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40,083 articles from Guardian Unlimited Science

Has Venter made us gods? | Andrew Brown

Does Craig Venter's creation of life in the laboratory finally squeeze God right out of the scientific universe?Craig Venter's production of an entirely artificial bacterium marks another triumph of the only major scientific programme driven from the beginning by explicit atheism. Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, was a militant atheist, who refused to accept a job at a...

The research paper in Science

This is the article published in Science today describing how Craig Venter and his colleagues synthesised an entire bacterial genome from scratch and incorporated it into a cell. The new genome took over the cell, which was capable of continual self-replicationCraig VenterGeneticsMicrobiologyBiologyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our...

Video: Mechanical butterfly makes successful maiden flight

Scientists in Japan filmed the maiden flight of their lifesized mechanical butterflyThe swallowtail butterfly has exceptionally large wings relative to its body mass, a feature that makes its in-flight movements unique.This scale model, which copies the shape of the swallowtail's wings and the thin veins and membranes that cover them, reveals that the insect achieves forward motion with simple...


WEDNESDAY 19. MAY 2010


Turing is thrashing Sir Tim as films promote computer pioneers

The BCS is trying to raise the profile of IT workers with a campaign based on Information Pioneers. Five will be featured in short films that will be shown on the website, which went live todayThe BCS (British Computer Society) has launched a website at pioneers.bcs.org to "highlight the achievements of the often forgotten and unacknowledged Information Pioneers". You can vote for a select 150....

Smallest waterlily in the world saved from extinction – by Kew Gardens

The thermal waterlily, extinct in the wild since it disappeared from Rwanda in 2008, has been granted a new lease of lifePlant experts at Kew Gardens have rescued the smallest waterlily in the world from the brink of extinction.The thermal waterlily has not grown in the wild since the last specimens vanished two years ago from its only known habitat, a hot spring in southwest Rwanda.After a...

Letters: Received wisdom on flat vowels

I don't know what Steve Seddon is talking about when he refers (Letters, 17 May) to "properly spoken English". There are a huge number of varieties of spoken English, a small number of which are regarded as standard (not "proper") in certain regions. For example, standard American English is the variety spoken in the midwest. In England (not Britain, note) the standard is received pronunciation, a...


TUESDAY 18. MAY 2010


The secret life of a suburban garden

How many different species would you expect to find in a rather scruffy, small suburban garden? Juliette Jowit invited four ecologists round for a 'bioblitz' – with unexpected resultsThere are four bodies lying and crouching in our tiny back garden. The ecologists from the Natural History Museum (NHM) got here only minutes ago, but, while the kettle boils, they are already grubbing about behind...

Archaeologists discover 2,700-year-old tomb in Mexico

Tomb of dignitary inside pyramid in southern Mexico may be oldest such burial documented in MesoamericaArchaeologists in southern Mexico have discovered the 2,700-year-old tomb of a dignitary inside a pyramid that may be the oldest such burial documented in Mesoamerica.The tomb held a man aged about 50, who was buried with jade collars, pyrite and obsidian artefacts and ceramic vessels....

Universities take stock of what Conservative-Liberal Democrat government will mean for them

Will new ministers ensure that universities, which have already taken the financial rap, are not subjected to further reductions?During the election campaign, the million+ thinktank asked candidates from the three main parties in England to respond to a "gold standard", which highlighted key policies for universities and research funding to be considered by the new parliament. Following the deal...

Heart risk software made free for all

The University of Nottingham and Emis have made a heart disease risk assessment tool available as open source softwareThe decision to make the software available free of charge was made after an independent evaluation of the Qrisk2 tool by researchers at the University of Oxford. This found that the software was more accurate than the widely used Framingham risk assessment tool at predicting...