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Replicating the success of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), in an organization devoted to energy research, will be easier said than done.
Commercial and political pressures are pushing for a halt to the use of animals in toxicology tests in Europe. This change will also mean a move towards better science, says Alison Abbott.
Endangered languages often contain key linguistic insights found nowhere else. But the tongues are disappearing faster than scientists can document them. Jessica Ebert reports.
Fast transmission between nerve cells relies on specialized ion channels. Probing the structure of these proteins reveals how the binding of a neurotransmitter causes the communication channels to open.
Two-dimensional graphite could be useful in carbon-based electronic devices. How electrons move in these structures seems best described by relativistic quantum physics, modelling them as if they have no mass at all.
There is an urgent need for new antimicrobial agents because antibiotic resistance has become so prevalent. But a promising class of such agents, known as RAMPs, may suffer from the same problem.
Can we predict the final size of an earthquake from observations of its first few seconds? An extensive study of earthquakes around the Pacific Rim seems to indicate that we can — but uncertainties remain.
Many animals concentrate their activity around dawn and dusk. This timing is regulated by distinct ‘morning’ and ‘evening’ oscillators in the central nervous system. But how are these two neuronal clocks coordinated?
