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The California meeting set standards allowing geneticists to push research to its limits without endangering public health. Organizer Paul Berg asks if another such meeting could resolve today's controversies.
François de Rose chaired the meeting that founded Europe's premier facility for experimental nuclear and particle research. Here he relives the five days of drama that changed the world of physics.
The first mass data crunchers were people, not machines. Sue Nelson looks at the discoveries and legacy of the remarkable women of Harvard's Observatory.
A tug-of-war between the mother's and father's genes in the developing brain could explain a spectrum of mental disorders from autism to schizophrenia, suggest Christopher Badcock and Bernard Crespi.
To understand how mirror neurons help to interpret actions, we must delve into the networks in which these cells sit, say Antonio Damasio and Kaspar Meyer.
In the last of nine Essays on science and music, John Sloboda argues that researchers must study music as people actually experience it, if they are to understand how it affects thoughts and feelings.
If we are to learn how to develop a healthy society, we must transform history into an analytical, predictive science, argues Peter Turchin. He has identified intriguing patterns across vastly different times and places.
Ruth Deech, former chair of Britain's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, reflects on how the science that gave an infertile couple a baby has been extended to saving lives.
Could the end of US world dominance over research mark the passing of national science giants, ask J. Rogers Hollingsworth, Karl H. Müller and Ellen Jane Hollingsworth.
An English biochemist single-handedly changed the West's perception of China, revealing its past scientific glories and predicting more to come. Simon Winchester investigates the ongoing legacy of Joseph Needham.
The way performers shape notes brings music to life. Nicholas Cook argues that measuring these subtle changes can help us appreciate and replicate the performer's art.
Thanks to a fateful letter, the theory of evolution by natural selection was unveiled 150 years ago this week. Andrew Berry and Janet Browne celebrate the letter's writer, Alfred Russel Wallace.
Statistical analysis can inform the history of music, classification technologies, and our understanding of the act of composition itself, argues Damián Zanette.
Believed to be the world's first printed document, the Phaistos Disc was unearthed 100 years ago. Andrew Robinson explains why this remarkable object remains undeciphered.
To appreciate how our species makes sense of sound we must study the brain's response to a wide variety of music, languages and musical languages, urges Aniruddh D. Patel.
Music provides unique opportunities for understanding both brain and culture. But globalization means that time is running out, warns David Huron, for the quest to encounter the range of possible musical minds.
Reflecting on how far we have come scientifically since isolating HIV in 1983, Anthony S. Fauci urges a renewed commitment to the far greater challenges ahead, especially that of vaccine development.
