Comment

Models show that even a 'small' nuclear war would cause catastrophic climate change. Such findings must inform policy, says Alan Robock.

Nokia, Toyota and Roche explain how they are weathering the financial crash, the technologies they are investing in and their innovation strategies.

The World Health Organization needs major reform to regain its leadership as a convener and provider of scientific and technical knowledge, says Barry R. Bloom.

Two months on from the earthquake and tsunami that hit their country on 11 March, five Japanese seismologists reflect on what they have learned from it so far.

Creating more exotic isotopes will reveal the stellar formation of atoms — a fitting tribute to Ernest Rutherford, say Michael Thoennessen and Bradley Sherrill.

Calls in Canada for trials of a contentious treatment for multiple sclerosis illustrate how social media can affect research priorities, say Roger Chafe and his colleagues.

As the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) turns 50, Henry Nicholls traces how the evolution of conservation practice has been echoed in the various incarnations of WWF's iconic pandas, and other conservation logos.

Scientists share memories of doing doctorates in different decades, disciplines and locations, from the hunt for the structure of DNA to deciphering the human genome.

Robert J. Geller calls on Japan to stop using flawed methods for long-term forecasts and to scrap its system for trying to predict the 'Tokai earthquake'.

A year after the oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, Jeffrey Short and Susan Murray call for action to prevent an even more nightmarish scenario: a spill in the Arctic.

Curbing nitrogen emissions is a central environmental challenge for the twenty-first century, argue Mark Sutton and his colleagues.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been an innovator of university funding models, says David Kaiser. Its 150-year history holds lessons for today.

This month marks 50 years since Yuri Gagarin first ventured into space in the Vostok 1 mission, and 30 years since NASA's first shuttle flight. As the shuttle Endeavour prepares for its final flight, seven experts outline what NASA's priorities need to be.

As resistance mushrooms, governments must make development of new antibiotics financially viable for industry, say Matthew A. Cooper and David Shlaes.

A radical restructure is the only way to solve the systemic problems of the world's biggest funder of biomedical research, argues Michael M. Crow.

Madeleine C. Thomson and colleagues call on climate and health researchers, policy-makers and practitioners to work together to tackle infectious diseases.

On the 50th anniversary of the first attempt to drill into Earth's mantle, Damon Teagle and Benoît Ildefonse say that what was once science fiction is now possible.

Combining Maxwell's equations with Einstein's general relativity promises perfect images and cloaking devices, explains Ulf Leonhardt.

James Clerk Maxwell's 1861 work on electromagnetism, which unified scientific fields, was driven as much by technology as by abstract theorizing, argues Simon Schaffer.

An old influenza strain still circulating in birds and swine could easily jump back to humans now that immunity to it has dropped, warn Gary J. Nabel and his colleagues.