Volume 388 Issue 6639, 17 July 1997

Sending people to Mars is a bad idea.

[LONDON]Carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels continued to increase throughout 1996 with the highest percentage rises coming from India, China, and the newly-indusrializing ‘tiger’ economies.

washington

The Clinton administration is planning extensive reforms to its controversial Advanced Technology Programme that provides federal support for civilian technology developments.

washington

NASA has launched a campaign to ensure that international research agencies which receive its technical reports free of charge charge reciprocate by sharing their own published data.

ottowa

Canadian researchers have won out over their French counterparts in a cancer vaccine development project that Prime Minister Jean Chretien calls “the largest biotechnology investment ever made in Canada”.

washington

United States participation in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project, the planned next generation fusion device, is secure for at least another year after the Clinton administration scotched a move in the Congress to end the collaboration.

london

The Mars Pathfinder mission has scored at least one scientific hit to add to its set of technological achievements: the Sojourner rover has analysed the surface of a rock called Barnacle Bill, and found it to be unexpectedly high in silicates.

washington

NASA has re-floated an idea for a human expedition to Mars. The plan is rough, and there is no political or financial commitment. But the agency says it would cost less than one-tenth the amount of earlier proposed missions.

tokyo

Japan's top science policy-making body is expected to formally approve a new ten- year plan for promoting the life sciences, with particular emphasis on strengthening those areas of research linked to possible medical applications.

san francisco

US President Bill Clinton has endorsed legislation that would make it illegal for health care companies to discriminate against consumers on the basis of genetic information.

munich & washington

The United States should pay half of the costs of the circuits linking its research networks to those in other continents, according to Renater, the French research network organization.

london

The United States is set to oppose European Union calls for a relaxation of its strict controls on the export of sophisticated encryption technology.

washington

A $7 million-a-year Chimpanzee Management Program — or ChiMP — should be established at the office of the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide lifelong care for 1,000 research chimps in the United States.

munich

Jürgen Rüttgers, Germany's minister for education and research, may be about to resurrect his reputation as ‘minister for the future’. Last week, the German cabinet approved a funding increase of just under 1 per cent for education and research next year — almost twice the increase for the budget as a whol

scheveningen, the netherlands

US proposals to establish a common, centrally managed, pot of funds for malaria research was firmly rejected at a international meeting on the disease held here last week.

New Delhi

The Clinton administration has banned US companies from exporting equipment to three Indian nuclear facilities, following reports that they are “involved in developing weapons of mass destruction”.

Japan's universities need strong leadership to give young scientists, foreign staff and women the opportunities that are denied them. Academics should have more of a sense of crisis over what is an unacceptable situation.

The sequencing of mitochondrial DNA from Neanderthal fossil bone is a terrific achievement. Among the conclusions to be drawn from the data is that there was a period of more than 500,000 years during which Neanderthals and the line leading to modern humans evolved independently.

In about 800 AD, the Mexican volcano Popocatépetl exploded, sending up several cubic kilometres of ash and pumice, and burying the surrounding area. Since then it has been relatively quiet, but every few decades it threatens to explode again — which could this time be catastrophic, as the area is now one of the most densely populated in Mexico. Seismic activity and eruptions are now increasing, with ash falls even 70 km away in Mexico City

The mystery of how spongiform encephalopathies are transmitted and wreak damage in the brain remains, and is a matter of great public worry — particularly as far as the bovine form (BSE) is concerned. At the moment the ‘protein only’ (prion) hypothesis is gathering favour, and two new in vitro studies add further support to it. One is an assay of the conversion of purified prion protein to its abnormal, pathological form. The other is an investigation of a similar phenomenon in yeast.

A paradox about reef-building corals is that they seem to be vulnerable to environmental change in the short term, yet have persisted for hundreds of millions of years. A new study may provide the solution, showing that the corals form symbiotic associations with many different types of algae, and the distribution of these algal taxa within coral-reef communities varies according to light and temperature, allowing the corals to adjust to environmental changes.

To infect a cell, the human and simian immunodeficiency viruses have to attach to its membrane, then enter the cell, before subverting the genetic machinery to their own ends. The CD4 membrane receptor has long been known to be essential, but not sufficient, for this process. Eighteen months ago, the first so-called co-receptor was discovered. More have since been identified, and the latest tally for HIV-1 is six. The possibilities thereby opened up for developing drugs that compete with the virus for these binding sites is counterbalanced by the prospect of viral evolution to use alternative co-receptors.

Mathilde is a very odd asteroid. The NEAR spacecraft, in a recent flyby, found it remarkably lightweight, very dark, and covered with enormous craters. How has it survived the hugeimpacts that made those craters? And how has it come to rotate so slowly (once in 17.4 days),when the same impacts should have left it spinning?

Parkinson's disease occurs in a rare familial (inherited) form. At long last researchers have identified a gene which, when mutated, is at least in part responsible for the condition — the mutation changes the amino acid alanine to threonine at a particular position in a protein called a-synuclein. It remains to be seen whether this finding will tell us more about the much more common sporadic form of the disease.

Guided lightning Dreadco's new lightning launcher ionizes a track through the air 20 metres at a time with a microwave beam, and then charges it up to 100 million volts. The device could be a gentle anti-aircraft weapon, a rainmaker, or a tool for religious zealots.

Geologist with a passion for ancient corals, and the first woman to reach the pinnacles of Australian science