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Experts convene at the National Academy of Sciences to discuss restrictions on data access.

Improved data format debuts but universal microarray repositories still on the horizon.

Martin Kamen dies aged 89.

Until last week, Swedish biotech did not have an industrial body. Now SwedenBIO is its voice.

NIH genome priorities misplaced, say miffed monkey researchers.

With a population of just 143,000, the city of Dundee may not seem the kind of glitzy destination that competes with knowledge centers such as San Francisco and Boston: Golf and mountain climbing qualify as top entertainments, and it takes less time to fly from New York to London than to drive there from Dundee. If fresh air fails to lure prospective lecturers to Dundee University's life science division, the median annual salary of researchers in the region--$37,757 (US)--probably won't start

Women still earn slightly less than men do in the life sciences, though the difference narrows as both advance in their fields, according to a salary survey conducted by Abbott, Langer & Associates and sponsored by The Scientist and the American Institute of Biological Sciences. Midcareer female scientists in the United States, who have worked for five to nine years since obtaining their PhDs, earn a median income of $55,000 (US), roughly 92% of the $60,000 their male colleagues earn. Wom

Richard Tapia often tells disadvantaged children about his own humble upbringing in the barrios of Los Angeles. Then he tells them that he earns six figures as a mathematician. "People are shocked when they find out how much money I make," says Tapia, now Noah Harding Professor in the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics and director of the Center for Excellence and Equity in Education at Rice University. "[Counselors] told me I should be a trash worker or a mechanic, and not b

Image: Marlene J. Viola Look for big changes in the stock options that lure many scientists out of academia and into the biotechnology industry, life sciences compensation analysts say. The stock market decline has stripped options of their value, just as regulators have begun to eye them suspiciously. Seemingly obscure accounting issues are critical to scientists in biotech firms, who may have gambled half their pay package on options or on rights to buy shares in a company at a set price. "

With ImClone Systems' chief executive Sam Waksal under indictment for insider trading and fraud, the black cloud over corporate business ethics that first rose over Enron now hovers above the biotech industry. While Waksal may be an outlier, the problems at ImClone have prompted the industry to once again examine ethical standards. Perhaps more than any other industry, biotech is experienced in dealing with ethical issues, with managers constantly embroiled in hot-button debates over stem cell

Image: Courtesy of Barry R. Lentz  LOVING WATER AND OIL: The illustration shows a full length phosphatidylserine molecule of the sort that would occur in a platelet membrane. The molecule has a water-loving "head" end (left end with several red balls in the figure) and an oil-loving "tail" end that holds it in the membrane. The researchers used a molecule with the tail end shortened to about a third of its physiological length so that the whole molecule remains in solution instead of formi

Photo: Courtesy of Advanced Cell Technology In these days of rampant science phobia, a researcher associated with human cloning risks being linked to the few renegade scientists claiming to already have done the deed. Mike West's quest as president and CEO of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in Worcester, Mass., is not to clone dinosaurs or replace children, but to customize cells to rebuild degenerating or injured human tissue. The company's late 2001 announcement1 that it had created a human