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A clampdown on conflicts of interest at the US National Institutes of Health needn't stifle quality research at the agency — and it might indicate the shape of things to come elsewhere.
The fatty bones of dead whales provide rich pickings for creatures on the sea floor. Amanda Haag meets the scientists who go to extreme and unpleasant lengths to study the unique ecosystems on these corpses.
It was invented by a healer familiar with the horrors of opiate addiction, and refined by Vietnam's leading chemistry lab. Can this novel herbal cocktail ease withdrawal and reduce drug cravings? Peter Aldhous investigates.
A few French scientists are bringing astronomy to captive audiences, such as the terminally ill and the incarcerated. Alison Abbott joined a group of convicted murderers to learn about gravity.
Gene transfer from bacteria to plants was thought to be limited to the bacterial genus Agrobacterium. But other bacterial groups also contain species capable of interkingdom genetic exchange.
The heart was thought to lack the capacity to regenerate after injury. But the identification of cells that can divide and mature into heart muscle suggests that the heart has repair mechanisms after all.
It's a tough job to excavate trustworthy records about past temperatures from the palaeoclimate archives. The application of a fresh approach, in the form of wavelet analysis of the data, is a step forward.
What were European forests like following the last ice age and before the advent of agriculture? The pollen record in Ireland provides a unique perspective from which to examine ideas on the question.
The synthetic assembly of the active centre of hydrogen-producing enzymes adds to our understanding of their structure and function — and could produce new and useful materials that mimic these enzymes.
Breast cancers arise when the BRCA2 protein is defective, but what does the normal enzyme do? Studies of a relative of BRCA2 reveal a capacity to initiate the repair of broken DNA by loading a repair protein.
