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The history of energy research highlights the importance and inadequacies of markets, and a yawning gap in the priorities of governments. It's time for a radical change.
Lengthy visas delays and persistent security checks have turned foreign scientists away from the United States. Now the country is striving to woo them back. Geoff Brumfiel and Heidi Ledford report.
Sunlight is a ubiquitous form of energy, but not as yet an economic one. In the first of two features, Oliver Morton looks at how interest in photovoltaic research is heating up in California's Silicon Valley. In the second, Carina Dennis talks to Australian researchers hoping to harness the dawn Sun's heat.
Sunlight is a ubiquitous form of energy, but not as yet an economic one. In the first of two features, Oliver Morton looked at how interest in photovoltaic research is heating up in California's Silicon Valley. In this, the second, Carina Dennis talks to Australian researchers hoping to harness the dawn Sun's heat.
With scant evidence that market-based conservation works, argues Douglas J. McCauley, the time is ripe for returning to the protection of nature for nature's sake.
An unpublished paper has recently come to light, which shows that even at an early age, Alfred Russel Wallace was bold enough to approach the scientific establishment with his ideas.
Cancer cells are generally viewed as a problem innate to their host, but evidence is mounting that they can evolve to become infectious agents and be transmitted between individuals.
Turbulence is generally regarded as a permanent feature of many fluid flows. That assumption is challenged by the claim that shear turbulence has a limited lifetime — albeit sometimes a very long one.
Did drug researchers have a lucky break when they developed antiviral drugs for influenza? Crystal structures of enzymes from the H5N1 virus suggest that they did, and provide avenues for further exploration.
The Sato–Tate conjecture holds that the error term occurring in many important problems in number theory conforms to a specific probability distribution. That conjecture has now been proved for a large group of cases.
The creation of asymmetric molecules from symmetrical precursors is a useful strategy for organic synthesis. A new catalyst can accomplish this task through a unique, symmetry-breaking reaction.
It's not clear what general level of accuracy is required in translating the genetic code. But the protective role of proof-reading is evident from a case in which a small mistake has a catastrophic effect.
In mice with the sticky mutation, the cells that are involved in motor coordination degenerate, due to a single nucleotide change in the enzyme called alanyl-tRNA synthetase. This demonstrates the potentially catastrophic consequences of small changes in the fidelity of translation.
A dark region on a small (550-metre) asteroid, 25143 Itokawa, is significantly more space-weathered than a nearby bright region. This shows that space-weathered materials accumulate on small asteroids.
The flow of a fluid down a straight pipe provides an example of a shear flow undergoing a sudden transition from laminar to turbulent motion. Experimental data and numerical calculations show that the lifetime of the turbulent state does not diverge, but rather increases exponentially with the Reynolds number.
A new class of low-cost, non-precious-metal-polymer composite catalysts has been developed. These are not yet as good as platinum, but perform reproducibly in H2-O2 fuel cells at high voltages and with good stability.
This study describes a simple catalyst that can be used to protect secondary alcohols with a silyl protecting group. High yields and enantioselectivies for a number of substrates were obtained. This, and related, catalysts may be used to synthesize, in a more practical and efficient manner, important organic molecules.
Lakes formed by thawing of frozen ground in North Siberia emit methane through bubbling. Now this flux has been quantified, revealing that it may be five times higher than previously thought, requiring current estimates of methane emissions from northern wetlands to be increased by 10–63%.
An investigation of how cortical circuitry changes after a major manipulation of sensory input finds changes in cortical inhibitory circuitry. Out of the investigation also comes the description of a new form of synaptic plasticity between inhibitory interneurons and their targets.
In monkeys trained to categorize motion direction, two cortical motion-processing areas were found to carry category information to different degrees: lateral intraparietal neurons responded to direction depending on their category membership whereas middle temporal neurons encoded only direction.
By invoking a concept called Hill–Robertson interference, a computer simulation has been developed that selects for recombination regardless of whether deleterious mutations exhibit epistasis. This provides a new framework for understanding how recombination may have evolved.
Denitrification, the biological conversion of nitrate to nitrogen, was believed to be restricted to bacteria and archaea. It has now been shown that highly abundant benthic foraminifers are also capable of denitrification, suggesting that much remains to be learned about the global nitrogen cycle.
Examining how the division rate of primordial germ cells (PGCs) in the fly ovary is controlled finds that there is a feedback loop composed of positive and negative signals, whereby PGCs express an EGF ligand called Spitz, which is essential for survival of adjacent somatic cells, and the somatic cells in turn inhibit PGC proliferation.
A proteomics strategy in Caenorhabditis elegans has identified spermatogenesis-specific factors required for DNA compaction, chromosome segregation and fertility, many of which cause male sterility in mice.
Trafficking of the phytohormone auxin throughout plant cells is highly regulated by a variety of plasma membrane auxin carriers. This study reports the discovery of a new intracellular compartment, the SNX1 endosomal compartment, which is involved in the trafficking of one of these auxin carriers.
Determination of the first structure for an RNase II in the absence and presence of RNA reveals that the domain structure is different than sequence analysis had predicted. The structural details explain why RNase II only acts on single-stranded RNA, and how it moves along the RNA to processively degrade it.
Manufacturing jobs may be shifting from the large drug companies to contract organizations as firms re-evaluate their strengths. But scientists with analytical skills and an eye for efficiency can find a job transforming materials into medicines, says Hannah Hoag.
