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But researchers and advocates call plan 'too little, too late'

Politicians urge the government to insist on free archiving of scientific papers

New government guidelines aim to boost key areas including biotech and medicines

Andrzej KrauzeThe number of European researchers who leave Europe for greener pastures abroad has continued to make headlines on a regular basis in recent months. Time magazine, for example, reported in January that some 400,000 European science and technology graduates now live in the United States, and the European Commission says that only 13% of European science professionals working abroad intend to return home. More recent studies from Germany question whether the picture is as gloomy as t

Chances are you've never seen a laboratory like the one supervised by Chip Maxwell. Pulsating Day-Glo fluorescent lights flash off brushed aluminium walls as Maxwell places his hands on an opaque plastic hemisphere sprouting from the countertop. Maxwell, an environmental engineer at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, rubs it with his eyes closed. "What does that instrument do?" asks a woman from Kentucky, raising her camera to capture the scientist at

Perhaps in no area is the divide between the developed and developing worlds as striking as it is for vaccines: While healthcare consumers in economically advantaged nations worry about risk, in developing nations compelling need forces a focus on potential benefit. "People in the United States want a quick solution, not prevention, so they prefer drugs to vaccines. Elsewhere, people are afraid of drugs and side effects, and prefer vaccines," says Shan Lu, a primary-care physician who has worked

© 2004 Nature Publishing GroupConstantly on the run, membrane-bounded organelles (MBOs) in neurons deliver proteins from cell bodies to axons. A recent study by Scott Brady and colleagues at the University of Illinois suggests that disruption of this anterograde fast axonal transport (FAT) may contribute to Alzheimer disease pathogenesis via a novel pathway locally regulating glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK3) activity.1According to this study, cyclin-dependent kinase 5-inhibition allows pro

Courtesy of The Natural History Museum, LondonSome liken DNA recovery from ancient sources to genetic time travel. But contamination remains a significant challenge, and museum curators cringe about recovery methods that involve drilling into bone and teeth. To overcome this concern, researchers in the United Kingdom have refined a method to extract genetic material from ancient hair.Thomas Gilbert, then a student in Alan Cooper's laboratory at Oxford University, says he tired of porous ancient

© 2004, National Academy of SciencesBiological patterns often develop in a mathematically predictable way. Fifty years ago Alan Turing invoked differential equations describing the interaction of an activator molecule and its inhibitor, a so-called reaction diffusion mechanism, to describe biological pattern formation. "People have suggested the model but without having any strong experimental evidence to back it up," says mathematical biologist Kevin Painter at Heriot-Watt University, Edin

BUILDING A BETTER MODEL:Metabolic and regulatory networks may be expanded by coupling high-throughput phenotyping and gene expression data with the predictions of a computational model. (Reprinted with permission, Nature, 429:92–6, 2004).Most people like their predictions to pan out, but Markus Covert is glad when his fail. That's because he has developed a genome-scale mathematical model of the transcriptional interactions that regulate bacterial metabolism. The model's mistakes lead to n

While researchers have long relied on electrophoretic mobility-shift assays (called gel shifts) to identify which transcription factors bind to DNA samples, the method can be time-consuming and requires the use of radiolabeled nucleotide to track protein-DNA complexes.Now Novagen http://www.novagen.com, a brand of San Diego-based EMD Biosciences, is offering a new alternative to gel shifts with its NoShift Transcription Factor Assay Kit. The kit eliminates gels altogether, immobilizing DNA insid

Courtesy of LeicaLeica Microsystems http://www.leica-microsystems.com, Bannockburn, Ill., has released the DM6000 B, the latest in its new DM line of digital research microscopes. The system includes a host of automated features: an automatic recall function for all settings, fully automated interference contrast, a five-step fluorescence intensity manager, and single-key switching between contrasting techniques, all designed to reduce the tedium of research microscopy, says product manager Jill