When it comes to matters of science, Republican US presidential hopeful John McCain is with his party on some issues, not quite on others.

This week the Republican Party released a draft of its 2008 platform, one that will be debated in the days leading up to the GOP convention in St Paul, Minnesota, starting Monday (September 1). Some of the party's points regarding science differ from the campaign points McCain has... Click to continue

The nectar of plants may be more than just nourishment for the birds and bees that feed off of them - instead, suggests a study published in this week's issue of Science, it may be a complex chemical cocktail that simultaneously attracts and repels pollinators in order to optimize the amount of time they spend at each... Click to continue

The rector of a prominent Austrian medical university has been fired in the midst of a scientific misconduct investigation that has plagued the institution for months.

The Medical University of Innsbruck's seven-person council unceremoniously dumped Clemens Sorg, an immunologist and the rector of the university, from his position on August 21, according to a... Click to continue

For the first time, researchers have converted fully-differentiated cells in vivo into another type of cell without first reprogramming them to a pluripotent state. The conversion of pancreatic exocrine cells into fully functioning beta cells in living mice is described in a paper to be published tomorrow (August 28) in Nature.

"This paper is an important milestone on the road that hopefully leads to the generation of new beta... Click to continue

Viruses in the deepest ocean environments are unexpectedly strong regulators of the deep sea biosphere, according to a paper published tomorrow (August 28) in Nature.

By infecting and killing bacteria and other prokaryotes viruses are the main producers of the organic matter that sustains life at 1000 meters deep and below. By generating this biomass, viruses also make major contributions to the carbon cycle and other ... Click to continue

Thomas Weller, who shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in Medicine for propagating polio virus in culture, passed away on Saturday, August 23rd. He was 93.

"Thomas Weller was one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century," said Dyann Wirth in statement released by the Harvard School of Public Health, where she is chair of the department of immunology and infectious... Click to continue

Upon last night's opening of the giant pep rally known as the Democratic National Convention, Democrats formally approved their platform, pledging to double federal funding of basic science research, lift the ban on funding embryonic stem cell research, and make the R&D tax credit permanent. The platform makes these promises against the backdrop of the current Administration's... Click to continue

Barack Obama added Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) to the Democratic electoral ticket over the weekend, and Obama's choice of vice presidential running mate may be very good for the research community.

Biden's voting record and past comments regarding science policy indicate that he supports robust funding for biomedical and... Click to continue

Legislation seeking to criminalize some of the key methods used by animal rights protesters to target researchers was passed by the California State Senate last Friday (Aug 22).

The Senate unanimously passed the bill, which now makes its way to the State Assembly, where it must be approved before it goes to the governor's desk, according to the ... Click to continue

Over the past several weeks editors at The Scientist have received announcements from Allerca, the controversial company selling purportedly hypoallergenic cats, stating that some of their felines will be doubling in price this fall.

According to a release sent out from the company last week, the price of the standard Allerca cat will go from $5,950 to $7,900 on September 1. But starting on November 1, the cost is skyrocketing to $15,000. The other cat breeds that Allerca sells are... Click to continue

The nose may know more than we think: New research suggests a poorly-understood structure in the tip of the nose may regulate a vital mammalian alarm system. According to a paper published in Science tomorrow (August 22), mice detect alarm pheromones -- signals evoking behavioral reactions such as fear and anxiety -- through a bundle of cells on the roof of the nasal cavity.

This cell structure, first described by Hans Grueneberg in 1973 and called... Click to continue

Step aside sound barrier: Chemical engineers at Johns Hopkins University have broken the mucus barrier, a long-standing adversary to drug delivery in diseases such as cystic fibrosis, lung cancer, and cervical cancer.

"We get asked all the time, 'Why on Earth do you want to study mucus?'" said Samuel Lai, a postdoc at Hopkins who presented the work yesterday (August 20) at the annual American Chemical Society meeting in Philadelphia. Lai has an easy answer to that question: Mucus has evolved... Click to continue

The University College of London will be the likely host to a new $261 million neuroscience institute, according to a statement sent to The Scientist from the Wellcome Trust, a co-developer of the new center.

Beating out Oxford and Cambridge Universities, UCL will host the new center devoted to researching neural circuits and behavior, and could be completed as soon as 2011, Nature reported yesterday.... Click to continue

Sure, you can score vintage cars, one-of-a-kind guitar straps, even the odd mass spectrometer on eBay. But now it seems that a place in science history can also be purchased on the popular auction website. So learned entomologist Richard Harrington, vice president of the United Kingdom's Royal... Click to continue

Will findings by Worcester, MA-based Advanced Cell Technologies (ACT) on large-scale blood production from stem cells help the company pull in some much-needed capital?

By now you've likely seen reports on a paper appearing today in Blood in which researchers differentiated human embryonic stem cells into oxygen-carrying blood cells, in large quantity. The results suggest it may be possible... Click to continue

All fat is not not created equal: In the past couple years researchers have come to realize that there's good fat and bad fat, and a study in this week's Nature points to a biological reason for this difference.

White fat, the main type of fat in the body, develops from fat precursor cells and stores excess energy. Brown fat, however, burns energy rather than storing it, and the new findings suggest it originates from muscle precursor cells. That means that "brown fat is one gene away from... Click to continue

In an industry known for backing Republicans, Sen. Barack Obama has emerged as a surprising pharma favorite in the US presidential election.

In April, Obama won a mock election at the annual DTC national meeting, a drug advertising conference, with a 53% to 46% victory over Sen. John McCain. Drug companies have also put the money where their mouth is: Pharma has donated three times more to the Obama campaign than to McCain's.

According to a ... Click to continue

The following is a post by Eric Vance, a freelancer for Scientific American, who sent us this story.

PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA -- It was perhaps the most highly touted press conference of the week, but it didn't reveal much in the way of evidence: Three Bigfoot enthusiasts announced today that a series of genetic tests performed on samples taken from a carcass they claim is a... Click to continue

Embattled Stanford psychiatrist and president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association, Alan Schatzberg, has resigned leadership of an NIH-funded research project studying the effects of mifepristone (also known as RU-486) on patients with depression.

The drug is made by Corcept Therapeutics, a company which Schatzberg co-founded, and in which he owns... Click to continue

A science publisher that holds copyright supreme has a double standard, a science blogger is arguing.

This week, science blogger Mike Dunford of The Questionable Authority posted a blog saying that Reed Elsevier had copied some of the content from his blog without permission.

While checking out links to his blog, Dunford came across a page run by LexisNexis (a Reed... Click to continue

A bill that would criminalize some of the key methods used by animal rights protestors to target researchers cleared a California senate committee yesterday (Aug 14).

Bill AB 2296 makes it a misdemeanor to enter a researcher's home or publish their personal information or that of their immediate families to encourage violent crime against them.

University of California administrators... Click to continue

Ethical lapses and procedural breakdowns plagued an Austrian clinical trial of a stem cell therapy that used patients' own cells to treat urinary incontinence, according to a report recently released by the country's Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES).

The AGES report says that urologists involved in the study engaged in a series of questionable activities: They designed... Click to continue

A previously unknown form of photosynthesis discovered in purple bacteria scooped from a Californian hot spring may be an ancient process that arose before the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis, according to a paper published on Friday (August 15) in Science.

The bacteria use arsenic instead of water for photosynthesis.

"It's a fundamental, exciting observation," said Tim McDermott, a... Click to continue

Researchers have introduced the world to Gordon, the first robot that operates on real brain tissue, according to a news release from University of Reading in the UK yesterday (August 13).

The robot moves only under direction from his brain, which is a collection of 50,000-100,000 rat neurons. The researchers separated the neurons from rat fetuses, cultured them, and then spread them on a nutrient-rich array panel with... Click to continue

Roche won't be acquiring Genentech in the near future. Roche's bid to purchase the remaining public shares of the biotech company undermines the value of the company, Genentech's board of directors announced today (August 13).

Last month, Roche put in a bid to buy up the remaining 44% of Genentech's shares it does not already own for $89 a share. A... Click to continue

New insights into how HIV becomes latent in host cells could lead the way to improved retroviral therapy, according to a report in the August issue of Cell Host and Microbe.

Once HIV infection occurs, the virus can integrate into actively transcribed host genes, where it becomes latent. These reservoirs of latent HIV can reactivate and continue to spread the disease after ... Click to continue

Five British hospitals and medical research centers are joining forces to link basic research and healthcare more closely, the University College London (UCL) announced last week.

The Guardian reported last Thursday that the four centers "disclosed plans for a 2 billion [pound] business partnership to create the largest biomedical research organization in Europe," suggesting that new... Click to continue

If you're found guilty of plagiarism or scientific fraud, is your academic career as a researcher over? Not according to a study published in Science tomorrow (August 8), which contradicts a long-standing assumption by suggesting that rebuilding a career after a misconduct finding is difficult, but not impossible.

"While the punishments [for misconduct] are severe, there are hopes for redemption," said ... Click to continue

With the help of a new mouse model for HIV infection, scientists have shown that gene silencing with RNA interference (RNAi) may be effective in preventing viral entry and replication in T-cells, according to a study published online today (August 7th) in Cell.

Past studies have used RNAi to suppress HIV infection in cultured cells, but researchers did not have a good animal model simulating chronic HIV-infection in which to test the approach. Another... Click to continue

Researchers have created 20 disease-specific pluripotent cell lines by reprogramming skin and bone marrow cells from patients with genetic disorders, they report in a paper to be published tomorrow in Cell.

"These cells will be an incredible resource for those interested in studying the root causes of these diseases," wrote Kevin Eggan, Harvard researcher who was not involved in the study, in an Email to The Scientist.

The... Click to continue

Researchers have discovered the first virus to infect another virus, according to a study appearing tomorrow in Nature. The new virus was found living inside a new strain of the viral giant, mimivirus.

"This is one parasite living on another parasite, which is really fascinating," Michael Rossman, microbiologist at Purdue University, who was not involved in the study, told The Scientist.

... Click to continue

The Food and Drug Administration unveiled new, tougher conflict of interest rules yesterday (Aug 4). Key among the regulations was one that prohibits physicians or researchers who have more than $50,000 worth of financial interests in pharmaceutical or medical device companies from... Click to continue

A graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University studying the psychology of decision-making falsified data in four studies funded by National Institutes of Health and National Institute of Mental Health grants, according to a notice published by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), the misconduct watchdog of the Public Health Service, on July 23.

Roxana Gonzalez, at the time an advanced doctoral student in the ... Click to continue

The British High Court's rejection last week of a biotech company's patent on the genetic sequence coding for a therapeutically important protein may be a warning for other biotechs who hold patents on portions of the human genome.

The court ruled last week that a patent held by Human Genome Sciences since the mid 1990s was invalid because at the time the company applied for the patent they hadn't demonstrated a practical use. The patent... Click to continue

A house and car belonging to two University of California, Santa Cruz researchers were firebombed in the wee hours of Saturday (Aug 2) morning. The attacks occurred after anti-animal research pamphlets listing the names and personal information of several UCSC researchers were discovered in a Santa Cruz coffee shop last week.

... Click to continue

Yesterday the British High Court overturned a UK genome patent owned by biotech Human Genome Sciences. The patent covered the inflammation-linked protein neutrokine-alpha which is part of the tumor necrosis factor family of cytokines.

The court overturned the patent, ruling that at the time its application was filed there was no practical application, the Financial Times reported.

Human Genome... Click to continue

Biomedical researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz have again been targeted by animal rights activists opposed to their use of experimental laboratory animals. According to the Santa Cruz Sentinel, nearly a dozen threatening pamphlets containing the names, home addresses, phone numbers, and photos of several scientists turned up in a coffee shop in the seaside town on Tuesday (July 29) night.

The pamphlets read, in part:... Click to continue

A biodefense researcher committed suicide this week, just as the US government was about to indict him for the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people and caused a national panic.

The microbiologist, Bruce E. Ivins, whose death was first reported today (August 1) in the Los Angeles Times, was a top scientist at a US Army biodefense research facility in Fort Detrick, Md., where... Click to continue