The Scientist back issues from March 2003:
Results pages:1|2|3
Fleeing monkey fuels simmering fire. (Frontlines).(monkey escapes the California National Primate Research Center)(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 2003; Cohen, Hal ... A monkey that split from the California National Primate Research Center at University of California, Davis, caused one group of protestors to go bananas last month. On Feb. 13, a rhesus macaque escaped from its cage during a cage change; researchers believed that the female animal had ...
Why do scientists join societies? Meetings and conferences are most important. (Snapshot).(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 2003 ... <Pre> Participation in meetings 67.4% and conferences Association with 65.6% fellow scientists Subscriptions to 60.1% research journals Other publications 39.4% provided by the society Support for society's lobbying ...
Rita Colwell. (First Person).(Interview)
Mar 10, 2003 ... Ambivalence doesn't fit the mien of Rita Colwell. Director of the National Science Foundation since 1998, Colwell, 68, says that she always wanted to be a scientist, wouldn't stand for anyone stopping her advancement, and decided the day that she met her physicist husband Jack that he was ...
Botulism from blubber. (Frontlines).(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 2003; Lewis, Ricki ... Botulism, usually associated with eating improperly canned foods, get its name from the Latin botulus for sausage, a source when the illness was first described in Europe in the late 19th century. A recent report chronicles another source and route: consuming raw beached marine mammals (J ....
Carl Linnaeus, 1707-1778. (Foundations).(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 2003 ... His parents wanted him to be a priest, but he rejected the collar to study natural order. Swede Carl Linnaeus, a medical doctor who treated syphilis, tried to organize the world's flora and fauna. Starting with Systema Naturae in 1735, he began providing a concise survey of the 12,200 ...
NMR: spin doctoring. (5-Prime).(nuclear magnetic resonance)
Mar 10, 2003; Bunk, Steve ... WHO? Stanford's Felix Bloch and Harvard's Edward Mills Purcell shared the 1952 Nobel Prize in physics "for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connections therewith." WHAT? Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) concerns ...
RNA interference maintained in stem cells. (Frontlines).(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 2003; Lewis, Ricki ... Short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) offer a new way to silence genes, courtesy of RNA interference (RNAi). A study from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, home of the discovery of the RNAi enzyme dicer, indicates that these RNAs can be more than "off" switches. Different RNA hairpins corresponding to ...
What's the most creative way you've seen of cutting lab costs? (Off The Cuff).
Mar 10, 2003 ... "Opening the lab doors to high school volunteers. It provides inspiration for them and cheap labor for us. --Louis R. Ptak, North Wales, Pa. "Some researchers at our facility have purchased slightly used lab equipment on eBay." --Judith Ochrietor, ...
So they say. (Upfront).
Mar 10, 2003 ... "Your statement that we don't need stern cell research because we're doing other stuff is crap." --James Watson, in response to a bioethicist's comment that stem cell research is just another line of research, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle. "Bioinformatics ...
The Joseph McPartlin selection. (My Top Five).(science research and anecdotes)
Mar 10, 2003; McPartlin, Joseph ... 1. In the age of nanofluidics, the 24-hour urine collection may seem a curiosity, though much depends in metabolic studies on the accuracy of collecting these specimens. In an account worthy of Italian satirist Dario Fo, the authors Turner and Merlis (1) recount the sources of errors ...
Life science sojourners. (Data Points).(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 2003 ... Biology and Agriculture PhD graduates in the US; selected countries of origin (1996) <Pre> Taiwan 223 India 191 Korea 159 Mexico 51 Germany 42 United Kingdom 27 ...
Will walls come tumbling down? (Editorial).(open-access journals and academic publishing)(Editorial)
Mar 10, 2003; Gallagher, Richard ... The Public Library of Science, whose editorial board reads like a Who's Who of the biology community, (1) is slated to start publishing later on this year. PLuS will practice what it has preached: open-access publication, joining BioMed Central (a sister company of The Scientist), which ...
Letters of recommendation: from God or Darwin? (Opinion).(evolution as a requisite in science education)(Column)
Mar 10, 2003; Palevitz, Barry A. ... If you teach introductory biology, you've probably heard this refrain at least once: `I had to learn it, but I don't believe it.' The `it,' of course, is evolution. The admission usually comes at the end of the semester, when grades are safely in. Invariably, when you ask why, the student ...
Foundations and research decisions. (Letters).
Mar 10, 2003; Klausner, Richard ... Regarding Susan M. Fitzpatrick's opinion article , (1) we agree that many other private foundations have made, and continue to make, important contributions to research on the diseases of the developing world. In fact, we have consulted extensively with several of these foundations during ...
Frequent flyer bugs. (Letters).
Mar 10, 2003; Ros, Mikael ... Regarding the hypothesis that rootworms (Diabrotica virgifera) that destroy cornfields have spread to Europe by airplane, (1) a quick look into the compartment for the landing gears for a jumbo jet shows that there are several insects in this huge space. There might as well be other pests ...
Just politics. (Letters).
Mar 10, 2003; Bump, David ... Regarding Daniel S. Greenberg's Closing Bell column, (1) his article certainly is about "politics" and not about science. It's obviously just a liberal journalist's biased attempt to enlist scientists in his cause of removing right-wing ...
Proteomic players pick plasma: researchers aim to untangle a host of interlocking challenges. (Proteomics).
Mar 10, 2003; Bunk, Steve ... Like any good board game, proteomics requires a blend of strategy and serendipity. But while the former is about winning, the latter is about achievement, and its rules are still being made. Without such rules, it's hard to measure success, which is why nobody at a recent proteomics ...
Technologies vie for dominance: liquid chromatography gains adherents, but 2-D gel-based proteomics sallies forth. (Proteomics).
Mar 10, 2003; Perkel, Jeffrey M. ... Thierry Rabilloud has been doing proteomics since long before the word proteome was even coined. For years Rabilloud, currently at the Atomic Energy Commission Research Center in Grenoble, France, used two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE) to break complex protein mixtures down into ...
Rockettes material? (Science Scene).(diatoms)(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 2003 ... * ROCKETTES MATERIAL? This diatom, belonging to the Bacillariophyceae class of minute planktonic unicellular or colonial algae, could be called the daddy longlegs of the unicellular marine world. Found in plankton, this ...
HIC-down. (Models And Targets).(Johns Hopkins School of Medicine researches the HIC1 gene)(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 2003; Maher, Brendan A. ... Johns Hopkins School of Medicine researchers developed a murine model to investigate the role of the HIC1 gene, which encodes a zinc-finger transcription factor. HIC1 is hypermethylated (in cancer) and therefore transcriptionally silent in many cancer types. HIC1-/- mice were not viable ....
DEP-ressed. (Models And Targets).(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 2003; Maher, Brendan A. ... Salt Lake City's Myriad Genetics is following up on a yet unpublished study of 400 Utah families with histories of major depression. The investigation implicated a gene temporarily called DEP1 (not the transmembrane protein tyrosine phosphatase involved in cell adhesion). While Myriad ...
Interdisciplinary research. (Research).(selections from www.facultyof1000.com)(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 2003 ... These papers were selected from multiple disciplines of the Faculty of 1000, a Web-based literature awareness tool. (www.facultyof1000.com) * S.H. Shi et al., "Hippocampal neuronal polarity specified by spatially localized mPar3/mPar6 and PI 3-kinase activity," Cell, 112:63-75, ...
Microbes rule: with a few genomes completed, some foresee a better world with bacteria. (Research).
Mar 10, 2003; Pray, Leslie ... Over the past year, major English-language newspapers worldwide have printed six stories about microbial genomes, as compared with 485 stories on the Human Genome Project. (1) Yet, scientists have sequenced and published nearly 100 complete microbial genomes. Dozens more have been ...
Exploring the microbial world: researchers want to know how microbes interact, survive, and thrive--and how they can benefit humankind. (Research).
Mar 10, 2003; Black, Harvey ... They are the oldest forms of life, and by sheer quantity, they dominate the planet. But how bacteria and archaea interact with each other and their environment is essentially unknown. "It's really difficult to understand how the natural world functions if we don't know its most abundant ...
AID and its impact on antibody genetic alteration: this gene controls both somatic hypermutation and class switch recombination. (Hot Papers).( )
Mar 10, 2003; Roberts, Josh P. ... Antibodies undergo three phases of genetic alteration. Researchers know that perhaps one billion different specificities of human antibodies are created from just 1,000 genes in the germline by shifting and reshifting various segments, called variability (V), diversity (D), and joining ...
Some viruses elicit immune response before entering cell.(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 2003; Black, Harvey ... Human cytomegalovirus triggers an immune response before it actually enters the cell, according to a report from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Massachusetts (T. Compton et al., "Human cytomegalovirus activates inflammatory cytokine responses via ...
Suburban sprawl could increase Lyme disease infections.(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 2003; Watanabe, Myrna E. ... A recent study suggests that suburban sprawl leading to forest fragmentation could also increase the prevalence of ixodid ticks infected with Borrelia burgdorferi, the spirochaete bacterium that causes Lyme disease (K. LoGiudice et al., "The ecology of infectious disease: Effects of host ...
Human pediatric anesthetics damage murine model brains.(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 2003; Cohen, Hal ... Researchers from the University of Virginia and Washington University, St. Louis, found that a combination of drugs used as pediatric anesthetics results in brain damage and long-term learning and memory disturbances in murine models (V. Jevtovic-Todorovic et al., "Early exposure to common ...
An eternal fluorescent protein? (Gadget Watch).(research at the Shemyakin and Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry)(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 2003; Maher, Brendan ... Researchers at Shemyakin and Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry in Moscow who developed the fluorescent protein DsRed are tinkering with a new chromoprotein with some unique properties. (1) Discovered in the sea anemone, Anemonia sulcata (at left), this GFP-like protein, called ...
Model behavior. (Software Watch).(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 2003; Perkel, Jeffrey M. ... Trying to untangle hopelessly knotted genetic regulatory networks? NetBuilder, a freely available modeling package, could help. Developed under the direction of Hamid Bolouri, at the Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle, NetBuilder (strc.herts.ac.uk/bio/maria/NetBuilder) performs two ...
Compacting DNA shrinks gene therapy barriers. (Patent Watch).(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 2003; Oransky, Ivan ... Despite the promise of gene therapy, problems associated with typical viral vectors, which can be toxic or immunogenic, have stymied efforts. A Cleveland, Ohio-based company has been awarded a patent for a device that it claims can overcome these hurdles by obviating the need for a ...
Long-suffering lipids gain respect: technical advances and enhanced understanding of lipid biology fuel a trend toward lipidomics. (Lab Consumer).
Mar 10, 2003; Wilson, Jennifer Fisher ... Scientists who add detergents to their cell preps, take heed: You might be consigning the most interesting stuff to the trash bin. Not proteins, surely, or nucleic acids, but lipids. A class of molecules united by their common solubility in organic solvents, lipids are like the poor ...
The proteomics toolbox: Beckman Coulter's ProteomeLab initiative brings proteomics to the forefront of instrumentation development. (Tools & Technology).
Mar 10, 2003; Constans, Aileen ... Fullerton, Calif.-based Beckman Coulter recently announced a new program to tackle the development of tools for proteomics research from a systems biology standpoint. Called ProteomeLab[TM], the initiative integrates existing technology with new instrumentation and software to "simplify, ...
Save the mice: researchers explore whole-body imaging as an alternative to sacrificing lab mice. (Tools & Technology).(non-invasive techniques)
Mar 10, 2003; MacNeil, Jane Salodof ... "Save the mice" may sound like an animal rights slogan, but it is smart science to researchers in the Comparative Mouse Genomics Center at the University of Washington in Seattle. A major drawback of working with laboratory mice is having to kill the animals to measure endpoints such as ...
Education for would-be entrepreneurs. (Tip Trove).(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 2003; Burrill, G. Steven ... 1. Not every scientific discovery "deserves" a company. The product must meet a market need rather than be in search of a market. 2. It may be better to license a discovery rather than build a company around it. 3. It's critical to understand that the agenda of those ...
Ethics for academics. (Training @).
Mar 10, 2003 ... WHAT: Teaching Research Ethics WHERE; Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind. WHY: A workshop that trains academics how to teach graduate students the ethics of research and publication ADVANTAGES: Intensive tracks and breakout sessions ...
Dancing to DNA. (Moonlighting).(scientists' rock band Amplified DNA)(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 2003; Miller, Kelli ... Molecular biologist Glenn Nedwin spends his days engineering enzymes for use in detergents, textiles, and even food. In his spare time, he focuses on Amplified DNA, a passion that truly rocks. But he needs no lab coat for this gig--just fast fingers, fancy footwork, and good old-fashioned ...
America's towers of exclusion: overseas scholars face entry barriers and delays. (Profession).(related article: Getting An Edge On Immigration)
Mar 10, 2003; Wilkie, Dana ... Shortly before Christmas 2002, Xuguang Jiang took a break from his doctoral program at Iowa University and returned to his Beijing home with two goals: to see the family he missed so much, and renew his student visa. As of late January, the 27-year-old engineering student was still waiting ...
Patent rights wrangle puts law in question: Duke physicist fights to exercise rights to technology he designed. (Profession).(John Madey's free-electron laser)
Mar 10, 2003; Brickley, Peg ... John M.J. Madey, long known as the father of the free-electron laser, has made his career in academic research, not business or law. So Madey did not craft the legal weapon that may close the patent law loophole allowing academic researchers to use patented technology without risking ...
Basic science in US universities can infringe patents. (Fine Tuning).(experimental use exception)(Madey v. Duke University)
Mar 10, 2003; Ergenzinger, Ed ... Much of the research conducted in US universities falls into the category of basic science. Usually this simply means research that is not applied toward developing a product, but instead focuses on explaining underlying scientific principles. Many US university officials and researchers ...
No pardon for poor English in science: written and spoken language skills are critical to careers. (Profession).
Mar 10, 2003; Jaffe, Sam ... Kiyokazu Agata decided to stay in Japan for his postdoctoral fellowship, and that decision haunts him today. Not because he hasn't been able to do great science in Japan--he's now a group director of evolutionary regeneration at the prestigious Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe. But ...
Fate, flack and flair. (How I Got This Job).
Mar 10, 2003; Robinson, Margaret ... Early Indications: I hadn't necessarily intended to become a scientist. I went to a liberal arts college (Smith College, Northampton, Mass.) without any clear idea of what I would eventually do and just became captivated by cell biology. Arriving at Cambridge just sort of happened. I came ...
On choosing children. (Postdoc Talk).(double standard for graduate students)
Mar 10, 2003; Mohr, Stephanie ... It's happened again: One of my colleagues in the lab has announced she's pregnant. As a postdoc, I've based most of my life decisions on what's best for my education and career. So far, starting a family has not factored into the equation. Most of the time this seems right: I worked very ...
Guide.
Mar 10, 2003 ... PRIMARY CELLS Cells: --50 cell types * Services: --Large-scale production --Cell-based screening --Custom isolation --RNA preparation * Extensive selection of both human and animal cells, and ...
Adding style to scientific papers. (Closing Bell).
Mar 10, 2003; Bunk, Steve ... It's a shame that most nonscientists probably would be bored silly by the fundamental unit of scientific communication: the paper describing original research. The content of such work is often anything but dull; yet even scientists have to admit that the quality of presentation can vary ....
Fleeing monkey fuels simmering fire
Mar 10, 2003; Cohen, Hal ... UPFRONT FRONTLINES A monkey that split from the California National Primate Research Center at University of California, Davis, caused one group of protestors to go bananas last month. On Feb. 13, a rhesus macaque escaped from its cage during a cage change; researchers believed ...
Why do scientists join societies?
Mar 10, 2003; Anonymous ... SNAPSHOT Meetings and conferences are most important We surveyed 340 readers to find out if they are members of professional scientific societies, and why they join. A majority of readers, 82.4%, belong to at least one society, and a remarkable 21.4% belong to four or ...
Rita Colwell
Mar 10, 2003; Anonymous ... Ambivalence doesn't fit the mien of Rita Colwell. Director of the National Science Foundation since 1998, Colwell, 68, says that she always wanted to be a scientist, wouldn't stand for anyone stopping her advancement, and decided the day that she met her physicist husband Jack that he was the ...
Botulism from blubber
Mar 10, 2003; Lewis, Ricki ... FRONTLINES Botulism, usually associated with eating improperly canned foods, get its name from the Latin botulus for sausage, a source when the illness was first described in Europe in the late 19th century. A recent report chronicles another source and route: A consuming raw beached ...
Carl Linnaeus, 1707-1778
Mar 10, 2003; Anonymous ... FOUNDATIONS His parents wanted him to be a priest, but he rejected the collar to study natural order. Swede Carl Linnaeus, a medical doctor who treated syphilis, tried to organize the world's flora and fauna. Starting with Systems Naturae in 1735, he began providing a concise survey of ...
NMR: Spin doctoring
Mar 10, 2003; Bunk, Steve ... UPFRONT 5-PRIME WHO? Stanford's Felix Bloch and Harvard's Edward Mills Purcell shared the 1952 Nobel Prize in physics "for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connections therewith." WHAT? Nuclear magnetic ...
RNA interference maintained in stem cells
Mar 10, 2003; Lewis, Ricki ... Short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) offer a new way to silence genes, courtesy of RNA interference (RNAi). A study from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, home of the discovery of the RNAi enzyme dicer, indicates that these RNAs can be more than "off" switches. Different RNA hairpins corresponding to the ...
What's the most creative way you've seen of cutting lab costs?
Mar 10, 2003; Anonymous ... OFF THE CUFF "Opening the lab doors to high school volunteers. it provides inspiration for them and cheap labor for us. -Louis R. Ptak, North Wales, Pa. "Some researchers at our facility have purchased slightly used lab equipment on eBay." -Judith Ochrietor, ...
So they say
Mar 10, 2003; Anonymous ... UPFRONT "Your statement that we don't need stem cell research because we're doing other stuff is crap." -James Watson, in response to a bioethicist's comment that stem cell research is just another line of research, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle ....
Life science Sojourners
Mar 10, 2003; Anonymous ... DATA POINTS Biology and Agriculture PhD graduates in the US; selected countries of origin (1996) Taiwan/ 223 India/ 191 Korea/ 159 Mexico/ 51 Germany/ 42 United ...
The Joseph McPartlin selection
Mar 10, 2003; McPartlin, Joseph ... MY TOP FIVE 1. In the age of nanofluidics, the 24-hour urine collection may seem a curiosity, though much depends in metabolic studies on the accuracy of collecting these specimens. In an account worthy of Italian satirist Dario Fo, the authors Turner and Merlis1 recount the sources of ...
Will walls come tumbling down?
Mar 10, 2003; Gallagher, Richard ... UPFRONT EDITORIAL The Public Library of Science, whose editorial board reads like a Who's Who of the biology community,1 is slated to start publishing later on this year. PLoS will practice what it has preached: open-access publication, joining BioMed Central (a sister company of The ...
Letters of recommendation: From God or Darwin?
Mar 10, 2003; Palevitz, Barry A ... UPFRONT OPINION If you teach introductory biology, you've probably heard this refrain at least once: 'I had to learn it, but I don't believe it.' The 'it,' of course, is evolution. The admission usually comes at the end of the semester, when grades are safely in. Invariably, ...
Letters
Mar 10, 2003; Anonymous ... Foundations and Research Decisions Regarding Susan M. Fitzpatrick's opinion article,1 we agree that many other private foundations have made, and continue to make, important contributions to research on the diseases of the developing world. In fact, we have consulted extensively with ...
Proteomic players pick plasma
Mar 10, 2003; Bunk, Steve ... PROTEOMICS Researchers aim to untangle a host of interlocking challenges Like any good board game, proteomics requires a blend of strategy and serendipity. But while the former is about winning, the latter is about achievement, and its rules are still being made. Without such ...
Technologies vie for dominance
Mar 10, 2003; Perkel, Jeffrey M ... PROTEOMICS Liquid chromatography gains adherents, but 2-D gel-based proteomics sallies forth Thierry Rabilloud has been doing proteomics since long before the word proteome was even coined. For years Rabilloud, currently at the Atomic Energy Commission Research Center in ...
Automating 2-D gel electrophoresis
Mar 10, 2003; Anonymous ... Amersham Biosciences www.amershambiosciences.com The Ettan(TM) proteomics product line includes the Ettan IPGphor(TM) IEF system and Ettan DALT(TM) SDS-PAGE system, plus the standalone Ettan Spot Picker, Ettan Digester, and Ettan Spotter. Alternatively, the integrated Ettan ...
Models and targets: HIC-down / DEP-ressed
Mar 10, 2003; Maher, Brendan A ... RESEARCH Johns Hopkins School of Medicine researchers developed a murine model to investigate the role of the HIC^sub 1^ gene, which encodes a zinc-finger transcription factor. HIC^sub 1^ is hypermethylated (in cancer) and therefore transcriptionally silent in many cancer types. HIC^sub ...
Interdisciplinary research
Mar 10, 2003; Fishell, Gordon J; Hodgkin, Jonathan; Hengge-Aronis, Regine ... These papers were selected from multiple disciplines of the Faculty of 1000, a Web-based literature awareness tool. (www.facultyof1000.com) S.H. Shi et al., "Hippocampal neuronal polarity specified by spatially localized mPar3/mPar6 and PI 3-kinase activity," Cell, 112:63-75, Jan. 10, ...
Microbes rule
Mar 10, 2003; Pray, Leslie ... With a few genomes completed, some foresee a better world with bacteria Over the past year, major English-language newspapers worldwide have printed six stories about microbial genomes, as compared with 485 stories on the Human Genome Project., Yet, scientists have sequenced and ...
