As the necessity of cleaning up the environment moves to the forefront of the public's consciousness, researchers in increasing numbers have been enlisting some of the earth's tiniest creatures to help clean up highly polluted sites and reclaim soils and groundwater systems. Stimulated by advances in microbiology and biotechnology, the booming multidisciplinary field of environmental biotechnology focuses on the use of microorganisms to treat or degrade hazardous waste, encompassing the techniq

With human research trials resulting in dozens of successful deliveries in the US and abroad, doctors move toward offering the surgery clinically, while working to learn all they can about uterine and transplant biology from the still-rare procedure.

Government incentives, advances in technology, and an army of patient advocates have spun a successful market—but abuses of the system and exorbitant prices could cause a backlash.

To help create better conservation and management plans, researchers are measuring how marine organisms move between habitats and populations.

Science programs in many state schools are feeling the pinch of hard times, but there's an exception to the suffering: Universities in big energy-producing states are thriving, with some even gaining a competitive edge over their hurting counterparts by luring senior level faculty. Times are tough at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville (UTK). After taking a 5.8% hit in their approximately $750 million budget last year, they are facing an 8 to 20% cut in state funding this year, said Willia

By Dennis MeredithTHE STATE OF LIFE SCIENCENorth Carolina combines academic, industrial, government, and private resources to drive research, development, and manufacturing A half century ago, the world was only beginning to grasp the stunning implications of Watson's and Crick's double-helix DNA structure. Amidst those earliest glimmerings of the genetic revolution, North Carolina was already laying the foundation for its 21st-century success in biotechnology. In 1959, however, the evidence o

Early in his career, Russ Altman and members of his lab at Stanford University devised a new data analysis strategy. They drafted the manuscript about their approach and, before sending it to a computer science journal, showed it to the biologists whose raw data they had used. These colleagues expressed great distress at seeing their results in the methods paper, and insisted the team delay submitting the manuscript until they prepared a paper detailing the biological conclusions. Altman agreed

Date: March 16, 1992 Revamping of the biology directorate and creation of a social sciences unit aims to accommodate new trends in life sciences When Cora Bagley Marrett assumes full duties in May as the first assistant director of the new social, behavioral, and economic sciences division (SBE) of the National Science Foundation, she will give social scientists something for which they have long lobbied: their own voice in high-level NSF decisions. NSF announced the new directorate last Oc

A Living Legacy At the birthplace of stem cell research, the next generation of scientists continues to advance the field. By Megan Scudellari In Toronto’s downtown Discovery District, world-class stem cell researchers populate the buildings like athletes at the Olympics. On University Avenue, Andras Nagy, a renowned innovator in induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, works at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, housed within the towering Mount Sin

As science increasingly becomes more complex, interdisciplinary research at many academic institutions is quickly becoming the rule rather than the exception, many scientists and ad- ministrators say. At the same time, observers warn, there are institutional roadblocks to such collaborations. Most universities remain bound by traditional departmental structures for administrative and curricular purposes, including peer review, tenure, and promotion. Funding agencies, too, have been structural