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Frank international discussions need to start immediately if anything is to be salvaged from the space station, whose completion currently relies on the ailing space shuttle.
In 2015, Pluto will welcome its first visitor, a robot named New Horizons. Amanda Haag meets the planetary scientist who nursed the mission through its darkest days.
Does the Moon's surface contain an archive of the early history of Earth? According to an intriguing idea, based on recently published analyses of lunar soils, it might do — and the proposal can be tested.
Neurons extend one long axon, through which they transmit electrical impulses to other cells in the nervous system. Surprisingly, it seems that where the axon forms is determined entirely within the neuron.
A new way to manipulate quantum states resolves a long-standing conundrum about who knows what, and when and how, in the quantum world. The result is, as one has come to expect, startling and counterintuitive.
A continental-scale analysis of habitat and bird distribution in South America provides the latest challenge for neutral theory — a controversial idea in ecology about what determines the make-up of communities.
Cellular senescence stops the growth of cells. This process, first glimpsed in cell culture, is now confirmed by in vivo evidence as a vital mechanism that constrains the malignant progression of many tumours.
Earthquakes occur in cool, foundering tectonic plates deep within the Earth. But seismic data from the southwestern Pacific indicate that the minerals that make up the plates at depth don't behave as if they are cool.
The spatial organization of signalling proteins in the cell membrane is often ascribed to lipid-based ‘rafts’. But single-molecule tracking reveals that such organization probably arises by protein–protein interactions.
Reduced side effects and more effective therapies are some of the benefits promised by pharmacogenomics. But to reach these goals industry will have to marshall a broad range of skills, as Ricki Lewis explains.
Flexible and relatively unfettered, non-profit foundations are able to boldly go into areas of research funding often untouched by public bodies, says Helen Gavaghan.
