Nature Newsblog
Cash thrown and plans hatched to beat down malaria, tuberculosis and HIV.
A spotlight has been cast on the health burdens of tuberculosis (TB), malaria and HIV this month, thanks to two influential meetings with high-profile participants.
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Contenders line up to net credit for smallest vertebrate.
You might be more used to arguments about who has caught the biggest fish. But this week a squabble has broken out among zoologists, each of whom is claiming to have found the smallest.
Looking for the point of seemingly pointless research.
A recent press release about lightning protection systems (otherwise known as lightning rods, I assume) strikes me as odd.
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Alternative livestock drug should be used to avert bird extinctions, say researchers.
Conservationists battling to save South Asia’s vultures have renewed their calls for a regional ban on the widely prescribed livestock drug diclofenac, which is responsible for the fatal poisoning of millions of birds over the past decade.
Study reveals hidden role for split-personality proteins.
Researchers have found clues to what prion proteins might be doing when they are not triggering brain disease: it seems they help certain stem cells to copy themselves.
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RNA researcher defends experiments others have found impossible to repeat.
After the spectacular case of fraud involving stem-cell researcher Woo Suk Hwang, Asia has been hit by another, more low-key scandal.
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Red planet under fire in proposed mission.
Scientists have had a smashing idea that could help them explore beneath Mars's dusty surface. Slamming a hefty chunk of copper into the red planet should excavate enough material to reveal water ice or carbon-based chemicals that lurk underground, according to a proposed NASA mission.
Continue reading this story here.
Common cold helps grow swift protection against bird flu.
Researchers in the United States have unveiled a new, faster way to produce vaccines against the H5N1 bird-flu virus. They claim that the technique can create a vaccine against a specific strain within 36 days. This could permit a speedy response should the virus acquire the ability to spread easily from human to human.
Genetic data highlight a protein that could be key to flu pandemics.
The mass decoding of nearly 170 strains of avian influenza has pinpointed a particular protein region that may help the H5N1 virus to kill with a vengeance.
Ethanol does well on efficiency, but only so-so for the environment.
Ethanol fuel from plants may be more efficient that petrol, but for now it offers only marginal environmental benefits. That's the message from scientists who have analysed exactly how much energy goes into making such biofuels, and how much carbon dioxide they emit as they power your car.
Continue reading here.
Arctic puddles point to melting ice, but their effect is hard to predict.
Parts of Alaska that have been frozen for more than 3,000 years are now puddled with water, according to a team of scientists working in this northernmost US state.
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Astronomers use gravity lensing to spot homely planets.
Astronomers say they have found the most Earth-like planet yet outside our Solar System. At just 5.5 times the mass of Earth it is one of the smallest extrasolar planets ever found, and orbits its star at a distance comparable to that of habitable worlds.
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Human activity not to blame for wayward whale's death.
Researchers have begun to answer the question of how and why a whale died after swimming up the River Thames last week — a rare event that captivated the world's media.
Physicists reveal how best to get speed and distance with a throw-in.
Researchers have managed to confirm what many football players have already worked out: when it comes to throwing a soccer ball far and fast, the usual rules of projectile maths don’t necessarily apply.
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Has Philip Morris broken its promise not to fund medical research?
In a move that seems to break its own promise not to fund medical research, the Philip Morris Foundation has awarded €25,000 (US$31,000) to a chemist at the University of Munich who works on DNA repair.
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Darwin’s theory that snails hitch a lift with birds proves plausible.
For an animal with one foot, it certainly gets around. Even across oceans.
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Fattening fears are an ‘urban myth’, say medics.
The contraceptive pill does not cause women to put on weight, say researchers who have surveyed data from more than 40 studies.
A second Antarctic sample excites climatologists.
Scientists have drilled right to the bottom of an Antarctic glacier, creating a hole that is three kilometres deep. The ice core that they extracted is shorter than that from a similar hole made in 2004, but oddly it seems to be just as old.
Continue reading the story here.
Studies suggest humour signals big brain and good partner-potential.
If love is blind, then maybe humour is the attention-grabber.
That’s the conclusion of two recent studies that confirm a long-standing stereotype of flirting: that women like joky men, while men like women who laugh at their jokes.
Looking for the point of seemingly pointless research.
"Mountain bikers are cautioned to ride with care - major injuries do happen". So says the newsflash in my inbox.
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Looking for the point of seemingly pointless research.
A trawl through the journal Addiction this week comes up with this startling find: a hangover makes you feel out of sorts, and affects your cognitive performance.
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Looking for the point of seemingly pointless research.
2006, I have decided, is the year that I'll make it big. I'll get a promotion. I'll be wildly popular. And in order to do this I'll meet lots of people and make them my friends.
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