We all share our genetic make up with relatives, but should we also share ownership of the results of DNA analysis or should this knowledge be considered private?

Dr Anneke Lucassen, a clinical geneticist at the University of Southampton, believes that if anyone is to own genetic information, it has to be all those who have inherited it and, more importantly, it must be available to all those who might be at risk.

The question, she says, is how to balance a right to privacy with disclosing risks to others.

Should a ban on smoking exempt people who do it for 'cultural' reasons? What if the science regarding the detrimental effects of certain types of smoking is inconclusive?

This is an issue lawmakers in the UK will have to struggle with as advocates try to get hookah smoking exempted from England’s smoking ban.

A hookah is a glass waterpipe. It has primarily been used in Arabic communities for smoking herbal fruits after meals, but it has become popular among young people for smoking tobacco, massel (aromatic tobacco), cannabis and the cheaper bango, write Dr Rashid Gatrad and colleagues.

At the annual meeting of the American Society of Plant Biologists in Chicago, Dr. Jorge Zavala, Sr. of the Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois, and colleagues showed that elevated CO2 may negatively impact the relationship between some plants and insects.

Elevated CO2 is considered to be a serious catalyst of global change. Its effects can be felt throughout the ecosystem, including the insect-plant food chain link. Safeguarding highly-usable crops is of great importance to many local and national economies.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has revealed for the first time surface details of Saturn's moon Hyperion, including cup-like craters filled with hydrocarbons that may indicate more widespread presence in our solar system of basic chemicals necessary for life.

Hyperion yielded some of its secrets to the battery of instruments aboard Cassini as the spacecraft flew close by in September 2005. Water and carbon dioxide ices were found, as well as dark material that fits the spectral profile of hydrocarbons.

From Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" to heated Congressional debates about federal tax incentives for new alternative fuels, the issue of coal's place in supplying America's energy and fuel needs has taken on added importance in recent months.

A research institute at the University of Kentucky, though, has been exploring ways to increase the efficiency of converting coal to liquid fuel well in advance of national discussions of the process.

At the UK Center for Applied Energy Research (CAER), Burt Davis is refining the process to identify ways to reduce or capture carbon dioxide generated by the Fischer-Tropsch method of converting coal to diesel and other products, such as paraffin and chemicals for making plastics.