News, Seven Days, News Q&A and News Explainer in 2000

Global warming encourages vegetation, but the reverse may also be true, Valerie Depraetere finds. .

Chaos could scramble the super-powerful computers of tomorrow, Philip Ball finds. .

Global warming may be damaging Caribbean coral reefs by causing the Sahara desert to expand. .

Clay sandwiches could smuggle DNA into cells needing gene therapy. David Adam investigates.

Stargazers may be in for a treat this weekend as the Earth takes its annual trip through the Leonid meteor belt. .

The deadlocked race for the US presidency, together with uncertainty over the extent of Republican control in the Senate, has left a huge question mark over who will be calling the shots in science policy in January.

LONDON

Last week's disclosure of extensive fraud by one of Japan's leading archaelogists has led to renewed soul-searching about how much the country's most prominent scientists are allowed to escape peer criticism.

KANSAS CITY

The people of Kansas City are hoping that this month's official opening of the $200 million Stowers Institute for Medical Research will provide a springboard to transform the city into a top life-science centre.

The question of who will be in the White House come January will cast a heavy pall over this week's climate treaty talks in The Hague.

Now that genome sequences are two a penny, researchers are beginning to work out what they mean, Valerie Depraetere explains.

TOKYO

Japanese researchers and animal-welfare activists are at loggerheads over the treatment of wild monkeys that are captured and sold to laboratories.

MUNICH

The death knell for the Large Electron-Positron collider in Geneva has finally sounded.

The power of thought can drive robotic movement and may help paralysed people. David Adam investigates.

LONDON

The naming of organisms will take a leap into the twenty-first century this month with the first publication of zoological names in an online journal.

MEXICO CITY

International bioprospecting in Mexico has ground to a halt amid uncertainty about the new government's approach to the collection and export of plant samples.

Dinah Ashman explains how modern astronomy may have put a new date on the building of the Great Pyramid at Giza.

LONDON

A report giving top-level advice to the European Commission is set to rule that creating human embryos for stem cell research is 'premature'.

Philip Ball finds out what could be firing neutron stars out of the supernovae that create them.

Tiny needles could supersede magnetic disks in tomorrow's computer memories.

Changing pictures into music may help the blind hear their way around town.