencing' genes, called RNA interference. This capability has now been exploited to protect cells in culture dishes from HIV-1 and poliovirus.
Travel to overseas destinations is possible even for certain tiny land invertebrates. Although they cannot fly, the ocean is not an insuperable barrier because they can survive for longish periods in sea water.
Gas bubbles in a liquid can convert sound energy into light. Detailed measurements of a single bubble show that, in fact, most of the sound energy goes into chemical reactions taking place inside this 'micro-reactor'.
A study of families containing asthma sufferers has led to the discovery of a gene that is associated with the disease. The finding brings the biological basis of asthma into sharper focus.
