The Nutshell

The field candidates for the top job at the World Health Organization is dominated by a list of current and former WHO insiders, it emerged on Wednesday. Of the 13 nominees to fill the post of director general that was linkurl:left vacant;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/23475/ earlier this year by the death of Lee Jong-Wook, four currently hold senior WHO posts and three have former connections to the agency. Lee?s unexpected passing in May forced the WHO to put in place an accelera

The photo shoot for this month?s linkurl:feature on the postdoc glut;http://www.the-scientist.com/2006/9/1/42/1/ was obviously a spoof. At least that?s what we thought. Standing on the median of Broad street with a sign that says ?Have PhD, Will Work For Food,? Kevin Duffy expected to garner a few stares, but not much else. ?Some guy gave me his business card,? he told me. Someone walking on the set of the shoot asked what they were doing. Even though Kevin told them they were working on an

After issuing linkurl:two post-press corrections;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/24413/ to the release notes for a headline grabbing linkurl:news story about human embryonic stem cells;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/24363/ last week, Ruth Francis, __Nature__?s senior press officer said she got a lot of calls and emails from editors and journalists. They issued the second correction Friday night about 9pm Francis? time, just before a three day weekend which was bound to rais

When Robert Lanza?s group at Advanced Cell Technology reported linkurl:this week;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/24363/ creating so-called ethically clean ES cell lines (establishing colonies from an early human embryo without destroying it) they didn?t make clear whether they had actually accomplished this feat. This work might have potential, but the numbers speak to a logical smoke and mirror show. Using 16 blastomeres (embryos in the 8-to-10-cell stage), Lanza?s group extracted 9

A few weeks ago linkurl:I chided Nick Wade;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/24083/ (lovingly! I?m a huge fan, after all) for invoking the ?code? word when describing a study on nucleosome positioning. It surprised me when my post spurred some comments on the nature of the __Nature__ press office, and their proclivity for hyping, but ?not overhyping,? the research papers within. Wade can be forgiven. I didn?t realize how pervasive the word code had been in __Nature__ until I saw the di

Earlier this week, I and several other editorial staffers here at __The Scientist__ started receiving Emails titled ?User Quarantine Release Notification? from an ?inel.gov? address, presumably from the Idaho National Laboratory. Nothing terribly unusual about such spam, which requested that we click on a link to view a list of all of our quarantined messages. Someone had been attacked by a virus. What happened after that, however, was more unusual: __The New York Times?__ George Johnson respo

Iranian biosciences aren?t exactly top of the news agenda these days, so I was interested to linkurl:read;http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/story/0,,1839217,00.html this week that researchers at Tehran?s linkurl:Royan Institute;http://www.royaninstitute.org/ have "succeeded" in producing what is apparently the Middle East's first cloned sheep. The sheep died minutes after it was delivered at the institute, which specializes in fertility issues (Royan meaning Embryo in

During one of the most linkurl:memorable;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/23254/ conference sessions I attended, a researcher from Japan wowed an entire Keystone meeting on stem cells by announcing he had found a way to reprogram adult stem cells into embryonic stem cells using only a few factors. What those factors were, however, Shinya Yamanaka from Kyoto University wouldn?t say -- even after numerous probing questions from the audience. Now, Yamanaka is revealing his secrets in the

It?s been a summer of depressing anniversaries, but not until now have I had the occasion to remember, vividly, the actual events. I was too young to remember the first reports of linkurl:AIDS, 25 years ago.;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/23586/ Legionnaire?s disease, happened (just a few blocks from where I now work) linkurl:five years earlier;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/88/ than that. But I still remember quite vividly watching President Bush give his linkurl:firs

I was glad to see that someone?s taking direct-to-consumer genetic testing to trial. Nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics is a burgeoning experimental science as we?ll be writing about in September, but the common refrain among many experts -- ?It?s not ready for prime-time? -- hasn?t stopped several companies from marketing store bought genetic tests which are used with a lifestyle inventory to provide customized nutritional guidance. I?ve been linkurl:skeptical, to say the least,;http://www.the-s

Nicholas Wade extols the virtues of chromatin organization and regulation in today?s linkurl:__Science Times__;http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/science/25dna.html hitting on a topic that I always love reading and writing about. Here he talks about DNA directed nucleosome positioning. Certain DNA sequences, perhaps because of their relative bendability, might be more or less amenable to histone wrapping making some regulatory sequences more or less accessible. A linkurl:recent paper;http://www

A linkurl:piece;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/23878/ we ran on July 7 has given birth to a great forum linkurl:thread;http://forums.lablit.com/viewtopic.php?t=177; on LabLit -- created by Jennifer Rohn, one of our contributing editors -- on Stephen Gallagher's work and science on television. Gallagher himself has even taken part. Join it, and add your comments to our story (see linkurl:comment link;http://www.the-scientist.com/forum/addcomment/23878/ at the end of the story, where se

In a largely symbolic victory for biomedical research, the Senate today (July 18) approved a linkurl:controversial bill;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/23895/ (HR 810) to extend Federal research funding to newly derived human embryonic stem cells (hESC). The legislation faces a veto from President Bush, who opposes the expansion of funding on ethical grounds. Indeed, on Monday (July 17) the White House reaffirmed the president?s intention to veto the bill. After 12 hours of discussi

?It?s how we describe the thing that almost makes more of a difference than what it is.? These words, from linkurl:Patricia Alt;http://wwwnew.towson.edu/healthscience/alt.html of Towson University in Maryland, are particularly applicable to hot button issues in bioethics, particularly the ever-raging debate over using embryos for stem cell research. At linkurl:this week?s;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/23946/ conference on linkurl:Bioethics & Politics,;http://politics.bioethics.net/

The linkurl:Bioethics & Politics;http://politics.bioethics.net/ conference hosted by the Albany Medical College got off to a bang today, not a whimper. As participants trickled in, networking and finding old friends, another, uninvited group calmly filed in, parked in front of the room, and started shouting at the tops of their lungs. The protesters, around 30 or so, were from linkurl:Not Dead Yet,;http://www.notdeadyet.org/ a disability rights group that is against legalized euthanasia and oth

A linkurl:paper;http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0604351103 published this week in PNAS provides a possible glimpse at the near-term future of linkurl:next-gen sequencing;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/23051/ technologies. Susanne Goldberg, Justin Johnson, and colleagues at the J. Craig Venter Institute compared the cost of sequencing six marine microbial genomes using traditional Sanger sequencing chemistry (using an Applied Biosystems 3730xl), 454 Life Sciences? pyrosequ

It looks like Norwegian researcher Jon Sudbo, who hit the headlines earlier this year for linkurl:fabricating;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/22952/ data for a Lancet paper has been at the data fraud game for quite some time. That?s the conclusion of a report made public on Friday by a commission set up to probe his research career. The commission members found that most of his 38 scientific publications were riddled with manipulation and fabrication of raw data. Even his doctoral dis

The remarkable tale of linkurl:disgraced;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/23432/ South Korean researcher Hwang Woo-suk has taken another startling twist. It turns out he?s planning to open his own lab in Seoul next month, using private money to do conduct linkurl:animal cloning;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/22746/ and perhaps human embryonic stem cell research. Nobody will need reminding of Hwang?s high-profile woes. Once a national hero, he was forced to leave his post

Jane Tomlinson, who is living with advanced breast cancer, starts her grueling 4200 mile, US-spanning bike ride to raise money for cancer research this Friday in San Francisco. According to her linkurl:Website,;http://www.janesappeal.com/ she?s run three London marathons, the NYC marathon, and completed the Ironman triathalon among other extreme exercise fundraisers since she was told nearly six years ago that she had six months to live. She?s been quoted as saying that she expects this to be t

From an Endocrine Society linkurl:press release;http://sev.prnewswire.com/health-care-hospitals/20060627/NYTU00827062006-1.html describing a study presented at their national conference this week: 'Our preliminary results indicate that body weight is compromised and weight goes up when people are exposed to an environment with unlimited availability of palatable food and low levels of daily activity,' said University of Chicago researcher Plamen Penev. Stop the presses! Read further, and you