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With one ageing telescope in space, and another mired in construction troubles on Earth, Matt Mountain has a tough job to do. Jeff Kanipe meets the new custodian of everyone's favourite space telescope.
Marine scientists are getting ready for their newest tool, a versatile robot submersible that can travel into the oceans' deepest abyss. Robert Cooke visits the Massachusetts lab where the future of deep-sea exploration is taking shape.
Approaches to conservation that seek to protect the most endangered species have had only mixed success. Is it time to move away from biodiversity ‘hotspots’, and stress the economic value of ecosystems? Lucy Odling-Smee investigates.
A pill that works by putting the hunger induced by cannabis into reverse could jump-start a languishing market for obesity drugs, reports Meredith Wadman.
Fritz London's single-minded thinking led him to surpass even Einstein, as he believed correctly that quantum mechanics was right at all scales, including the macroscopic.
The identification of a receptor for gibberellin, a plant signalling molecule, opens up new prospects for understanding plant growth and development. Not least, crop-selection programmes should benefit.
Phytoplankton productivity depends on the replenishment of nutrients in ocean surface waters. An explanation for a region of strikingly low productivity invokes a little-considered aspect of the nutrient cycle.
Why do cells of the same type, grown in the same conditions, look and behave so differently? Studying fluctuations in a well-characterized genetic pathway in yeast hints at how such variation arises.
The holes of mesoporous materials provide sheltered venues for many catalytic and adsorbent processes. A complex and beautiful crystalline germanate structure widens the scope of such materials.
Over the past ten years, microscopy has been transformed from slice, stain and fix, to the capacity to view living cells and even whole organisms in real time. Lisa Melton looks at what's on offer.
Despite funding uncertainties, Berlin's facilities, charisma and cosmopolitan atmosphere continue to draw researchers from across Europe, says Quirin Schiermeier.
The importance of surfaces and interfaces cannot be overstated, with their reach extending from the hardware of the digital age to the processes of life. The past half-century has seen the development of a varied toolkit for characterizing them which is providing a powerful platform for scientific research and manufacturing technology. In this Insight, Nature brings together literature demonstrating that the investigation of surfaces and interfaces has moved to the forefront of an increasing number of fascinating fundamental scientific enquiries.
