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GENOME SYMBOL: DNA strands form the basis of a graphic symbol of the genome project. They said it wasn't a race. When a private venture announced plans in May to produce a version of the human genome four years ahead of the international nonprofit Human Genome Project's deadline, scientists associated with the public project insisted that the private effort wasn't really a challenge to theirs. The private effort would present, at best, a "rough draft" with many holes--if it worked at all, they

By In the early 1950s, when Jonas Salk produced the first inactivated polio vaccine and Albert Sabin later produced a live, attenuated, oral polio vaccine, the individual researchers' names were permanently linked to the products. But development of an HIV vaccine--a task President Bill Clinton has charged researchers to accomplish by 2007--requires the skills of so many scientists and so many laboratories worldwide that it would be impossible, and perhaps even improper, to link any vacci

BIOLOGY RULES ... Biology is becoming so popular, it may overtake the humanities as the foundation of American undergraduate education, claims Joseph G. Perpich, vice president for grants and special programs at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute of Chevy Chase, Md. The institute, America's largest philanthropy, recently announced the allocation of a record $91.1 million in four-year grants to help 58 research and doctoral universities to strengthen their undergraduate programs in biological

Let's say you want to build the best biomedical research facility, bar none. The catch is, it will be in Kansas City. Can you still hope to lure top scientists away from their prestigious postings in world capitals to an untested center in Missouri? Philanthropists Virginia Stowers and James Stowers Jr. think so. And they have a plan to make it happen. On 10 acres across the street from the University of Missouri, the foundations already are being laid for their six-story, 594,000-square-foot

The stream of life science students entering the graduate school pipeline should be frozen to prevent researcher job applicants from flooding the market, according to a recent National Research Council (NRC) report. However, just who will control the valves regulating enrollment--government, universities, or some combination--remains to be seen. "I don't think the federal government alone can provide the answer to this," explains Shirley Tilghman, chair of NRC's Commission on Life Sciences, whi

For a thing that is "nothing," placebo has been much in the news lately. Whenever the media have mentioned placebo this year, it often has been in the context of clinical trials overseas for treatments to prevent perinatal HIV transmission. The studies were controversial because most of them employed placebo controls with the various treatments being tested, although trials in the United States and France already had indicated that the antiretroviral drug zidovudine (AZT) reduced the incidence

Also See: Breadth of Biodiversity After months of complaints, hundreds of scientists will finally be able to use a long-coveted recombinant technology without looking over their shoulders. On August 19, National Institutes of Health Director Harold Varmus announced an agreement with DuPont Pharmaceuticals that will enable NIH and NIH-supported researchers to use a DuPont-developed technology, called Cre-lox, without compromising the company's ability to receive the appropriate value for commer

A proposed plan to screen about 15,000 commercial chemicals that may interact harmfully with the endocrine system could be one of the most ambitious and expensive such efforts ever. The first tier of the two-part plan would cost an estimated $200,000 per chemical for high throughput screening. Those screens would test chemicals for interactions with five endocrine receptors, including estrogen, androgen, and thyroid receptors. Chemicals testing positive would move on to the next level, which co

Contents AIDS pioneer Jonathan Mann dies in crash Genetics and mental retardation Stress and memory Morning After' to market No pain, no gain, but a pill? Nitric oxide gets renewed attention A scientist's way of winemaking AIDS PIONEER DIES IN CRASH Epidemiologist Jonathan Mann and his wife, Mary Lou, were among the 229 people killed Sept. 3 when a Swissair flight traveling from New York to Geneva crashed off Nova Scotia. Mann was founding director of the World Health Organization's Global Prog

Antifreeze proteins produced in some fish have hooked the attention of industry. But chemists are still casting inquiries into how these proteins act to prevent some species of flounder, cod, and sculpin from icing up in below-zero Centigrade water. RED HERRING: Although antifreeze proteins produced by the flounder are the most studied, they may be the least representative. Scientists at the 216th American Chemical Society Meeting in Boston last month trolled through the merits of a number of

BIODIVERSITY ABOUNDS: Algae and sponges line the underwater ledges of Navassa, a tiny, uninhabited island in the Caribbean that recently got a rare visit from scientists. A recent expedition has revealed an unexpected breadth of biological diversity on a rare untouched patch of wilderness. Led by Center for Marine Conservation (CMC) scientists Michael Smith and Nina Young, 14 researchers set out to survey a tiny U.S.-owned island 40 miles west of Haiti in the Greater Antilles. Part of the Unite

A fat substitute made its public debut in an oatmeal raisin cookie last month. The substitute, a coarse beige-yellow flourlike substance called Nu-Trim, contains high percentages of ß glucans--the soluble fibers that lower cholesterol through the same mechanisms as oat bran. While those mechanisms are not well understood, they are effective, remarked the product's developer, George E. Inglett , of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service in Peoria, Ill. Ear