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UK government backing for open-access publishing while proponents move to promote it more widely

Cash gifts from grantees prompt congressional investigation of NIH officials

Courtesy of Eric D. Laywell SPHERES OF PROMISE These neurospheres, clusters of cells in culture derived from the CNS of mice, are stained with antibodies against a neuronal protein (red), and a astrocyte protein (green). They have a nuclear counterstain (blue). The brain and spinal cord were once considered mitotic dead ends, a division of neurons dwindling with toddlerhood, with memory and learning the consequence of synaptic plasticity, not new neurons. But the discovery of neural stem

In his novel, Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, Spike Milligan describes waiting for the train to take him to his first military posting during WWII. His commanding officer hands him a picture of Hitler labeled: This is your enemy. "I searched every compartment," writes Milligan, "but he wasn't on the train." In a way, we are still searching for the Führer. Hitler is the archetypal enemy, whose badness virtually all can agree on, which is why his name often crops up in discussions

Click for larger version (14K) We surveyed our readers to find out if they attend scientific meetings and why they do. Of the 282 who responded, 81% travel to one or more scientific meetings every year. An inveterate 13% go to more than three meetings per year. Readers ranked the importance of various reasons for attending conferences on a 1-to-5 scale, with 5 considered very important. Three motivations stand out: Attending formal lectures and sessions (4.4), meeting informally with collea

Foundations | Evil Science Click for larger version (39K) Few events signify science gone awry more than the Tuskegee experiments. Started in 1932 to study the effects of untreated syphilis in 399 black men, the scientific rationale for the work became inconsequential by the late 1930s, when it was proven that the symptoms could be treated with heavy-metal therapy. Yet bureaucratic inertia compelled its continuation. In 1943, the morally questionable descended to the intentionally harmful

Legal stalemate keeps small window of opportunity open in the United States

Modest increases in 2004 appropriations for NIH fall short of science groups' goals

US congressman joins push to promote public access to publicly funded research

Chris McManus wins the "Science Booker" for his exploration of an uneven universe

US dispute, but new EU measures could complicate matters further

Canadian researchers tire of waiting for stem cell legislation, plan to proceed with embryo research