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Senate passes revived legislation offering permanent residence in exchange for information.

Spat over rights to one technique settled, but many more remain.

WHO moves to clarify conflicting evidence on SARS causative agent

Despite low turnout, ideals and impassioned discussion dominate AIBS meeting.

MPs accuse UK's Medical Research Council of poor financial management.

Disagreement over court ruling's significance for basic science patents.

An informal infectious disease reporting system shows the value of broad access.

Courtesy of California Department of Health Services Faster than an injection, more reinforcing than crack cocaine: Smoking a cigarette speeds nicotine to the brain faster than any other delivery method, giving smokers precise control over their exact nicotine dose with each puff they take. It turns out that those two attributes--speed and control--greatly enhance nicotine's addictive effect on the brain. "It's not just the drug, but how you take it," says Timothy Baker, associate director, U

Quitting the habit means fighting nicotine addiction. "It's not like drinking, where you have a huge social drinking population of nonaddicted people. People who smoke regularly tend to be addicted," says Timothy Baker, associate director, University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention. With nearly half the US adult population lighting up in 2000, public-health researchers are hard-pressed to figure out what helps--and what doesn't--in the fight against nicotine addictio

Courtesy of Vector Tobacco  READY, SET, STOP: Quest's 'step down' low- and no-nicotine cigarettes. The major toxins in cigarettes, perhaps surprisingly, don't come from the chemicals that manufacturers add. "The carcinogens mostly come from the burning of tobacco," says Kenneth Warner, director, University of Michigan Tobacco Research Network. Just burning tobacco also produces carbon monoxide, a big contributor to heart disease. So, tobacco companies are turning to science to make ciga

Does the United States face a shortage of scientists and engineers? Are drooping science enrollments undermining America's strength? You might conclude so from the anxious warnings that perennially occupy a prominent place in scientific establishment pronouncements. An American Scientist editorial, in its July-August 2001 issue, asserts, "We are not training enough American scientists and engineers to retain our prosperity ...." Former NASA head Dan Goldin wrote in the September 2001 Atlantic

 Click for larger version (22K) We surveyed 261 readers to find out if they regularly check citations to the papers they have written and whether they think that citations are important. More than 70% of respondents check citations to their papers in ISI's Science Citation Index or Web of Science, with 40% checking more than once per year, and over 20% checking more than once per quarter. The average interval between checks is about nine months. Over 65% of respondents consider it import