Nature Newsblog
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Babies born by caesarean may miss immune system trigger.
A messy birth could be good for the baby's digestion. So say researchers in Germany, who have found evidence that baby mice squeezing through the birth canal swallow bacterial molecules that help their gut grow healthily. The finding suggests that kids born by caesarean might miss out.
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Indirect side effects of therapeutic trials may have led to organ failure.
Scientists in Germany are trying to establish what exactly caused the death of a 28-year-old patient participating in a gene-therapy trial based in Frankfurt.
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Should we expect more flooding in Europe?
On 15 April, the River Danube reached its highest level for some 111 years, forcing residents of Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Serbia to flee their homes. With weeks of snowmelt and rain swelling Europe's second-longest river, the waters haven’t dipped below that level since. Meteorologists are warning that the flood represents yet more evidence that climate change is gearing up to play havoc with our weather. News@nature.com asks what caused the events of the past few days in Eastern Europe, and whether those living near other major river systems can expect the same this year.
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Successful launch should prove to be a boon for climate research.
It has been a long wait, but two satellites that will study how clouds affect our climate are finally in orbit around the Earth. After delays by strikes, bad weather and dodgy phone connections, CloudSat and CALIPSO were launched on 28 April from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
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Tiny satellite makes debut inside the space station.
A miniature satellite has arrived at the International Space Station (ISS), where it will take its first space flight in indoor comfort rather than in the harsh conditions outside the station.
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New growth charts could push more kids into obese category.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued new guidelines showing how babies should ideally grow. Controversially, the new charts mean that more children in Western countries could be labelled as overweight.
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Catching dinner could save some corals from climate doom.
Hungry corals have an unexpected trick up their sleeve that could help reefs to escape destruction at the hands of warming seas. Marine biologists have discovered that some corals can weather 'mass bleaching' events by gorging on marine animals.
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Artificial cloud-maker could yield clues about climate change.
An office block with a huge silver silo perched on top of it seems an unlikely place to produce clouds. But nestled within just such a building at the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research in Leipzig, Germany, lies some cutting-edge equipment: an 8-metre long, pencil-thin steel tube that can hold man-made clouds.
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Core from the ocean floor may hold rare plateosaur find.
Jørn Hurum has hit a scientific jackpot twice. First by finding a dinosaur bone in an oil-drill core sample found off the North Sea, and then by being able to identify the dinosaur from that one tiny sample.
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Manufacturers urged to take more responsibility for problems with heart implants.
Medical implants that can restart a failing heart are causing problems for thousands of patients because of malfunctions, researchers say. This is prompting calls for manufacturers to be clearer about how often their devices go wrong.
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muse@nature.com
It is a crime against humanity when professional communicators manage to get language so horribly muddled, says Henry Gee.
For the past few weeks I've been busy completing a book, and so haven't had much time to listen to the radio, nor watch TV. But now, having switched back on to these means of mass communication, it seems that news and current-affairs shows have been taken over by a horde of lexical barbarians whose mission seems to be to assault my ears with a barrage of grammatical and stylistic solecisms.
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Massive data-crunch points to basis of inscrutable disease.
The largest study yet of chronic-fatigue syndrome (CFS) has revealed a battery of genetic changes that might explain how the mystery disease arises.
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Brain autopsy of pollution victim rekindles contaminant fears.
Fears of a link between aluminium and Alzheimer’s disease have been reignited by the case of a British woman who died of the illness 16 years after an industrial accident polluted her local drinking water.
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Is the proton losing weight, or has the fabric of the Universe changed?
It seems that nothing stays the same: not even the 'constants' of physics. An experiment suggests that the mass ratio of two fundamental subatomic particles has decreased over the past 12 billion years, for no apparent reason.
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Shifting of ocean sediments could trigger undersea landslides.
Hurricanes whip up gigantic waves at sea, but it seems they could also cause even more dangerous monsters to crash into shore.
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Tiny software mistake puts results back by months.
A software error has hit one of the world's most sophisticated climate simulations. Participants in the BBC-sponsored project, which uses spare time on home computers to predict Britain's climate in 2080, will have to wait longer than expected to see their work on television.
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Sexy pictures and lacy underwear take men’s minds off getting a good deal.
It seems that the more macho a man is — at least according to his hormones — the more the sight of an attractive woman will affect his judgement.
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Lots of vegetables and low dairy may stave off Alzheimer's.
It seems a diet loaded with fruit, vegetables and olive oil, some fish and alcohol, but little dairy and meat - known as the Mediterranean diet - can reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease in the elderly.
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On Tuesday 11 April, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country had successfully enriched uranium. News@nature.com puts his statement in context.
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Catfish show how the first tetrapods might have caught dinner.
Zoologists have found a remarkable fish that can wriggle from Africa's tropical swamps to snaffle a snack on land.
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Organic LEDs use fluorescence to pump up efficiency.
The traditional light bulb's days could be numbered, according to scientists who have taken an important step towards making white organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) commercially viable.
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Baby caecilians scrape the fatty skin from their mum's back.
How far would you go to feed your kids? Mothers of some worm-like amphibians called caecilians literally give a piece of themselves, by allowing their young to eat their flesh.
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Give it a good spin and a hard-boiled egg will start leaping.
After two years of work, with a purpose-built steel machine wired up to high-speed cameras, microphones and electronic sensors, a team of Japanese researchers has finally proved that a hard-boiled egg can jump1. All it takes, according to Yutaka Shimomura and colleagues of Keio University, is a good spin.
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Looking for the point of seemingly pointless research.
Today I bring you some research results that should please sitcom writers everywhere: men are fat slobs who prefer to dine on chicken wings, beer and solid fat, whereas women are iron-willed sylphs who subsist mostly on carrot sticks and tofu.
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NASA hopes smashing space junk into the Moon will throw up water.
Open season on planetary bodies continues as NASA plans to smash a spent rocket stage into the Moon in 2008. The proposal follows the Deep Impact mission, which slammed a space probe into a comet, and a recently announced plan to crash an impactor into Mars (see 'Mars attack!').
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European probe arrives at our hellish planetary twin.
On 11 April, less than six months after launch, the European Space Agency's probe Venus Express arrived at its destination, swinging elegantly into orbit around the fiery hot planet. News@nature finds out why we have sent a probe to our hellish neighbour, and what's in store for the mission.
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Microbial adhesive is three times stronger than superglue.
Geckos, mussels and barnacles step aside — physicists have found the stickiest customer in all of biology. The title-holder is an unassuming bacterium that lives anywhere wet. By copying its feat of strength, material scientists might create new surgical glues.
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People who have near-death experiences more likely to find REM sleep intruding on reality.
People who have had near-death experiences are more likely to mix up dreams and reality than those who have not, researchers say.
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Care for women is still falling short, keeping life expectancies low.
A chronic shortage of health workers is having a deadly impact on developing countries' ability to fight disease, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned.
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Physicists explain how shampoo streams can bounce.
Dutch researchers believe they have cracked the physics behind a mysterious bouncing behaviour of liquids, first seen more than 40 years ago.
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Measures of rain, snow and runoff in Siberia show hefty changes.
One of Siberia's largest rivers is dumping about 10% more fresh water into the Arctic today than it was some 60 years ago, thanks to the complex effects of increased snowfall, melting permafrost and changing weather.
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Interim report on London case shows no evidence of contamination.
The drug-trial disaster that put six British patients in intensive care does not seem to have been due to contamination or a failure to follow protocol, says the agency investigating the incident. If the preliminary finding is confirmed, it would indicate that the drug itself caused the negative effects.
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A newly found fossil links fish to land-lubbers.
A crucial fossil that shows how animals crawled out from the water, evolving from fish into land-loving animals, has been found in Canada.
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A lack of shut-eye is costing lives and dollars.
Sleep deprivation is costing the United States hundreds of billions of dollars each year. So say the experts behind a report that highlights this burgeoning and oft-ignored health problem.
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British system could offer more accurate reporting of animal suffering.
Britain could soon overhaul its regulations on how research that uses animals is reported. The proposed new measures aim to give the public a better understanding of exactly what pain and suffering lab animals experience throughout their lives.
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Looking for the point of seemingly pointless research.
Did you know that there are scientists who study deaf budgies? I didn't. But this mysteriously titled paper has brought the field to my attention: "Perception of complex sounds in budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus) with temporary hearing loss."
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Trial points way to engineered organs using patients' own cells.
A team of scientists has grown human bladder sacs in the laboratory and successfully transplanted them into people.
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Electrical lenses switch modes at the flick of a switch.
Wearers of unwieldy bifocal spectacles, take heart. A new kind of lens could offer a neat solution to the problem of switching between two lens types. The electrically powered design can shift from one lens power to another in the blink of an eye, or in this case, the flip of a switch.
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They're worth a cool $57 billion to the United States each year, that's what.
Next time you dismiss insects as mere creepy-crawlies, ponder for a while on what life would be like without them. Our six-legged friends might be more valuable than you think — research estimates that they're worth at least a staggering $57 billion to the US economy every year.
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