The Scientist - Home

Add this to the pot of stem cell sources creating a political stir: parthenogenesis, creating embryos from unfertilized eggs. Unlike the cloning issue, which has a defined division, the ethical question regarding parthenogenesis may have all the earmarks of being ambivalent. So far, the US government has already placed restrictions on federal funding for new stem cell lines derived from in vitro fertilized embryos, and the Senate is deliberating over a ban on cloning that may block stem cells de

Melvin Silverman, professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, recently got a call from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The CIHR surveyor asked the scientist who would benefit from his studies of diabetes and membrane function, and what the intermediate and final outcome of the work would be. To Silverman, the questioner had asked him to justify the funding of basic biomedical research according to its direct community health benefits, rather than its scientific significance.

At the first meeting of the newly assembled President's Council on Bioethics (PCB), Jan. 17-18, members began their consideration of sensitive bioethical issues not with an analysis of the writings of a scientist, nor a bioethicist, nor a legislator, but a novelist. The group discussed Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story The Birthmark, a literary exploration of mankind's apparent aspiration to root out his own imperfections. The story's protagonist, an alchemist named Aylmer, convinces his wife Ge

With a little help from a group of Weddell seals, a team of marine scientists has uncovered new information about the two ecologically most important fish species living far beneath the ice pack in the dark, frigid waters of Antarctica's McMurdo Sound.1 Behavioral ecologist Lee A. Fuiman of the University of Texas, Austin, biologists Randall W. Davis of Texas A&M University, Galveston, and Terrie M. Williams of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and their team at McMurdo equipped each

While the anthrax letters of October 2001 sent microbiologists and geneticists into an unwanted limelight, the chemical community also found itself suddenly grappling with how their field fits into the post-9/11 world. The news from a Jan. 14-16 meeting at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center of the National Academies of Science and Engineering in Irvine, California, "National Security and Homeland Defense," was upbeat. The goal of the meeting, the third in a series called Challenges for the Chem

During the height of the national ruckus over anthrax mailings and feared terrorist attacks this past October, the US Senate quietly confirmed John H. Marburger III as scientific adviser to President George W. Bush, and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Bush broke records for heel dragging in nominating a candidate and then demoted the position from assistant to the president, granting less face time with the chief of staff.1 Add to this the fact that the OSTP was r

New evidence points to brain trauma as an environmental risk factor for Alzheimer disease (AD). 

A new initiative aims to establish a global network to increase access to academic and research publications.

For many animals, to stick is to survive. Nature's varied adhesive structures and substances enable animals to stick to inert substrates, to each other, and even to parts of themselves. An octopus uses its suckers to grab food, a gecko coordinates its highly specialized feet to ascend a wall, and a mussel emits strings of proteinaceous goo to hold fast to a rock in times of turbulence. Insects coordinate their jumping motions by choreographing contact of leg parts. Some species can even multitas

The killer will be turned against itself, if a human trial of gene therapy for AIDS goes forward in a few months, using a vector derived from HIV-1. Biotech startup VIRxSYS Corp. of Gaithersburg, Md., is complying with requests for more information concerning its clinical protocol that were made in October by the National Institutes of Health Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee and the Food and Drug Administration. The candidate drug's inventor, Boro Dropulic, says VIRxSYS has received about $18

A multiple-sponsor distributed computing project launched Jan. 22 aims to derail anthrax's ability to enter human cells and eliminate the toxin as a terrorists' weapon. The ambitious project has the backing of computer giants Intel and Microsoft, distributed computing specialist United Devices, the chemistry department at the University of Oxford, UK, and the National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR). The anthrax project comes on the heels of a successful similar effort in cancer research t

A three-alarm fire ravaged two labs at University of California, Santa Cruz, knocking out power and shutting down multiple buildings during the early hours of Jan. 11. The Sinsheimer building where the fire occurred remains closed, displacing approximately 150 researchers who are now scrambling to assess the damage, find new lab space, and salvage whatever is possible. "The upper floor, where the real devastation occurred, is not likely to be back to normal use for six to eight months," says Eli