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Studies of violence in the media and its effects on people are clouded by overheated rhetoric and exaggerated claims. More clarity is needed, both in the science and in the way it is discussed.
Some pioneering biologists are trying to grow eggs and sperm in the lab. In doing so, they're entering a technical and ethical minefield. Carina Dennis reports.
The latest computer games involve pretty gruesome scenes — severed limbs and drive-by shootings are standard fare. But opinion is divided on whether such games spark real-life violence. Tony Reichhardt investigates.
Ancestral genetic data are far more useful for medical purposes than are racial categories, which may be correlated with disease for social or economic rather than biological reasons.
Developing organisms still hold many surprises for biologists. For instance, an entirely new 'organizer' — a clump of cells that tells other cells what to do — has been discovered at a very early stage of zebrafish development.
Three new subatomic particles have been found, and all survive for an unusually long time before they decay. Physicists now face the challenge of explaining this within the framework of the existing theory.
Researchers may have seen the signature of a memory in the making. In monkeys that learnt to associate two stimuli, single neurons changed their responses before, during or after learning became evident.
Nanoscale chemical patterns written on a substrate can direct the self-assembly of polymer overlayers with remarkable precision. These polymer films, in turn, can be used as templates for nanofabrication.
Embryonic development is a complicated business, as a recent meeting bore witness. The signals generated at the boundaries between compartments were a key topic of discussion.
Guidance molecules called semaphorins ensure that nerve cells grow in the correct direction during development. It now appears that one semaphorin interacts with integrin proteins to produce another effect.
Searching for distant objects in our Universe is equivalent to looking back in time, to the early origins of stars and galaxies. The most distant object known shows the earliest evidence of star formation.
