News: Milestone for RNAi therapeutics? Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 29th February 2008 10:16 PM GMT] A company developing therapeutics using RNA interference (RNAi) today (February 29) announced positive results of a clinical trial in humans ? ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: Conflict policies raise data challenges Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 29th February 2008 06:28 PM GMT] Developing policies on conflicts regarding financial interests held by US medical colleges, teaching hospitals and research institutions has proven a much thornier task than targeting conflicts among individual faculty members. Institutions "are ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Big tobacco stubs out research money Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 29th February 2008 03:44 PM GMT] Big tobacco is pulling its money out of academic research -- kind of. Tobacco company Philip Morris told researchers in September of last year that it was ending its controversial extramural research program, Science ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Groups call for strict conflict rules Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 28th February 2008 09:07 PM GMT] Two national academic associations have called on US academic institutions to develop and implement rules that manage institution-wide conflicts of interest and refine rules that deal with conflicts among faculty of medical schools, teaching ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: MA debates life sciences bill Posted by Edyta Zielinska [Entry posted at 28th February 2008 07:26 PM GMT] Massachusetts' $1 billion life sciences bill is inching closer to approval. A preliminary vote yesterday in the House of Representatives supported the measure, which is being debated further ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: USPTO upholds stem cell patent Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 28th February 2008 06:50 PM GMT] One of three stem cell patents held by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) is valid, according to a non-final ruling issued on Monday by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The three WARF patents have been under examination ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Chimp's gestures share language roots Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 28th February 2008 06:20 PM GMT] In the first ever functional imaging study of the communicating chimpanzee brain, researchers have found that brain function in grunting and gesturing chimpanzees closely parallels that in actively communicating humans, according to a ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: Biotech claims for safer stem cells Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 28th February 2008 04:20 PM GMT] A California biotech announced at the Stem Cell Summit in New York City on Tuesday that they have successfully reprogrammed human skin, kidney, and retina cells to a stem-cell-like state without using potentially cancer-causing retroviruses. But ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Targeted UCSC animal researcher speaks Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 27th February 2008 08:42 PM GMT] The University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) cancer researcher whose home was invaded last Sunday, has commented on the attack to the ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Listening to prozac, for autism Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 27th February 2008 04:13 PM GMT] Just what is it about autism that produces the three hallmark behaviors of social impairment, language difficulties, and rigidity, or an "insistence on sameness'? Scientists at this year's Keystone meeting on the pathophysiology of ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: UCSC animal researcher targeted Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 26th February 2008 10:55 PM GMT] Attackers broke into the home of a University of California, Santa Cruz scientist who uses animals to study breast cancer and neurological disorders, on Sunday (Feb. 24), according to the ... Click to continue View comments (4) | Comment on this news story News: What role of autism in Fragile X? Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 26th February 2008 09:30 PM GMT] This morning's session at the Keystone meeting on the pathophysiology of autism in Santa Fe, New Mexico, focused on the disorder's link to Fragile X syndrome. Like autism, Fragile X is associated with behaviors such as high social anxiety, ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Embryonic origins of autoimmunity Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 26th February 2008 03:02 PM GMT] Autoimmune diseases may not stem from defects in the immune system alone. Rather, developmental genetic abnormalities in organ tissues may make those organs more susceptible to autoimmune ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Senator questions open access mandate Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 26th February 2008 12:13 AM GMT] More questions have come up over the new National Institutes of Health public access mandate and its fairness to journal publishers. Two weeks ago Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter sent a letter to NIH director Elias Zerhouni questioning whether ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Autism, in its early days Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 25th February 2008 09:23 PM GMT] It's a small Keystone meeting on the pathophysiology of autistic syndromes here in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but you can feel the excitement among the 100 or so attendees, as they muddle their way through early data in this growing area of research. ... Click to continue View comments (3) | Comment on this news story News: Encyclopedia of Life goes live Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 25th February 2008 08:25 PM GMT] Almost one year after the Encyclopedia of Life announced its plan to construct a comprehensive, online catalog of biodiversity, the website will unveil its first 30,000 species pages tomorrow (Feb. 26). With $50 million ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Pfizer leans on confidential peer review Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 22nd February 2008 09:19 PM GMT] The sanctity of peer review is under scrutiny again. Last month Pfizer filed a motion in federal court to force the New England Journal of Medicine to turn over confidential peer review documents for two of their products, Celebrex and Bextra. The ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Online methods videos go mainstream Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 22nd February 2008 05:57 PM GMT] Scientific and medical publisher Wiley-Blackwell announced this week (February 20) that they will work with the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE), the first online video methods ... Click to continue View comments (2) | Comment on this news story News: James Watson supports Obama Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 22nd February 2008 03:48 PM GMT] In an intriguing election-year twist, James Watson, the renowned biologist who made headlines last October when he told the ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Animal rights extremists restrained Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 22nd February 2008 02:57 PM GMT] A California judge issued a temporary restraining order yesterday (Feb. 21) against three underground ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Insect Art Winners: A slideshow Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 22nd February 2008 02:46 PM GMT] For 25 years, a university town in Illinois has become insect central for day thanks to entomologist May Berenbaum's Insect Fear Film Festival at the University of Illinois at ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Let's lighten up peer review: NIH Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 21st February 2008 09:40 PM GMT] NIH needs to make life easier for everyone involved in the peer review process - a not surprising conclusion of the agency's peer review working group, which it announced today (February 21) after reviewing thousands of suggestions from ... Click to continue View comments (3) | Comment on this news story News: New Scientist is for sale Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 21st February 2008 05:37 PM GMT] Science and medical publishing giant Reed Elsevier has announced that is putting Reed Business Information (RBI), the largest business-to-business publisher in the US, up on the auction block. ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: DNA damage resets body clock Posted by Edyta Zielinska [Entry posted at 21st February 2008 04:55 PM GMT] DNA damage resets the circadian clock in mammals, researchers report in this week's online issue of Current Biology. Previous studies have shown that DNA damage affects circadian cycles in ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: UCLA sues animal rights groups Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 21st February 2008 04:09 PM GMT] In response to several recent attacks on University of California, Los Angeles researchers, the school is suing three animal rights groups and several people associated with the ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Scientists Without Borders Posted by Edyta Zielinska [Entry posted at 21st February 2008 03:51 PM GMT] Have you ever wondered how your day-to-day work in the lab can contribute to health and science efforts in the developing world? The New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) is inviting scientists to offer up their skills and resources toward an effort ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: $1 million fine for biosafety snafus Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 20th February 2008 11:12 PM GMT] Texas A&M University will pay an unprecedented $1 million in fines for more than a dozen safety violations in its research program on bioterrorism agents, the university announced today (February 20). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ... Click to continue View comments (2) | Comment on this news story News: Crowdsourcing for science? Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 20th February 2008 01:37 PM GMT] Last night, I and other attendees of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships 25th Anniversary Symposium in Boston were introduced to an interesting idea, courtesy of Clive Thompson, science writer extraordinaire for Wired and other outlets: ... Click to continue View comments (6) | Comment on this news story News: Help wanted: Science advisors Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 19th February 2008 06:54 PM GMT] Who should the next US president appoint as director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy? That and more than 50 other science-related positions in the executive branch will more ... Click to continue View comments (3) | Comment on this news story News: FDA inspects wrong Chinese plant Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 19th February 2008 05:10 PM GMT] The US Food and Drug Administration admitted yesterday that it never inspected a Chinese facility supplying the active ingredient in heparin, a widely used blood thinner recently implicated ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Geneticist Ray Wu dies Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 19th February 2008 12:16 AM GMT] Geneticist and genetic engineering pioneer Ray Wu died on February 10 of cardiac arrest. He was 79. In 1970, Wu developed a new location-specific primer-extension technique that became the first method of sequencing DNA. In the following decade, ... Click to continue View comments (4) | Comment on this news story News: Another HIV microbicide a bust Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 18th February 2008 02:01 PM GMT] Another microbicide to prevent HIV transmission has been deemed ineffective. The Population Council, a nonprofit research organization, which has been developing the microbicide ... Click to continue View comments (8) | Comment on this news story News: Pet dog to be cloned by Korean biotech Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 15th February 2008 07:50 PM GMT] A South Korean biotech company has announced it will, for the first time ever, commercially clone a pet dog, according to reports coming out of the country. RNL Bio said last ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: Animal studio portraits: Slideshow Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 15th February 2008 03:00 PM GMT] The images you see in [Creature, a new book of photographs by Andrew Zuckerman] are the product of a journey of discovery and of learning how to connect with the soul and essence of all creatures. In animals, as in humans, the eye connects the ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: Epithelial cells made pluripotent Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 14th February 2008 06:22 PM GMT] A team of Japanese researchers has changed epithelial cells from the livers and stomachs of adult mice into pluripotent cells that resemble embryonic stem cells, according to a paper in ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Autoimmunity in plants? Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 14th February 2008 06:04 PM GMT] Can plants suffer from autoimmunity? The term is generally reserved for organisms with an adaptive immune system, but one of the speakers last night at the Keystone meeting on plant signaling and immunity described a scenario that she called "the ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Variation at the start Posted by Edyta Zielinska [Entry posted at 14th February 2008 05:14 PM GMT] Some organisms adopt an unusual strategy to make sure the genetic code is translated accurately, according to study that will be published tomorrow in Molecular Cell. These findings suggest that ancient organisms ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Ocean global warming tool sinks Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 14th February 2008 04:05 PM GMT] A company that aimed to reduce global warming by creating blooms of carbon dioxide-absorbing phytoplankton in the ocean has sunk, according to the New York ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Plant signaling gets complex Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 14th February 2008 04:41 AM GMT] Last night's session (February 12) on hormones networks at the joint Keystone meeting on plant signaling and immunity in Keystone, Co, began with Charlie Chaplin. Specifically, the audience was treated to a video clip of the scene in Modern Times ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: Harvard first to force open access Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 13th February 2008 06:28 PM GMT] All papers by Harvard scholars accepted for publication as of today will be freely available to the public. The Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences unanimously passed a motion ... Click to continue View comments (4) | Comment on this news story News: Med school conflict policies lacking: study Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 12th February 2008 11:02 PM GMT] Most US medical schools excel at keeping an eye on conflicts of interest among their faculty. But they're not so good at keeping an eye on themselves, according to a study out today. In a ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: The cell wall defense Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 12th February 2008 08:03 PM GMT] What if our textbooks aren't quite correct, and the plant cell wall isn't just the purely structural organ it's thought to be? That's the theory Shauna Somerville of Stanford's ... Click to continue View comments (5) | Comment on this news story News: Ex-NIEHS director speaks out Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 11th February 2008 09:00 PM GMT] National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) director David Schwartz, who officially resigned from the agency last Friday, told The Scientist that NIEHS "could do better" ... Click to continue View comments (2) | Comment on this news story News: Geneticist sentenced in art case Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 11th February 2008 07:02 PM GMT] A geneticist was sentenced to one year of unsupervised release (no jail time) and a $500 fine for supplying bacteria to an artist, according to the Buffalo News, bringing to an end a ... Click to continue View comments (2) | Comment on this news story News: Schwartz resigns from NIEHS Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 11th February 2008 04:06 PM GMT] After a tumultuous three-year stint, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) director David Schwartz officially stepped down on Friday (Feb. 8). During his time as NIEHS director, Schwartz's leadership was often questioned. ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Lasker winner Frank Dixon dies Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 11th February 2008 03:46 PM GMT] Frank Dixon, a Lasker winner and founder of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., died on Friday (February 8) of heart failure. He was 87 years old. Dixon was best known for his work showing that immunologic responses can cause harm, ... Click to continue View comments (4) | Comment on this news story News: Postdoc's budget blues Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 11th February 2008 03:24 PM GMT] NIH-funded postdocs won't be getting a raise this year. The agency announced last week that it would freeze National Research Service Award (NRSA) stipends for ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Biodefense watchdog goes dark Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 8th February 2008 05:57 PM GMT] The Sunshine Project, a Texas-based group that has monitored safety and oversight issues in research on bioterror agents, suspended operations on February 1, according to the group's ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: My time at Science: Don Kennedy Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 7th February 2008 07:17 PM GMT] It was the days before the two competing groups of researchers published the first draft of the human genome (released in February, 2001), and Don Kennedy was stressed out. As editor of Science, he was trying to get both groups to publish ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: Ocean thermostat protects corals? Posted by Edyta Zielinska [Entry posted at 7th February 2008 04:46 PM GMT] In a time when all coral news is bad news, a new study that will be published online Saturday in Geophysical Research Letters (read the press release here) suggests that areas of open ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: New direction for gene therapy Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 7th February 2008 04:38 PM GMT] Researchers have identified a new strategy for circumventing the safety problems that have plagued gene therapy according to a ... Click to continue View comments (3) | Comment on this news story News: Shot in the arm for UK funding Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 6th February 2008 07:54 PM GMT] The Wellcome Trust, the UK's largest independent funder of biomedical research, announced yesterday (Feb 5) that it will increase its spending from about £2.5 billion (roughly 4.9 billion ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Alzheimer plaques precede neuron damage Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 6th February 2008 06:05 PM GMT] Alzheimer's disease researchers have long tried to address a key question: Do amyloid plaques cause the disease, or do other disease ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: UCLA monkey researcher targeted again Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 6th February 2008 04:29 PM GMT] A fire was set at the home of a University of California, Los Angeles, neuroscientist targeted by animal rights activists in the past. The fire was caused by a device left on the house's front porch on Tuesday (Feb. 5), FBI officials told the ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Lederberg: A thoughtful visionary Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 6th February 2008 04:28 PM GMT] As a young lab leader at the University of Wisconsin in the 1950s, Joshua Lederberg and his first wife Esther, a microbiologist, would invite lab members to their home once a week to discuss ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: How The New York Times picks reporters Posted by Ivan Oransky [Entry posted at 6th February 2008 04:25 PM GMT] In a story that probably hit close to home to anyone who ever clicked on the wrong email recipient in Outlook, it turns out that attorneys for Lilly sent confidential documents to a New York Times reporter named Alex Berenson instead of an attorney ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Cat designer declares war Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 5th February 2008 07:54 PM GMT] The less-than-reputable entrepreneur at the helm of a company peddling hypo-allergenic cats is under scrutiny again -- this time for fraudulent "designer cats." But now he's taking the offensive by making allegations against journalists who have ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: UK eases proposed stem cell rules Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 5th February 2008 06:31 PM GMT] In response to a petition from researchers, the UK government has backed down on restrictions to stem cell research proposed in a new bill. The revision of the Human Fertilisation and ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: How free radicals make us old Posted by Edyta Zielinska [Entry posted at 5th February 2008 05:29 PM GMT] Free radicals are often blamed for causing cellular damage that promotes aging. A new study published today in Cell Metabolism suggests that they don't wreak ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: One more source to shape your vote Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 5th February 2008 04:19 PM GMT] Still undecided about who to vote for in today's Super Tuesday election? Here's another source from Research!America and its partners called "Your Candidates-Your Health." The ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Joshua Lederberg dies Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 4th February 2008 10:31 PM GMT] Joshua Lederberg, Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist who shaped the field of bacterial genetics, and served as chair of The Scientist's advisory board since 1986, died on Saturday (February 2). He was 82. Lederberg shared a ... Click to continue View comments (5) | Comment on this news story News: Varmus votes - how will you? Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 4th February 2008 09:28 PM GMT] Tomorrow is Super Tuesday, so who are you going to vote for? Yesterday, Harold Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, told Wired that he ... Click to continue View comments (20) | Comment on this news story News: Bush's budget cuts life science dollars Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 4th February 2008 08:56 PM GMT] In his FY 2009 budget, released this morning, President George W. Bush calls to freeze the National Institutes of Health's budget at ... Click to continue View comments (3) | Comment on this news story News: Is autoimmunity like cancer? Posted by Edyta Zielinska [Entry posted at 2nd February 2008 01:16 PM GMT] The first keynote presentation of this week's Keystone meeting on autoimmunity and transplantation tolerance ended in a rather surprising way -- the speaker was actually heckled during the question answer session for comparing autoimmunity to ... Click to continue View comments (4) | Comment on this news story News: Journal vs. docs: malnutrition spat Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 1st February 2008 09:11 PM GMT] The editor of The Lancet has banned members of international aid group Doctors Without Borders (Medicins sans Frontieres or MSF in French) from publishing articles in the journal, according to a ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: More delay for Boston biolab Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 1st February 2008 08:56 PM GMT] Additional safety studies for Boston's planned Biosafety Level 4 lab, demanded by the Massachusetts Supreme Court last year, will further delay the opening of the facility, according to court documents filed by the NIH this week. In November, 2007, ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: A rare malaria victory Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 1st February 2008 07:57 PM GMT] I've been looking into how global health programs evaluate the effects of their interventions for a story that will appear in our March issue. Public health experts have told me again and again that too little attention has been paid to evaluation ... Click to continue Comment on this news story

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