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Despite the warning shots of SARS and last year's Asian outbreak of avian flu, governments are still not doing enough to monitor and prepare for the next viral pandemic. This inaction is scandalous.
Cave paintings and catacomb walls around Europe are decaying under microbial attack. Are nightclub lights and designer chemicals the answer? Federica Castellani finds out.
Having suffered heavily from avian influenza in 2004, Vietnam might now be brewing the next human flu pandemic. Yet, as Peter Aldhous discovers, local researchers don't have the resources to investigate the risk properly.
An effective vaccine against malaria remains elusive. But the finding that a genetically manipulated malaria parasite can protect its host lends fresh appeal to the idea of vaccines involving live attenuated parasites.
How do you build a planetary system? Astronomers are tackling the question by peering back in time at the gas and dust surrounding stars younger than our Sun.
Discoveries of large, carnivorous mammals from the Cretaceous challenge the long-held view that primitive mammals were small and uninteresting. Have palaeontologists been asking the wrong questions?
In the Universe, the element carbon is created only in stars, in a remarkable reaction called the triple-α process. Fresh insights into the reaction now come from the latest experiments carried out on Earth.
Grazing and mechanical mowing can increase plant diversity in grassland, probably by weakening dominant species and so allowing others to thrive. A partially parasitic flower can, it seems, have a similar effect.
