By Alison McCook A Transforming Field There is no “typical” biologist. Meet two scientists who don’t fit into the usual mold—they changed genders in the middle of their careers. Here’s how they embrace their differences. Left: © Plush Studios/Bill Reitzel right: © Image Source For a few months in 2001 and the beginning of 2002, there was a jar on Julia Serano’s lab bench at the University of

UMass leader steps downJack Wilson is expected to announce today that linkurl:he will retire as president of the University of Massachusetts;http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2010/03/01/umass_president_jack_wilson_to_step_down_in_2011/ in 2011. Over his nearly 8 year tenure, Wilson helped unify the five-campus system, and encouraged research collaboration between faculty at different schools. According to the Boston Globe, Wilson, a physicist by training, plans to begin "speak

By Alison McCook A rare chance Hannah’s swollen belly at 3 weeks Courtesy of Carrie Ostrea Over the course of 5 days last summer, an army of researchers and clinicians examined, poked, and prodded 1-year-old Hannah Ostrea at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Experts in neurology, rehabilitation medicine, physical therapy, speech pathology, and anesthesiology gave the little girl an EEG, a test of her heart’s electrical activity

On Ontario If you’re not as excited as I am about life science in this region, you will be. By Alison McCook Confession: I’m in love…with a Province. The affair began during my undergraduate career at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. Many McGill students came to the English language university from the nearest English-speaking Province: Ontario. They were all bright, interesting, and diverse–

A new play explores the inner workings of the mind through the life of an autistic academic

Scientists have met one of the long-standing challenges of regenerative medicine: For the first time, they have succeeded in coaxing an injured spinal cord to regenerate sensory axons in rats that reinnervate the specific place they would need to reach in order to regain function. Human vertebral columnImage: Gray's Anatomy, via Wikipedia However, the paper, published online in Nature Neuroscience, showed that the regenerated axons, which also formed synapses, showed little to no activity. "

A U.S. Senate panel has okayed President Barack Obama's request for next year's funding for the National Institutes of Health -- a $442 million boost, for a total of $30.8 billion. According to linkurl:a statement;http://appropriations.senate.gov/News/2009_07_28_Summary_of_FY_2010_Labor_HHS_Appropriations.pdf?CFID=7971628&CFTOKEN=44101372 released by the Senate, lawmakers decided not to award the agency a huge amount of funding because of the recent stimulus package, which passed $10 bi

A journal editor has linkurl:retracted;http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/scd.2009.0063 a linkurl:paper published this month;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19583494?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum that showed sperm could be made from human embryonic stem cells, claiming the authors plagiarized portions of the paper. According to linkurl:ScienceInsider,;http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/

You put your name into Google, and the first entry is about a transgression from 20 years ago, the penalty for which only lasted three years. Now you can't get a job.

Researchers are slowly establishing a connection between an extremely rare genetic disease and HIV -- and homing in on a safe, non-prescription compound that could treat both. Recently, linkurl:James Hildreth;http://www.mmc.edu/faculty/som-jhildreth.html at the Meharry Medical College School of Medicine in Nashville, Tenn., and his colleagues found that cells affected by Niemann-Pick Type C (NPC), which disrupts cholesterol trafficking, were unable to release HIV, suggesting these cells would

By Alison McCook Is Murray hypoallergenic? Murray the cat Courtesy of Eve Yohalem It was pouring rain the night that Eve Yohalem went to pick up her $6,000 kitten at the airport. She and her husband had been told to wait at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City, where the cat would be arriving on a cross-country flight from Los Angeles. Finally, late that Friday night in October 2007, a cat carrier came into sight. Inside was the ti

Due to the tough times, the EU's largest biomedical research charity, the Wellcome Trust, has lost £2 billion in assets, and is therefore cutting its funding for grants by £30 million. Wellcome Trust's Gibbs BuildingIn linkurl:a statement,;http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/2009/News/WTX053144.htm the charity announced: "Over the next financial year we will commit around £590 million to support biomedical research in the UK and internationally, as compared to £620 million in 200