麻豆传媒

Protectors of Peru’s shining past: A squad drawn from Peru’s elite police force is cracking down on the looters who plunder pre-Columbian graves. Mary Dempsey reports on a country learning to value its heritage against all the odds

Wildlife’s road to nowhere?: Corridors connecting fragmented islands of natural habitat are all the rage. John Bonner asks whether they are routes to survival for threatened species or expensive dead ends

Shore Wars: Maritime strategists sre planning for battle in the confusing, cluttered waters off the enemy’s coast. Vincent Kiernan reports on the equipment navies will need for their new role

A paintbox for plant genes: A colourful DNA technique, the botanical equivalent of a paternity test, is helping researchers to trace the wild ancestors of key crop plants, explains Stephen Young

The sweet smell of purple

Mystery molecules of deepest space: Observers are scrutinising interstellar space on the trail of the lonely molecules that lurk there. Karen Schmidt reports

The trillion-bit cube: Computers’ appetite for data threatens to overwhelm today’s storage techniques. Sunny Bains reports on the race to develop digital memory banks to bridge the gap

Solvents get the big squeeze: Compress carbon dioxide enough and it will decaffeinate your coffee, improve the flavour of your beer and help chemists find safer ways to make new molecules. David Bradley reports on the strange world of supercritical fluid

Environment

How many species do we need?

Proofreaders for the code of life: When genes become garbled there are two safe options – repair or die. The alternative, reports Karen Schmidt, is cancer

Shooting at the moon

Those ears were made for walking: Peering into the inner ear of fossil skulls may help us solve the mystery of when humans first stood up and walked. But, writes Pat Shipman, it may have an even bigger surprise in store

What a tangled Web they wove…

Making friends with death-wish genes: Persuading renegade cells to do the decent thing and die for the good of the organism could be the next big thing in cancer research, says Kate Douglas