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As Europe wrestles with its BSE crisis, the top priority is to develop a diagnostic test that can reliably identify animals incubating the disease and people incubating its human form.
Spending on science and technology in the United States should be doubled in the name of national security, says a report by a high-powered bipartisan panel.
A workshop planned for next month on the genetics and neurology of apes could pave the way to a better understanding of the relationship between the human genome and the brain, its organizers say.
Scientific research in India is facing up to a brain drain with a difference. The financial lure of careers in information technology — at home and abroad — is creaming off more and more of the talented young people who might otherwise become scientists.
No one knows whether the diagnostic tests being used to search for BSE infection in Europe's cattle can reliably detect animals incubating the disease. Given this limitation, asks Quirin Schiermeier, what is the testing programme likely to achieve?
Many thousands of people may be incubating the human form of BSE. Could drugs or other therapeutic agents prevent them from succumbing? Clare Thompson reports on the race against time to find a treatment.
According to new modelling calculations, black carbon in the atmosphere exerts a large warming influence on global climate. Curbing emissions of this pollutant may be advisable both on climate and on human health grounds.
Knocking out a glucose transporter in fat cells also affects the uptake of glucose into muscle cells, which may prompt a rethink of the transporter's role in diabetes.
Dating the Universe has always been a tricky business with unsatisfying answers. Astronomers now have a better clock, based on radioactive uranium, that puts the age at around 12.5 billion years.
The bacterium Wolbachia has strange and wonderful effects on reproduction in its many invertebrate host species. In effect, the creation of new species can now be added to the list.
On 11 May 1999, the density of the solar wind dropped almost to zero. Space scientists are now giving their first reports of this rare opportunity to study the complex relationship between the Sun and Earth.
The 'mosaic' theory of development applies, to different degrees, to most animals. It owes its existence in part to a group of obscure marine invertebrates, which now take centre stage in the molecular age.