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At the turn of the millennium, the US National Academies put the spotlight on the miserable pay and conditions experienced by most US postdocs. Things are now starting to change, but slowly. Betsy Mason reports.
Crooks, terrorists and liars can be hard to spot. But some researchers hope that scanning brains, faces or voices might reveal deceivers. Jonathan Knight looks at lie-detection technology, and wonders who is being fooled.
Can we ever hope to pin down the genetic changes that underlie the big steps in evolution? Possibly so, if a study of the variation in the pelvic fins of sticklebacks is anything to go by.
A class of black holes of intermediate mass is expected but has never been detected. The suggestion that these beasts might lurk behind powerful X-ray sources in nearby galaxies is now strengthened.
The p27Kip1 protein inhibits cell proliferation, helping to prevent tumours developing. We now know that it also affects cell migration, by regulating Rho proteins. Does this function influence tumour progression?
The courtship of satin bowerbirds is a complicated business. Different parts of a male's display appeal to females of different ages, so age-biased variation might underlie the evolution of these displays.
Analyses that largely exploit indirect data from the past 150 years show that El Niño and La Niña might be more predictable than was thought. The results presage the prospect of extended climate forecasts.
The Mars saga continues. The latest finds — wide areas covered in balls of haematite, or ‘blueberries’, and large sulphate deposits in rocks — enable us to draw in more details of the planet's past climate.
