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Best Places to Work in Academia: U.S. Rankings No. 1 US: Fox Chase Cancer Center Courtesy of Paul Cohen At the Fox Chase Cancer Center, which ranked first in the United States in the "Best Places" survey, research is a team sport. "We all have a common mission and a common goal," says Erica Golemis, a principal investigator in the basic science division. "This is the most cooperative, interactive place." TOP 10 US RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS 1. Fox Chase Cancer Center (Philadelphia,

Best Places to Work in Academia: Non-U.S. Rankings No. 1 Non-US: Dalhousie University Courtesy of Dalhousie University A sense of community and cooperation makes Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a great place to work, says Benjamin Rusak, professor of psychology, psychiatry, and pharmacology. Here, researchers and faculty often find themselves "looking inward for partners for projects," says Rusak. Dalhousie was chosen in the "Best Places" survey as the number one place to w

1. Build collegial relationships Scientists prize collegial relationships: More survey participants rated them as important than they rated any other feature in The Scientist's "Best Places" questionnaire. "The environment here is very collegial and supportive," says Ite A. Laird-Offringa, assistant professor at the University of Southern California. "And interdisciplinary research is stimulated in many ways ... [for example] through the mindset of the faculty, who seek each other out to work

Illustration: Brian Bookwalter From the massive Blue whale to the tiniest plant viroids, size extremes have long fascinated mankind. This is not a trivial pursuit, for size can yield important insights into the physical constraints that govern an organism's evolution, as well as the particular mechanisms that impose a limit at either end of the scale. Some size limits apply broadly to entire classes such as mammals, while others apply more narrowly to a single species because of its particula

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

Protein folding raises some of biology's greatest theoretical challenges. It also lies at the root of many diseases. For example, the fundamental question of whether a protein's final tertiary conformation, sometimes called the native state, can be predicted from its primary amino acid sequence is also of vital importance in understanding the protein's potential capacity to form disease-inducing aggregates. MISS A FOLD, PROMPT A DISEASE Here's a list of protein folding-related disease catego

In 1992, American writer Andrew Solomon, then in his late-20s, was about to publish his first novel when he unexpectedly slid into a major depression. In a subsequent book, he wrote that the experience is "almost unimaginable" to the uninitiated. Describing it, he likened himself to an oak being strangled by a vine, "a sucking thing that had wrapped itself around me, ugly and more alive than I." He called up the image of falling into an abyss: "You hit invisible things over and over again, un

 SUPER GOO: Nanotech and Super Heroes? It's a natural. A nanoscale adhesive, developed by University of Manchester researchers, lets this Spiderman hang with confidence. (Reprinted with permission from Nature Materials, 2:461-63, 2003) Don't look now, but the nanotech revolution is already here. It began as a collection of curiosities: nano-enabled sunscreens, tennis racquets, fishing rods, and stain-resistant pants. And more are coming. Nanotech supporters say the technology will benef

All photos courtesy of Sam Jaffe UTTER DEVASTATION: First, looters stole everything from Rajwan Hassan Issa's lab, then burned the remains. Alternating pavement stones at the entrance to Mustansiriyah University in Baghdad bear a bas-relief image of Saddam Hussein's face, minus his eyes: somebody chipped them out of each brick. Political banners drape the iron fence that surrounds the campus, seemingly unnoticed by the crowd of buzzing students as they race to class. Some banners procla

Courtesy of Eric D. Laywell SPHERES OF PROMISE These neurospheres, clusters of cells in culture derived from the CNS of mice, are stained with antibodies against a neuronal protein (red), and a astrocyte protein (green). They have a nuclear counterstain (blue). The brain and spinal cord were once considered mitotic dead ends, a division of neurons dwindling with toddlerhood, with memory and learning the consequence of synaptic plasticity, not new neurons. But the discovery of neural stem

Photos courtesy of TransForm Pharmaceuticals (left) and Pioneer Hi-Bred(center and right) The majority of participants in The Scientist's "Best Places in to Work for Scientists in Industry" survey reported that they valued their workplaces because the companies maintained industry standards, kept promises, and sustained the staffs' pride in their work. The magazine asked employees in life sciences companies to evaluate their own workplaces and identify company characteristics that employees c

Image courtesy of Magnus Stark The Broad Center for the Biological Sciences, at the California Institute of Technology, designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners James Spudich, a Stanford University biochemist, likens the cell to a city. It incorporates roads and pathways, he says, and houses large structures, akin to buildings, such as the mitochondria and nucleus. But unlike the city, the cell can completely transform its own structure according to its needs. The right signals can convert t

 Models of estradiol (left) and genistein. For decades, researchers believed that a single estrogen receptor mediated the effects of estrogens in the body. So imagine their surprise when Jan-Åke Gustafsson of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm announced at a 1996 Keystone symposium the discovery of a second estrogen receptor in the rat prostate. The revelation added unexpected complexity to scientists' understanding of estrogen's biological action. Many attendees scurried back to

All Illustrations: Tammy Irvine, Rear View Illustrations Researchers are bringing the wild inside their laboratories. Compelled by studies that suggest animals' bodies and minds react to even minor changes in living conditions, scientists are decorating animal cage interiors to mimic the exterior world of nature, thus challenging lab animals to think and move. A large, complex living space outfitted with objects that stimulate animals' mental and physical growth form the ideals of environmen

As thanks for their years of contributions to humankind through their use in biomedical research, some chimps will be guests of honor at a retirement party this spring. Set to break ground on May 30 is Chimp Haven (http://www.the-scientist.com/news/20021008/02/), a 200-acre chimpanzee sanctuary in Shreveport, La., which is slated to hold about 200 chimps retired from medical testing. The warm, moist climate of Louisiana is expected to provide a natural environment conducive to monkeying around

Michael Trott, © Wolfram Research,Inc. The possibility of mathematical power laws governing the scaling of fundamental biological properties, such as metabolic rate, within a species group has been strongly suspected for almost a century. But since 1997, the laws have been confirmed by overwhelming experimental evidence and backed by convincing mathematical theory. Before, research biologists were puzzled by the fact that a wide range of ultimately related properties, such as aortal surf

Courtesy of Steven Rock HEADING OFF RUNOFF: Trees planted in Amana, Iowa, to protect stream from agricultural run-off Humankind has passed a remarkable environmental milestone: People now consume more of Earth's natural resources than the planet can replace.1 In light of this, pollution abatement technologies, coupled with development of renewable energy resources, seem destined to become big business during the 21st century. What is unfolding is a multidisciplinary, biology-led wave of

Courtesy of Vector Tobacco  READY, SET, STOP: Quest's 'step down' low- and no-nicotine cigarettes. The major toxins in cigarettes, perhaps surprisingly, don't come from the chemicals that manufacturers add. "The carcinogens mostly come from the burning of tobacco," says Kenneth Warner, director, University of Michigan Tobacco Research Network. Just burning tobacco also produces carbon monoxide, a big contributor to heart disease. So, tobacco companies are turning to science to make ciga

Courtesy of California Department of Health Services Faster than an injection, more reinforcing than crack cocaine: Smoking a cigarette speeds nicotine to the brain faster than any other delivery method, giving smokers precise control over their exact nicotine dose with each puff they take. It turns out that those two attributes--speed and control--greatly enhance nicotine's addictive effect on the brain. "It's not just the drug, but how you take it," says Timothy Baker, associate director, U

Quitting the habit means fighting nicotine addiction. "It's not like drinking, where you have a huge social drinking population of nonaddicted people. People who smoke regularly tend to be addicted," says Timothy Baker, associate director, University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention. With nearly half the US adult population lighting up in 2000, public-health researchers are hard-pressed to figure out what helps--and what doesn't--in the fight against nicotine addictio