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Photo: E.D. Laywell, UT MemphisMultipotent clones of cells derived from the adult human brain With the promises and challenges of stem cell research in the headlines, visions of artificial livers dance in the public's eye. Bioethicists, politicians, and citizens alike continue to debate whether public funds should be used to obtain cells from human embryos and fetuses. On the scientific front, however, the implications of stem cell research are even more profound than offering replacement parts.

Your data's solid. Your results are impressive. Your methodology's near foolproof. It's time to submit your research for publication. So, of course, you place a call to--the New York Times? The practice isn't new: For a variety of reasons, companies sometimes choose to pitch their research results straight to the popular press--or, in recent years, to anyone who happens upon their Web press release--rather than first submitting their findings to a peer-reviewed journal. Sometimes they don't even

Young boy drinking from a tube well Researchers estimate that as many as half of the four million tube wells in Bangladesh are pumping out groundwater contaminated with naturally occurring arsenic. In many contaminated wells, arsenic levels exceed 500 parts per billion (ppb), a level 50 times higher than the safety recommendation from the World Health Organization (WHO). With foreign aid, the Bangladeshi government is finally tackling the problem years after its discovery in 1992. It has a tough

Courtesy of USIOL Inc.Intraocular lenses are among the implantable devices gaining popularity. From intraocular lenses to heart pacemakers, artificial joints, and even dental fillings, an estimated 8-10 percent of Americans walk around with permanent medical implants. These devices--which penetrate living tissue, have a physiological interaction and a minimum lifespan of three months, and are retrievable--have been widely used since the 1960s. But there has never been any systematic effort for r

A change in the Food and Drug Administration's "philosophy toward review of applications" is responsible for a "remarkable" acceleration in the time required for new drug approvals, according to Kenneth I. Kaitin, director of Tufts University's Center for the Study of Drug Development. The result has been an upsurge of novel medications on the market in recent years. Kaitin adds that the agency and industry now are turning their joint efforts toward shortening drug development times, particularl

When Science voted stem cell research its 1999 Breakthrough of the Year, the congratulatory article traced the field's origin to the 1981 successful culture of mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells.1,2 But the roots of exploring these multipotential cells go back considerably farther, to a little-mentioned researcher who worked with mice at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. Photo: Jackson LaboratoryLeroy Stevens Leroy Stevens arrived at the lab in 1953, a newly minted developmental b

Science at State Conceding that "the State Department's science capabilities have not always been as substantial as they should be," U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright promised a number of improvements last month. Speaking at a plenary session at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Albright said she will issue a policy statement this month "setting forth my commitment to enhance the department's ability to handle [science and technology] issu

Like medieval alchemists, modern biologists apply intricate, esoteric protocols to lowly matter, such as bacteria and rodents. Unlike alchemists, biologists successfully transmute these creatures into gold--disease-fighting pharmaceuticals and profits accruing from them. An indispensable ingredient in this dross-to-drug process is patent protection, which preserves monopoly and attracts investment. Unfortunately, the patent system isn't as ideal a catalyst as the chimerical philosopher's stone s

Graphic: Cathleen Heard The boy had the classic symptoms of acute leukemia--low blood counts and tumor cells circulating in his bloodstream. But the diagnosis was tentative because the tumor cells looked atypical for leukemia. So doctors extracted RNA from the cells, made cDNAs from the RNA, and incubated the cDNAs with a chip bearing thousands of single-stranded gene fragments on its glass surface. The hybridization pattern suggested, surprisingly, that the boy had a muscle tumor. After confirm

Known Cancer-Pathogen Associations Photo: Bill BransonJames J. Goedert In the 1960s and '70s, as part of a nationwide war on cancer, U.S. virologists took part in a massive effort to find virally caused human cancers. They didn't find much in the way of causative viral agents, but their research did lead to key, high-impact discoveries including the tumor suppressors p53, ras, and myc, not to mention HIV. A profusion of interest in the cancer-causing roles of tumor suppressors, signal transduct

Global Effort Against Cancer Paul F. Engstrom Cancer cannot be successfully fought in isolation. In recognition of this, more than 100 international leaders of government, patient advocacy, cancer research organizations, and corporations signed The Charter of Paris Against Cancer at the first World Summit Against Cancer this month. Paul F. Engstrom, senior vice president for population science at the Fox Chase Cancer Center, comments, "I saw more than the usual commitment to put more dollars int

Photo: James PlattFriends and colleagues: From left, K. Brooks Low, David Bermudes, John M. Pawelek When the public hears about Salmonella, it is usually in a warning about food poisoning, but a group of researchers in New Haven, Conn., is using the bacteria to target cancer. It turns out that Salmonella preferentially colonize and multiply within a tumor, thereby inhibiting growth. Vion Pharmaceuticals is taking advantage of this trait by genetically altering Salmonella typhimurium to reduce th