News Feature in 2007

Researchers in San Francisco have findings that suggest a whole new side to RNA interference. Erika Check reports on their attempts to make a revolutionary field more revolutionary still.

Elephant populations are soaring in some parts of Africa. Emma Marris discovers there's no single way to fit them in amid the people.

Space exploration usually means leaving Earth's orbit. But chemists are now burrowing inside solids to open new vistas. Katharine Sanderson reports from the internal frontier.

For 30 years scientists have believed that there are no organic molecules in the martian soil. Will NASA's Phoenix probe prove them right or wrong, asks Corinna Wu.

India's new Ministry of Earth Sciences is at the helm of ambitious plans to advance deep-sea and polar research. K. S. Jayaraman reports.

No longer just cellular janitors, cilia are making a clean sweep for biological greatness. Claire Ainsworth explores how they may hold the secret of multicellular development.

The ethics committees that oversee research done in humans have been attacked from all sides. Heidi Ledford recounts the struggle to come up with alternatives.

A project that gives Congolese pygmies new ways to tell logging companies about the trees that are important to them, and their own radio station to discuss community issues, is really putting their interests on the map, says Michael Hopkin.

Part of The Simpsons' greatness is a willingness to find the humour in absolutely everything — including science. Executive producer Al Jean, the show's head writer and a Harvard mathematics graduate, talks to Nature about how to get a laugh out of Euler's formula.

Alan Krensky has been put in charge of a controversial new office responsible for charting the progress of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research. Meredith Wadman catches up with him in his first few days on the job.

Physicists say that 96% of the Universe is unseen, and appeal to the ideas of 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' to make up the difference. In the first of two articles, Jenny Hogan reports that attempts to identify the mysterious dark matter are on the verge of success. In the second, Geoff Brumfiel asks why dark energy, hailed as a breakthrough when discovered a decade ago, is proving more frustrating than ever to the scientists who study it.

Why is dark energy, hailed as a breakthrough when discovered a decade ago, proving so frustrating to the scientists who study it?

Traditional Chinese medicine and Western science face almost irreconcilable differences. Can systems biology bring them together? Jane Qiu reports.

Studies of mass extinctions tend to emphasize the sheer scope of the carnage. But subtle differences between the species that died and those that survived can be crucial, finds Nick Lane.

Fifty years ago, a physics student dissatisfied with the standard view of quantum mechanics came up with a radical new interpretation. Mark Buchanan reports on the ensuing debate.

Time machines, spaceships, atomic blasters — the icons of science fiction tend to come from the physical sciences. But science fiction has a biological side too, finding drama and pathos in everything from alien evolution to the paradoxes of consciousness. Nature brought together four science-fiction writers with a background in the biological sciences to talk about life-science fiction.

How did a little Spanish province become one of the world's wind-energy giants? Daemon Fairless reports.

Smoking was banned in Californian bars a decade ago, and this week England follows suit. But Kris Novak finds that epidemiologists are still arguing about the effects of second-hand smoke.

From acid mine drainage to the bowels of the Earth, Josie Glausiusz reports how researchers are taking great pains to grow recalcitrant bacteria.

Can motor racing go green? Andreas Trabesinger asked Max Mosley, head of Formula 1, how he wants the sport to develop energy-efficient technology that will also work in road cars.