The Scientist - Home

Caitilyn Allen The dearth of women in science and engineering has spawned programs on college campuses to redress the balance and encourage women to stay in science. According to the National Science Foundation,1 a little more than 22 percent of the scientists and engineers in the United States in 1995 (the date of the most recent figures) were women. Though women make up about half of the social scientists, they are noticeably underrepresented among the "hard sciences." The NSF reports that 20

For years, evolution's critics picked on supposed gaps in the historical record--missing links between different forms or species in biologists' evolutionary lineages. Evolutionary leaps, say from dinosaurs to birds, are inconceivable without intermediates, so the reasoning went. Finding key fossils is no easy matter, but creationists interpreted the absence of evidence as evidence of absence--no links, no evolution, only supernatural design. Paleontologists were patient, though. They predicted

When Günter Blobel and David Sabatini first proposed the signal hypothesis in 1971, the whole thing was simply ignored.  

Graphic: Leza Berardone Everybody wants a piece of the pie, especially when that pie is worth $206 billion. That is the total amount the states won from the tobacco companies last November in the largest civil settlement in U.S. history. Florida, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Texas had settled individually for a combined amount of $40 billion earlier. The payments will be made over the next 25 years, and even though the money is still not available to the states, a scramble over how to spend it is

Call the 1990s the decade of molecular biology and genetics. A healthy chunk of academic funding has gone to these disciplines as they ferret out new genes and molecular mechanisms, and it has everyone talking of the new paradigm in drug discovery. All of those genes and all of that information will make 20th century medicine primitive by 21st century standards. At least that's what some say. Others say drug discovery is at something of a crossroads. The exploding numbers of potential receptor

The Clinton administration has proposed a new governmentwide definition of research misconduct within a federal policy that establishes basic guidelines for fair and timely investigations of alleged or suspected infractions. The policy, which was published in the Oct. 14 Federal Register, will apply to all federally funded research regardless of who conducts the research or whether it is conducted in federal, university, or private labs. "This policy provides needed consistency and clear guidan

Alzheimer's disease (AD) researchers at Amgen Inc. of Thousand Oaks, Calif., appear to be the first winners in the race to find secretases, enzymes believed critical to AD onset and, potentially, to AD treatment. Considered the most promising potential drug targets for the disease, two secretases, dubbed gamma and ß, have pivotal roles in generating the neuron-suffocating plaques in the brains of AD sufferers. They work by cleaving amyloid precursor proteins (APPs) to produce amyloid &szli

The paper airplanes rained down as usual. The cluster of authentic Nobel laureates sat in their usual spots on the stage of Harvard University's Sanders Theater. The traditional mini-opera had cloning as its subject. What could the occasion be but the awards ceremony for the 1999 Ig Nobel prizes? This year's event, sponsored by the scientific humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research, recognized some pieces of research that may have actual, if so far unproven, redeeming scientific or social

Researchers hoping to test a novel nonviral gene therapy system in people next year are unsure of approval prospects, following the recent death of a young man who was treated with an experimental viral vector.1 The man's health deteriorated rapidly a day after he was treated with an adenovirus carrying a therapeutic gene to treat ornithine transcarbamylase (OTC) deficiency. R. Michael Blaese Instead of taking the conventional gene therapy approach of delivering missing genes, the novel approa

Editor's Note: This year's winners of the Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards were honored for their achievements at an Oct. 1 luncheon at the Hotel Pierre in New York. Three researchers were recognized for their work on ion channels, two for their development of a novel hypertension medication, and one for a lifetime of contributions to neuroscience. Following are three stories on the winners. More information is available on the Web at www.laskerfoundation.org. Basic Award Recognizes Ion Ch

It was like falling off a cliff," Mark L. Batshaw, George Washington University pediatrics chairman, says of the adverse effect Jesse Gelsinger experienced following gene therapy. On Sept. 14, 18 Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania patients received escalating doses of an adenovirus carrying a gene to restore ornithine transcarbamylase (OTC)--an enzyme that, when missing, renders people unable to break down dietary protein. Gelsinger was in the highest-dose group, which nonetheless receiv

It was the first weekend in September, and all was not right at the Washington County fairgrounds, 35 miles north of Albany, N.Y. Usually the site of a well-attended arts and crafts show, the fairgrounds was a ghost town. The previous weekend, a convergence of unusual events at the annual county fair created a health nightmare that would take the lives of a 3-year-old and a 79-year-old and sicken more than 1,000. But painful lessons learned may help prevent future outbreaks of infection by Esche