Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Planetary scientists in the United States have criticized a string of recent cancellations of missions at NASA, warning that they may put the future health of US planetary exploration at risk.
Supporters of an international agreement to combat global warming are optimistic that more talks next spring could achieve a breakthrough on the role of carbon 'sinks' — the issue that last weekend sank the latest round of climate-change negotiations in The Hague.
The UK Wellcome Trust is set to fund an effort, costing £5 million (US$7 million) in the first year, to sequence the genome of the zebrafish (Danio rerio) at the Sanger Centre near Cambridge. All the data will be made freely available in the public domain.
The German government has been prompted to order extensive tests on cows following the identification last week of two cases of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) in German-born cattle. Within the next few weeks it should learn whether these cases represent only the tip of an iceberg.