NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 31st October 2007 10:15 PM GMT] At an 11-th hour hearing, a Federal court in Virginia today issued an injunction that will temporarily block controversial new patent rules from taking effect tomorrow (November 1).
The court hearing concerned the lawsuit filed by GlaxoSmithKline against the US Patent and Trademark Office earlier this month, on the grounds that the patent agency did not have the authority to create the new rules.
The final version of the ... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 31st October 2007 07:39 PM GMT] An animal rights group says it vandalized the home of a Los Angeles neuroscientist, adding yet another incident to a string of recent attacks on UCLA researchers. The incident is being investigated by the FBI and local authorities.
An anonymous statement posted on the Web site of the North American Animal Liberation Press Office described in detail how the perpetrators, members of the Animal Liberation... Click to continue
|
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 30th October 2007 02:53 PM GMT] One of my favorite email digests I receive every day is from ProMEDmail, the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases. It's an endless source of story ideas, from chikungunya to bipartisan bacteria to lab accidents. (Not to mention ... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 26th October 2007 09:21 PM GMT] A science journalist and university president are trading barbs this week over the administrator's less-than-glowing book review in Nature.
Last week, Nature published a letter from science policy journalist Daniel Greenberg, who criticized the review of his latest book in the journal. (Greenberg ... Click to continue
|
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 26th October 2007 07:29 PM GMT] Readers who have been following my coverage of attempts to save the endangered pygmy rabbit may remember Onyx, a male rabbit I accompanied in April as his keepers moved him into temporary quarters to see how he would do in a ''prerelease setting.'' Onyx, who is 75% Columbia Basin rabbit and 25% Idaho rabbit -- the Columbia rabbits are officially endangered, and there has... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 25th October 2007 11:29 PM GMT] Every now and then, I get an Email that makes me wonder whether people are idiots. OK, more than every now and then. Today, it was a job posting from a science writers' association that caught my eye. ''I am searching for a psychiatrist or psychologist, an expert in bipolar disorder, to write (or work with a writer to write) The Complete Idiot's Guide to Bipolar Disorder.''
Hmm, I thought. I earned an MD and then finished an internship in psychiatry. I'm a writer. If I had the time and the... Click to continue
|
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 25th October 2007 10:42 PM GMT] A University of New Hampshire biochemistry professor who has been embroiled in a dispute with another faculty member was cleared of criminal charges on Tuesday (October 23).
The district court of Durham, N.H., cleared John Collins of criminal charges of disorderly conduct and stalking, Collins told The Scientist. The charges, which were filed on June 29, came after Collins, then chair of the biochemistry department at UNH, was... Click to continue
|
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 25th October 2007 08:44 PM GMT] What would you do if you realized you'd made a mistake in a paper you wrote half a century ago?
When an 84-year-old retired chemist Googled himself ("I wanted to see, what have I done in all these many years?") he wasn't so happy with what he found, The New York Times reports. A paper of his, published in American Scientist in 1955, had become fodder for creationist arguments about the origin of life. But not only... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 25th October 2007 03:10 PM GMT] Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 25th October 2007 03:03 PM GMT] James Watson is immediately stepping down as chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. The move follows days of public criticism of his remarks to a UK newspaper that people of African descent are less intelligent.
"Closer now to 80 than 79, the passing on of my remaining vestiges of leadership is more than overdue," he said in a statement released this morning. "The... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 25th October 2007 02:51 AM GMT] NIH will hold a final working group meeting tomorrow (October 25) to discuss how to amend peer review. The agency kicked off its review of peer review this summer with the aim of "optimizing its efficiency and effectiveness" - a process many researchers have agreed is needed. The plan is to present results of the series of meetings at the end of this year, and to propose... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 24th October 2007 09:26 PM GMT] Yesterday the U.S. Senate passed the 2008 appropriations bill that -- if not vetoed by the President -- will be a big step forward for open access.
By a voting margin of 75 to 19 the Senate passed the 2008 appropriations bill that includes $150 billion in funding for the Departments of Health and Human Services, and Education. The bill also includes a public access mandate for all research funded by the National Institutes of... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 23rd October 2007 10:10 PM GMT] A congressional committee is investigating whether researchers have a conflict of interest in their work on tobacco effects.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reported today that Congressmen John Dingell and Bart Stupak sent a letter to the directors of the National Institutes of Health and the... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 23rd October 2007 03:40 PM GMT] Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 23rd October 2007 03:38 AM GMT] In May, Bill Sharfman wrote about a London exhibit of works by John White, a 16th-century painter and traveler. They are of what might be considered well-known items: A pineapple, a plantain, and a Portuguese Man O' War. As Sharfman pointed out, however, "when White painted these images in 1585, they represented England's first glimpse of the flora and fauna of a mysterious body of land known as the Americas."
That exhibit has now made... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 22nd October 2007 10:56 PM GMT] Earlier this month, the US Fish and Wildlife Service denied protection under the Endangered Species Act to the giant Palouse earthworm. I can't describe the Driloleirus americanus any better than "worm defender" Steve Paulson did in the High Country News last year: ''What kid wouldn't want to play with a 3-foot-long,... Click to continue
|
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 22nd October 2007 07:57 PM GMT] This afternoon I was corresponding electronically with Joshua Schimel, a professor in the department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, about a story on climate change. He mentioned that last night part of a reserve managed by the university was burned by one of the numerous wildfires whipping up California's southwestern flank. Schimel wrote, "it sounds like it burned our... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 22nd October 2007 07:42 PM GMT] Financial relationships between industry and the nation's medical schools and large teaching hospitals are widespread, according to a study published in the October 17 issue of JAMA. This may not be surprising to some, but this the first study to quantify the prevalence of such relationships in the country's academic medical institutions.
Researchers and physicians from Mass. General Hospital, the University of Michigan, and the... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 22nd October 2007 05:45 PM GMT] The open access movement will take a hit if two amendments are voted into a bill currently on the Senate floor.
The two amendments were filed in the Senate on Friday to either strike or modify language from a Senate appropriations bill that would require NIH-funded research to be made publicly available. The provisions are part of the Senate appropriations bill for 2008, which totals about $150 billion in funding for the departments of Health and Human Services and Education. This bill, if... Click to continue
|
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 22nd October 2007 02:53 PM GMT] Scientists in Europe have been expressing relief this week at the news that the European Union is dropping rules on the levels of radiation medical staff can be exposed to.
The EU physical agents directive had triggered consternation a couple of years ago, with researchersworried it would be impossible to do certain kinds of studies and keep within the... Click to continue
|
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 22nd October 2007 12:38 AM GMT] Last month, a judge ruled that the US Fish and Wildlife Service had to revisit a 2004 decision denying pygmy rabbits outside of the Columbia River basin protection under the Endangered Species Act. I wrote about efforts to save the Columbia basin rabbits in our June issue; such rabbits have been listed as endangered since 2003.
The ruling was in response to a... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 19th October 2007 04:45 PM GMT] According to the Science Media Center in the UK, James Watson has cancelled all his remaining speaking engagements in the UK and will be returning to the US, in the aftermath of the uproar created by his comments on race and intelligence.
In today's news reports, Watson appears almost befuddled by the words that came out of his mouth. "I am mortified about what has happened,"... Click to continue
|
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 19th October 2007 03:09 AM GMT] In a statement issued tonight, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Board of Trustees said that they had "decided to suspend the administrative responsibilities of Chancellor James D. Watson, Ph.D., pending further deliberation by the Board." This follows their harsh response to his comments in the Sunday Times that he believed people of African descent are less intelligent, as Alison McCook... Click to continue
|
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 18th October 2007 05:52 PM GMT] James Watson is coming under fire for telling the Sunday Times that he believed people of African descent are less intelligent. Yesterday (October 17), Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (where Watson is Chancellor) Board of Trustees and President Bruce Stillman released a statement distancing the center from one of its most vocal representatives.
Watson's comments "are his own personal statements and in no way reflect the mission, goals, or principles of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's... Click to continue
|
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 18th October 2007 05:16 PM GMT] The University of California finally made the decision to allow researchers to accept funding from tobacco companies last month, the Sacramento Bee reported .
As I wrote in January, the issue had been brewing since 2004, when several UC campuses voted not to accept funding from tobacco companies, falling in line with several other prominent research institutions. The university has... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 18th October 2007 04:29 PM GMT] The US Senate dropped language from a bill yesterday that would have directed federal money to research on stem cell lines derived before June 15, 2007, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported.
The move was made in hopes to avert a presidential veto over the stem cell provision. The language was part of a Senate Appropriations Committee budget measure for 2008, proposed in... Click to continue
|
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 16th October 2007 02:07 AM GMT] Till recently, just two classes of antiretroviral drugs, reverse transcriptase inhibitors and protease inhibitors, were on the market to treat HIV infection. Last week, the FDA approved Merck's raltegravir (Isentress), which interferes with viral replication at a different point, blocking the enzyme integrase to prevent the integration of the viral genetic material into host DNA.
In our September issue, The Scientist... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 12th October 2007 07:27 PM GMT] Robert Ferrell, a geneticist at the University of Pittsburgh who was indicted in June, 2004, along with Steven Kurtz, an artist at the State University of New York in Buffalo, after Ferrell shipped bacteria to Kurtz to use in an art project, pled guilty yesterday to charges of "mailing an injurious article," according a report by the... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 12th October 2007 04:51 PM GMT] This morning former vice president Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) were awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
According to a statement posted on his Web site,... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 11th October 2007 04:09 PM GMT] The former president of McLean Hospital outside Boston has admitted to sexual misconduct and is now under investigation. The Boston Globe reported this week that Jack Gorman, who resigned from McLean in 2006, admitted to the New York Board of Professional Medical Conduct that he had inappropriate sexual contact with a patient. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health directed McLean to look into whether Gorman abused... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 11th October 2007 02:57 PM GMT] A company that develops "stem cell enhancers" as dietary supplements posted a complaint over 1,000 words in length on its website regarding an article I wrote in May about its product. StemEnhance is an algal extract promised to enhance circulating stem cells and promote wellness. In my article, responses from stem cell researchers on whether the... Click to continue
|
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 10th October 2007 12:52 PM GMT] Gerhard Ertl, a German physical chemist, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry this morning for research that defined how molecules interact at interface between solids and gasses. His work laid the foundation for the modern field of surface chemistry, and had important implications for understanding processes such as how catalytic converters clean up car exhaust, how the ozone layer gets depleted, and how iron... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 9th October 2007 11:19 PM GMT] Bruce Flamm, a doctor and former research chairman is being sued for defamation by Kwang Yul Cha, the co-author of a 2001 paper that showed couples who were prayed for (but didn't know it) were more likely to conceive during in vitro fertilization. Flamm has publicly criticized the paper for years, arguing it was too implausible to be believed.
The lawsuit was a complete surprise, Flamm told me today. "I never would have... Click to continue
|
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 9th October 2007 08:19 PM GMT] Massachusetts is getting ready to overturn regulations that restrict the use of stem cells for research, according to the Associated Press. The regulations imposed by the 2005 bill created a muddy picture of which stem cells could be used for research.
The language made collaborations with out of state researchers especially difficult. David Scadden, co-director of... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 8th October 2007 08:51 PM GMT] Rumors of J. Craig Venter's achievements in creating artificial life are again circulating in the press - the Guardian reported this weekend that Venter has successfully made a fully synthetic chromosome, dubbed Mycoplasma laboratorium. The chromosome reportedly consists of 381 genes, and in total contains 580,000 nucleotide base pairs.
In a... Click to continue
|
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 8th October 2007 11:47 AM GMT] This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes to Mario Capecchi , Martin J. Evans and Oliver Smithies for developing the method of gene targeting in mice leading to the "knock out" mice used today as models of human disease.
The trio of scientists received the Lasker award for Medical Research in 2001 for their achievements. Read more about the prize in our daily... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 6th October 2007 03:58 PM GMT] New York Democratic senator and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton told a Carnegie Institution audience on Thursday that a fictional TV show like CSI would inspire more students to pursue science, according to the Washington Post. "Make up a character," she said.
The comments were part of a speech in which Clinton promised to end the Bush administration's ''war on science,'' which we covered... Click to continue
|
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 5th October 2007 06:01 PM GMT] Another university press has disassociated itself from PRISM -- the Partnership for Integrity in Science and Medicine -- an anti-open access advocacy group established by the Association of American Publishers (AAP). MIT Press director Ellen Faran resigned from AAP's Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, The Chronicle of Higher Education... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 5th October 2007 04:35 PM GMT] We'll all find out who takes this year's Nobel Prizes the morning they do (sometime next week), but there are some early predictions.
Thomson Scientific predicts this year's Prize for Physiology or Medicine will go to Fred H. Gage (adult neurogenesis); Joan Massague (action of growth factor beta); and R. John Ellis, F. Ulrich Hartl, and ... Click to continue
|
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 4th October 2007 10:23 PM GMT] This in from news editor Alla Katsnelson:
At a congressional hearing on biosafety today (October 4), the Government Accountability Office reported that the federal government doesn't know how many labs are involved in biosafety level 3 and level 4 work, or where those labs are.
Although labs working with certain "select agents" are under the oversight of the CDC, labs working with other pathogens such as SARS or Hantavirus... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 4th October 2007 08:01 PM GMT] This morning, at the annual meeting of the American Thyroid Association, I was captivated by a talk that included a very resourceful experimental design. Joanne Rovet's group, at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, described her research on the effects of hypothyroidism in pregnant women on the visual processing of their babies.
Rovet's group found that babies exposed to... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 3rd October 2007 07:05 PM GMT] The British government and three big pharma companies announced a partnership today (October 3) to develop techniques for using stem cells to test the safety of new medicines, the Financial Times reports. So far, the article notes, big companies have stayed away from the controversial field.
The group, launched today as a nonprofit called Stem Cells for Safer... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 3rd October 2007 02:44 AM GMT] On the heels of recent revelations of unreported accidents in Texas university labs and breaches of safety regulations at the University of Wisconsin, an AP article today reports on mishaps at biosafety labs across the country.
More than 100 such incidents have occurred since 2003, and some were not reported as required, according to the... Click to continue
|
Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 2nd October 2007 06:23 PM GMT] The National Institutes of Health has made public more than 50 years worth of data from the Framingham Heart Study. The data from that study are the first to go live as part of the recently-launched, web-based SNP Health Association Resource (or SHARe) database, which is funded by NIH's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
As per NIH's recently finalized... 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
|
