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Given recent rumblings from opinion-formers, researchers working on the science of the incredibly small should exert more effort on putting the risks posed by their work into the proper perspective.
Balloons will soon be able to carry telescopes for months at a time, matching some of the capabilities of satellites, but at a fraction of the cost. Tony Reichhardt charts the course of a new era in ballooning.
The world of science is gearing up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Watson and Crick's seminal paper. But there's more to DNA than the pair's iconic structure. Helen Pearson profiles a truly dynamic molecule.
Clinical oncologists and tumour biologists possess virtually no comprehensive model to serve as a framework for understanding, organizing and applying their data.
Flying birds evolved from a group of bipedal dinosaurs. The latest fossil discoveries from China indicate that the dinosaurian ancestors of birds had four wings — and that these animals glided rather than flapped.
An excellent sediment record from the Arabian Sea traces recent patterns in the activity of the Asian monsoon. It reveals both variability in monsoon strength and links with climatic events elsewhere.
Mice lacking a certain neurotransmitter receptor have trouble forgetting scary experiences. This finding uncovers a fear-regulating feedback loop in the brain that might be at work in humans, too.
Heat is transferred along a temperature gradient, from hot to cold, at a rate determined by the thermal conductivity of the material. But is the situation so straightforward in fewer than three dimensions?
The molecular details of a connection between the nervous system and the inflammatory response to disease have been uncovered. This suggests new avenues of research into controlling excessive inflammation.
Quasars, the oldest known objects in the Universe, are powered by gas falling into black holes at their centres. How black holes formed so early in time has been hard to explain, but a new model might have the answer.
As a prelude to the many celebrations around the world saluting the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the DNA double helix, Nature presents a Collection of overviews that celebrate the historical, scientific and cultural impacts of a revelatory molecular structure.
