The Santa Fe Institute (SFI), a 24-year-old collaborative research center in New Mexico, is tightening its belt in anticipation of continued market instability and a curtailment in donations to support its work.

Physicist and SFI director Geoffrey West told The Scientist that, while the budget of the institute is in no immediate danger of evaporating, administrators there thought it prudent to... Click to continue

With Halloween upon us, youngsters and adults alike will enjoy a night of regret-free chocolate bingeing. But how much do you really know about the sweet substance? If you're Stefan Bernhard, you can safely say you've made a lifetime study of the elixir of the gods.

At a recent meeting of the Experimental Cuisine Collective(ECC) at New York University, Bernhard, professor of... Click to continue

The mysterious disease has been ravaging bat populations in the northeastern US appears to be caused by a previously undescribed species of a common fungus, according to research published today (Oct. 30) in Science.

White-nose syndrome (WNS) is a fungal infection that has killed 75% of some bat populations in Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, and Connecticut since it was first discovered in a cave in upstate New York in 2006.... Click to continue

The 5,000-year-old mummy Öetzi, found in a glacier in the European alps 17 years ago and believed to be an ancestor of modern Europeans, actually belonged to a different genetic family and may have no living descendants, researchers report today in Current Biology.

The researchers sequenced mitochondrial DNA extracted from Öetzi's intestines, offering the oldest complete mtDNA sequence of modern humans.

"We... Click to continue

Pharma giant Wyeth announced plans yesterday to eliminate research in half of its disease research areas. The company has not yet said what, if any, jobs will be cut in the process.

A handful of other pharmaceutical companies have recently narrowed their research focus in response to sluggish sales and the growing cost of drug development.

Wyeth in particular has suffered from the... Click to continue

Venture capital investment in the biotechnology sector appears to be one bright spot in an otherwise gloomy snapshot of the financial climate, according to recent data. But a strong third quarter belies a likely downtrend in biotech investment over the next couple quarters.

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers' quarterly MoneyTree Report, which was released... Click to continue

A high-security pathogen lab in Galveston, Texas, survived the hurricane that hit the region last month, but is now the focus of safety concerns plaguing biosafety research of late.

Galveston is an island often hit by hurricanes. Ike, which hit in September, caused more than $700 million in damage to the University of Texas facilities there, about $18 million of that to research labs, Nature reported. But the pathogen lab... Click to continue

With just over a week to go until Americans choose their next President, the McCain/Palin campaign has again lashed out at what they've called wasteful "earmark" spending on "pet projects" in the form of scientific research. This time Alaska Governor and Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin leveled the charge, and she's picked a new target: fruit fly research.

"Sometimes these dollars, they go to projects having... Click to continue

The Web site of the student-run Harvard Health Policy Review is up and running after about a week of mysterious down time, and the journal's editor has apologized for running a controversial article without proper bias screening.

Rumors circulated last week when the Review Web site was down that Harvard authorities had censored the publication of the article, which addressed a long-standing debate about the total cost for... Click to continue

Local lawmakers in Bremen, Germany, are refusing to renew a prominent neuroscientist's license to conduct research on primates, despite the fact that his research was approved by a national regulatory body.

The University of Bremen researcher, Andreas Kreiter, works with 24 macaques to measure neuronal firing as part of his studies into cognition in the mammalian brain. During local elections last year, the regional parliament, in... Click to continue

When I heard that pharmaceutical company Merck was slashing more than 7,000 jobs across the company, my thoughts immediately went to Eric Schadt and his colleagues at Rosetta Inpharmatics, a Seattle-based Merck subsidiary. I profiled Schadt, who heads the company's research genetics department, in our July issue.

Recent... Click to continue

David Vitrant, a PhD student in genetics at the University of Pittsburgh, thinks he's got a creative idea for alternative schemes to fund research: simply ask the public for money. He recently launched non-profit, called FundScience, that aims to connect researchers with potential donors.

To explain why he started FundScience, Vitrant cited a number well-known to NIH-funded scientists: 42, the average age at which researchers these days receive their... Click to continue

Merck plans to eliminate 7,200 jobs by the end of 2011, according to their 2008 third quarter financial report, released today. The cuts are part of ongoing restructuring efforts and come after a 28% profit plunge in the third quarter.

The restructuring efforts began in 2005, and at the time the pharmaceutical company eliminated more than 10,000 jobs. The... Click to continue

Manipulating the brain to over-express a protein can selectively erase short- and long-term fear memories in mice without compromising other memories or harming neurons, according to a study out this week in Neuron.

The findings offer "a molecular paradigm by which we can actually erase a specific memory," Joe Tsien, a neuroscientist at the... Click to continue

A fungus that has eradicated more than 100 frog species across the globe has spread to an ecosystem in Panama that researchers hoped might hold out from infection a while longer.

"The findings are a concern because it means the fungus will continue to move through eastern Panama, and we only have a [limited time] to do what we can to save the frogs, collect data, watch," Karen Lips, herpetologist at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale,... Click to continue

"Molecules That Matter," a traveling exhibit that opened to the public at the newly renovated Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia earlier this month, ties the history of the 20th century to a handful of the most influential molecules of the period.

The goal of the exhibit is simple: to help the public, who typically cringes at memories from high school chemistry classes, to connect chemical discoveries to... Click to continue

The first clinical trial treatment based on embryonic stem cells may soon get the go ahead.

In May, the Food and Drug Administration placed a hold on a clinical trial application submitted by Geron Corporation, a California-based biotech. The company submitted a 22,500-page Investigational New Drug application to the FDA for an embryonic stem cell-derived compound -- called GRNOPC1 -- to treat spinal cord injury.

Geron president and... Click to continue

In a boost to the field of synthetic biology, researchers have created an RNA-based device that can control gene expression of target genes, thus regulating molecular processes in living cells, a paper in this week's Science reports.

The paper "shows this design approach for the first time in a biological system," ... Click to continue

Two of the five US labs that conduct research on the world's most dangerous pathogens suffer from serious security shortfalls, according to a report released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) today (October 16).

What's more, the labs were given the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) stamp of approval despite these shortcomings, the report states.

The two labs were not named in the report, but the... Click to continue

The sharp downturn in markets over recent weeks is delaying a final shareholder vote on the merger of biotech companies Invitrogen and Applied Biosystems (ABI).

The delay "is a direct consequence of the dramatic drop in share prices across the board since June," Peter Dworkin, vice president of investor relations and... Click to continue

Adult stem cells become slower at dividing as they age because they get less efficient at sensing their microenvironment, according to a study to be published in Nature tomorrow. The findings suggest a mechanism to explain why production of adult stem cells such as sperm drops as an organism gets older.

"I think this is a fantastic piece of work that begins to explain" how adult stem cells age, said Leanne Jones, a stem cell... Click to continue

Training the brain to control a single neuron 's activation could restore motion in paralyzed limbs, according to a study to be published tomorrow in Nature. The study represents a novel approach for developing neuroprosthetics.

"This paper demonstrates that simple methods can be very useful," said Leigh Hochberg, a clinician and researcher at Brown University and other institutions, who was not involved with the... Click to continue

Iceland biotech deCODE Genetics is taking a hit from the global financial downswing. The company's stock price has plunged 54% since September to $0.45 a share.

According to NASDAQ's s regulations, companies must keep their share prices over $1. DeCODE dipped below $1 on September 10, and has 180 days to bounce back to maintain a NASDAQ listing. (The company's net worth, $27.88 million, puts it above the $5 million -- not $50 million, as... Click to continue

An Emory University psychiatrist under investigation by a Senate committee for allegedly failing to disclose more than a million dollars in pharmaceutical company pay has stepped down as principal investigator on a $9.3 million National Institutes of Health research grant.

The researcher, Charles Nemeroff, is the second scientist who has recently stepped down from an NIH grant amid Senate scrutiny of undisclosed conflicts of... Click to continue

The recent suicide of microbiologist Bruce Ivins, pegged by the US government as the culprit in a spate of deadly anthrax mailings in 2001, is already spurring a boost in security procedures and screening at labs working on deadly pathogens.

Boston University's biolab, a controversial high-security facility under construction in the city's South End neighborhood, plans to vet... Click to continue

A diseased mammalian embryonic heart boosts its production of heart muscle cells to spur its own regeneration, according to a study appearing tomorrow in Developmental Cell.

"The mammalian heart has a phenomenal capacity to fix itself," Timothy Cox at the University of Washington, the study's lead author, told The Scientist,... Click to continue

Will BioMed Central, the publishing house that's been the flagship for open access for nearly a decade, be in good hands with Springer?

Yes, say some open access advocates, as long as the BioMed Central (BMC) publishing model is allowed to persevere. Indeed, the acquisition this week of BMC by Springer may send the signal to other commercial groups that open access works. "I think it's a good sign for open access," Heather Joseph,... Click to continue

More than six years after researchers sequenced the genome of the most virulent human malaria parasite, researchers now report the sequences of two more species, according to a pair of studies published in Nature this week.

By comparing the genetics of Plasmodium falciparum to that of the newly sequenced species, P. knowlesi, and ... Click to continue

Stem cells undergo circadian cycles in humans, emerging from the bone marrow into the bloodstream at higher concentrations at night than in the day, according to a report in Cell Stem Cell this week. The study suggests that a simple change in hospital procedures could significantly increase stem cell yield for therapy.

"We can take advantage of [the findings] if we coordinate our clinical practices" to harvest stem cells for cancer patients late in the... Click to continue

Three researchers who were instrumental in discovering and developing green florescent protein (GFP), which revolutionized how biologists observe the functioning of living cells, have won the 2008 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Osamu Shimomura, now at the Marine Biological Institute in Woods Hole, MA, Martin Chalfie, a Columbia University cell biologist, and ... Click to continue

The 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry will go to a trio of researchers who discovered, expressed, and developed green fluorescent protein (GFP) and revolutionized the way that biologists visualize living cells. Osamu Shimomura discovered GFP in the jellyfish Aequorea victoria in 1962 while working at Princeton University, Martin Chalfie of Columbia University first expressed the protein in E. coli and C. elegans in the early 1990s, and Roger Tsien of the University of California, San... Click to continue

Embryonic stem cell biotech company Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), announced today (Oct. 7) that it will be selling off $500,000 in convertible bonds in the next three months, following the company's disclosure this summer that it was experiencing financial troubles.

The Massachusetts-based company told ... Click to continue

A former member of a high profile stem cell biology research team at the University of Minnesota has been found guilty of falsifying data, a university investigatory panel has ruled.

Morayma Reyes, a former PhD student in the lab of prominent stem cell biologist Catherine Verfaillie, was under investigation by the university for fabricating data in a ... Click to continue

The world's largest open access publisher, BioMed Central, has been sold to Springer.

BioMed Central (a former sister company of The Scientist) publishes 180 peer-reviewed journals under the open access publishing model, meaning that anyone can read articles for free once they are published, and authors pay a per-page fee to publish in the journals.

There are no plans to change the journal publishing costs or fees, Matt McKay, director of public relations at BioMed Central, told The... Click to continue

Researchers in the UK should report more details than they currently do about how much their lab animals are suffering, according to recent recommendations by a UK working group. But one prominent pain researcher thinks such requirements are useless.

Last week, a working group made up of research scientists, veterinary surgeons, and animal care technicians, representing the Animal Procedures Committee and Lab Animals Science Association, released a report calling for more stringent reporting... Click to continue

Renowned psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff stepped down from his position as chairman of the psychiatry department at Emory University on Friday (Oct. 3) amid accusations that he's failed to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars in pharmaceutical company payouts while receiving millions of dollars in federal research funding.

Nemeroff's apparent lack of disclosure is being probed by Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) from his perch as the... Click to continue

Francoise Barré-Sinoussi of the Institut Pasteur in Paris and Luc Montagnier, cofounder and director of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, have won the 2008 Nobel in Physiology or Medicine for their the discovery of HIV. Harald zur Hausen of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg also received the prize for his work identifying the human papilloma viruses and their role in cervical cancer.

According to the Nobel Prize Committee, Barré-Sinoussi and... Click to continue

This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine will be shared by three researchers who identified two viruses that have had crucial impacts on human health. Harald zur Hausen of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg will be honored for his work in the 1970s identifying the human papilloma viruses and their role in cervical cancer. Francoise Barre-Sinoussi of the Institut Pasteur, and Luc Montagnier, co-founder of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, will share the... Click to continue

Capturing the eye of a potential mate is the first step in propagating a species. But can the way a female sees males of a certain color lead a single species of fish to split into two?

A study published this week in Nature suggests two species of cichlid fish -- one red and one blue -- may have arisen from the female mating preference for males she is best able to see.

"We've wanted since Darwin to understand how species... Click to continue

Analysis of a newly-identified 48-year-old tissue sample from a woman infected with HIV has confirmed that the virus emerged in the early 20th century, researchers report today in Nature.

By comparing the differences between the sequence of this sample from 1960, the second-oldest ever found, and that of a 1959 sample identified a decade ago, Michael Worobey of the... Click to continue

Predicting who will win Nobel Prizes is a tricky business. The Nobel committees' nomination and selection processes are cloaked in mystery.

Each year, though, a couple brave organizations try their luck. One of these is Thomson Reuters, which has released a list of Nobel picks every year since 2002. Thomson bases its picks largely on the citation data that ISI - a part of Thomson Scientific founded by The Scientist founder... Click to continue