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The four large moons of Jupiter form the most coherently organized planetary system known. Over the past two years, the Galileo spacecraft has illuminated both the interconnections between these worlds and the uniqueness of each, challenging theories of moon formation and evolution.
At the beginning of this month, Stanley Prusiner of the University of California, San Francisco, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the infectious agent that causes spongiform encephalopathies _ the prion. His ‘protein-only’ theory now has many advocates, and the advances that have been made, the questions that remain and the ways in which these could be addressed are discussed in this feature.
Projections of future climate change depend largely on the results of computer models. Such models are becoming increasingly sophisticated, but they do not offer the certainties that policy-makers would like.
Neurons and their networks underlie our perceptions, actions and memories. The latest work on information processing and storage at the single-cell level reveals previously unimagined complexity and dynamism.
