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Volume 395 Issue 6703, 15 October 1998

Opinion

  • Researchers seeking to build projects that make the best of Europe's potential have no obvious place to turn. A new proposal should be actively encouraged by funding agencies, despite their strong reservations.

    Opinion

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News

  • london

    Interest in nitric oxide has exploded in recent years following the recognition that manipulating the nitric oxide signalling pathway can have major medical benefits.

    • Rory Howlett
    News

  • london

    The Nobel committee has once again sparked controversy with the award last week of the 1998 prize for Physiology or Medicine to three US-based pharmacologists for their discoveries concerning nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system.

    • Rory Howlett
    News

  • london

    This year's Nobel prize for physics has been awarded to the researchers who explained why an electric current in a two-dimensional conducting material appears to be made up of charge carriers bearing a fraction of the charge on an electron.

    • Philip Ball
    News

  • london

    The award of the Nobel prize for chemistry to signals a recognition that computational chemistry is now a tool at the chemist's disposal equal to any experimental or analytical technique.

    • Philip Ball
    News

  • washington

    The three nuclear weapons laboratories of the US Department of Energy are tightening controls on access by foreign scientists.

    • Colin Macilwain
    News

  • tokyo

    Japan has announced plans to introduce tough new regulations requiring all food containing genetically modified organisms to be labelled as such.

    • Asako Saegusa
    News

  • london

    The public should be more closely involved in setting local and national environmental standards, according to Britain's Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution.

    • Quirin Schiermeier
    News

  • washington

    A top official of BNFL, the UK-based nuclear fuels corporation, has told a Congressional hearing that the company is ready to tackle the trickiest nuclear waste problem in the United States

    • Colin Macilwain
    News

  • san fransico

    A decision by the State of California to discontinue funding for an epidemiologist after a dispute over his report on smoking behaviour has prompted concern about the state's apparent reluctance to accept unfavourable scientific results.

    • Sally Lehrmann
    News

  • london

    UK scientists have been urged to do more to ensure that contract researchers working under their responsibility receive proper guidance on non-academic careers.

    • David Dickson
    News

  • london

    The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope on Mount Paranal in Chile has obtained images of the Dumbbell Nebula, which is believed to be around 1,200 light years from Earth.

    • Ehsan Masood
    News
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News in Brief

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Correspondence

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News & Views

  • We thought we knew how powerful supernova explosions could be. We also thought that supernovae and γ-ray bursts were unrelated. One extraordinary supernova is making us re-examine these ideas.

    • Eddie Baron
    News & Views

  • King penguin chicks are fed by a parent who goes off to sea to forage. Colonies of these birds can be huge and noisy, meaning that there is potentially a problem for the chick in identifying the calls of the returning parent. Experiments involving playback of calls show that the chicks have remarkable abilities to pick out those of their parent against the background din.

    • Rory Howlett
    News & Views

  • One-fifth of the world's population - that's 1.2 billion people — is Chinese. But, although unified politically and linguistically (800 million people speak Mandarin), there are groups of Chinese that are quite different from each other genetically, according to the most comprehensive genetic analysis of China ever made. These results bear on models of the origins of East Asian peoples.

    • Alberto Piazza
    News & Views

  • In the very early Universe, gravity may briefly have become repulsive. The ensuing period of rapid expansion, called ‘inflation’, could account for such fundamental matters as the origin of galaxies and galaxy clusters. But if a new analysis of the cosmic microwave background stands up, inflation either cannot be so simple, or must be discarded.

    • Marc Kamionkowski
    • Andrew H. Jaffe
    News & Views

  • ‘Photonic atoms’ are tiny semiconductor devices designed to confine photons and so restrict them to discrete energies. Now pairs of them have been combined into ‘photonic molecules’, whose photon states are similar to the bonding and antibonding orbitals of the hydrogen molecule.

    • Stephen Battersby
    News & Views

  • How does an embryo decide where to form its head? This decision was always thought to be made by a specialized region of the embryo called the organizer. But a study ofCriptomutant mice that lack an organizer, yet can still develop an antero-posterior axis, indicates that the organizer may not determine where the head forms — in mammals at least.

    • Rosa Beddington
    News & Views

  • Each of us has a ‘personal ecology’ of skin bacteria that digest our sweat — in some cases, producing foul-smelling compounds. Daedalus plans to help the odorous by devising a consortium of bacteria for each sufferer that not only has sweet smelling by-products, but is able to displace the old culture. But the same technology might have more sinister uses for criminals and bureaucrats.

    • David Jones
    News & Views
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News and Views Feature

  • One of the most versatile and universal signalling agents in the human body is the calcium ion, Ca2+. How does this simple ion act during cell birth, life and death, and how does it regulate so many different cellular processes?

    • Michael J. Berridge
    • Martin D. Bootman
    • Peter Lipp
    News and Views Feature
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Science and Image

  • The type of perspective favoured in technical drawing was first used by military draughtsmen to ensure accurate fortifications. It was developed geometrically by Gaspard Monge and drawn to perfection by Johann Hummel.

    • Martin Kemp
    Science and Image
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Scientific Correspondence

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Book Review

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Progress

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Article

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Letter

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Erratum

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New on the Market

  • The molecular biology tools presented here include microchip array analysers and labels, telomeric probes, cloning kits for cosmic library construction and a system for quantifying and analysing fluorescently labelled nucleic acids.

    • Brendan Horton
    New on the Market
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