The Scientist - Home

Kerstin Bergman, a researcher at Lund University, Sweden, discusses how positive images of human clones are infiltrating our entertainment media and slowly shifting our perception

Dene Grigar, a professor of digital technology and culture, describes narratives of scientists in popular literature

Environmental watchdog group says toxicologist deserves penalty for involvement in retracted paper; scientist says he was honoring now-deceased study author's wishes

Proposal to combine basic and clinical research funding into one agency sparks disagreement over how to manage the money

Credit: COURTESY OF EPPENDORF AG" /> Credit: COURTESY OF EPPENDORF AG Near the end of 1962, Wilhelm Bergmann, an Eppendorf development engineer, designed the first successful disposable tube for handling microliter volumes. Employing the durability of polypropylene, which can withstand centrifugation speeds up to 30,000 times that of gravity (or more depending on the fit of the centrifuge), and designed with a tight-fitting, attached lid that can be opened and closed with one han

Credit: COURTESY OF CURTIS RICHARDSON" /> Credit: COURTESY OF CURTIS RICHARDSON Duke University's Curtis J. Richardson, a wetlands expert, was part of the first scientific team to visit the Iraqi Mesopotamian marshes after Saddam Hussein's fall in 2003. Lying between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the marshes - once nearly twice the size of the Everglades - were the main stopover on the Siberia-Africa bird migration route, and a crucial filter that cleansed the rivers as the

Credit: COURTESY OF JIM MCQUAID" /> Credit: COURTESY OF JIM MCQUAID In the tiny village of Wankama, Niger, sits a rounded thatched hut. Except for its solar panels, it looks much like the twenty or so other huts that blend into the stark desert of the Sahel. Woven from brown straw, the hut measures about five meters in diameter. It is 1.5 meters high at the wall and reaches a height of three meters at the apex. The floor is plain soil. A floppy lean-to door covers the entran

Credit: COURTESY OF TASER INTERNATIONAL" /> Credit: COURTESY OF TASER INTERNATIONAL A few years ago, John Webster heard that the US Department of Justice was looking for applications to study the possibility of a link between Tasers and ventricular fibrillation. Amnesty International has claimed that 70 people in the United States have died in association with Tasers since 2001, and "there was an allegation that the heart was getting electrocuted," says Webster, a professor

Credit: COURTESY OF HEATH SMITH" /> Credit: COURTESY OF HEATH SMITH If you're on Washington State's Puget Sound this summer, you may glimpse a boat carrying a stocky Australian cattle dog named Gator. When Gator's body is stiff, his mouth open, ears forward, tail erect, and nose twitching in the wind, you can plausibly conclude one thing: A killer whale has pooped nearby.Gator is one of 11 scat-detection dogs at the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of

By her own admission, Melissa Bateson has spent most of her research career knowing very little about how the European Union sets science policy. Any scraps she did pick up were routinely distorted by the snide lens of the UK's tabloid newspapers.So when Britain's Royal Society offered her the opportunity to join in a partnering scheme with her local representative in the European Parliament (her "MEP" in Euro-speak) she jumped at the chance. "I was interested to see whe

RCUK report shows many schools aren't applying for extra funding to supplement young researcher salaries

Science prints letters blasting methodology and conclusions of study that linked logging to reduced forest regrowth