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Sands of time: Traces of recurring tsunamis on Indian Ocean shores Nothing known from written history gave reason to expect the Indian Ocean tsunami that took nearly a quarter million lives on 26 December 2004. That tsunami entered geological history by laying down centimetres of sand on the coastal plains that it overran. Jankaew et al. have now found such sedimentary records of earlier tsunamis preserved in the dark soils of marshy swales at Phra Thong, a barrier island in western Thailand. The cover shows an example from a pit dug there in 2007: the topmost light-coloured layer represents the 2004 tsunami, while a similar layer below records a tsunami in the fourteenth or fifteenth century AD. The ruler divisions are 10 cm long. In a separate study in Aceh, Indonesia, Monecke et al. found the 2004 sand sheet preceded by the deposits of three tsunamis from the past 1,200 years. One of these earlier deposits may match the medieval one found in Thailand. The combined findings suggest that the 2004 tsunami is neither the first nor the last of its kind.
The values of scientific enquiry, rather than any particular policy positions on science, suggest a preference for one US presidential candidate over the other.
Where should the drug industry go to find new ideas? In the first of two features, Alison Abbott asks if the future lies in systems biology -- a field that attempts to piece together 'everything'. In the second, David Cyranoski looks at drug companies' attraction to China.
Where should the drug industry go to find new ideas? In the first of two features, Alison Abbott asked if the future lies in systems biology -- a field that attempts to piece together 'everything'. In this, the second feature, David Cyranoski looks at drug companies' attraction to China.
Electronic voting machines were supposed to vanquish unreliable counts. They did not -- but David Lindley finds that other technologies present their own problems.
Financial engineers have put too much faith in untested axioms and faulty models, says Jean-Philippe Bouchaud. To prevent economic havoc, that needs to change.
The scale of the 2004 tsunami that devastated shores around the Indian Ocean has no precedent in written histories of the region. But evidence of similar events has been unearthed from the geological record.
How did organismal complexity evolve at a cellular level, and how does a genome encode it? The answer might lie in differences, not in the number of genes an organism has, but rather in the regulation of gene expression.
Bunsen didn't just invent the burner — he also worked on spectral analysis, in which compounds are heated in flames to produce distinctive light emissions. The latest device replaces flames with microplasmas.
Pathogens have many ways of subverting their hosts' molecular machinery. A striking example of such a ploy comes to light from investigations of the species of bacterium that causes listeriosis.
The standard model of metals is found to fail in several cases. The long-sought-after marginal state in which such a breakdown occurs has been identified in a metal on the border of ferromagnetism.
Polymers of misfolded proteins underlie many diseases, including major neurodegenerative disorders. Structural data on how such aggregates of serpin proteins form answer several outstanding questions.
Despite its diminutive size and modest research budget, the Netherlands makes a major contribution to research in the physical sciences. Quirin Schiermeier reports.