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The drive for greater public participation in the regulation and politics of technologies is both necessary and irreversible. But proposals to extend it into the selection of publicly funded research contain dangers to science and society.
Alaska is warming up more than anywhere else on Earth. Climate researchers are now turning to regional models to find out why — and how to deal with it. John Whitfield went north to investigate.
Thanks in part to brain-imaging technology, researchers are now homing in on the root cause of dyslexia. But research into strategies for treating the condition is still in its infancy, says Glenn Murphy.
Roberto Macchiarelli is a palaeoanthropologist. Until recently at the National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography in Rome, he is currently professor of human palaeontology at the University of Poitiers, France.
Looking inside the compartments of certain immune cells — professional antigen-presenting cells — has revealed how the immune system can trigger a cell-killing response to extracellular pathogens.
An Alfvén-wave maser, a feature of atmospheric and astrophysical science, has been created in a laboratory, and opens the way for further Earth-bound investigations of cosmic phenomena.
It has long been proposed that stem cells function by dividing to generate an identical daughter cell and a cell that becomes more specialized. New work illustrates such asymmetric division and its molecular basis.
The industrial application of zeolites is limited by the cost of certain organic materials that are needed to make them, but which are destroyed in the process. A clever technique offers a solution.
The puzzle of how a drug that binds to a protein found in normal cells as well as cancer cells preferentially kills tumours is now solved — the target protein exists in a drug-binding complex in tumour cells.
Magnetic-memory devices of the future could be based on 'spintronics', through switching the directions of electron spins. New work confirms the physics behind a spin-switching mechanism.
Flooding reduces the ability of roots to absorb water. The molecular basis for this paradox involves the regulation of water-channel proteins by the pH inside root cells.