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By Edwin Cartlidge of Nature magazine Now that's precision measurement: the electron is a perfect sphere, give or take barely one part in a million billion. The result comes from the latest in a long line of experiments to probe the shape of the fundamental particle that carries electrical charge. [More]

Scientists at Imperial College London have made the most accurate measurement yet of the shape of the humble electron, finding that it is almost a perfect sphere, in a study published in the journal Nature today.

By Eugenie Samuel Reich of Nature magazine As Earth's biggest "ear" on the Universe, the giant 305-meter radio dish at Arecibo , Puerto Rico, has played a part in groundbreaking discoveries, searches for alien civilizations and the occasional Holly

By Barbara Casassus of Nature magazine Variable energy sources such as wind and solar power could provide 19-63% of required electricity in many countries if the technical and market hurdles are overcome, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). [More]

By Ewen Callaway of Nature magazine As species go, humans aren't renowned for their sense of smell. [More]

By Erika Check Hayden of Nature magazine All science students learn the 'central dogma' of molecular biology: that the sequence of bases encoded in DNA determines the sequence of amino acids that makes up the corresponding proteins. [More]

By Philip Ball of Nature magazine Why are we so complicated? You might imagine that we've evolved that way because it conveys adaptive benefits.

By Marian Turner of Nature magazine A long-term study of children from Romanian orphanages suggests that the effects of childhood stress could be visible in their DNA as they grow up.

By Gwyneth Dickey Zakaib for Nature magazine For Scott Cornman, the honeybee genome is a prized resource, yet he spends much of his time removing it. [More]

By Jeff Tollefson of Nature magazine Staff have been cut, contractors laid off, offices closed and even furniture disposed of. [More]

By Nicola Jones of Nature magazine The past five years has seen a spurt in the creation of giant marine protection areas, including a 320,000 square-kilometer marine reserve announced earlier this month in Australia. "Now we have a competition for politicians to see who can have the biggest one," said Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, at the start of the Society for Conservation Biology's 2nd International Marine Conservation Congress in Victoria, Canada, on Saturday. [More]

By James Mitchell Crow of Nature magazine The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is starting to heal, say researchers in Australia. [More]

Used to be that sick kids got lollypops after a visit with the doctor. But in some cases candy can be more than a reward--it can be part of the therapy. Because scientists have found that, in battling chronic infections, sugar can boost the effectiveness of antibiotics

By Declan Butler of Nature magazine Health ministers from the World Health Organization's (WHO's) 193 member states will next week debate when to destroy the two last known remaining stocks of the virus that causes smallpox, a scourge that was eradicated in 1980. Many scientists argue, however, that the variola stocks should be maintained, perhaps indefinitely

By Nicola Jones of Nature magazine When audiences saw dramatic scenes of people setting their tap water on fire in the Oscar-nominated documentary Gasland, hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," was thrown into the spotlight. [More]