Volume 388 Issue 6641, 31 July 1997

washington

US president Bill Clinton has begun what he promises will be a sustained campaign to win US public support for action on climate change.

london

Delegates to the climate convention meeting in Bonn want changes to the structure and content of the third five-yearly assessment of the world's climate.

washington

NASA should keep all its current Sun-watching satellites operating until the end of 2001, and should expand the community of researchers analysing their data, according to a panel of experts.

london

The surface of Mars as recorded from cameras on the Pathfinder lander and the travels of the rover Sojourner appears more uniform than expected

tokyo

Earth scientists and deep-sea drilling engineers have unaminously endorsed a plan to build a new deep-sea drilling ship that will be able to investigate the state of the Earth seven kilometres beneath the sea bed.

munich

Germany's pharmaceutical industry has waived its three-month privileged reading access to sequence information generated within German Human Genome Project.

washington

A report from the National Research Council warns that Japan could soon become a formidable competitor to the United States in the field of research.

new delhi

A bibliometric study has concluded that most of India's medical research remains irrelevant to the most urgent health needs of its population.

washington

The risk of triggering new disease pandemics from the xenotransplantation of animal organs into humans can be reduced, according to a joint meeting of scientists and transplant surgeons in Bethesda, Maryland.

san francisco

The University of California has settled 72 lawsuits at a cost of about $14 million filed by former patients of its fertility clinics in San Diego and Irvine where it was alleged that human eggs and embryos were stolen and then implanted into other women or used for research.

washington

European and US astronomers are considering merging their separate plans to build large millimetre-wave astronomy observatories, a move which could result in a single, more capable facility.

munich

The Austrian government has approved in principle the conclusion of a controversial report that responsibility for the allocation of all research funds and the development of long- term research strategies, should be placed in the hands of a private organization.

Last week's long-awaited Dearing report has urged the UK government to take immediate steps to remedy the underfunding of university research. But at a price: universities, it says, must agree to do things differently.

The genetic heritability of IQ remains highly contentious. A new analysis shows that genetic influences may be weaker, and prenatal environmental influences greater, than previously appreciated.

To understand the impact of a future Earth which may be warmer than now, geologists look to records of warmer times in the past - often the last interglacial period, around 120,000 years ago. But a better match to today's conditions might be found in a period around 400,000 years ago, an earlier interglacial known as stage 11, when Earth's orbital parameters were closer to those of the present day. Stage 11 was an unusual period, with severe climate change and, at its peak, exceptionally warm temperatures.

In 1994, George Rose and Trevor Creamer proposed the ‘Paracelsus challenge’, offering $1,000 to the first person who could show a pair of proteins that have different topologies, yet no less than 50% sequence identity. The challenge has now been met by a group who have created the aptly named Janus protein. Janus shares 50% sequence identity with the B1 domain of the Streptococcal protein G - which is mainly beta-sheet - yet it folds into a helical structure that resembles the four-helix-bundle protein Rop.

Ten areas of behavioural perception in science are illustrated using satirical compound verbs.

The human ear has discovered a new phenomenon in quantum mechanics. Two reservoirs of superfluid helium, connected only by tiny holes, oscillate when they are pumped to different pressures. This effect is expected, and is analogous to the familiar Josephson effect in electronics, but in the superfluid system it has been exceptionally hard to demonstrate.

Trying to look at small, cellular organelles - such as synaptic vesicles - through a microscope is a bit like looking into a bucket of transparent tennis balls. But help may now be at hand with the development of two new techniques to increase resolution. In the first, a few vesicles are selectively stained using a fluorescent dye, then all are illuminated. And in the second, all of the vesicles are stained, but only a few of them are then illuminated.

A meeting held last month, “The evolution of language and the speciation ofHomo sapiens”, had a hidden agenda - a theory for the underlying biological cause of schizophrenia. According to this theory, schizophrenia stems from a failure to develop the normal asymmetric positioning, in the brain, of the language-processing centre (Broca's region). If this is so, a gene or genes involved in development would be implicated, and could in principle be identified. But resolution of the issue is unlikely to be so straightforward

Dendrimers are highly branched molecules that can absorb infrared photons and funnel the energy towards their centres. It turns out that they can also trap it there, preventing vibrational energy from leaking out because of their rigid outer layers. This allows a few low-energy excitations, randomly moving around inside the dendrimer, enough time to combine on one bond and break it - a new way of doing multiphoton chemistry.

Long-lasting changes in the strength of synapses in the brain underlie many forms of learning and memory. Depending on the pattern of activation, synapses can show either long-term potentiation (LTP) or long-term depression (LTD). A provocative study now shows that a form of LTD may spread over considerable distances, and that this spread may even involve signals that travel backwards.

V(D)Jrecombination is used by lymphocytes to assemble the variable regions of antigen receptors. It involves the formation of a DNA double-strand break, followed by rejoining of the blunt DNA ends. Studies of the breakage and rejoining reactions will be facilitated by the development of a new, cell-free system in mammalian cells, and the identification of a hitherto undiscovered component of this system in yeast.

In thick fog, turning your headlights onto full beam won't help you to see more clearly, as the light is merely scattered into a bright blur. The problem is, although fog droplets absorb very little light, they scatter it confusingly. Daedalus believes that infrared imaging could be the way out, and DREADCO physicists are currently trying to find the exact wavelength (around 11 μm) at which fog will be transparent.

Astrophysicist instrumental in developing the modern theory of stars and galaxies.

This serving of laser equipment will have to sustain readers until next year, offering a variety of lasers, software for laser measurement, a compact optical isolator for diode lasers, as well as mirror, filter and optics accessories.