NewsBlog: Have a question about pandas? Posted by Ivan Oransky [Entry posted at 31st August 2007 12:10 AM GMT] In May, we brought you a story by Jerry Guo, who traveled to China to report on efforts to boost that country's population of pandas. (See a slideshow about the panda facility here .) One of the people Guo interviewed was Lu Zhi, director of Conservation International's China office. Zhi questioned some of China's efforts, especially those at Wolong Nature Reserve, which is... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Questions about NIH agency chief linger Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 29th August 2007 06:42 PM GMT] One lawmaker has levied more allegations of mismanagement against David Schwartz , director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Last week, Schwartz temporarily stepped down from his position while the National Institutes of Health, which oversees NIEHS, conducts a "comprehensive review of the management and leadership" at the agency. Senator ... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: NIH to bank genome-wide association data Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 29th August 2007 04:46 AM GMT] As of January 25, 2008, researchers conducting genome-wide association studies with NIH funding will be required to submit their data, stripped of information that could identify individual study participants, to the a central repository at the National Library of Medicine. The database will allow researchers not connected with an original study to mine another lab?s data in search of further gene... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Head scientist leaves CIRM Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 27th August 2007 08:37 PM GMT] Arlene Chiu, the interim chief scientific officer at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine , has announced that she will step down from her post at the end of October. In a CIRM statement Chiu writes that she'll be moving from San Francisco, where CIRM is headquartered to her home in Los Angeles to "pursue new professional directions." Chiu will serve as a consultant to the agency through April 2008, advising newly chosen... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this blog NewsBlog: HHMI pays for open access Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 21st August 2007 04:04 PM GMT] The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has decided to pay article processing charges if HHMI-funded scientists choose to publish in open access journals from BioMed Central (BMC). Articles published in BMC journals will be immediately free on the Web. The current BMC article-processing charge ranges from $500 to $2400, depending on the journal. These charges will not come out of an HHMI investigator's budget, so will therefore be in... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Has pharmacogenomics arrived? Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 17th August 2007 04:25 PM GMT] The FDA yesterday updated the label on a widely used blood thinner, warfarin, to include information about how a patient's genes will predict response to the drug. Patients with certain genetic variations should receive a lower dose of the drug, according to the added text. Although a handful of drugs already note such genetic information on their labels, most of these... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Anthrax incident in Mississippi Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 15th August 2007 07:09 PM GMT] A graduate researcher at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMC) in Jackson, Mississippi, was treated for exposure to anthrax on Saturday (August 11), according to a news release from the University of Mississippi Medical Center. The researcher was working in the Biosafety Level 3 high containment lab on Saturday, August 11, where UMC conducts anthrax research. According to the UMC release, the student inoculated a flask of medium with anthrax cells and,... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: No backing down on bisphenol A Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 13th August 2007 05:48 PM GMT] A 12-member NIH panel is disagreeing with a scientific consensus statement published this month about the health hazards of bisphenol A, a common component of plastics. In the statement, in Reproductive Toxicology, 38 scientists warn that the product may cause serious human reproductive disorders. As ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Hold members of Congress accountable Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 13th August 2007 04:16 PM GMT] When Research!America polled the US public in July on biomedical research and health care issues, 70% of registered voters who participated believed that the country's primacy in biomedical research is slipping. Almost half believed that the country must boost NIH funding and more than half supported federal funding for ... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Buy a bond, an NIH bond Posted by Edyta Zielinska [Entry posted at 10th August 2007 09:06 PM GMT] The NIH needs money, and now, everyone can pitch in. If legislation proposed August 3 passes Congress, you will be able to buy a US Treasury bond and send 10% of the interest to the NIH institute of your choice. It may not seem like much, but US Rep. Steve Pearce (R-New Mexico) -- who co-sponsored the bill along with Emanuel Cleaver (D-Missouri) and Dan Burton (R-Illinois) -- noted that in fiscal year 2006, the Treasury Department... Click to continue View comments (2) | Comment on this blog NewsBlog: CIRM doesn't want an active scientist president Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 10th August 2007 08:02 PM GMT] Shortly after posting my news story on incoming California Institute for Regenerative Medicine interim president Richard Murphy, Robert Klein--chairman of CIRM's governing board--told me that a policy regarding candidates for the permanent position has recently been enacted. Klein said that through discussions in June and July, the board confirmed a policy that precluded candidates... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: New head of Calif. stem cell group Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 9th August 2007 06:19 PM GMT] Richard Murphy, former head of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, will assume the role of interim president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the agency announced yesterday. Murphy will take over for Lori Hoffman, who served as acting present since the spring, when Zach Hall resigned from CIRM's top position. "We are grateful that Dr. Murphy has agreed to assume this responsibility for a period up... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this blog NewsBlog: And the supercomputing award goes to... Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 9th August 2007 05:27 PM GMT] The wait is over for those eager to know who will be building the fastest computer in the world. Yesterday, August 8, the NSF decided to award $208 million to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, for its "Track One" proposal to build a supercomputer with more than a petaflop of processing power -- a whopping 1000-trillion calculations per second. As I... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: A small step for postdoc mentoring Posted by Edyta Zielinska [Entry posted at 9th August 2007 04:49 PM GMT] Today, President Bush is scheduled to sign the America COMPETES Act (the full title is "American Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act"). The new legislation would approximately double NSF funding over the next five years (which some say could be a bad idea for scientists). Nestled with that... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Foot and mouth source still mysterious Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 8th August 2007 05:20 AM GMT] The UK government has issued some preliminary findings into an investigation of the source of foot and mouth disease (FMD) virus that started an outbreak in cattle near two research labs in Surrey last week. After an onsite investigation and personnel interviews, the government-led team has found that the virus strain was being worked on in two facilities near the outbreak, the Institute of Animal Health (which researches FMD) and... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Study the economic impact of research? Win $5,000 Posted by Kerry Grens [Entry posted at 7th August 2007 10:27 PM GMT] As I found in my reporting of a July feature called "Is science a good bet," it is a daunting task to figure out the economic impacts of investing in research. For decades economists have tried, but they've managed only to eke out a fuzzy sense of direction?meaning that the impact is positive, but no one really knows how positive, nor what an optimal investment might return. Yet the economics of research are of huge interest to the government,... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Online evolution at The Scientist -- part 1 Posted by Simon Frantz [Entry posted at 6th August 2007 09:27 PM GMT] As you will have noticed our website has a new look, which marks the first of several changes that will be occurring on our site over the coming months. This first round of changes is more than just a nifty change of color. We've streamlined a lot of aspects, and updated a lot of the behind-the-scenes technical wizardry that should make many of the future additions that we have in the pipeline easier to incorporate. We also want our homepage to highlight more of the online content that we... Click to continue View comments (4) | Comment on this blog NewsBlog: A wee pat on the back Posted by Richard Gallagher [Entry posted at 3rd August 2007 04:50 PM GMT] It's always nice to get some stroking, and The Scientist staff has been purring over the last couple of weeks. Last night we took home the national Gold Azbee award -- that's the top one -- for Publication Redesign in the under-80,000 category at the American Society of Business Publication Editors' 29th Annual Awards of Excellence . We entered the ... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Nature on the slide? Posted by Richard Gallagher [Entry posted at 3rd August 2007 04:00 PM GMT] In the beauty contest that is the annual citation report from ISI, Nature has tripped and fallen off the stage. Having been the top journal in 2004 with an impact factor of 31.9, they slipped marginally behind Science and Cell in 2005. But the latest figures, for 2006, show a gulf in impact factors . Science comes in at 30.0, Cell... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Three syllables, sounds like "cabana" Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 2nd August 2007 11:33 PM GMT] Behavioral research has provided another insight into the mental workings of our fellow apes: orangutans can play charades . This finding enriches our concept of primate communication, a phenomenon most likely important in the transmission of customs and the eventual establishment of cultures among our primate cousins. I wrote about chimp culture (and orangutan customs) in our August... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Just in: Fake ID linked to drinking Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 2nd August 2007 05:37 PM GMT] One of our notebooks in the August issue takes a close look at press releases about research, and why some press offices choose to cover seemingly obvious research. We only mentioned one university-based press office, but it's not just Ohio State University that "sells the self-evident," as a press release that landed in my inbox last week demonstrates. "Mizzou study shows that possessing a fake ID results in more drinking by... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Desert Gold Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 1st August 2007 07:45 PM GMT] In our June issue, I wrote about environmentally friendly laboratories and last month, I wrote about Arizona State University's Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building IV, which is scheduled for completion by 2010. ASU plans to seek LEED Silver status from the US Green Building Council for that project, but has received even higher LEED ratings for two other research buildings on its Tempe... Click to continue Comment on this blog

Previous months >>   May 2008 >>   April 2008 >>   March 2008 >>   February 2008 >>   January 2008 >>   December 2007 >>   November 2007 >>   October 2007 >>   September 2007 >>   August 2007 >>   July 2007 >>   June 2007 >>   May 2007 >>   April 2007 >>   March 2007 >>   February 2007 >>   January 2007 >>   December 2006 >>   November 2006 >>   October 2006 >>   September 2006 >>   August 2006 >>   July 2006 >>   June 2006 >>   May 2006 >>   April 2006 >>   March 2006 >>   February 2006 >>   January 2006 >>   December 2005 >>   November 2005 >>   October 2005 >>   September 2005 >>   August 2005 >>   July 2005 >>   June 2005