Feature

Scientists have successfully grown monkey embryos containing human cells for the first time – the latest milestone in a rapidly advancing field that has drawn ethical questions. In the work, published on April 15 in Cell, the team injected monkey embryos with human stem cells and watched them develop. They...

India, one of the world’s biggest suppliers of vaccines, is facing a Covid-19 vaccine crunch, partly due to an explosion of cases linked to new variants. This spells trouble for many countries relying on Indian-made vaccines supplied through the World Health Organization’s COVAX initiative for equitable access to vaccines. On...

Federal authorities on Tuesday recommended that states stop using Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine while an investigation is conducted into six serious cases of clotting problems – one of which was fatal – that were reported among women who received the vaccine. The blood clots are similar to those reported...

Since the sixth century BC, when the Romans began building their Cloaca Maxima (Greatest Sewer), a safe sewage system has epitomised civilisation. More than two millennia later, one Victorian novelist called a good sewer “nobler” and “holier” than the most admired Madonna ever painted. For sound reasons: the construction of...

The US government is converging on a long-awaited set of rules designed to protect American science from theft by foreign spies. A series of announcements this year describe steps that US universities and researchers must take when reporting foreign financing and collaborations to US science funders. But university groups say...

English is the international language of science, for better or for worse, but most of the world’s scientists speak it as a second language. We shoulder an extra career challenge: not only must we gain command of our science, but we must also be able to write to professional standards...

The European Medicines Agency has concluded there is a link between AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine and “very rare” but dangerous clotting events reported in a number of countries where the vaccine has been used, events which in some cases have been fatal. A safety committee, the agency said on Wednesday (April...

After collecting seeds, they are usually sent to nurseries, where they are grown into seedlings for planting. The number and size of nurseries around the world are becoming fewer and smaller, raising the concerns about the future vegetation cover and some tree species. A study in which we interviewed over...