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The detection of BSE in Japan last week raises the prospect of vCJD to follow. The history of government handling of human health crises gives little basis for confidence that appropriate preventative measures will be taken.
The living world is governed by laws based on fractal geometry and on the sizes of organisms, some scientists claim. John Whitfield looks at the debate surrounding a biological 'theory of everything'.
Will restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research and attempts to ban therapeutic cloning erode the United States' leadership in biomedical research? Laura Bonetta considers the evidence.
When the NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft landed on the asteroid Eros earlier this year, it provided an unprecedented view of these battered relics from the early Solar System. The next step is to find out what's inside.
The molecular defect in the human disease dyskeratosis congenita is a reduction in function of telomerase. This discovery provides a direct test of the importance of this enzyme in ageing and cancer.
Solutions to optimization problems, such as that faced by the travelling salesman, have many practical applications. Might a related problem offer insight into the behaviour of foraging animals?
The hormone auxin is moved across plant cells by transporters called efflux carriers. It now looks as if these carriers behave much more dynamically than had been thought.
Quantum mechanics has potential applications in communication and computation. But first a quantum connection — known as entanglement — has to be created between bigger and bigger objects.
The potential existence of a spiritual world, weakly coupled to the material Universe, raises interesting questions about the temperature of ghosts and the survival of souls.
