Volume 388 Issue 6643, 14 August 1997

Italy must grasp a unique chance to reform its grant system before the window of opportunity closes.

rome

The power of Italy's national research council (CNR) could be threatened by a proposal to create a National Institute of Biomedical and Clinical Research.

rome

An unresolved struggle over who should control the allocation of research grants in Italy threatens to undermine an opportunity for quick and effective reform of the country's research structures.

washington

Top US research universities are alarmed at calls to redirect Pentagon money away from basic research towards the purchase of new weapons systems.

washington

Biomedical researchers in the US face federal criminal sanctions for illegally divulging medical information under proposals to be sent to Congress next week.

london

A US cattle-breeding and biotechnology company has successfuly cloned a bull calf, called Gene, using primordial stem cells taken from a 30-day old calf foetus.

london

After spending more than a month exploring the surface of Mars, NASA's lander Pathfinder is being allowed to rest at night to conserve the life of its batteries.

washington

US lawmakers are groping for ways to fund scientific research that is seen as neither biased or flawed following a recent bitter debate in Congress over new air pollution standards.

new delhi

As India celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of its independence, many are asking why no Indian scientist has been awarded a Nobel prize in the post-independence era.

san francisco

The National Institutes of Health has been urged to set up a centralized mechanism to facilitate studies of the potential therapeutic effects of marijuana.

munich & tokyo

Theree is guarded optimism that the gap between different countries on the need for strict measures to restrict greenhouse gas emissions may be closing.

paris

The chairman of a commission of inquiry set up to investigate claims of an increase in leukaemias among children living close a French nuclear reprocessing plant has resigned.

Cuts in Japan's space programme indicate a shift towards users’ needs, rather than providing broad-based support for space technology.

The scientific enterprise is full of experts on specialist areas but woefully short of people with a unified world-view. This state of affairs can only inhibit progress, and could threaten political and financial support for research.

At ultra-high pressures, liquid hydrogen becomes metallic. So should solid hydrogen, yet it stubbornly resists. A newly predicted spontaneous asymmetry of molecules in the solid may be the reason.

A new study indicates that cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) form a clade with artiodactyls (pigs, hippos, camels and ruminants) -- that is, they have a common ancestor that is not shared by any other group of mammals. These radical new findings could mean that a cow is more closely related to a dolphin or whale than to a pig or a camel.

Among its many functions, adenosine is a neurotransmitter which acts at the adenosine receptor. By creating knockout mice for one subgroup of adenosine receptors (A_2a), the normal functions of the receptor can be studied. The knockout mice show reduced sensitivity to pain, increased anxiety and similar responses to those shown by wild-type mice to high levels of caffeine. This has led to the conclusion that caffeine normally exerts its responses by blocking the action of the A_2areceptor.

Ozone in the atmosphere has many useful functions. Most of it is in the stratosphere (above 10 to 20 km) and only ten per cent is in the troposphere (the region down to ground level), where it helps to remove undesirable emissions. The two regions are usually separated, dynamically, by the tropopause, but new measurements taken on airliners show that pockets of extremely high ozone concentration are somehow getting from the stratosphere into the troposphere over the tropical Atlantic.

Tumour cells can be eradicated by the body's own immune system, but this relies on a marker to highlight the tumour cells and make sure that normal, healthy cells are not destroyed. This marker is the major histocompatibility complex, which presents tumour antigen on the surface of antigen-presenting cells (APCs). A new study shows that one group of APCs -- the dendritic cells -- can be made to present tumour antigens by direct fusion with tumour cells.

Humans have, for many thousands of years, introduced crops and animals into different parts of the world. But the introduction of many species has not been so welcome, and today more species are being introduced than ever before. A new report warns that these introductions are an important component of human-induced global change, and that they represent a serious threat to biodiversity.

Active noise control is becoming a practical way to quieten our environment, with, for example, interior trim panels in aircraft cabins that can react to and cancel out noise. Other automated acoustic systems can act as sound mirrors in the ocean, to probe currents and allow underwater communication; imitate the directional quality of different instruments; and even tell the difference between an oboe and a saxophone.

The low-density lipoprotein receptor (LDLR) removes cholesterol-carrying lipoproteins from the blood, and mutations in this protein lead to familial hypercholesterolaemia -- a condition that leads to high cholesterol levels and heart attacks at an early age. We're now a step closer to knowing why these mutations are so damaging thanks to a study of one region of the receptor, mutations in which destabilize the whole protein.

Pulsed magnetic currents can induce highly localized currents in the brain, leading to the firing of nerves in a small region of tissue. Daedalus wants to develop such pulsing techniques to improve muscular coordination and strength. A well-designed ‘neuromagnetic program’, firing the right nerves in the right place, could allow an athlete to run, jump or throw with ultimate power and accuracy.