The international picture How much should researchers pay clinical trial subjects? By Alla Katsnelson Related Articles Paying for Patients How do trials pay?: Play the game Different countries have different standards for paying clinical trial participants. In some places, says National institutes of Health's Christine Grady, a bag of rice or a bag of soap are considered more appropriate than cash. Institutional Review Boards (IRB s) say they try to transl

var FO = { movie:"http://www.the-scientist.com/supplementary/flash/54202/54202.swf", width:"500", height:"866", majorversion:"8", build:"0", xi:"true"}; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); How do trials pay? DIRECTIONS: Drag the game pieces to their corresponding holes, release the mouse button and then click on the piece a second time to find out how the trials pay.Click on the game below to begin Please download the Adobe Flash Player to view this content:

Additional safety studies for Boston's planned Biosafety Level 4 lab, demanded by the Massachusetts Supreme Court last year, will further delay the opening of the facility, according to court documents filed by the NIH this week. In November, 2007, an outside scientific panel linkurl:concluded;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53944/ that the NIH had flubbed the safety evaluations for the lab, and in December, the Massachusetts Supreme Court linkurl:ruled;http://www.the-scientist.com/bl

Researchers linkurl:report;http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/319/5863/627 that they have overcome one of the major roadblocks to using small interfering RNA (siRNA) therapeutically - they have developed a new method to linkurl:deliver siRNA;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/53307/ to silence genes in specific cells in vivo, according to this week's Science. "I'm really actually quite excited about the paper," said linkurl:John Rossi,;http://www.coh.org/Researchers/RossiJ

The word "chameleon" is almost synonymous with camouflage. But the chameleon's famed ability to change colors may be more about sticking out than blending in: A new linkurl:study;http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0060025 in PLoS Biology suggests color change is a way for the lizards to send each other signals related to mating - but to do so quickly, so as not to attract predators. linkurl:Devi Stuart-Fox;http://www.lexagrutter.com/Devi_pro

You may remember the hubbub about four years ago, when it emerged that antidepressants can cause suicidal thoughts in kids. After investigating the issue, the FDA ordered companies to place a "black box" warning noting suicidality as a potential side effect of the medication. But antidepressants aren't the only drugs that can cause psychiatric problems. The New York Times linkurl:reported;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/washington/24fda.html?ref=health&pagewanted=print yesterday (January 2

A researcher lost his legal battle with Washington University in St. Louis over the ownership of thousands of cancer tissue samples he had collected while working there. The US Supreme Court this week let stand lower court rulings that awarded ownership of the samples to the university, the Chronicle of Higher Education linkurl:reports.;http://chronicle.com/news/article/3785/university-owns-disputed-tissue-samples-supreme-court-rules linkurl:William Catalona,;http://www.the-scientist.com/artic

When my editor forwarded me a press release yesterday promoting a linkurl:series of articles;http://www.liebertonline.com/toc/hum/0/0 in January's issue of Human Gene Therapy on informed consent, he mentioned that the authors of those pieces were the key players in the death of an 18-year-old in a 1999 gene therapy trial that had called informed consent into question. The issue's editorial was written by James Wilson, the journal's editor-in-chief, and one of the articles was written by Univers

UK scientists are objecting to a new law that would require researchers wishing to work on embryonic stem cells to obtain consent from the cells' donors. Yesterday (January 21), 29 researchers, including three Nobel laureates, published a linkurl:letter;http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article3221046.ece in the Times arguing that while such consent should be required in the future, obtaining it retroactively for cell lines and disease-specific tissue banks already inexistence w

Two government agencies continue to bicker over how to protect US borders from agroterrorism and invasive species, which critics -- including a major congressional oversight committee -- say has left the country ill-equipped to handle either crisis. In 2003, antiterrorist legislation transferred control of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which monitors the borders for agricultural pests and conducts much of the country's research relating to linkurl:agroterrorism,;http:/

Research on bioterrorist agents at Texas A&M University is linkurl:still suspended;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53600/ due to breaches in biosafety practices, although the university said last year it expected to be cleared to continue such work by the end of 2007. "The program continues to be on hold," Sherylon Carroll of the university's press office told The Scientist. "We are waiting for feedback from the Centers for Disease Control." The CDC suspended the university's bioterro

Shielding from the Storm Courtesy of Russ Hopcroft Scientists search for genes that help calcifying organisms weather the effects of climate change. By Alla Katsnelson The pteropod Limacina helicina, sometimes referred to as a sea butterfly, has a translucent shell and a pair of swimming wings called parapodia, and is plentiful in polar seas. Climate change focus Climate change and the biosphere A sensitive reaction Modeling with model organisms Compromis