The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has decided to pay article processing charges if HHMI-funded scientists choose to publish in open access journals from BioMed Central (BMC). Articles published in BMC journals will be immediately free on the Web. The current BMC linkurl:article-processing charge;http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/apcfaq#howmuch ranges from $500 to $2400, depending on the journal. These charges will not come out of an HHMI investigator's budget, so will therefore be in a

A 12-member NIH panel is linkurl:disagreeing;http://www.cspinet.org/integrity/watch/200708131.html#4 with a scientific consensus statement published this month about the health hazards of linkurl:bisphenol;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/15654/ A, a common component of plastics. In the statement, in Reproductive Toxicology, 38 scientists warn that the product may cause serious human reproductive disorders. As linkurl:we reported;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/52888/ in F

Richard Murphy, former head of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, will assume the role of interim president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the agency announced yesterday. Murphy will take over for Lori Hoffman, who served as acting present since the spring, when linkurl:Zach Hall;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/24357/ resigned from CIRM's top position. "We are grateful that Dr. Murphy has agreed to assume this responsibility for a period up t

One of our notebooks in the August issue takes a linkurl:close look at press releases;http://www.the-scientist.com/2007/8/1/18/1/ about research, and why some press offices choose to cover seemingly obvious research. We only mentioned one university-based press office, but it's not just Ohio State University that "sells the self-evident," as a press release that landed in my inbox last week demonstrates. "Mizzou study shows that possessing a fake ID results in more drinking by u

This Sunday's New York Times devoted an entire article to Nancy Hopkins, a professor of molecular biology at MIT and member of the National Academy of Sciences. She is an accomplished researcher, who spent many Saturday nights working, and never building up much of a social life. "That's what was required for women of my generation to be taken seriously, " said Hopkins, 64, who has linkurl:written about women in science;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/15844/ on our p

Union of Concerned Scientists online visitors pick their favorite cartoon to headline a 2008 calendar

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are likely taking a collective sigh of relief. This just in from The Scientist intern Kelly Chi: Today (July 3) representatives from the National Jewish Medical Research Center and the CDC revealed that Andrew Speaker, a patient who sparked international concern after traveling with a highly-resistant form of TB, has multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB), not extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB). This means that he can be treated with a

South Korean researcher Woo-suk Hwang has apparently picked up the pieces of his life since he admitted to fabricating key findings in human embryonic stem cell research. According to the Associated Press, he has linkurl:opened a private lab;http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/06/22/asia/AS-FEA-GEN-SKorea-Disgraced-Scientist.php outside of Seoul, and taken 30 researchers with him. They are now extracting stem cells from cloned animal embryos, such as pigs and cows. "If we had been working

Yesterday (June 21), Science editor-in-chief Donald Kennedy announced he was retiring from the journal, after seven years at the helm. AAAS president David Baltimore is leading a search committee for a new candidate. Kennedy has steered Science through some tricky waters, to say the least. The journal published, then retracted, one of Woo-Suk Hwang's linkurl:now-infamous;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/36969/ papers on human embryonic stem cell research. In 2002, the journal lin

Woo-Suk Hwang, the South Korean scientist who admitted to faking his results on embryonic stem cells, is exploring whether to join an international consortium, according to Korean linkurl:news;http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2007/06/129_4446.html reports. According to multiple unnamed sources, Hwang is in Thailand where he is debating whether to work with foreign biotechnology companies, including one "prominent" US company. Once a national hero, Hwang left his post at Seoul National

The band The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets is inviting marine biologists to be in their new music video for a song about -- yes, of course, marine biology. You can catch the linkurl:song;http://www.thickets.net/toren/darkestofthehillsidethickets.mp3 here, a ditty they call "A Marine Biologist" -- "a fun little number about bathyscaphes, benthic trawlers, giant squid, etc, " according to the band. The band's plan is to film marine biologists at work, adding text at the bottom of the screen d

Yesterday afternoon, the front stoop on every house on my block was tagged by a bright neon piece of paper tucked into the railings. Pulling out mine, I was greeted with the message "What have your STEM CELLS done for you lately?" That was just the beginning. "Why not have your own ADULT STEM CELLS work to enhance your health?" The product is "a concentrated natural aquabotanical extract that 'wakes up' our body's stem cells and puts them to work!" For just