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SEEING THE RETINA Borrowing a technique that clarifies images from spy satellites, researchers from the University of Rochester have imaged the distribution of cone cells in the human retina (A. Roorda, D.R. Williams, Nature, 397:520-2, Feb. 11, 1999). The three types of cone cells have photopigments that absorb predominantly short (S), middle (M), or long (L) wavelengths, corresponding to blue/violet, green, and red. Color vision works much like a color television--the brain integrates the i

The American chestnut, decimated by a fungus that scientists have tried in vain to quell throughout this century, finally may be on its way back to health, thanks largely to genetics. Once a dominant tree throughout the Northeast, prized for the timber from its long, unbranched trunks, the American variety (Castanea dentata) stopped providing those famed chestnuts roasting on an open fire long before Bing Crosby's time. The tree bore sweet nuts, but they were small, and the quest for a meatier n

Eric Carmen/ARCADIS Geraghy & Miller Phytoremediation--the use of trees and plants to help clean up toxic waste sites--is not only a growing science; it's also a growth industry. One report estimates that the phytoremediation market in the United States will expand from $16.5-$29.5 million in 1998 to $55-$103 million by 2000 and to $214-$370 million by 2005.1 In addition to offering job opportunities for environment-related physical scientists, the industry also will need life scientists, s

What's the biochemical basis for our learning and storing the names, events, sights, and sounds that stay with us for a lifetime? Can we, in fact, reduce and explain these bits of nostalgia in terms of the inner workings of cellular and molecular mechanisms, phenomena in the brain at the synapses between neurons? Seth Grant and Richard Morris More than 30 years ago, investigators believed that they'd taken a huge step toward doing precisely that. Terje Lomo, then a Ph.D. student at the Univer

Call it the angiogenesis inhibitor shuffle. Bristol-Myers Squibb of New York dropped clinical plans for the protein angiostatin, but is proceeding to Phase I with a small molecule. A National Cancer Institute lab that last fall questioned the viability of endostatin now confirms the protein can be synthesized and may be back on track for human tests. And a third, unnamed protein, not yet reported in the scientific literature, has been licensed to Genzyme Corp. of Framingham, Mass., with clinica

When J. Craig Venter proposed last May to use the "shotgun" technique to sequence Drosophila, many scientists doubted that blasting such a large genome into billions of base pairs, then reassembling it in one fell swoop would succeed.1 On the brink of the project's beginning, skepticism remains. But an agreement between Celera Genomics Corp. of Rockville, Md., and the University of California at Berkeley's Drosophila Genome Project Group, may render that uncertainty irrelevant. The Berkeley gr

David Holtzman and Friend SNAKE LOGIC David Holtzman, an assistant professor of brain and cognitive science at the University of Rochester, has loved snakes since childhood. But in college, when he wanted to investigate how snake brains develop, he found that serpents weren't exactly model organisms. "I wanted to devise a task that could show that snakes can learn as well as rodents--if you ask them to do the right thing," he recalls. Now Holtzman and his colleagues are doing just that (D.

Mildred Dresselhaus coauthored a report to be released Feb. 17. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) President Bruce M. Alberts was so concerned by the accountability provision buried in last year's "omnibus" budget legislation that on Jan. 26 he sent a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob Lew in which he writes that he's "convinced that the new legislation will have serious, unintended consequences for the nation's research enterprise." Speaking at the recent American Associ

Using genomcs to develop new antibiotics and vaccines could help prepare for potential bioterrorist actions Although the Human Genome Project now draws more attention, the genomes of smaller organisms collectively contain more information. The American Association for the Advancement of Science's second annual Genome Seminar, held at this year's annual meeting in January in Anaheim, Calif., focused on analyzing that information for a myriad of purposes ranging from developing malaria vaccine s

President Bill Clinton's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) emphasized technology over science during the unveiling of the president's fiscal year (FY) 2000 budget request Feb. 1. The administration requested $78.42 billion for total civilian and military R&D--over $1 billion less than for FY1999. If Congress strictly adheres to that request next fall, most agencies that fund science would see their budgets at or below this year's level, after accounting for inflation. The two

Mae West said that anything worth doing is worth doing slowly. Plants would probably agree, if they could. Courtship in flowering plants begins when pollen lands on the receptive surface (stigma) of a carpel, the female part of the flower. The ensuing dance of biochemical signals and responses culminates in the flower's decision to accept or reject the suitor. A variety of molecules have been implicated in the recognition process, including flavanols, lipids, and receptor kinases.1,2 If the in

Editor's Note: The news items on this page all originated from the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif., Jan. 21-26. Mars: Future homestead? NASA's Astrobiology Institute revealed its definition of astrobiology and a road map of research directions, about six months after its inaugural gathering.1 "Astrobiology is the study of life in the universe, an attempt to answer some of the fundamental questions that have been with us for a long time--ho