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The teaching of alternative theories to evolution in schools is not just an issue in the United States. Almut Graebsch and Quirin Schiermeier assess whether creationism is threatening science in Europe.
Peter Korevaar is head of the physics and cosmology working group of Germany's Studiengemeinschaft Wort und Wissen, one of the largest creationist groups in Europe. He holds a PhD in astrophysics and now works at IBM in Mannheim. Quirin Schiermeier asks him about his group's aims.
Khotso Mokhele, formerly in charge of developing research in South Africa, talks to Michael Cherry about the role that science is playing in the nation's development.
Philosophers since Aristotle have puzzled over the meaning of happiness. Tony Reichhardt asks what scientists, psychologists and economists can bring to the topic. Are we any closer to being able to quantify joy?
The biggest project in the history of ecology is nearing its dawn. Can its organizers pull off the seemingly impossible and unite a disparate field behind its vision to observe the ecosystems of the United States? Michael Hopkin reports.
Silicon is the archetypal semiconductor, and base material of the microelectronic age. But it turns out that, treated the right way, silicon the semiconductor can become silicon the superconductor.
The first map of copy-number variation in the human genome has been created. It is now feasible to examine the role of such genome variation in disease and to explore in depth the extent of 'normal' variability.
Accumulation of organized, self-polymerizing protein aggregates is a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease and infectious prion diseases. The similarities between these conditions may be even closer than that.
Molecules in solution change their conformations so quickly that no method has been able to record the process. This looks set to change, as infrared spectroscopy rises to the challenge.
Generating human stem cells from a single cell recovered during preimplantation genetic diagnosis does not, in principle, harm the embryo. Can the approach be used in assisted reproductive technology programmes?
In most bacteria, a molecule known as trigger factor prevents misfolding of newly made proteins emerging from their ribosome factory. The dynamic action of this molecule has been followed using fluorescence spectroscopy.
Last year the first map of single nucleotide changes was published; now an international consortium has mapped even larger areas of differences, called copy number variants. These variants are at least 1,000-base-pair differences between individual people, and have been linked to both benign and disease-causing changes in the human genome.
Fluorescently labelling trigger factor (TF) to monitor its real-time interaction with ribosome and polypeptide reveals that binding to the ribosome opens and activates TF. Rather than remaining bound to the ribosome, TF is carried away from it on the new polypeptide chain and remains associated with it for a time that depends on the propensity of the protein to aggregate.
The application of small bursts of an oscillating magnetic field can be used to reverse controllably the gyration direction of a vortex core structure, and hence switch the direction of the out-of-plane vortex core polarization. This raises the possibility of using this core switching scheme as a means of magnetic data storage.
Using a technique called gas immersion laser doping, silicon can be doped such that it has a boron concentration of several per cent, and becomes superconducting below 0.35 Kelvin.
A theory to predict quantitatively the damage to reef coral assemblages during hydrodynamic disturbances has been developed and tested. The work provides a mechanistic basis for projecting how effects of hydrodynamic disturbances vary with disturbance magnitude, as well as with the size and shape of coral colonies.
A new way of isolating human embryonic stem (ES) cells that does not require destruction of the embryo is described, thus overcoming one of the major ethical objections to human ES cell research.
