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.
A century-long record of levels of inorganic carbon in the Mississippi, extracted from the water-treatment plants of New Orleans, documents the changes wrought by shifting agricultural practices in the river's basin.
Imagine being able to tweak the properties of a compound simply by replacing a molecular 'cartridge' with a different one. Just such a capability has been developed in a new class of porous crystalline materials.
Building two different fluorescing dyes into a composite organic nanocrystal makes a tunable light generator. At just the right dye proportions, a low-cost, highly efficient source of white light is the result.
Mobile genetic elements called transposons could cause havoc in the genome if left unregulated. Of the various cellular defence strategies used to preserve genome integrity, one involves exploiting transposons themselves.
Fast jet streams blow along the hallmark coloured bands that engirdle Jupiter's surface. By observing how storms erupt in these jet streams and disturb them, we can penetrate deeper into what lies beneath.
Without its Vpu protein, the AIDS-associated virus HIV-1 becomes stuck to the surface of the human cell in which it has replicated. The mysterious factor that tethers HIV-1 is probably a cell-membrane protein.
Light that propagates without spreading or diffracting sounds like a theorist's pipedream. But it is a very real proposition, and could be used to illuminate some profound aspects of wave–particle duality.
In songbirds, a class of neurons shows a striking similarity in activity when the bird sings and when it hears a similar song. This mirroring neuronal activity could contribute to imitation.
How and when galaxies assembled their mass to become the structures seen today are among astronomy's big outstanding questions. A comprehensive study of nearby galaxies provides a new angle on the issue.
Immune mediator molecules such as antimicrobial peptides are crucial for host responses to pathogens. Akirins are the latest identified components of a signalling cascade that leads to these responses in insects and mice.
A new variation on an old theme in atomic physics, a spectral distortion known as the Fano effect, has been revealed — not in an atom, but in an artificial nanostructure known as a quantum dot.
The most common form of uranium in solution is notoriously unreactive, limiting the use of the element. But interactions of this complex with potassium ions unleash a potentially rich seam of unexpected chemistry
Although some diseases occur when both copies of a gene are mutated, mutation of just one copy of certain tumour-suppressor genes promotes tumorigenesis. Identifying such mutations is arduous, but worth the effort.
It requires a quirk of fossilization for the soft parts of an animal to be preserved. Study of such a specimen of the mysterious machaeridians provides these organisms with a well defined evolutionary home.
Cats kill birds, and therefore eradicating cats from an island would seem to be a good strategy for protecting the native population of seabirds. But that thinking does not take account of ecological complications.
Manipulating cells from adult human tissue, scientists have generated cells with the same developmental potential as embryonic stem cells. The research opportunities these exciting observations offer are limitless.
