News: Nobels ripe for overhaul? Posted by Katherine Bagley [Entry posted at 30th September 2009 09:46 PM GMT] The Nobel Prize system is dated and in desperate need of an overhaul, a group of top scientists and engineers said today (September 30) in a ... Click to continue View comments (16) | Comment on this news story News: New president for EMBO Posted by Edyta Zielinska [Entry posted at 30th September 2009 09:00 PM GMT] The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) announced today (September 30) the appointment of a new president: Maria Leptin, a developmental biologist at the ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: NIH recovery grants top $5 billion Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 30th September 2009 04:27 PM GMT] Grants to be announced today (September 30) will bring the total amount of recovery act funding spent by the National Institutes of Health to more than $5 billion, top officials said this morning. The NIH has awarded 12,000 biomedical research ... Click to continue View comments (11) | Comment on this news story News: Q&A: Is stem cell research misguided? Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 29th September 2009 05:08 PM GMT] Searching for a set of molecular characteristics common to all stem cells is, at best, a quixotic quest, argues a systems biologist in an opinion piece recently published in the Journal of Biology. This ... Click to continue View comments (11) | Comment on this news story News: Mahlon Hoagland dies Posted by Katherine Bagley [Entry posted at 29th September 2009 04:43 PM GMT] Mahlon Hoagland, a molecular biologist whose discoveries of transfer RNA and the mechanisms behind amino acid activation helped build the foundation of genetics, died in his home in Thetford, VT, on Friday. He was 87 years old. Mahlon Hoagland ... Click to continue View comments (5) | Comment on this news story News: Short-term stress stops cancer Posted by Katherine Bagley [Entry posted at 28th September 2009 04:19 PM GMT] Stress is commonly thought to increase susceptibility to disease, but a new study in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity finds short-term stress can actually boost the immune system and help reduce the number of skin cancer tumors in mice. Squamous cell ... Click to continue View comments (2) | Comment on this news story News: 2009 Nobel predictions go public Posted by Katherine Bagley [Entry posted at 25th September 2009 03:44 PM GMT] The identities of top contenders for annual Nobel Prizes are kept under wraps during the nomination and selection process, no one quite knowing what happens behind the committees' closed doors. That secrecy doesn't stop a few brave organizations ... Click to continue View comments (3) | Comment on this news story News: A cancerous melody Posted by Jef Akst [Entry posted at 25th September 2009 06:07 AM GMT] A project at Harvard Medical School aims to bring music to medicine in a way that goes beyond setting the mood in the waiting room. Gene transcription and translation are anything but ... Click to continue View comments (8) | Comment on this news story News: The young and the bold, funded Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 24th September 2009 09:01 PM GMT] The National Institutes of Health awarded more than 100 new grants for high-risk research or innovative work being done by young investigators, the agency announced today (September ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Late nights linked to Alzheimer's Posted by Katherine Bagley [Entry posted at 24th September 2009 08:48 PM GMT] Insomnia, late-night habits, and irregular sleep schedules may be linked to the onset of Alzheimer's disease, says a new study published online today in ScienceExpress. Image: ... Click to continue View comments (7) | Comment on this news story News: HIV vax testers react to Thai trial Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 24th September 2009 05:02 PM GMT] Positive results in an HIV vaccine trial conducted in more than 16,000 Thai volunteers, announced this morning, need to be examined more closely to analyze data on subgroup analyses and specific immune responses so that subsequent trials can absorb ... Click to continue View comments (6) | Comment on this news story News: Nature to launch OA journal Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 23rd September 2009 04:10 PM GMT] Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is adding an online-only, open-access publication to its roster of scientific journals, the publishing juggernaut announced today (September 23). Nature Communications is set to launch in April 2010, and the hybrid ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Swine flu windfall Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 23rd September 2009 03:15 PM GMT] Though a worrisome flu season is knocking at the Northern Hemisphere's door, the five biopharmaceutical companies awarded massive contracts by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for development and production of more than 195 ... Click to continue View comments (5) | Comment on this news story News: Centralize biolab oversight: GAO Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 22nd September 2009 03:57 PM GMT] A new government body should be formed to oversee the increasing number of high-containment laboratories that work with dangerous pathogens, according to a ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: NIH picks stem cell panel Posted by Jef Akst [Entry posted at 21st September 2009 07:37 PM GMT] The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has established a much-awaited panel charged with deciding whether human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines derived in the ... Click to continue View comments (4) | Comment on this news story News: Plague may have killed researcher Posted by Jef Akst [Entry posted at 21st September 2009 02:59 PM GMT] A University of Chicago geneticist studying the genetics of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague, may have died from exposure to a weakened strain he worked with in the laboratory. Wayson stain of Yersinia pestisImage: Wikimedia ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Can unresponsive brains learn? Posted by Victoria Stern [Entry posted at 20th September 2009 10:46 PM GMT] Brain-injured patients who show minimal to no signs of consciousness may still retain functioning brain networks that allow them to learn, researchers report in a study published online today (September 20) in Nature Neuroscience. A brain scan ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: Primate study triggers lawsuit Posted by Jef Akst [Entry posted at 18th September 2009 04:57 PM GMT] A six-month dispute between a biotech company and a university primate facility it contracted for a study on spinal cord injury has prompted a lawsuit. Cambridge-based biotech ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Food in all its splendor Posted by Margaret Guthrie [Entry posted at 18th September 2009 03:45 PM GMT] These days food comes to us in all manner of attractive packaging: fancy foils, bright boxes, and striking wrappers. But the plants that make up the bulk of our diets can be even more beautiful than the most cleverly designed package. This fact, ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: Six biologists win Nat'l Medal Posted by Edyta Zielinska [Entry posted at 18th September 2009 03:12 PM GMT] Francis Collins and J. Craig Venter, former adversaries in the race for sequencing the human genome, are two of the six life scientist who will receive the ... Click to continue View comments (3) | Comment on this news story News: New role for righty molecules Posted by Katherine Bagley [Entry posted at 17th September 2009 06:03 PM GMT] Researchers have identified a role for rare, right-handed versions of amino acids. This so-called D-form of nature's building blocks allows bacterial cell walls to adapt to changes in the environment, says a study in Science this week -- marking one ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: More regulatory science: FDA chief Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 17th September 2009 04:58 PM GMT] The US must bolster study on how to best craft regulations that bring drugs, medical devices and vaccines to market, the commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration stressed in a speech delivered yesterday (September 16th) in ... Click to continue View comments (4) | Comment on this news story News: Colorblind monkeys see new light Posted by Jef Akst [Entry posted at 16th September 2009 06:00 PM GMT] Gene therapy has successfully given colorblind adult monkeys the ability to see red and green, according to a study published this week in Nature, demonstrating a striking plasticity in the adult visual system and providing new hope for treating ... Click to continue View comments (6) | Comment on this news story News: A biotech's battle lost Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 16th September 2009 04:55 PM GMT] Altus Pharmaceuticals, a 17-year-old Boston-area biotech whose struggle for survival we profiled last month, will join the boneyard of companies that have not made it through the current ... Click to continue View comments (2) | Comment on this news story News: Q&A: Hail to the chief (of staff) Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 15th September 2009 02:52 PM GMT] At the beginning of September, the new director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, welcomed a friend and colleague back into the NIH fold. He named ... Click to continue View comments (6) | Comment on this news story News: Norman Borlaug dies Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 14th September 2009 05:06 PM GMT] The Nobel Peace Prize-winning researcher who developed a high-yielding variety of disease resistant wheat and improved varieties of other crop plants that fed legions of starving people died this Saturday (September 12). Norman Borlaug won the 1970 ... Click to continue View comments (6) | Comment on this news story News: 2009 Lasker Awards announced Posted by Jef Akst [Entry posted at 14th September 2009 04:57 PM GMT] John Gurdon of Cambridge University and Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University and the University of California, San Francisco, will share ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: Critter cams Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 11th September 2009 03:17 PM GMT] What happens in the far corners of the animal kingdom when no one is looking? A lot, as you might imagine. Armadillos scamper, tripod fish sit at the bottom of the ocean, waiting for prey to pass by, laughing kookaburras nest in gum trees. And you ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Neurons don't waste energy Posted by Jef Akst [Entry posted at 10th September 2009 07:00 PM GMT] A classical model of how neurons power their chemical messages may need revision. Neurons from the rat hippocampus use three times less energy to propagate an action potential down an axon than was previously believed, according to a new study ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: PNAS scraps special submission Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 10th September 2009 03:39 PM GMT] A leading scientific journal has done away with a manuscript submission option that allowed members of the National Academy of Sciences to usher papers from non-members through the peer review process. The Proceedings of the National Academy of ... Click to continue View comments (4) | Comment on this news story News: Stem cell co. faked success: SEC Posted by Jef Akst [Entry posted at 9th September 2009 04:59 PM GMT] A stem cell company is in hot water with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for falsely representing an early-stage experimental stem cell therapy as nearing human trials. Image: Wikimedia commons, Centers ... Click to continue View comments (8) | Comment on this news story News: School sued for fake cancer test Posted by Jef Akst [Entry posted at 8th September 2009 04:04 PM GMT] A biotechnology company is suing the University of Pittsburgh over a test for prostate cancer, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported last week. The lawsuit claims the test is ... Click to continue View comments (7) | Comment on this news story News: New round of Gates grants Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 3rd September 2009 07:06 PM GMT] The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is taking applications for a new round of funding under its Grand Challenges Explorations grant program. The program, in its second year, aims to fund research that tackles developing world problems using ... Click to continue View comments (5) | Comment on this news story News: Brain proteins make fears last Posted by Jef Akst [Entry posted at 3rd September 2009 07:00 PM GMT] Why are fearful memories so hard to shake? The answer may lie in developmental changes in the extracellular environment in the amygdala -- the emotional center of the brain -- where such memories are formed, according to a study published this week ... Click to continue View comments (2) | Comment on this news story News: Y causes sex disorders Posted by Jef Akst [Entry posted at 3rd September 2009 05:00 PM GMT] The Y chromosome has a unique approach to ensuring its survival, but that self-preservation mechanism may cause a range of sexual disorders from male sterility to sex reversal, in which a person's genetic sex is opposite his anatomical development, ... Click to continue View comments (6) | Comment on this news story News: NSF adopts new ethics rules Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 3rd September 2009 03:56 PM GMT] Starting in 2010, all researchers applying for funding from the National Science Foundation will have to provide some evidence that they will educate their students and postdocs in the responsible and ethical conduct of research. According to an ... Click to continue View comments (2) | Comment on this news story News: Mass spec business consolidated Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 2nd September 2009 10:29 PM GMT] A $1.1 billion deal announced today (Sept. 2) has brought an industry-leading joint venture in mass spectrometry instrumentation supply under the roof of a single manufacturing and technology company. Danaher Corporation will shell out more than $1 ... Click to continue Comment on this news story News: Edutainment Posted by Victoria Stern [Entry posted at 2nd September 2009 09:55 PM GMT] One afternoon in 2007, James Kakalios, a physics professor at the University of Minnesota, received a rather unexpected call. Ann Merchant, marketing director for the National Academy of ... Click to continue View comments (7) | Comment on this news story News: Epilepsy paper retracted Posted by Jef Akst [Entry posted at 2nd September 2009 03:56 PM GMT] Researchers have retracted a highly-cited 2003 Nature Genetics paper which identified mutations underlying some types of epilepsy after discovering some blatantly erroneous ... Click to continue View comments (6) | Comment on this news story News: Trial registries not working Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 1st September 2009 10:03 PM GMT] Clinical trial registries -- set up in the last few years to ensure trial data see the light of day -- are a long ways from correcting the problem, says a report to be published in the ... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this news story News: NIH calls for risky research Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 1st September 2009 04:14 PM GMT] The National Institutes of Health is once again sounding the call for research proposals that push the innovation envelope. The agency will award nearly $93 million to about 50 biomedical researchers through two grant programs: The NIH Director's ... Click to continue View comments (3) | Comment on this news story

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