News: Creationist postdoc loses lawsuit Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 29th April 2008 10:53 PM GMT] A Massachusetts federal court judge last week (April 22) dismissed the case against a researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who allegedly fired a postdoc in his lab because of the postdoc's creationist beliefs. The postdoc, ... Click to continue View comments (44) | Comment on this news story News: Conflicts on HHS stem cell council Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 28th April 2008 09:04 PM GMT] Nearly half the voting members of a Department of Health and Human Services stem cell advisory council have financial conflicts of interest despite the committee's pledge to limit these ... Click to continue View comments (3) | Comment on this news story News: No to gene patents, says Euro group Posted by Elie Dolgin [Entry posted at 28th April 2008 07:04 PM GMT] Patents should be granted only for genetic tests, not for genes and DNA sequences, a working party from the European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG) and ... Click to continue View comments (2) | Comment on this news story News: Dissecting a massive squid: live Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 28th April 2008 05:07 PM GMT] Ever seen a colossal squid dissected? Me neither. In fact, few biologists have glimpsed an intact specimen of the rare and elusive squid species, much less observed one being probed and ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Biotech in space? Posted by Edyta Zielinska [Entry posted at 28th April 2008 04:47 PM GMT] Can the biotech and pharma make money in space? That was the question Congress posed at a hearing on the International Space Station's future, held on Thursday (April 24). "I think ... Click to continue View comments (2) | Comment on this news story News: House passes biotech funding bill Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 24th April 2008 10:15 PM GMT] The US House of Representatives passed a bill yesterday (Apr 23) that extends two programs providing federal grants to early-stage biotechs and other startups with promising ideas. ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: HIV vaccine research: crisis of faith? Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 24th April 2008 08:27 PM GMT] HIV/AIDS researchers are despondent over the waning prospects of ever creating an effective vaccine against the virus, according to a ... Click to continue View comments (4) | Comment on this news story News: Rooting out plant stress responses Posted by Elie Dolgin [Entry posted at 24th April 2008 07:44 PM GMT] Plant cellular responses are much more locally and temporally specialized than previously thought, a new study suggests. In growing Arabidopsis roots, different tissue layers respond to stressful conditions in highly cell-type specific ways, ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: The black box of pluripotency Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 24th April 2008 02:26 PM GMT] What keeps stem cells pluripotent? In the past six months researchers have reprogrammed human progenitor skin cells and ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Bioterror art case dismissed Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 23rd April 2008 03:06 PM GMT] An artist who was charged with mail and wire fraud for receiving postal packages of bacteria to be used in his artwork has been cleared. A federal judge on Monday (April 21) dismissed the ... Click to continue View comments (3) | Comment on this news story News: Genetic bias vote in Senate, finally Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 22nd April 2008 06:43 PM GMT] It appears that the US Senate is going to finally cast its vote on a 15-year-old bill with wide bipartisan support against genetic discrimination. According to Scientists and Engineers for America, Senator Tom Coburn has ... Click to continue View comments (5) | Comment on this news story News: Legal spat over prayer study ends Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 21st April 2008 10:47 PM GMT] The ongoing legal battle between a fertility researcher who published a controversial 2001 ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: EPA whistleblower sues university Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 21st April 2008 09:32 PM GMT] A University of Georgia (UGA) microbiologist and whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency is suing the university Board of Regents, the university research foundation, and five faculty members for accepting federal grant money to publish ... Click to continue View comments (3) | Comment on this news story News: Legal shield for Calif. researchers? Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 21st April 2008 04:23 PM GMT] University scientists in California who use animals in their research may get some legal protection from animal rights groups, which have attacked and ... Click to continue View comments (2) | Comment on this news story News: A Tribute to Aldo Leopold Posted by Margaret Guthrie [Entry posted at 18th April 2008 05:16 PM GMT] Aldo Leopold is widely considered the father of the conservation movement. This Monday (Apr21) marks the 60th anniversary of his death. He died of a heart attack at age 61 while helping a Wisconsin neighbor fight ... Click to continue View comments (3) | Comment on this news story News: Researchers explore pluripotency Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 17th April 2008 09:15 PM GMT] Partially or fully differentiated cells can acquire, or be reprogrammed for, stem cell-like pluripotency, according to two studies published this week. The research adds to a growing body of work on the subtleties of pluripotency, since last ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: NIH report omits specific blame? Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 17th April 2008 09:08 PM GMT] Researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences are saying the recent NIH report on mismanagement at the agency fails to pinpoint some root causes of the problems. The ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: A single pathway for lung damage Posted by Edyta Zielinska [Entry posted at 17th April 2008 06:41 PM GMT] SARS, avian flu, and other lung diseases destroy the lungs via a common mechanism, researcher report in Cell today. That mechanism, based on innate immunity, could provide new targets for treating severe lung damage, the ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Like frog, like mouse Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 17th April 2008 05:06 PM GMT] For the first time, scientists have identified in mammals an essential mechanism used by amphibians to adjust to low-oxygen environments. According to a ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Tenured Nevada prof. fired Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 17th April 2008 03:16 PM GMT] Last week, the University of Nevada, Reno, fired and banned from campus an animal nutrition researcher, according to a university spokesperson. Hussein Hussein, associate professor in the department of animal biotechnology, told the ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: FDA's 1st Chief Scientist speaks Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 16th April 2008 09:21 PM GMT] Last week, the US Food and Drug Administration named cancer biologist Frank Torti as the agency's first ever Chief Scientist. ... Click to continue View comments (2) | Comment on this news story News: Problems linger at NIEHS Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 16th April 2008 04:29 PM GMT] A report from the National Institutes of Health has detailed a suite of management and ethics problems at the agency's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: Game, set, matching umpire calls in tennis Posted by Elie Dolgin [Entry posted at 16th April 2008 02:30 PM GMT] Umpires at Wimbledon, Roland Garros, and Arthur Ashe Stadium might deserve a break, according to a new study published online this week in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: Haitian clinic weathers riots Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 15th April 2008 11:08 PM GMT] The Haitian HIV/AIDS clinic that I visited earlier this year and wrote about in the March issue of The Scientist has resumed normal ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Brain-freeze reveals auditory pathways Posted by Elie Dolgin [Entry posted at 13th April 2008 08:25 PM GMT] The brain's sound processing areas are split into two distinct regions — one which determines what a sound is, the other which tracks where it's coming from, according to ... Click to continue View comments (3) | Comment on this news story News: Plagiarists beware Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 11th April 2008 10:39 PM GMT] We here at The Scientist do our best to keep an eye out for instances of scientific misconduct and publishing irregularities. In the past we've not only reported on ... Click to continue View comments (5) | Comment on this news story News: Thousands of NIH laptops unprotected Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 11th April 2008 08:35 PM GMT] Earlier this week I posted a blog on the digital security problems at NIH, which revealed the agency cannot encrypt sensitive data, such as the personal information (including social security ... Click to continue View comments (5) | Comment on this news story News: FDA mulls embryonic stem cell therapy Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 11th April 2008 07:05 PM GMT] With biotech companies inching up on clinical trials for human embryonic stem cell-based therapies, the US Food and Drug Administration held a meeting yesterday to discuss scientific issues in properly deriving and characterizing the cells, as well ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Germany eases stem cell law Posted by Elie Dolgin [Entry posted at 11th April 2008 04:01 PM GMT] The German parliament voted today (April 11) to ease restrictions on stem cell research, according to Reuters. The ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Giuseppe Attardi dies Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 10th April 2008 11:08 PM GMT] Giuseppe Attardi, the California Institute of Technology researcher who identified all the genes in human mtDNA and uncovered the mitochondrial genome's role in degenerative diseases and ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: Takeda acquires Millennium Posted by Edyta Zielinska [Entry posted at 10th April 2008 09:40 PM GMT] When I profiled Millennium Pharmaceuticals' chief scientific officer, Joe Bolen, in last month's issue of The Scientist, he described some amusing airport foibles that had taken place during a ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Bacteria blending into single species? Posted by Elie Dolgin [Entry posted at 10th April 2008 08:04 PM GMT] Two bacterial species found in the guts of chickens, pigs and other animals are merging into a single species after the domestication of livestock brought the two microbes together, according to a ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Arabidopsis evolution study pulled Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 10th April 2008 07:05 PM GMT] Plant biologists have withdrawn a study on Arabidopsis thaliana evolution published in a 2004 issue of Science, saying one of its conclusions was marred by contamination, according ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Security risks at NIH? Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 10th April 2008 06:11 PM GMT] The National Institutes of Health this week warned its employees that Apple Macintosh laptops cannot be encrypted using the agency's software, leaving unprotected sensitive data such as personal information (including ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Visa woe pushes scientist out of US Posted by Edyta Zielinska [Entry posted at 10th April 2008 03:34 PM GMT] Last August, I reported on Mohammad Sajid, a UK citizen who was barred from returning to the US pending several months of background checks - twice. On Monday I got an e-mail from Sajid ... Click to continue View comments (4) | Comment on this news story News: Ge-what-ics?: Nation's teenagers Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 9th April 2008 10:21 PM GMT] A significant portion of American high schoolers have seriously flawed ideas about genetics, according to a study conducted by the country's largest society for genetics ... Click to continue View comments (9) | Comment on this news story News: Hybrid embryos challenged Posted by Elie Dolgin [Entry posted at 9th April 2008 08:45 PM GMT] Two Christian groups launched legal action today (Apr. 9) challenging licenses granted to UK scientists to create human-animal hybrid embryos for research purposes, according to the ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Science unemployment down: NSF Posted by Edyta Zielinska [Entry posted at 9th April 2008 06:46 PM GMT] The supply of scientists and engineers continues to grow in the US, and that unemployment rate, at 2.5 percent, is the lowest it's been since the early 1990s, the National Science Foundation ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: 1st cancer vaccine approved in Russia Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 9th April 2008 12:11 AM GMT] A New York-based biotech company announced today (April 8) that it has received approval for the first therapeutic cancer vaccine -- in Russia. It is the first approval by a regulatory body ... Click to continue View comments (2) | Comment on this news story News: Stem cell rx wins another horse race Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 8th April 2008 05:05 PM GMT] This report in from Editorial Administrator and journalist Margaret Guthrie: Earlier this year, we reported on a company called Vet-Stem which has devised a treatment for horses using the ... Click to continue View comments (4) | Comment on this news story News: Neuroscience peer-review posse grows Posted by Elie Dolgin [Entry posted at 7th April 2008 06:32 PM GMT] Nature Neuroscience is joining an alliance of journals that share manuscript peer-reviews, according to the journal's April editorial. The ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Public access begins Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 7th April 2008 04:26 PM GMT] Today (April 7) is the start day of the National Institutes of Health mandate requiring that all research funded by NIH dollars be deposited into PubMed Central within one year of publication. Any articles arising from NIH funds that are accepted ... Click to continue View comments (2) | Comment on this news story News: Say your prayers, cane toads Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 4th April 2008 09:23 PM GMT] Though Australian scientists are working to engineer a virus to control the invasive pests, an Aussie politician has suggested a less subtle solution: kill 'em all. Shane Knuth, a ... Click to continue View comments (4) | Comment on this news story News: Citizens and the art of maintaining science Posted by Elie Dolgin [Entry posted at 4th April 2008 01:59 PM GMT] Wouldn't it be nice to have thousands of collaborators, collecting data and sharing observations, who didn't demand a salary at all? A nation-wide initiative called Project Budburst is enlisting the help of so-called "citizen scientists" to nip the ... Click to continue View comments (6) | Comment on this news story News: Antibiotics feed bacteria Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 3rd April 2008 07:05 PM GMT] Hundreds of bacteria isolated from soil samples are able to live exclusively on antibiotics as a food source, according to a report published today (April 3) in Science. The ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: New metastasis mechanism revealed Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 3rd April 2008 04:36 PM GMT] A signaling molecule commonly found in cancerous tissue primes some breast tumor cells to metastasize to lung but not bone tissue, according to a study to be published in ... Click to continue View comments (2) | Comment on this news story News: Does blogged peer review work? Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski [Entry posted at 2nd April 2008 05:00 PM GMT] Can the blogosphere work as well as the traditional peer review system? Over the past two months one researcher has been trying to find out. Based on his and his publisher's early assessment ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: UK lab creates hybrid embryo Posted by Elie Dolgin [Entry posted at 2nd April 2008 03:31 PM GMT] Hybrid embryos containing both human and animal material have been created for the first time in the UK, the BBC reported yesterday (April 1). Scientists at Newcastle University led by Lyle ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: New patent rules overturned Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 1st April 2008 11:44 PM GMT] A Virginia court struck down today (April 1) new patent rules which pharma and biotech companies argued would have limited their ability to protect their intellectual property. The new ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: HHMI president steps down Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 1st April 2008 10:16 PM GMT] Thomas Cech, a Nobel laureate who studied the catalytic properties of RNA, has announced plans to step down from the top spot at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, according to the ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: The perils of DNA import/export Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 1st April 2008 03:45 PM GMT] Ever had trouble transporting DNA across international borders? I was in Taiwan last year covering a conference on DNA barcoding, ... Click to continue View comments (3) | Comment on this news story

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