Best of what science has to offer at US annual meeting

All that's weird and wonderful in science will be under discussion in the coming days as the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting gets under way in San Francisco, California.

Computers which could fit on the head of a pin, treatments for Parkinson's Disease, new hope after brain injury and how dogs were domesticated are just a few of the topics up for discussion during the six-day event.

This is the 167th national meeting of the association, the largest scientific organisation of its kind. It represents 138,000 scientists and researchers worldwide and also publishes one of the world's leading scientific journals, Science.

It was officially opened last night by its president, Prof Mary Good. She discussed the meeting's theme, "Building the Future through Science, Engineering and Technology" during her plenary address. The intensive schedule includes 130 symposiums and lectures by many of the world's top scientific researchers. Three special seminars have also been arranged on the human genome, developments in electronic miniaturisation and teaching sci ence at second level.

The genome seminar will hear from Dr Francis Collins of the National Centre for Human Genome Research at the US National Institutes of Health and Dr Craig Venter, president of Celera Genomics.

Scientists here are provided with a showcase opportunity to present their work. The event has been used for more than a century and a half as the place where dramatic findings were first presented.

Much of the research is about people, and how they tick. There is a scientific study about how long a human might live given new medical discoveries. Another discusses how babies learn language and how your genes might make you obese.

Many of the talks relate to human diseases and how treatments and cures might be found through a better understand of the human genetic code.

Environmental research is up for discussion including how climate change is occurring not just because of greenhouse gases but also through reckless land use. There is also a study of the rich web of life being discovered at the Earth's frozen poles.

The papers on nanocomputing will discuss efforts to reduce the size of computers and all electronics. New discoveries will show how future computer circuitry will be "grown" in a test tube and finished devices might be no bigger than a full stop on this page.