D.F. Dowd When terrorists unleashed a new kind of fear in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, few Americans may have guessed their attacks would also have significant repercussions for scientists and scientific research. Frustration over visa delays, discouragement over visa denials, and fears that US students, researchers, and employers might now be reluctant to work with them have led some foreign scholars to look elsewhere to advance their careers. As a result, concerns are growing that ne

M.C. Escher's Tower of Babel ©2003 Cordon Art, Baarn, Holland Shortly before Christmas 2002, Xuguang Jiang took a break from his doctoral program at Iowa University and returned to his Beijing home with two goals: to see the family he missed so much, and renew his student visa. As of late January, the 27-year-old engineering student was still waiting for US embassy officials to finish the extensive background checks now required for some foreigners studying in America. Last he heard, it

Nearly three years ago, the federal government gave Nancy Connell the green light to investigate how people respond to infection by Bacillus anthracis, the bacterial agent that causes anthrax. With $3 million (US) from the Department of Defense, Connell hoped to learn how to detect the bacteria within hours of infection. But thanks to the hurdles put in her path, it took until this past July for Connell to get her hands on the bacterial strain for her study. Today, her team at the Center for B

On most days, Francis S. Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, coordinates with genome centers around the world and evaluates ethical, legal, and social implications of the project that made him famous. But Collins reserves this day in late July for the passion that brought him to the institute in the first place: research to identify which of the human body's 35,000 genes causes Type 2 diabetes. Assembled around a table in the vaccine center of the National Institut