Articles by Brendan Maher

Credit: © Andy Walker / Photo Researchers, Inc." /> Credit: © Andy Walker / Photo Researchers, Inc. The paper: J. Johnson et al., "Oocyte generation in adult mammalian ovaries by putative germ cells in bone marrow and peripheral blood," Cell, 122:303-15, 2005. (Cited in 81 papers) The finding: Jonathan Tilly, director of the Vincent center for reproductive biology at Massachusetts Gene

I sent a note to our editorial board member, Steve Block, to congratulate him on his linkurl:election into the National Academies of Science;http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=05012007 this week. He got back to me mentioning that the honor was juxtaposed with grief over the recent death of "our beloved lab espresso machine." Just as I was thinking, "What an odd name for a Labrador!" I remembered the linkurl:stupendous coffee maker;http://www.stanf

Tilo Kunath, a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, found himself chatting with an older gentleman next to him. That had the potential to be sticky: Kunath works with embryonic and extraembryonic stem cell lines, and his work sometimes requires the destruction of human embryos. His traveling companion wasn't exactly quiet about his more socially conservative views.

Slideshow: Stem cells for laughs Presenting last at the end of a five day conference can be a drag. Follow some slides from a talk at a recent Keystone meeting on reproduction to see how Tilo Kunath keeps the audience?s interest up. var FO = { movie:"http://images.the-scientist.com/supplementary/flash/53155/funnies.swf", width:"552", height:"600", majorversion:"8", build:"0", xi:"true"}; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Please download the Adobe Flash Player to view this con

Call it a row, a kerfluffle, a spat, or what have you. A linkurl:paper in __PNAS__;http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0700266104v1 has whipped up some convoluted discussion in science and non-science blogs. Here's the basic run down: 1. A group publishes an linkurl:explanation;http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0700266104v1 for the stepwise evolution of the flagellum, an interesting scientific question, which linkurl:intelligent designers (IDers);http://www.the-scientist.com/2007/4

Howard Hughes Medical Institute is opening a new competition for US investigators. It plans to fund as many as 50 new researchers by Spring 2008 representing an investment of $600 million. Unlike the traditional HHMI investigator programs which have relied on nominations from the investigator's institution these are open to direct application (similar to a plan they announced in a smaller scale for physician scientists last November). The grants are meant for early career investigators (betwe

A nice linkurl:AP story;http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/H/HATFIELD_MCCOY_SECRET?SITE=PASTR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT talks about the hypothesis that much of the fuel for the famed Hatfield-McCoy feud might be attributed to Von Hippel-Lindau disease, a rare genetic disorder that predisposes those affected to highly-vascularized tumors. The reasoning is that adrenal tumors might be responsible for many of the McCoys' notorious tempers. There are some great quotes from actual family memb

How It Works: Electronic Multichannel MicropipettorMultichannel micropipettors have drastically increased the rate at which samples can be prepared for modern high throughput assays. By automating the process with a fine-tuned digital motors and on-board software to conduct various pipetting tasks (forward, reverse, and repetitive pipetting, stepping, mixing, sequential aspiration, and programmable combinations of steps) electronic multichannel pipettors, such as the Finnpipette Novus

The Death of Faith? Darwin's theory was part of a larger cultural shift towards naturalistic philosophy. Why is he still the target of so many attacks?By Brendan Maher ARTICLE EXTRASSPRING BOOKSStem Cells on ShelvesAn Awkward SymbiosisHigh in the TreesBloody IsleThe Enchantment of EnhancementBooks about BodiesNew Lab Man

The chimera marmoset story reported linkurl:here;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/home/53033/ and elsewhere is fascinating; I was stunned by the possibility, not heavily noted in a lot of press, that male cells might have made it into the germline of a female - that is XY cells from a male might have developed into eggs in his female twin sister resulting in a live birth. Germline transmission of one's brothers cells is interesting enough, but the idea of XY eggs is particularly interesting --

Ian Wilmut talks about his disappointment in the failure to move forward on human stem cell research involving cloned embryos in today's Hartford Courant. linkurl:Read it here;http://www.courant.com/news/health/hc-ctdolly0328.artmar28,0,4944106.story?coll=hc-headlines-health Obviously the challenges are many, but to blame his failure to receive a license for cloning human embryos on getting behind in the paperwork does seem a bit odd. Wilmut had written for us when he was first applying said

A press release from linkurl:Thomson Scientific;http://thomsonscientific.com lists 17 of the hottest researchers from 2005-2006 based on the number of Hot Papers published in that time. Hot Papers, as our readers know are papers, generally on the order of two years old, that have been cited much more than papers of a similar date and age (50 to 100 times as often according to Thomson). Immunologist Shizuo Akira of Osaka University tops the list with 7 publications in the specified time frame.

How It Works: Surface Plasmon ResonanceMany functional proteomic technologies require time-consuming labeling steps and still produce little more than yes or no answers as to whether proteins interact. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) allows for label-free detection in real time and provides rich information about the interaction kinetics. Under total internal reflection conditions, light shining at a specific angle at a thin film of gold between two media with different refractiv

We've linkurl:written in the past;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/24535/ about Randy Jirtle's agouti mice, which are a neat animal model for epigenetic change. Feed adult mothers a methyl-rich or genistein-rich diet, and DNA methylation lowers expression of the agouti gene in their offspring, shifting their coat color away from the classic agouti yellow and also protecting from obesity, which is associated with normal expression of the gene. Jirtle and colleagues have a new study

With Darwin day celebrations going on around the world, people are looking back on a man that changed science as part of a larger cultural revolution away from using theology to explain natural phenomenon and toward a more secular thinking. One wonders, however, where the next such revolution might take place. From where will the next groundbreaking scientific discovery that truly challenges the tenets of our social understanding come from? I'd offer -- linkurl:and I know I'm not the first;htt