Concepts

The fact that most people are not perpetually sick is testament to innate immunity squelching most of the infections that we contract.

In piecing together our ancestors' habits, corroborating lines of evidence are vital if we are to be confident that the emerging jigsaw reveals the true picture.

Preserving nature is not about stasis, but about maintaining the exciting, ever-evolving variety of life on Earth.

The similarity of hydrophobic hormones in plants and animals suggests that once you make a good key, with occasional filing it can be used in many different developmental locks.

Calculating the area of productive ecosystem required to support a population is a useful way to open people's eyes to the fact that we're stamping out the world's resources.

Heat and freshwater fluxes at the ocean's surface play a key role in forming ocean currents, which in turn have a major effect on climate.

We may well be paying a significant price for the luxury of an efficient energy supply.

When magnetic moments that prefer anti-alignment reside on a triangular crystal lattice, there is no simple pattern that satisfies all of the bonds.

Clinical oncologists and tumour biologists possess virtually no comprehensive model to serve as a framework for understanding, organizing and applying their data.

Has genomics overturned the family tree of microbial life? Thanks in part to often polarized debate, elements of a new synthesis are emerging.

This burgeoning field aims to reproduce advanced, dynamic behaviours of biological systems, including genetics, inheritance and evolution.

Do knots give extra stability to protein folds or are they just 'harmless' tangles that have arisen accidentally?

Most multicellular organisms pass through a single-cell stage from which they then develop. This feature may render them more evolvable.

Those evolving-human commercials are just nature philosophy brought up to date.

Efficient cloning will require the ability to reset the gene-expression programmes of specialized cells, in the same way that sperm and eggs form undifferentiated embryonic cells.

A primary function of mitochondria may have been to compartmentalize respiration, thus protecting cells from the damaging side-effects of oxygen metabolism.

A cut into the soul as a result of a horrifying experience can persist as a crippling disease with its core conceptualized as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Today we are so used to statistical predictions that it is difficult to appreciate the profundity of this retreat into probabilities.

How economists' controversial practice of discounting really affects the evaluation of environmental policies.

These tightly regulated oceanic communities consume small particles but let larger ones sink into the depths below.