Skip to main content

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.

Volume 409 Issue 6821, 8 February 2001

Opinion

  • 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.

    Opinion

    Advertisement

Top of page ⤴

News

Top of page ⤴

News in Brief

Top of page ⤴

News Feature

  • 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?

    • Quirin Schiermeier
    News Feature
  • 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.

    • Clare Thompson
    News Feature
Top of page ⤴

Correspondence

Top of page ⤴

Book Review

Top of page ⤴

Words

  • Scientific knowledge is enriched as it moves between languages.

    • Scott L. Montgomery
    Words
Top of page ⤴

Concepts

Top of page ⤴

News & Views

  • 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.

    • Meinrat O. Andreae
    News & Views
  • 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.

    • Morris J. Birnbaum
    News & Views
  • 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.

    • Christopher Sneden
    News & Views
  • 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.

    • Michael J. Wade
    News & Views
  • 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.

    • Mike Lockwood
    News & Views
  • 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.

    • Olivier Pourquié
    News & Views
Top of page ⤴

Brief Communication

Top of page ⤴

Article

Top of page ⤴

Letter

Top of page ⤴

Corrigendum

Top of page ⤴

Erratum

Top of page ⤴

New on the Market

  • The main theme this week is image acquisition and handling.

    New on the Market
Top of page ⤴
Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Quick links