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Both the public Human Genome Project and the private Celera Genomics-sponsored effort announced within a month of each other that they have sequenced a billion base pairs--about a third of human's total genetic code. Despite those twin landmarks, it's still difficult to say which project is ahead of the other in the quest to finish a "rough draft," or 90 percent completed copy, by spring 2000. This handicappers' confusion (in a competition both teams have said is not a race1) can be attributed

One way to encourage women to stay in science and move up to prominent positions is to reward them for their accomplishments. A small percentage of women are being nominated for and winning prizes at the highest levels, such as Nobel or Lasker awards. However, women may be overlooked at earlier stages of their careers, and that has a negative effect on their scientific futures. Brigid Hogan, professor of cell biology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and one of four women on the Lask

Much of what scientists know about the origins of cancer and the role of tumor suppressors can be traced back 28 years to the elegant theory of cancer researcher Alfred G. Knudson. Widely thought to be one of the most significant theories in modern biology, Knudson's "two-hit" hypothesis was recognized Nov. 19 at the John Scott Awards in Philadelphia, along with the revolutionary research of Benoit Mandelbrot, the discoverer of the powerful mathematical laws governing fractal geometry and self-s

Not all awards are created equal. That's why the International Congress of Distinguished Awards (ICDA), a Philadelphia-based organization, published the Official Roster of Distinguished Awards, a directory of 116 prizes that the ICDA considered the best of their kind. It gave those awards its seal of approval based on uniqueness to a particular field, amount of cash prize, and professionalism of administration. (See www.icda.org.) Keeping up with awards is difficult, because most of the approxim

Contents Pivotal pump Leptin limbo Clue to obesity Biotech Web site Helping hand Mapping malaria UCSD - Salk Program in Molecular Medicine HEART FAILURE RESCUE: A cross section of a mouse genetically engineered to develop heart failure (left) shows enlarged heart chambers and thin walls that are typical of the condition. A cross section from the same strain of mouse, but with the phospholamban gene (PLB) also missing, appears normal. PIVOTAL PUMP A biochemical calcium pump and the gene that con

Caitilyn Allen The dearth of women in science and engineering has spawned programs on college campuses to redress the balance and encourage women to stay in science. According to the National Science Foundation,1 a little more than 22 percent of the scientists and engineers in the United States in 1995 (the date of the most recent figures) were women. Though women make up about half of the social scientists, they are noticeably underrepresented among the "hard sciences." The NSF reports that 20

For years, evolution's critics picked on supposed gaps in the historical record--missing links between different forms or species in biologists' evolutionary lineages. Evolutionary leaps, say from dinosaurs to birds, are inconceivable without intermediates, so the reasoning went. Finding key fossils is no easy matter, but creationists interpreted the absence of evidence as evidence of absence--no links, no evolution, only supernatural design. Paleontologists were patient, though. They predicted

When Günter Blobel and David Sabatini first proposed the signal hypothesis in 1971, the whole thing was simply ignored.  

Graphic: Leza Berardone Everybody wants a piece of the pie, especially when that pie is worth $206 billion. That is the total amount the states won from the tobacco companies last November in the largest civil settlement in U.S. history. Florida, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Texas had settled individually for a combined amount of $40 billion earlier. The payments will be made over the next 25 years, and even though the money is still not available to the states, a scramble over how to spend it is

Call the 1990s the decade of molecular biology and genetics. A healthy chunk of academic funding has gone to these disciplines as they ferret out new genes and molecular mechanisms, and it has everyone talking of the new paradigm in drug discovery. All of those genes and all of that information will make 20th century medicine primitive by 21st century standards. At least that's what some say. Others say drug discovery is at something of a crossroads. The exploding numbers of potential receptor

The Clinton administration has proposed a new governmentwide definition of research misconduct within a federal policy that establishes basic guidelines for fair and timely investigations of alleged or suspected infractions. The policy, which was published in the Oct. 14 Federal Register, will apply to all federally funded research regardless of who conducts the research or whether it is conducted in federal, university, or private labs. "This policy provides needed consistency and clear guidan

Alzheimer's disease (AD) researchers at Amgen Inc. of Thousand Oaks, Calif., appear to be the first winners in the race to find secretases, enzymes believed critical to AD onset and, potentially, to AD treatment. Considered the most promising potential drug targets for the disease, two secretases, dubbed gamma and ß, have pivotal roles in generating the neuron-suffocating plaques in the brains of AD sufferers. They work by cleaving amyloid precursor proteins (APPs) to produce amyloid &szli