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The long awaited Horn report on the BSE epidemic throws up as many questions as it answers.

The discovery that antibodies seem to be effective against prions could open the door to immunisation against spongiform encephalopathies.

Observation of the brain's biochemical response to chronic pain is enabling the natural painkilling mechanisms of the body to be understood in greater detail.

The announcement that murine embryos have been created without fertilisation by sperm nuclei has opened an important ethical and scientific debate.

After Tropical Storm Allison struck Houston last month, researcher Jocelyne Bachevalier wasn't thinking about science when she learned that her 47 monkeys had died at the University of Texas Health Science Center. "We got very attached to these animals, because we work every single day with them," says Bachevalier, a professor of neurobiology and anatomy. "They've become our pets .... They react to their names, It's very painful." Bachevalier had used the monkeys in her research on the amygdala,

The idea sounds audacious: catalog all life on Earth within 25 years, a human generation. The All-Species Inventory hopes to do just that, with private funds and the help of a worldwide network of scientists and nature lovers. "It is a dream, but a neat one," says A. Townsend Peterson, curator of ornithology at the natural history museum and associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. He is one of 40 scientific advisers to the All-Species effort

Recognizing the growing importance of computational and information sciences to biology, the National Institutes of Health is establishing a new Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (CBCB). The new center is designed to support research and training in areas that merge biology with computer sciences, engineering, mathematics, and physics. "The future of the biological sciences will be driven by advances in bioinformatics and computational biology," says Marvin Cassman, director o

As California's energy crisis deepens, biotech companies have worries in addition to the ruined experiments and damaged equipment that concern life scientists in academia.1 Soaring energy prices could slowly sap the industry's economic health, and blackouts could spoil large batches of drugs by interrupting FDA-mandated protocols. "Biotechnology companies in California sort of naively thought that they were located in a First World business environment," says Joseph Dougherty, an analyst at Lehm

Toby Bradshaw, an associate professor at the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture in Seattle, had been studying traditionally bred and genetically engineered Poplar trees as part of a developmental biology program of interest to companies involved in paper and wood manufacturing. In the same lab facility, assistant professor Sarah Reichard had been growing 100 showy stickseed plants from tissue cultures. With only 300 of the endangered plants (hackelia venusta) remaining in t

Move over golden rice, genetically modified cats are in the works. Syracuse, N.Y., residents Jackie and David Avner, among the 10 percent of the population who have cat allergies, are working to create a feline that won't make their eyes water. Their privately held company, Transgenic Pets LLC (www.transgenicpets.com) is using knockout technology to create kitties that are missing the sole human allergen. David Avner, an emergency medicine physician, got the idea about seven years ago, according

Chills, fever, headache, muscle pain, and appetite loss are classic flu symptoms; they are also markers of the biological warfare agents tularemia, Staphylococcus enterotoxin B, and Q-fever. At the moment, the diagnostic methods that would distinguish, within a timely manner, the cause of these symptoms do not exist. But researchers are working towards that end, as well as trying to find the appropriate treatments. Advanced diagnostic methods, ranging from genetic analyses to breath analysis, a

Manipulating the integrin gene can enable adult neurons to switch on the molecular mechanisms necessary to allow regeneration.