Volume 392 Issue 6673, 19 March 1998

A small rebellion reflects postdocs' dissatisfaction with meetings of questionable value.

munich

Sensing possible victory in the forthcoming federal elections, the German Greens have relaxed their approach to biotechnology and genetic engineering.

washington

A high-powered Washington panel has sharply rebuked the Clinton administration for dragging its feet on the disposal of plutonium from surplus US nuclear warheads.

paris

A decade of efforts by successive French governments to encourage technology transfer and wealth creation have had little impact, according to a report commissioned by the French government.

paris

Claude Allègre, the French research minister, has told research agencies to come up with proposals within one month for increasing the autonomy of young researchers.

washington

The worldwide media frenzy over reports of a possible asteroid collision with the Earth in 2028 has led to a debate on how the public should be informed about such events.

new delhi

India's share of the world's research has dropped from 2.8 per cent in 1989 to 2 per cent, according to a study. But more Indian scientists are getting published in foreign journals.

montreal

Canada's environment minister has tabled a revised Environmental Protection Act that she said would strengthen environmental protection in Canada — but that critics said would weaken it.

montreal

The environment department has been accused of trying to interfere with the independence of an environmental cooperation body set up under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

london

Physics and astronomy research in Britain should concentrate on areas that could lead to scientific breakthroughs, according to the incoming head of Britain's Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council.

london

The British government to revive its senior advisory panel on research policy promising a broader membership and greater transparency than in the past.

san diego

A prominent geographer at Arizona State University is under scrutiny for possible scientific misconduct, according to officials.

tokyo

Japan's largest and most advanced genome research programme is set to begin from the end of this year.

Mutations that disrupt a cell-division checkpoint, thereby causing alterations in chromosome number, have been identified in cancer cells. The accompanying increase in mutability helps to explain how tumours acquire large numbers of mutant genes during their development.

The abyssal hills which occur all over the floors of the world's oceans are generated at faults at mid-ocean-ridge spreading centres. There are two principal but largely incompatible ways of considering the genesis and subsequent pattern of these hills — one largely taken by physical modellers, the other by observationalists. A new numerical physical model of faulting at mid-ocean ridges produces a satisfyingly realistic abyssal-hill morphology, and will help to reconcile the two different viewpoints.

The malaria parasite is transmitted from humans to mosquitoes in the form of male and female gametocytes. These gametocytes are transferred to the mosquito in red blood cells, when it takes a blood meal. The gametocytes immediately escape from the red blood cells, transform into gametes and fertilize. But what triggers them to do this in the mosquito, yet not in the human circulation? The factor turns out to be a single molecular entity, xanthurenic acid, and its identification may pave the way for new anti-malarial strategies.

Astronomers who probe the mysteries of galaxy formation traverse a bumpy road. Some galaxies are easy to distinguish by shape: there are spheroidal ellipticals, and spirals, which contain a bulge at the centre of a disk of stars in which spiral arms curl. But how do these different types form? Does one type evolve into the other? A simple new simulation shows how a spiral galaxy might form from a single gas cloud that first collapses into many large stellar clumps.

There are plenty of examples of mutually beneficial ant-plant relationships, but newly published work provides an example of such a relationship that has gone awry. In this case, the ants ‘castrate’ the plant by destroying the reproductive structures. The result has a severe effect on the plant's reproductive capacity but has the advantage, for the ant, of delaying senesence of the vegetative parts of the plant — which thereby provide more nesting places. The question then is how the relationship is sustained.

Images on our retinas shift as we turn and move. Such image motions are known as ‘optic flow’, and can be described as rotation around three orthogonal axes, or translation along these same axes. By studying optic flow in the pigeon, one group has characterized the translation component. They find that the main axes of the neurons that mediate this response are aligned in the same way as those that are responsible for the rotation component of optic flow.

In ordinary ice, molecules share a hydrogen atom; but the hydrogen is positioned asymmetrically, closer to one oxygen atom than the other. Under high enough pressure, however, the potential energy curve should change into one with a single minimum, and the hydrogen atom should then sit mid-way between the oxygens, making a symmetric, atomic crystal, ‘ice X’. A new simulation shows that symmetry occurs even earlier, as the quantum-mechanical nature of the of the H atom makes it sit centrally over a small maximum in the energy curve — so there are two kinds of ice X.

Spoken language is dealt with by the left hemisphere of the brain. But does that apply to sign languages? A study employing functional magnetic resonance, which reveals the brain areas activated when subjects undertake a task such as understanding sentences, surprisingly finds that processing of sign language is carried out in parts of both hemispheres. This challenging result runs counter to observations from people with brain damage, and is open to various interpretations.

As fish stocks dwindle in our oceans, the obvious solution is to turn to farming. But, to be profitable, fish farms need to keep large numbers of fish in close proximity — and this results in a depletion of food and oxygen from the water. Some fish farms try to solve this problem by ‘walling off’ a region of natural water with a net, and Daedalus now wants to take this idea even further. He suggests releasing a shoal of young adult fish within a large net into the open ocean, and allowing this ‘fish corral’ to drift through the open water.

Scientists have always had an irresistible urge to list and classify. But the work of the artist Herman de Vries reminds us that nature's variety will always defy our attempts at imposing a fixed order.

This selection of products includes systems for high-throughput DNA preparation, mutation analysis and fragment screening, a variety of genetics and genomics software, as well as an assortment of probes and labels. compiled by Brendan Horton from information provided by the manufacturers. For more details, fill in the reader service card bound inside the journal.