Q:Since Prime Minister Thatcher came to power in 1979, her three governments have changed the agenda for political debate in Britain. Has Conservative rule also altered the agenda for science policy? Do you believe that the difficulties now facing U.K. science are simply the outcome of an attempt to save money, or are they the result of a coherent plan? BODMER: Definitely not the latter. Our problems are largely to do with cash and with a monetary policy which says that government expenditure
Brianna Chrisman and Jordan Eizenga | Sep 1, 2022 | 10+ min read
Thirty years out from the start of the Human Genome Project, researchers have finally finished sequencing the full 3 billion bases of a person’s genetic code. But even a complete reference genome has its shortcomings.
And Future Ambitions Editor's Note: For the past four years, former National Institutes of Health researcher J. Craig Venter has been a major figure in the turbulent debates and scientific discoveries surrounding the study of genes and genomes. Events heated up in 1991, when NIH attempted to patent gene fragments, which were isolated using Venter's expressed sequence tag (EST)/complementary DNA (cDNA) approach for discovering human genes (M.A. Adams et al., Science, 252:1651-6, 1991). NIH's mo
Sidebar: National Medal of Technology Goes To Biomedical Computing Pioneer, Four Others Two pioneering molecular biologists-including a Nobel laureate-were among nine researchers named in April to receive the 1997 National Medal of Science, the United States government's highest honor for scientific achievement. The honorees, who represent a wide range of disciplines, include an astrophysicist who helped elucidate the origin of the stars, a chemist who help lay the groundwork for understanding
When Art Ashkin, Steve Chu, and their colleagues at Bell Labs in Holmdel, NJ, first invented optical tweezers, they spent their days pushing around tiny, glass spheres.
MISCONDUCT POLICY: University of Illinois' C.K. Gunsalus cites problems of oversight in academia. Is science in crisis? Scientists, historians, administrators, and others have debated this issue over the last few decades. The controversial topic was the impetus for a September 19 conference at George Washington University (GWU). Panelists at the day-long symposium, titled "Science in Crisis at the Millennium," think something has gone awry. Keith Yamamoto, University of California, San Franc
SOLVING REAL-WORLD PROBLEMS: MacArthur fellow Vonnie McLoyd's research combines concepts in socioeconomics, psychology, and anthropology. This year's John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowships will help six scientists advance their cutting-edge, multidisciplinary projects that extend from the ocean depths to distant stars and planets. With grants of about $250,000 or more, the newly named fellows will be able to finance innovative-even maverick-research ideas that might otherwis
Since World War II, scientific research in the United States has been sustained and driven largely by a vigorous System of public funding. This system has worked well in general and has brought the U.S. to its present position of scientific leadership. The majority of international prizes and awards consistently goes to scientists in the U.S., and by all accepted measures, U.S. science disproportionately produces important and innovative scientific papers. But American leadership is beset by a