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The director of the US National Institutes of Health has laid out a plan that would align the world's largest biomedical research agency more closely to the future shape of the life sciences. It deserves political support.
A new biology journal, positioned to compete with the likes of Nature, Science and Cell, aims to reinvent the economics of high-quality scientific publishing. Declan Butler examines the bottom line.
One grain of sand is a solid. But a lot of grains together can behave like a solid or a liquid. By probing this dual personality, physicists hope to understand a host of real-world systems, says Mark Buchanan.
Chris Miller is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and professor of biochemistry at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, and works on ion-channel mechanisms.
Mutations in the presenilin protein are associated with Alzheimer's disease. It now seems that mutant presenilin could wreak havoc on neuronal functions by triggering the activation of certain genes.
An analysis of astronomical data suggests not only that the Universe is finite, but also that it has a specific, rather rigid topology. If confirmed, this is a major discovery about the nature of the Universe.
Different types of neurons are born in a conserved, sequential order during development. The molecular cogs in the clock-like mechanism driving this process are now being revealed.
The association between legumes and nitrogen-fixing bacteria requires molecular recognition to allow bacterial entry into root hairs. The discovery of a novel type of plant receptor clarifies how this happens.
In collisions between nuclei, a proton or neutron might be knocked out of one nucleus. Now, two-proton knockout has been demonstrated, opening a new route to the creation of neutron-rich systems for study.
Two studies help reveal the dynamics of memory. New memories that weaken during the day can be strengthened by a period of sleep. And when memories are reactivated, they must be re-stored in order to persist.