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Snapshot | The Sporting Scientist Outside of the lab, everything's game Scientists crave that endorphin rush: 85% of the 312 respondents to our recent survey say they actively participate in sports or athletic activities more than once per month -- 53% get into a sweat more than once per week. Nearly 30% participate in team sports, with soccer the most popular pick; 29% participate in competitive sports, with tennis the game of choice; and a hearty 82% participate noncompetitively in athlet

Foundations | Biology's Renaissance Man Courtesy of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia I don't cite papers that are more than one hundred years old, but Joseph Leidy's (1823-1891) name keeps coming up. Although he published more than 400 papers, he's not known today. That's mainly because he never made the sweeping generalizations that tend to make scientists famous. He was a paleontologist, botanist, zoologist, medical doctor, and anatomist. For us, though, his most important contr

Getty Images Tis a good time to be a life scientist. Thanks to increases in the National Institutes of Health budget, a flood of defense spending, and a gradual warming in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, experienced investigators are in great demand. For senior US researchers, the benefits of the federal largesse appear in 2003 paychecks, according to The Scientist's latest salary survey. The average senior researcher, who holds a PhD and leads a lab, will earn $73,351(US) th

Briefs Hydrocephalus and the Accidental Transgene; Redox RNA; To Be a Bee, but He or She? Hydrocephalus and the Accidental Transgene Courtesy of Perry Blackshear, NIEHS A chat in an elevator at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences led to the discovery of a protein possibly linked to early brain development. Darryl C. Zeldin mentioned to an NIEHS colleague that a line of transgenic mice created by researchers studying the role of the CYP2J2 enzyme in heart function had de

Medical writers and editors for the general press don't intend to inflict cruelty on suffering people. But that's what they often deliver in the rote-journalism pursuit of informing the public of new developments in medical research, no matter how distant they may be from therapeutic application. News of direct health value to the public deserves the prompt coverage that it regularly receives. But not so the mere research fragments that raise unrealistic hopes, leaving distressed people empt

A row over patent rights and science-by-press-release has university researchers trading barbs

Director of bank says first labs are in place and outlines rules of engagement

, second paper also retracted

Additional published research affected by drug mix-up

Movement on 2004 budgets for NIH, NSF, and BioShield slower than hoped

should publish referees' reports

Hopes that alliance will make Barcelona an international center for biomedical research