News Feature in 2005

Endangered languages often contain key linguistic insights found nowhere else. But the tongues are disappearing faster than scientists can document them. Jessica Ebert reports.

Commercial and political pressures are pushing for a halt to the use of animals in toxicology tests in Europe. This change will also mean a move towards better science, says Alison Abbott.

This month South Africa will officially open the largest optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere. But is the country ready to capitalize on its investment? Michael Cherry investigates.

Living things from bacteria to humans change their environment, but the consequences for evolution and ecology are only now being understood, or so the ‘niche constructivists’ claim. Dan Jones investigates.

Hurricanes can grow more intense in a matter of hours, but exactly why remains a mystery. Mark Schrope flies into the eye of a storm to investigate.

It's a bizarre, toxin-filled microbe that could clean up sewage plants across the globe. Helen Pilcher gets on the trail of the anammox bacterium.

The flailing limbs of someone acting out their dreams in bed may not seem the obvious place to seek a cure for Parkinson's disease. But, as Alison Abbott finds out, this sleep disorder is shedding fresh light on the development of neurodegenerative disorders.

Ignoring the mainstream, physicist Seth Putterman has a knack for bringing long-forgotten mysteries back to the fore. Geoff Brumfiel discovers some of the payoffs, and perils, of being a fiercely independent researcher.

For years it was assumed that tiny differences in our genetic make-up gave us our individual traits. Now it seems that those characteristics are caused by rearrangements of large chunks of our DNA — variations that could be the key to understanding disease. Erika Check investigates.

Biologists, planetary scientists and engineers have gathered in southern Spain to test a robotic drill. They hope some day to probe for life beneath the surface of Mars. Jenny Hogan investigates.

Forget drugs carefully designed to hit one particular molecule — a better way of treating complex diseases such as cancer may be to aim for several targets at once, says Simon Frantz.

Everyone knows about the Amazon rainforest, but Brazil's tropical savannah is arguably under greater threat. Emma Marris visits a testing ground for future conservation strategies.

With a mathematician's logic and the perfectionism of a concert pianist, Nikos Logothetis is making waves in cognitive neuroscience — and putting the German town of Tübingen on the scientific map. Alison Abbott pays him a visit.

The Arctic is a unique testing ground for studying how birds navigate long distances. Jane Qiu catches up with an expedition to unravel the signals that help birds on their migrations.

Thousands of patients are queueing to be treated by Hongyun Huang at his Beijing clinic. But no Western journal editor seems willing to publish his research. David Cyranoski talks to the neurosurgeon whose global reputation among the ailing hasn't swayed his peers.

The friction that arises when a scientific society aims both to serve its members and stay commercially competitive is generating heat within the American Chemical Society. Emma Marris takes the society's temperature.

With one ageing telescope in space, and another mired in construction troubles on Earth, Matt Mountain has a tough job to do. Jeff Kanipe meets the new custodian of everyone's favourite space telescope.

Marine scientists are getting ready for their newest tool, a versatile robot submersible that can travel into the oceans' deepest abyss. Robert Cooke visits the Massachusetts lab where the future of deep-sea exploration is taking shape.

Approaches to conservation that seek to protect the most endangered species have had only mixed success. Is it time to move away from biodiversity ‘hotspots’, and stress the economic value of ecosystems? Lucy Odling-Smee investigates.

This month, as most researchers gear up to teach, two scientists are heading into the classroom to learn. Geoff Brumfiel asks why a physicist would want to enrol in biology lessons.