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Some branches of science have learnt how to cope with huge amounts of information. Biologists haven't. There is a dearth of essential skills which is only now starting to be taken seriously.
Physicists from the Middle East, Europe, the United States and the Far East are to meet in Paris next week to discuss plans for the first ever centre for collaboration in basic research in the Middle East.
The US Department of Agriculture to set up a biotechnology advisory committee made up of scientists, farmers, industry groups, environmentalists and other members of the public.
Dan Goldin, the administrator of the US space agency NASA, has triggered a fierce debate among physicists by suggesting that the next generation of instruments to explore the fundamental nature of matter should be built not on the ground but in space.
Harold Varmus, the director of the National Institutes of Health, has made a second attempt to persuade his advisory committee that the institutes should become a degree-granting institution.
John Lawton, director of the Centre for Population Biology at Imperial College London, has been appointed the next head of NERC, Britain's main government funding agency for environmental research.
The life sciences, information technology, and social sciences have received the lion's share of a recently created FF 1.2 billion special annual fund for research.
Construction of the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), planned to become the largest single telescope in the southern hemisphere, has moved a step closer.
Japan's science policy-makers are planning to make a statement of their priorities in science and technology in a bid to ensure adequate funding for key research areas in future government budgets.
Japan's Science and Technology Council has called for the setting up of an independent body to carry out external evaluation of university research in order to make it more competitive.
A federal jury in San Francisco last week failed to reach a unanimous agreement on whether Genentech Inc. had infringed a patent held by the University of California.
Germany's Max Planck Society is to investigate whether Peter Seeburg, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, is guilty of scientific misconduct.
Europe's radio-astronomers have won significant concessions in their prolonged battle with the global mobile telephone company Iridium over time-sharing in an astronomically important radiowave band.
Member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are to be asked to help draw up tighter rules for sharing the radio spectrum between astronomers and telecommunications companies.
Over 100 government science and education ministers from around the world are expected to address the World Conference on Science at the end of the month.
Australia's conservative government announced that it is nominating one of its main political opponents, Gareth Evans, to become director general of Unesco.
Enormous amounts of data are being amassed in fields as diverse as genomics and astronomy. If this information is to be used effectively to speed the pace of discovery, scientists need new ways of working. This requires investment in computers, new statistical tools, and a liberal approach to data sharing.
Models of the Earth's possible responses to global warming are continually being improved. The latest simulation of changes in deep flow in the Atlantic operates without several of the fudge factors previously required.
Bacteria are becoming increasingly clever, and can now outwit most of the antibiotics that we throw at them. The results of a new study show not only that some clinical isolates of penicillin-resistantS. pneumoniaeare also tolerant to vancomycin, but they also give us a clue to how the bacteria do this. The key is a two-component signal-transduction system.
Superconductivity and magnetism are usually considered mutually exclusive, although they can coexist in hybrid compounds containing two different sets of atoms. Under certain conditions, in a high-temperature superconductor, magnetism can now coexist with superconductivity even though they both arise from the same copper atoms.
The proposal that species diversity in an ecosystem makes it more resistant to perturbation is intuitively attractive, yet this is often not supported by either natural or model systems. An example that does support the proposal is now shown in populations of acorn woodpeckers. These birds rely on oak trees for food, and their population density is limited not by the overall density of trees, but by the number of species.
The effect of 'colossal magnetoresistance' in certain magnetic oxides may lead to improvements in magnetic storage media. This phenomenon usually arises from competition between a metallic and insulating state, but fine-tuning the chemical composition of these compounds produces a magnetoresistive material in which metal and insulator coexist.
During an immune response, T cells proliferate rapidly and acquire 'effector' functions, allowing them to kill infected cells. Most of these T cells then die, with a few surviving as memory T cells. A new technique has been developed, which seems to reliably identify which of the T cells will survive to become memory cells. It should have many implications for design of vaccines and in addressing immunological questions.
The problem with sending pictures electronically is that they take up a huge amount of space. To get round this, Daedalus is developing the 'Videosketch', which prunes down visual detail to the bare essentials. He's doing this by employing a panel of cartoonists to make sketches of photographs that are then embodied in software by a team of programmers.
Nature' s annual New on the Market section devoted to matters microscopic and to image analysis includes knives and microtomes, and ‘prescription’ eyepieces to allow wearers of spectacles to use optical microscopes in comfort. Compiled in the Nature office from information provided by the manufacturers.
