The Scientist - Home

Neuroscientists from the United States and Cuba gathered at the Hotel Nacional in Havana Oct. 19-23 and took a significant step toward enhancing scientific dialogue between the two countries. Their meeting featured 25 American speakers and a similar number of Cuban presenters, as well as representatives of U.S. pharmaceutical companies, Cuban students, and politicians from both nations. The purpose of the Havana gathering, organized as a satellite conference to the Society for Neuroscience

After six years and nearly $5 billion in budgetary increases, Harold Varmus announced Oct. 7 that he is leaving the National Institutes of Health to head the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. When Varmus took on the NIH directorship in 1993, the agency posted a budget of $11 billion. The budget for fiscal year 1999 soared to $15.6 billion. Scientists on the NIH campus also have praised Varmus for reinvigorating what was once a flagging institution.1 "Harold Varmus has done ever

Contents Id and angio Testosterone boost to favored offspring More dopamine To B or not to B Mice that know when to say when Viral conquest Unraveling helicase Done in by a sucker ID AND ANGIO When Robert Benezra of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and colleagues knocked out two proteins that inhibit transcription factors in mice, they expected to see premature neural differentiation. In addition, however, they noticed that the absence of those two proteins, Id1 and Id3, di

The "EcoSphere" (top) is a small-scale model of the self-sustaining living environment of Earth; in the sealed, airtight globe, materials are used and reused in an endless cycle. Karen Nelson (bottom), a microbiologist from Jamaica, is filmed in her own environment for the series. Historically, an uneasy alliance has existed between science and television. The uneasiness is partially due to an age-old belief that communicating science to the lay public is not necessary, to some degree impossible

Graphic: Cathleen Heard Researchers are used to stepping out of their labs to collaborate with colleagues across the hall. But with the advent of Internet technology, researchers are crisscrossing states--even oceans--to collaborate without leaving their labs.1 Nicolas Bazan, director of the Louisiana State University Neuroscience Center, New Orleans, started such an endeavor with Julio Alvarez-Builla, professor of organic chemistry at the Universidad de Alcala in Spain, six years ago. Bazan de

For a successful technologyReality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. --Richard Feynman Nobel physicist Richard Feynman was talking about the role NASA and its industrial partners played in the 1986 Challenger disaster, but his words could easily apply to the debate over genetically modified (GM) crops. When grain processor Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) of Decatur, Ill., asked suppliers on Sept. 2 to segregate GM corn from traditional varieties, some U.S. b

In 1977, Steven Lindow, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, discovered that a mutant strain of the bacterium Pseudomonas syringae altered ice nucleation on leaves in a way that enabled plants to resist frost. He continued the work at the University of California, Berkeley, and a decade later, with the blessing of the appropriate federal agencies and the townfolk of Tulelake, Calif., Lindow planted 3,000 potato seedlings coated with "ice-minus" bacteria. By the next mor

The $45-million research program at the Veterans Administration Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System (VAGLAHS) is slowly recovering after being abruptly shut down in March in an unprecedented sanction over regulations safeguarding patients in studies.1 "This might be the thing that wakes everybody up."--Stephen Pandol All 322 laboratory and animal studies, and more than 300 of the original 352 human clinical studies have been authorized to resume, leaving about 50 human studies in various s

Reprinted with permission from Nature CKI produces complete secondary dorsal axes. Synthetic mRNA encoding CKI, mutant CKI (K > R), or Xwnt-8 was injected at the eight-cell stage into one ventral vegetal blastomere. Embryos injected with CKI or Xwnt-8, but not inactive CKI (K > R), developed complete secondary dorsal axes. CANCER CLUE The rush of discoveries over the past two years concerning the Wnt signaling pathway--known to be crucial to normal development and altered in human melano

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