Peer Reviewed

The perfect recipe for building a sandcastle is eight parts sand to one part water. In the October issue of Nature Physics, Arshad Kudrolli and co-workers show how water stabilizes the sand

Would-be suicide bombers are encouraged to carry out their plans because they tend to live in small groups with fervent political opinions, say the authors of a Correspondence in this week's Nature.

Always thought of as addictive, nicotine is now shown to induce a progressive and long-lasting increase of sensitivity in the brain reward systems, reports an online publication from the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

Porous material has huge, handed holes; Understanding antibodies; The Dune thing; Diatoms delve deep for nutrients to stay alive; Human protein interactions go large scale; Corrupting the bacterial quorum; Quicksand won't suck you right in

Poisoning is one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality in pediatric population. Majority of the patients were toddlers between the ages of 1 and 3.

Farmers who own tube wells and enjoy unlimited access to groundwater, are not fully confronted with the opportunity cost of using water due to heavily subsidized electricity, and divert the water for growing crops that are economically inefficient.

NATURE AND THE NATURE RESEARCH JOURNALS PRESS RELEASE - For papers published online on 25 September 2005

Scientific understanding of flu, and avian flu, is being delayed by the reluctance of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the world's top public-health agency, to provide outside scientists with access to crucial data.

An expert panel responsible for ending the debate about whether or not Pluto is a planet have come up with a radical solution. They want to end use of the term 'planet' altogether, unless it is accompanied by a qualifier.

Summaries of newsworthy papers from Nature including An organic thyristor, Sequence of chromosome 18 completed, Surprising diet and lifestyle of ancient microbe revealed, Climate models underestimate air pressure changes and Landscaping by Amazonian ants

In the scenario of imminent energy crises fuelled by huge import bills and rising prices of petro-based products, biofuels seem to be options of the future.

Older adults in Cambodia have survived decades of political and social volatility including civil war and genocide. This analysis looks at a basic measure of health among a population that until recently has been isolated from the rest of the world.

Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) researchers in collaboration with the Veterinary Research Institute, Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia have come up with a one step molecular based technique which can quickly identify the bird flu virus.

The technique was evaluated using 20 different influenza A strains and was successful in identifying a series of different bird flu viruses.

A program providing reproductive health education and livelihoods skills training to adolescent girls in India, has shown that such interventions are acceptable to parents, feasible to implement, and exert some positive influence on the girls.

The essay looks at the proliferation of bilateral and minilateral preferential trading agreements from the perspective of the developing countries. The changes may not necessarily be good for the developing countries.

NATURE AND THE NATURE RESEARCH JOURNALS PRESS RELEASE

The agreement set a target of 2010 for “securing a constant and significant reduction in the current rate of loss of great ape populations and their habitats; and, by 2015, securing the future of all species and subspecies of great apes in the wild.”

At the National University of Singapore, Professor Gopalakrishnakone and his team have recently started working with the NUS Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Initiative on the use of quantum dots to deliver toxins to target areas.

Nature Vol.437 No.7057 Dated 15 September 2005

Population Council researchers recently completed studies in Pakistan and Nepal of attitudes and behaviors surrounding violence against women during pregnancy. These investigations were some of the first of their kind in South Asia.

In the present times, the question for us in the global South is: “Do we have choices?” If we do, how can we best exercise them in the age of extremes ushered in by globalization, by globalized wars, and symbolized by the events of 9/11.

Snakebite is one of the common causes of death in rural and suburban areas of tropical countries such as India. In the present case, it was a mystery as to how the snake could bitten the victim at the back of the head.

The program, developed by NTU's terrorism informatics research group, cuts down research time and is an intelligent system that can,over time, learn to extract more terrorist-related patterns and nuances from websites.

Scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) are the first in the world to identify juxtanodin, a novel protein of the nervous system, and to reveal its biological functions in controlling the development of oligodendroglia.

Pharmacological screening revealed that the drug "Savveera Chendooram" has got potent Anti-inflammatory (both acute and chronic), Anti-pyretic and Analgesic actions.

NATURE AND THE NATURE RESEARCH JOURNALS PRESS RELEASE. For papers that will be published online on 11 September 2005.

Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) researcher Charles Foley sought--and finally found--his white giraffe.

Scarcity of food can be a potential source of conflicts and incidence of socio-economic and political instability. There is a close nexus among food insecurity, poverty and disease.

Population Council researchers have found that exposure to low levels of phthalates can alter the levels of testosterone (the male sex hormone), increase the proliferation of cells in the testes, and significantly accelerate the onset of male puberty.