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The official report into the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter raises many issues that need to be coolly scrutinized. High on the list are NASA's efforts to increase its cost-effectiveness by launching ‘better, faster, cheaper’ missions.
India's worst cyclone this century, which ripped through the eastern state of Orissa on 29 October, flooded a nuclear accelerator lab, wiped out a botanical garden, and crushed the very radar system used to detect it.
A prominent US cell biologist is seeking funds for a multi-laboratory, multidisciplinary initiative intended to map how molecules in a cell interact with each other in response to various signals.
A group of leading Japanese electronics companies has proposed a joint industry-government programme to develop next-generation semiconductor technology for the emerging system-on-a-chip industry.
A leading scientific advisory body to the French government issued a strong critique last week of France's research budget for 2000, warning that a failure to increase spending could lead to a scientific recession in the near future.
A combination of understaffing, poor communication, lack of training, and other management problems at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and its prime contractor, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, ultimately doomed the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter, according to a report last week.
A computer-based service developed by a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, to detect student plagiarism is already being employed by a growing number of university professors across the United States, and may soon be tested in Britain.
The editor of the Journal of Medical Internet Researchis planning to publish a report on apparent plagiarism by the three physicians from the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Proposals for the partial privatisation of one of Europe's largest research organisations, the UK Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, have come under fire from the British Parliament.
The Spanish government committed itself to creating 2000 new posts in the public research sector in a research plan for the next four years unveiled last week.
New Zealand's opposition Labour Party has promised to increase funding for basic research by NZ$77 million over the next three years, financed primarily out of increased taxes on high-income earners, if it wins next week's general election
Some of the main attractions inside the Millennium Dome — the centrepiece of the British government's year 2000 celebrations — were unveiled to the press last week.
South Africa's Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, last week defended claims by the country's president, Thabo Mbeki, that the anti-retroviral drug AZT (zidovudine) may be too toxic to give to patients with HIV.
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has detained a Russian researcher, Igor Sutyagin, who works on arms control, disarmament and security problems, and interrogated two of his colleagues.
Stochastic resonance increases the ability of some nonlinear systems to detect weak signals. Paddlefish are now shown to use stochastic resonance to locate and capture prey, implicating this phenomenon in animal behaviour.
Microporous materials can now be designed from first principles. A new metal-organic framework has a crystalline structure that is twice as porous as most zeolites, which are currently the catalysts of choice for many industrial processes and domestic water softeners.
All known methods to increase lifespan come at a price. Usually, the costs are problems in development and fertility. But mutant mice have now been generated that live almost one-third longer than normal yet with no apparent side effects. These mice contain mutations in the gene that encodes a protein called p66shc, which is thought to be involved in the response to oxidative DNA damage.
Evidence for tectonic activity under the ocean comes from molten rocks that erupt at mid-ocean ridges. Chemical differences between volcanic rocks found at the ridge and nearby support a passive model of mantle flow whereby magma rises to the surface in response to the plates moving apart.
The ATP synthase enzyme catalyses the production of ATP from ADP and inorganic phosphate. It does so using a clever internal rotary mechanism, the latest insight into which is now reported. Using sophisticated NMR and chemical probes, one group has uncovered structural changes in a critical subunit that could drive the rotation.
Organ transplantation remains a difficult procedure that is especially dogged by the problem of immunological rejection. Daedalus plans to circumvent this hurdle by injecting large cohorts of fetuses with each others' cells, so making their organs compatible in adult life and revolutionizing transplant procedures.
