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Despite the presence of Hurricane Floyd and the resulting absence of more than half of the members, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) convened its 34th meeting Sept. 16-17 in Arlington, Va. The location of the meeting--a modest, drab hotel conference room--belied the serious subject matter of the day: "international bioethics," a preliminary consideration of bioethical regulations for research that runs between borders and cultures. It's the latest of an array of tough topics t

Second of two articles Editor's Note: In the Sept. 27 issue of The Scientist, the author discussed some of the possibilities scientists have for generating medicinal products from organisms that live in the oceans.1 In this issue is a discussion of some of the problems and complexities involved in pursuing such possibilities. Despite the allure and promise the oceans hold for providing new medicines, virtually every aspect of pharmacological research from oceanic sources is more difficult and

Do patents on genetic information hinder research? That long-festering debate arose again recently, following a report in the Guardian newspaper that Great Britain and the United States are negotiating an intergovernmental agreement aimed at preventing entrepreneurs from profiting on such patents.1 Although the accuracy of the report, which drew on documents received under the Freedom of Information Act, was denied by a spokesperson for the Office of Science and Technology Policy's director, Ne

A six-week "debate" on women in science that began Sept. 9 on the Nature Web site is the latest illustration of how media technology is helping to turn the long struggle for female parity with male colleagues into an internationally shared experience. Helen C. Davies "I can't help contrasting this with what has gone before," comments Helen C. Davies, president of the Association for Women in Science and a microbiology professor at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center. Recalling effor

As disease resistance to antibiotics and other drugs continues to build, even new methods of discovery such as combinatorial chemistry may not be able to meet the ever-increasing need for more efficient and more effective compounds. According to a core group of researchers, however, an untapped reservoir of powerful new medicines is in the oceans. In fact, so rich is life in the oceans that some seafaring scientists go so far as to say the greatest bounty in the medicine chest of the new millen

The chemoprevention field could be characterized as being in a double-blind double bind. One side of the field emphasizes taking a "whole food" approach to using food to prevent cancer. That approach entails having scientists closely monitor everything a necessarily small group of subjects eats over a necessarily short period of time. Such studies pick apart the complexities of diet and its possible roles in keeping cancer at bay. But the small numbers and short time frame put any conclusions o

Numerous studies have found that female scientists publish at slower rates than male scientists. In a classic statement of the problem, Jonathan Cole and Harriet Zuckerman characterize this gender gap in publication rates as "the productivity puzzle."

The banded Gila monster's saliva may help provide a new treatment for type II diabetes mellitus. NEW TREATMENT FOR DIABETES II? A chemical in the saliva of the Gila monster Heloderma suspectum that helps digest gigantic meals may provide a new treatment for type II diabetes mellitus. The Gila monster is one of only two venomous lizards and hails from the Phoenix, Ariz., area, coincidentally the home of the Pima Indians, who have the world's highest incidence of type II diabetes." John Eng, a

Since the mid-1980s, variations on the DNA fingerprinting theme have left their marks on diverse fields. By comparing distinctive DNA sequences, aberrations, or numbers of repeats among individuals, investigators have matched suspects to crime scenes and parents to offspring; assembled body parts in the aftermath of disasters; identified kidnap victims, Thomas Jefferson's son, and the remains of Tsar Nicholas' family, who were executed in 1918; and exonerated 64 prisoners, including nine on dea

Celera Genomics announced Sept. 9 that the Rockville, Md., company had sequenced the 1.8 billion base pairs that make up the Drosophila melanogaster genome. Now comes the tricky part--putting them together to form an accurate, contiguous fruit fly genome. "The sequence data is good," Paul Gilman, a Celera vice president, claims. "The question is, 'How good is our assembly?'" That's a question that critics of the company's "whole genome shotgun" sequencing approach--blasting the entire genome in

Understanding the genetic structure of ecosystems is important in saving biodiversity. That's especially vital as humans fragment vast natural areas into isolated patches, cutting off avenues for outcrossing. Unfortunately, scientists' understanding of breeding systems and gene flow may be even more fragmented than the ecosystems. Botanists are hard at work remedying the situation. Using genetic markers, they analyze plant paternity and infer how far pollen travels on gentle breezes or the bac

On Aug. 30 Harold Varmus, National Institutes of Health director, invited all members of the scientific publishing world to attend his version of a peer-review free-for-all. Several weeks later, it remains to be seen who will show up. The gala in question is PubMed Central, an Internet research repository first proposed by Varmus May 5 under the name E-biomed. The renamed repository will contain two kinds of research after its January 2000 addition to the popular PubMed Web site: non-peer-revi