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The Kyoto Protocol is just a small first step in restricting man's influence on climate. If we can't prevent fires in Indonesia, such international efforts to limit the effects of climate change could be in vain.
A strange Australian mole has eluded scientific study for more than a century. Now biologists are teaming up with Aboriginal trackers to unearth the secrets of the itjaritjari. Carina Dennis checks on their progress.
Vast tracts of Indonesia's peat swamps have been drained in a misguided attempt to turn them into rice plantations. Now the landscape burns every year, belching smoke and hastening global warming. Peter Aldhous investigates.
RNA interference — RNAi for short — might provide a way to silence disease-associated genes, but problems of delivery have hampered progress. Those problems may have been solved, at least in animal studies.
How does variation in ocean-floor rocks arise from differences in the temperature of their mantle source? A new angle on the question comes from painstaking work on one of the geological wonders of the world.
When a break occurs in the DNA double helix, it must be dealt with rapidly. The structure of one of the cellular machines responsible is now revealed, offering insights into its impressive speed and flexibility.
Will global warming cause northern forests to spread into arctic tundra? A study of black spruce suggests that the answer is complex and varies according to latitude and altitude.
In paper wasps, facial markings are cheap ‘status badges’ that would seem to be susceptible to cheating. But wasps punish those whose markings lie. Social competition is, it appears, a strong selective force.
Where two oppositely magnetized regions meet, there is a so-called domain wall. Under the right conditions, this wall can be made to oscillate like a pendulum, suggesting a new approach to electronics.
Technological innovations in detecting and studying protein–protein interactions are providing new ways of doing research in cell signalling. Diane Gershon investigates.
