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The United States' 2009 financial stimulus bill has provided research with breathing space, rather than the sharp shot in the arm that many anticipated.

Scientists must engage with the European Union's redesign of its research programmes to shore up the continent's competitive position.

Is a vast undersea grid bringing wind-generated electricity from the North Sea to Europe a feasible proposition or an overpriced fantasy?

Cleaning up the legacy of US nuclear weapons production is now the largest environmental project in the world. But science is finding it difficult to contribute to closing the circle opened by the Manhattan Project.

washington

Researchers in New York will be left with no convenient access to primates when the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP) closes on 31 December.

A shift in population, money and political influence to America's 'sunbelt states' is helping to reshape its research universities. The first of two features looks at the far-reaching ambitions of Arizona State University. The second asks whether a rush to create extra medical schools could spread the region's resources too thinly.

Syngenta admits 150 square kilometres accidentally sown with wrong seeds.

washington

US particle physicists are trying to persuade their European rivals to join them in a joint effort to study neutrinos.

munich & washington

The United States should pay half of the costs of the circuits linking its research networks to those in other continents, according to Renater, the French research network organization.

Accidental release of genetically modified crops sparks new worries.

US nuclear weapons laboratories are moving to a regime based on linking experiment and computer simulation. But can they win over their critics?

washington

US universities should reconsider their willingness to work closely with the nuclear weapons laboratories as their efforts could lead indirectly to the development of new nuclear weapons, according to an influential Washinton-based lobby group.

washington

Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, will decide next month whether to put himself forward for a second, six-year term as head of the United States’ most prestigious scientific body.

washington

The World Bank, private foundations and governments are planning a global chain of centres of scientific excellence in developing countries.

washington

A $1.4 billion project to build the world's most powerful neutron source has fallen several months behind schedule during its first year of construction and is facing major difficulties in obtaining further construction funds.

washington

Scientists are beginning to track down the ‘mysterious’ orgnanism which caused a public health scare by killing thousands of fish in the Chesapeake Bay on America's mid Atlantic coast. (P317)

After years of budget cuts and internal division, things are looking up for US fusion research. At a recent meeting,the community began work on a common agenda, and tried to present a united front to funding agencies.

Natural history museums are shaking off their dusty image in a bid to show relevance to contemporary concerns. Central to a revival in their research fortunes is a unique contribution to our understanding of life's complexity.

Nobel laureate attacks government's suppression of research findings.

Democracy, price stability and economic liberalization in Latin America are combining to present scientists in the region with their best opportunity in decades to match international standards of excellence.

washington

The United States is seeking to integrate research into two rival approaches to fusion power: magnetic and inertial confinement.

Farm subsidies trimmed to enable a 45% rise for research.

washington

Programme officers at the US National Science Foundation have been told to stop using their considerable clout with principal investigators to negotiate down the size of research grants.

washington

Scientists' representatives are losing a fight to protect US researchers from rules that could allow outside parties to examine federally funded scientific data at any time.

washington

The US National Science Board has strongly criticized the way that science policy is currently established within the US government, and has asked for a new approach to setting priorities.

washington

A 13-year-old global effort to design and build a prototype fusion reactor is likely to collapse as the US Congress prepares to pass legislation ending US participation in the project.

philadelphia

Neal Lane, the director of the National Science Foundation, is to succeed Jack Gibbons as science adviser to President Bill Clinton.

santa fe, new mexico

The Santa Fe Institute, set up by scientists from the neighbouring Los Alamos laboratory to escape from funding restrictions, and internal divisions, is having to wrestle with some of the problems its founders wished to leave behind.

washington

The US Department of Energy is defending its ‘lab-to-lab’ collaborations with Russian weapons scientists against criticism in a report from the General Accounting Office.

Washington

Hopes are rising among US Department of Energy researchers that the draconian security measures imposed following spying allegations at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, will soon be lifted.

Research into physical activity helps drive government policy in Brazil.

Washington

President Bill Clinton's eighth and last budget proposal — submitted to Congress on Monday — would give several US science agencies a larger increase than any of his previous budgets.

washington

Dan Goldin, the administrator of the US space agency NASA, has triggered a fierce debate among physicists by suggesting that the next generation of instruments to explore the fundamental nature of matter should be built not on the ground but in space.

washington

Prominent US fusion scientists want the United States to become a partner in the world's largest research facility for plasma physics, the European Union's Joint European Torus (JET) in the United Kingdom.

washington

The US National Science Foundation, acting under instructions from Congress to launch a plant genome research programme, has succeeded in framing the initiative in scientifically-rigorous terms.

washington

Universities and government laboratories in the United States are jockeying to head of a new research initiative that is intended to secure US leadership in the scientific simulation of complex problems.

Experiments in Nevada will not only increase our understanding of nuclear explosions, but should also help secure the future of the test site.

washington

A widely-used research reactor at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in NewYork state, forced to close down in January after a radiation leak, is unlikely to reopen untilOctober 1999 at the earliest.

LIVERMORE, CALIFORNIA

Bruce Tarter, the director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, will announce a major reorganization of the laboratory aimed to counter criticism that it has mismanaged the construction of a huge laser facility being built there.

Washington

The largest steerable, single-dish radiotelescope ever built will be dedicated on 25 August at Green Bank, West Virginia.

The growing interest of pharmaceutical and agri-business companies in genes from natural products is generating a complex set of conflicts with Third World nations, where most of the world's genetic diversity is to be found.

WASHINGTON

International scientific collaboration has never been a higher priority for the United States, if public pronouncements by the leaders of the US scientific establishment are anything to go by.

Stormy negotiations are expected during the third meeting of parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which opens in Kyoto in ten days time. But optimists hope that significant agreement can still be reached.

washington

A $7 million-a-year Chimpanzee Management Program — or ChiMP — should be established at the office of the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide lifelong care for 1,000 research chimps in the United States.

WASHINGTON

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has changed the top three managers of a $1.2 billion laser project currently under construction, and is attempting to determine the full extent of its current difficulties.

The party conventions are over, and the candidates have been anointed. Now it's a straight race to the tape between President George W. Bush and his challenger John Kerry. Nature asked them where they stand on science.