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Raymond Damadian was conspicuously absent from the medicine prize awardees

Peter Agre and Roderick MacKinnon share chemistry prize

Critics say moves to invigorate research undermined by axing of permanent posts

NSF awards $30 million for interdisciplinary work on evolution, development, and reproduction

Half-million dollar prizes awarded for creativity in a wide range of disciplines

Lauterbur and Mansfield lauded for contribution to imaging technique

The 420 print and web readers who responded to our survey about national origins were born in 67 different countries and currently reside in 45 countries. A remarkable 36% of respondents presently work in a place other than their native homeland, and 59% have lived in more than one country for three or more months. "I was born in England, live in Belgium, work in Germany!" says one reader. The countries with the largest percentages of non-native scientists moving in are the United States, Can

Courtesy of University of California, San Francisco The science of yeast genetics was still in its infancy some 30 years ago, and one of its thorniest problems wouldn't go away: How do diploid yeast cells transform themselves into haploid cells, so that they can mate and reproduce through meiosis? A young University of Oregon researcher named Ira Herskowitz proposed that a cassette of DNA dropped out, only to be replaced by a copy of another cassette of DNA, and that this event altered the ve

Illustration: Brian Bookwalter From the massive Blue whale to the tiniest plant viroids, size extremes have long fascinated mankind. This is not a trivial pursuit, for size can yield important insights into the physical constraints that govern an organism's evolution, as well as the particular mechanisms that impose a limit at either end of the scale. Some size limits apply broadly to entire classes such as mammals, while others apply more narrowly to a single species because of its particula

The Spice Ain't Always So Nice Anne Macnamara Capsaicin, the fiery alkaloid of chili pepper fame, sets tongue and skin afire, a sensation that some find irresistible. But, researchers recently associated it and its chemical cousins with chest pain.1 Isolated more than a century ago, capsaicin's structure was revealed in 1919, and its target, the vanilloid receptor 1 (VR1), was cloned in 1997. "VR1 functions as a molecular integrator of painful chemical and physical stimuli, including heat an

Many years ago, after finishing my residency, I decided to become a researcher. Around the same time, I went home to India for a visit. In those days, one of the standard accoutrements found in the living room of a Tamil Brahmin home was a wooden swing. My grandfather was still alive then and would occupy the swing each night. I remember once sitting by his side during this postprandial ritual. We sat swinging peaceably, no doubt immersed in our own thoughts, when he turned and asked, in his

International team hopes to set standard for easily accessible protein data