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Volume 427 Issue 6977, 26 February 2004

Volume 427 Issue 6977

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Editorial

  • Talks last weekend on choosing a site for ITER, the fusion project, ended in stalemate. But ITER deserves to proceed, and Japan's commitment to it is strongest.

    Editorial

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News

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News in Brief

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News Feature

  • Political strategies and careers are built and broken on the results of opinion polls. But polls' apparently small margins of error can hide large uncertainties. Tony Reichhardt surveys the issues.

    • Tony Reichhardt
    News Feature

  • Mathematical models incorporating ecological data are starting to be deployed on the front line in the battle against infectious disease. Virginia Gewin talks to the number-crunchers who are spearheading the assault.

    • Virginia Gewin
    News Feature
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Correspondence

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Commentary

  • Balancing the risks and benefits of clinical trial.

    • Marina Cavazzana-Calvo
    • Adrian Thrasher
    • Fulvio Mavilio
    Commentary
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Books & Arts

  • Could throwing spears have laid the foundations for language acquisition?

    • Robin Dunbar
    Books & Arts

  • The first images from the Mars Express orbiter highlight the universal beauty of the wilderness.

    • Martin Kemp
    Books & Arts
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Essay

  • Do inhibitors of blood-vessel growth found naturally in our bodies defend most of us against progression of cancer to a lethal stage?

    • Judah Folkman
    • Raghu Kalluri
    Essay
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News & Views

  • The p53 protein is among the most effective of the body's natural defences against cancer. News comes of a promising way of releasing the protein from its inhibitions to carry out its anti-tumour duties.

    • David P. Lane
    • Peter M. Fischer
    News & Views

  • Light from the most distant sources known, emitted when the Universe was only a billion years old, hints at a complex history of star and galaxy formation, and at their effect on the primordial gas around them.

    • S. George Djorgovski
    News & Views

  • A long-standing point of intrigue has been how certain non-human primates are resistant to HIV-1. The discovery in macaque monkeys of a protein that resides in mysterious cytoplasmic bodies holds the key.

    • Stephen P. Goff
    News & Views

  • The sea floor around the Hawaiian island chain is unusually shallow. New seismic evidence suggests that this up-raised ‘swell’ is partly due to heating and thinning of the lithosphere beneath.

    • Neil M. Ribe
    News & Views

  • Common wisdom holds that ion channels and ion pumps, with their obvious functional differences, should have visibly dissimilar structures. It seems that's not necessarily so.

    • David C. Gadsby
    News & Views

  • Nerve growth factor determines neuronal cell fate during development or after injury. A newly identified ‘death factor’, an unprocessed form of this protein, induces cell death by activating two receptors in concert.

    • David R. Kaplan
    • Freda D. Miller
    News & Views

  • Superconductivity is a complex phenomenon. And now there's something else to think about: a magnetic material whose structure is not mirror symmetric and yet, unexpectedly, superconducts.

    • S. S. Saxena
    • P. Monthoux
    News & Views
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Brief Communication

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Article

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Letter

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Prospects

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Special Report

  • Young scientists studying abroad often hit roadblocks when heading home. Some of these are now being cleared away, says Sally Goodman.

    • Sally Goodman
    Special Report
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Career View

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