News Feature in 2009

Could agent-based computer models prevent another financial crisis? Mark Buchanan reports.

A vast supply of energy is racing around the planet far above the surface. Erik Vance meets the engineers trying to bring the power of high-altitude wind down to earth.

Multiphoton microscopy is allowing immunologists to watch infections as they happen. Jeanne Erdmann pulls up a seat.

Maurice Strong has shaped how nations respond to planetary crises. Ehsan Masood meets the man whose successes — and failures — laid the groundwork for the current climate talks.

A small group of ecologists is looking beyond the pristine to study the scrubby, feral and untended. Emma Marris learns to appreciate 'novel ecosystems'.

Africa's Lake Kivu contains vast quantities of gas, which makes it both dangerous and valuable. Anjali Nayar asks whether it is possible to tap the gas without causing a disaster.

Cellular life is all slopes, arcs and circles — but there is much debate about how these curves are built. Kendall Powell reports.

With its electron microscope, genetic sequencing machines and observatory, the Yokohama Science Frontier High School is equipped like no other. Will future scientists be inspired there, asks David Cyranoski.

When the cystic fibrosis gene was found in 1989, therapy seemed around the corner. Two decades on, biologists still have a long way to go, finds Helen Pearson.

Slotting a fusion reactor into the heart of a nuclear fission plant could accelerate the development of waste-free nuclear energy. So why are all the designs still on paper, asks Ed Gerstner.

With their focus on greenhouse gases, atmospheric scientists have largely overlooked lowly soot particles. But black carbon is now a hot topic among researchers and politicians. Jeff Tollefson investigates.

Blogs and Twitter are opening up meetings to those not actually there. Does that mean too much access to science in the raw, asks Geoff Brumfiel.

The iPlant programme was designed to give plant scientists a new information infrastructure. But first they had to decide what they wanted, finds Heidi Ledford.

While conservation biologists debate whether to move organisms threatened by the warming climate, one forester in British Columbia is already doing it. Emma Marris reports.

Metrologists are on a path to redefine the unit of temperature. The freezing point of water will never be the same again, finds Nicola Jones.

The boundaries of biology reach farther below Earth's surface than scientists had thought possible. Amanda Leigh Mascarelli delves into how microbes survive deep underground.

Assessing the effects of television on young children is far from easy. But, as researchers tell Jim Schnabel, that is no reason not to try.