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Geochronologists are pinning down dates in deep time better than ever before. Rex Dalton talks to the experts who are redrawing the details of Earth history.
The US Food and Drug Administration may soon approve the use of cloned livestock for food. But regulatory roadblocks aren't the only thing keeping clones off the menu, as Heidi Ledford reports.
Most astronomers head for remote mountain-tops or deserts to study the cosmos. Jenny Hogan meets a confident team set up on a patch of farmland in a crowded corner of mainland Europe.
Mitochondria supply cells with energy, but in the process produce potentially damaging oxidants. It seems that a protein required to produce new mitochondria also protects against the resulting oxidative damage.
A new ice-core record from Antarctica provides the best evidence yet of a link between climate in the northern and southern polar regions that operates through changes in ocean circulation.
Intramembrane proteases have attracted much attention because of their biological and medical value. The first crystal structure of one of these enzymes begins to solve the mystery of how they work.
Transplants of photoreceptor cells offer hope for treating retinal disease. But getting the cells to make the right connections with the brain has been problematic. It seems the developmental stage of the cells may be the key.
Faint satellite galaxies of the Milky Way are being discovered that are dimmer than some of the Milky Way's star clusters. This finding poses a fundamental question: what are galaxies?
The complement C3 protein binds to pathogens, singling them out for execution by the immune system. Structural studies show how the chemical group responsible for this binding is exposed on activation.
There is a fundamental quantum limit to heat flow, just as there is to electric current. This limit is independent of what carries the heat, and could also have a role in an unexpected quarter: information theory.
Isotopes formed by the decay of radioactive nuclei provide evidence of how Earth was shaped in its infancy. But some decay products seem to be hidden — a finding that will revitalize a debate about Earth's interior.
A study of the duplicated genes in Paramecium tetraurelia suggests that after whole-genome duplication events, many duplicated genes are not able to immediately functionally diverge, because dosage constraints act on them. These dosage constraints also prevent loss of many duplicated genes after whole genome duplications.
The first description of the crystal structure of an intramembrane protease suggests a model where the substrate enters through a gated opening, unfolds, and becomes cleaved inside the membrane-embedded protease.
Patches of the lunar regolith in the Ina structure were recently removed, with the number of superimposed small craters and the 'freshness' of the regolith indicating that features within this structure must be as young as 10 million years. It is suggested that these result from recent, episodic out-gassing from deep within the Moon.
A clever experiment that makes use of two metallic islands connected by superconducting leads now confirms that thermal conduction by photons is limited by the same quantum value. Although the result is mainly of fundamental importance, there are implications for the design of bolometers, detectors of far-infrared light that are used in astrophysical studies, and electronic micro-refrigerators.
The X-ray crystal structure of the 340-kDa octamer of Wza, essential for group 1 capsule export in Escherichia coli, is determined. A large portion of Wza is located in the periplasm and the protein contains a large central cavity, through which capsular polysaccharides are translocated.
Sales and marketing jobs at pharmaceutical companies offer the opportunity to combine science with social skills and creative flair. Hannah Hoag investigates the pitch.
