The Scientist

Stung by anthrax mailings after suicide skyjackings, the United States is hurrying to erect an electronic line of defense against further bioterrorism. At least five sophisticated biosurveillance systems are under development with federal funding to nonprofit and to proprietary ventures; two other groups already have products on the market. The goal is to install a national sentinel network that can detect suspicious trends in medical data and in illness behavior before diagnosis, to help contai

0 Comments

When space shuttle Atlantis last launched from Cape Canaveral this month, more than 200 students and teachers from across the nation had particular reason to be excited. They had helped prepare the nearly 300 protein and viral samples which the space shuttle delivered to the International Space Station (ISS). Students and perhaps even a politician or two have taken part in space experiments in the past, but this experiment takes the concept of lab assistants to new heights. As principal investi

0 Comments

For some children, science is as palatable as brussels sprouts. To elevate the topic in the minds of primary and secondary students, the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia and the Science Museum of London have collaborated to publish an online science gallery entitled "Pieces of Science," www.fi.edu/pieces. The 16 featured objects, from a beginner's guide to genetic engineering to the story of the mold Sir Alexander Fleming discovered and transformed into penicillin has its own its Web page, com

0 Comments

Ben A. Hitt is living proof that you can leave biomedical research without saying goodbye forever. More than 20 years since turning out the lights in the lab for what he thought was the last time, Hitt is not only back, he's in demand. Now chief scientist for Correlogic Systems, in Bethesda, Md., his phone hasn't stopped ringing since Feb. 16, when a paper in The Lancet1 announced that Proteome Quest, the pattern-recognition software he created, had identified a pattern among five serum proteins

0 Comments

If mapping the entire human proteome isn't challenge enough, consider this: The Human Proteome Organization, created this past year, aims to coordinate the efforts of the many public and private groups moving into the proteomic field.1 HUPO president Samir Hanash hopes an April 29 meeting at the National Institutes of Health will solidify plans and collaborations to characterize all blood serum proteins, create a library of antibodies to every human protein, and put the data collected in a user

0 Comments