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New collaboration hopes to improve European prevention and control of zoonotic diseases

National Ethics Council can't agree on what to do about therapeutic cloning

Brad Fitzpatrick"We've got skinks. A lot of different skinks," notes Mike Osborn, an inspector with the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) in Los Angeles. It is a small shipment: about 1,000 gecko-like lizards from Egypt, packed in what appears to be squirmy pillowcases thumb-tacked to the sides of thin wooden crates. Osborn methodically opens the sacks to check whether they indeed hold skinks as it says on the manifest. They do: 25, 50, 75 per bag.Far from the familiar bustle of LAX's passeng

"I'm all out of ideas," says hydrologist Mike Gooseff, still smiling despite his frustration.On a crisp, unusually warm and dry August afternoon on Alaska's North Slope, a few miles from the Toolik Lake Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) field station, a two-meter metal rod is wedged in pristine streambed, irretrievable despite nearly an hour of yanking, pushing, prodding, and countless Rube-Goldberg-like brainstorms. Someone had forgotten to slip on a metal piece that would give a jack enough

DELIVERY METHODS:© 2003, Elsevier ScienceSmall interfering RNAs (siRNAs) may be synthesized and then transfected into cells (A), or generated by the RNAase activity of Dicer (B) on short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) transcribed in vivo (C). Transfection (D) and integration (E) of plasmid DNA containing a selectable marker and a promoter to drive shRNA expression are used to generate a stable cell line. Alternatively, DNA encoding shRNA may be introduced by viral-mediated transduction (D). siRNAs (

World RNAi Market 2010Contract service = outsourced research/target validation projects Total = Projected worldwide RNAi revenues for 2010, in US dollars Source: Frost & SullivanScientists hunger for breakthroughs in the lab, but it's the venture capitalists who continually scout the life sciences for the next great money-making bonanza. After a pivotal study in the May 2001 issue of Nature showed that RNA could effectively silence gene expression in mammalian cell lines, RNA interference (R

Nothing to be gained from restricting access to bioterror agent genomes, says report

The restructuring of Austrian science funding spawns an applied science super agency

US Congressional subcommittee holds hearing on clinical trial disclosure rules

In the wake of SARS, a revised law ensures funding for infectious disease control

Calls for his resignation abound after stem cell transplant announcement

In vitro diagnostics maker to buy reagents manufacturer but keep separate R and D operations