News Feature in 2010

She set out to revolutionize US ocean management — but first she faced the oil spill. Jane Lubchenco is Nature 's Newsmaker of the Year.

To learn the chemical language of plants, Ian Baldwin has built up a German research empire that engineers seeds — and a field station in the Utah wilderness to grow them.

Cancer epidemics in Turkey could hold the secret to staving off a public health disaster in North Dakota.

John Reppy has come out of retirement to question the high-profile discovery of a new kind of quantum matter.

Researchers are sure that they can put lab-grown meat on the menu — if they can just get cultured muscle cells to bulk up.

Is a vast undersea grid bringing wind-generated electricity from the North Sea to Europe a feasible proposition or an overpriced fantasy?

Bob Klein founded the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the biggest state-run research project in US history. What legacy will he leave behind?

The ancient Greeks' vision of a geometrical Universe seemed to come out of nowhere. Could their ideas have come from the internal gearing of an ancient mechanism?

What can microbiologists who study human bowels learn from those who study the bowels of Earth?

Sleep researcher Sara Mednick has straddled the line between media darling and respected scientist. But why is there still a line at all?

The release of climate-science e-mails last November ripped apart Phil Jones's life. He's now trying to patch it back together.

Do the billions of non-neuronal cells in the brain send messages of their own?

The biology is too complicated. Pharma companies are quitting. Where are schizophrenia drugs going to come from?

Schizophrenia appears during adolescence. But where does one begin and the other end?

Marine scientists are prowling the Bering Sea to learn how climate affects minute sea creatures and the lucrative fishery that depends on them.

Behind the walls of the J. Craig Venter Institute, Ham Smith and Clyde Hutchison quietly worked to bring a synthetic cell to life.

Nature surveys the sequencing landscape.

NASA's next-generation space observatory promises to open new windows on the Universe — but its cost could close many more.

With the majority of the human population now living in cities, Nature takes a look at the implications for scientists.

Which urban regions produce the best research — and can their success be replicated?