Comment in 2014

Research into how genetic variants can guide successful treatments must become part of routine medical practice and records, says Geoffrey Ginsburg.

Liz Allen, Amy Brand, Jo Scott, Micah Altman and Marjorie Hlava are trialling digital taxonomies to help researchers to identify their contributions to collaborative projects.

Investment and policies must support cheap, clean energy technologies to cut both poverty and climate change, say Reid Detchon and Richenda Van Leeuwen.

As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change asks how its assessment process should evolve, Dave Griggs argues for decadal updates and eased workloads.

Costs of carbon emissions are being underestimated, but current estimates are still valuable for setting mitigation policy, say Richard L. Revesz and colleagues.

Bernard Wood explains why the announcement of 'handy man' in April 1964 threw the field of hominin evolution into a turmoil that continues to this day.

As elections begin in India, Mathai Joseph and Andrew Robinson call for an end to the stultifying bureaucracy that has held back the nation's science for decades.

Businesses and the public can keep watch when governments fail to provide environmental data, say Angel Hsu and colleagues.

A participatory view of science resolves quantum paradoxes and finds room in classical physics for 'the Now', says N. David Mermin.

More investment to characterize animal models can boost the ability of preclinical work to predict drug effects in humans, says Steve Perrin.

Brian D. Wright and colleagues present data challenging the assumption that corporate-funded academic research is less accessible and useful to others.

Low-carbon technologies are getting better and cheaper each year, but continued public-policy support is needed to sustain progress, says Jessika E. Trancik.

Ideas in a thirteenth-century treatise on the nature of matter still resonate today, say Tom C. B. McLeish and colleagues.

Peter Gluckman, New Zealand's chief science adviser, offers his ten principles for building trust, influence, engagement and independence.

Bold strategies are needed to identify the elusive particles that should make up most of the Universe's mass, say Mario Livio and Joe Silk.

With improved breeding and cultivation, ruminant animals can yield food that is better for people and the planet, say Mark C. Eisler, Michael R. F. Lee and colleagues.

Improved methods for studying minerals at extreme pressures and temperatures promise a new era for exploring our planet's centre, says Thomas Duffy.

For medical use, human stool should be considered a tissue, not a drug, argue Mark B. Smith, Colleen Kelly and Eric J. Alm.

Plans for a 300-kilometre waterway joining the Pacific and Atlantic oceans need independent environmental assessment, urge Axel Meyer and Jorge A. Huete-Pérez.

Increasing both forest stocks and timber harvest will buy time while we learn more about how trees absorb carbon, say Valentin Bellassen and Sebastiaan Luyssaert.