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Volume 396 Issue 6712, 17 December 1998

Opinion

  • South Africa has a unique opportunity to play a key role in creating effective health-care systems in sub-Saharan Africa. It must not squander this opportunity by rejecting the help offered by science.

    Opinion

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  • The successful reform of French science needs a greater commitment to openness and consultation.

    Opinion
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News

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News Analysis

  • High-technology industry makes up most of Israel's industrial exports. But leading companies, worried by the government's failure to invest in research and development, are threatening to take this work abroad.

    • Haim Watzman
    News Analysis
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News in Brief

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Correction

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Correspondence

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Commentary

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News & Views

  • Whether Amazonia is a carbon-dioxide source or sink has a significant effect on estimates of the global carbon budget. On an annual basis, El Niño, and its influence on precipitation in the region, seems to be a controlling factor.

    • I. Colin Prentice
    • Jon Lloyd
    News & Views

  • The genome sequence of the nematode wormCaenorhabditis elegansis now "essentially complete", and this achievement is marked by the publication of a series of papers. At 97 mega base-pairs, corresponding to 19,099 predicted genes, this is the biggest genome yet sequenced, and the first genome sequence for a multicellular organism.

    • Martin Chalfie
    News & Views

  • Some plants and animals are attached to the seashore by flexible structures that allow them to move with the water as it sloshes shoreward and seaward. However, a series of mathematical models shows that this may not be the best strategy for these organisms to avoid being washed away by the waves, as the force experienced when the tether yanks the organism to halt may be greater than the hydrodynamic forces it is subject to.

    • M. A. R. Koehl
    News & Views

  • The ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter family of proteins all contain two nucleotide-binding domains (NBDs) along with two membrane-spanning domains. The NBDs are molecular engines, and the crystal structure of one -- the NBD from theSalmonella typhimuriumhistidine permease -- now gives us clues about how the NBDs work. The results have implications for other ABC transporters, including the protein that is mutated in cystic fibrosis.

    • Michael J. Welsh
    • Andrew D. Robertson
    • Lynda S. Ostedgaard
    News & Views

  • Foreign proteins in a cell are chopped up and presented to the immune system by molecules of the major histocompatibility complex. What enzymes are responsible for making these cuts? The enzyme that delivers the initial blow specifically to the tetanus toxin has now been identified as asparaginyl endopeptidase.

    • Matthew Bogyo
    • Hidde L. Ploegh
    News & Views

  • A series of papers provides a description of the behaviour of the unconventional superconductor strontium ruthenate: a superconducting analogue of superfluid3He. Together they uphold established theories about how superconductivity driven by electron-electron interactions should work. This neat and tidy picture contrasts with the puzzling story of high-temperature copper oxide superconductors, with which ruthenates share a similar crystal structure.

    • Maurice Rice
    News & Views

  • In both the United States and Europe the law requires new cars to be fitted with a three-way catalytic converter to reduce pollution. Under some circumstances (urban ‘stop-go’ driving, for example) it seems that such converters result in a shift in the sulphur species emitted, with a rise in concentration of hydrogen sulphide. As yet, however, the implications remain unclear.

    • Sarah Tomlin
    News & Views

  • Tumours develop because the tumour cells are immortal -- they escape cell-killing mechanisms. Normally, when a molecule called Fas binds its ligand (FasL), a death pathway (apoptosis) is activated. But another molecule called DcR3, which has now been identified in lung and colon carcinomas, can also bind FasL, blocking the apoptotic pathway and allowing tumour cells to cheat death.

    • Douglas R. Green
    News & Views

  • One of the long-standing questions in immunology has been whether the thymus -- the main site for the production of T cells -- remains active throughout life. This question has finally been answered by measuring the levels of a by-product of T-cell formation that disappears with age. And the answer is that the thymus is, indeed, active into old age.

    • Hans-Reimer Rodewald
    News & Views

  • The Earth's magnetic field reverses periodically, and such a reversal might (speculates Daedalus) be triggered by the impact of a meteor. So he proposes an imaginative and highly dangerous experiment -- an attempt to reverse the magnetic field with underground nuclear explosions in place of a meteoric impact. Such reversals have in the past been correlated with climate cooling.

    • David Jones
    News & Views
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Science and Image

  • The physicist Arthur Worthington was intrigued by the beauty to be found in photographs of splashes produced when bodies of various shapes and sizes fall into fluids. The legacy of his enthusiasm is with us today.

    • Martin Kemp
    Science and Image
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Scientific Correspondence

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Book Review

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Review Article

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Letter

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Corrigendum

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