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Budgets for Top Federal R&D Agencies The U.S. House of Representatives delivered a bumper crop for science in its fiscal year (FY) 2000 budget--but the R&D harvest still has a slight chance to be delayed or threatened by cows. Congressional moos reportedly filled the House chambers after the announcement that Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) planned to delay voting on a bill that would finalize a $1.8 trillion budget. Kohl's beef had nothing to do with science, but rather, with dairy subsidies that he

Academic health centers are increasingly willing to embrace, rather than rebuff, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies. Indeed, in the last few years, "integrative" and "complementary" centers or programs have sprung up at dozens of academic health centers, and the trend will likely continue. But the frequency with which these newfound coalitions have taken place by no means implies that the melding of "conventional" and "alternative" medicines will be effortless. At a mid-Novem

Twelve scientific publishers have joined together to provide an electronic linking service that could serve as a paid alternative to PubMedCentral, proposed by Harold Varmus, National Institutes of Health director, to provide similar information for free. When Varmus floated the possibility of PubMedCentral (then known as E-Biomed), many commercial publishers balked at giving away their content.1 Some scientific societies have since relaxed their opposition and will allow their content to be ava

Charles Darwin's frustration with the evolutionary origin of flowering plants--he called it "an abominable mystery"--stood for more than a century, as hypotheses, like flowers, bloomed and faded. Botanists even argued over whether ancestors of the 250,000 flowering plants, or angiosperms, were tender herbs or woody, like shrubs. Now they may be writing the final chapters of Darwin's whodunit, not with the traditional phrases of fossils and plant anatomy, but with the letters and words of gene se

Today's scientists, it could be said, frequently explain observed phenomena by finding chemical, biological, or physical mechanisms of some form, shape, or size. In a panel session at the recent History of Science Society meeting in Pittsburgh, presenters traced the roots of this perceived tendency and provided high-profile examples of scientists' apparent captivation with mechanisms--defined broadly as entities and activities that produce regular changes from start or setup to finish or termina

Contents Pivotal pump Leptin limbo Clue to obesity Biotech Web site Helping hand Mapping malaria Notebook Pictured above are pigmented bacterial colonies of Deinococcus radiodurans, the most radiation-resistant organism currently known. DEINO-MITE CLEANUP In 1956, investigators discovered a potentially invaluable cleanup tool in an unlikely place. A hardy bacterium called Deinococcus radiodurans unexpectedly thrived in samples of canned meat thought to be sterilized by gamma radiation. The b

Benefits and Impact Results from a survey released Dec. 2 by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) indicate that federally sponsored research really does pay off, even if it takes years to do so. For the fiscal year ending June 30, 1998, the AUTM survey credits $33.5 billion of U.S. economic activity to technology transfer. That activity included support for 280,000 jobs, issuance of 3,668 new licenses and options, and granting of 3,224 new U.S. patents (see chart). AUTM def

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