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The exodus of scientists from Italy reflects problems several European countries are trying to tackle. Are their efforts too little, too late? asks Alexander Hellemans.
Researchers and their live subjects in US universities are valuably protected by some regulatory processes but pointlessly undermined by others. It is time to streamline or scrap the latter.
Newts grow new legs, Hydra new heads. These remarkable creatures may hold clues for researchers developing human cellular therapies. But the connections are only now starting to be made. Helen Pearson reports.
Canada's new Perimeter Institute is planning to apply the risk-taking approach of venture capitalism to the pursuit of theoretical physics, says David Spurgeon.
Energy metabolism is an essential function of life. Yet a resourceful parasite with a minimalist genome has discarded much of its metabolism, developing a unique alternative in the process.
Theories of how the Universe developed structure assume a similar distribution of matter in small and large structures. But observations of gas densities in galaxy clusters suggest that this is not the case.
Humans, and many other species, have a tendency to cooperate and help each other. But how does such behaviour evolve? Some new computer simulations provide a plausible answer.
Modern microscopes are not just for imaging. In the right hands they can be used to follow and control catalytic reactions on a metal surface — one atom at a time.
Some plants have evolved delicious fruits to entice animals and birds into dispersing their seeds. But the seeds' dormancy and germinability are affected by which bird they pass through.
Some curious fossils from the Cambrian period have been grouped into a new phylum, the Vetulicolia. All of its members are extinct, and their unusual anatomy tempts evolutionary speculation.
A technique for injecting electrons into the surface layers of materials has now been applied to the most mysterious of superconducting compounds — the copper oxides.