Photo: Hal Cohen Upon meeting David Karp, fruit detective, his mild-mannered appearance initially brings to mind the image of an accountant, not a private eye; then he reveals the weapon he's been concealing. Fortunately, the fruit knife that ubiquitously occupies his holster is there to provide a readily available means to carve up fruit, not innocent streetwalkers. As Karp starts to slice up a few recently purchased seckles, he laments how the pears' dwarfish appearance has hindered their p

Photo: Courtesy of Julia Friedman Gallery, Chicago  ART CREATING LIFE: Eduardo Kac's Genesis project enables viewers to create bacteria mutations. A stroll through an art museum can mirror a walk outdoors, as nature has inspired artists since people first used charcoal to draw on cave walls. Today, ambitious artists and accessible technologies have modernized the marriage of biology and art into bioart, coupling imagination and science to create animate, often interactive, works that put

Image: Anne MacNamara "The history of modern science might be written without going outside the names of the Nobels." --Cosmopolitan, 19061 The Nobel Prize earned universal prestige a mere five years after its inception. With the 102nd Nobel awards this month, the Nobel Foundation continues to lavish acclaim among a thin upper crust of innovators in the life sciences. But the tradition of the science community's grumbling at the Foundation for its omissions will no doubt proceed unabated i

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't look up once in a while you'll miss it." This worn standard of high school yearbooks holds as true for scientists as for the hero of the 1980s movie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The glut of journals and papers can turn a small lapse of attention into a permanent state of catch-up for researchers who try to stay abreast of the latest findings in their fields. "Reading tends to fall by the wayside when people get consumed by their own work," says Kathy Lee, pos

Researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) have recently made a breakthrough linking the effects of genes to cognition and certain emotions, and several funding opportunities are available that may give rise to the next milestone in cognitive neuroscience. FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES IN COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE Grass Foundation Subject: Neuroscience fellowship for young investigators Deadline: December 15, 2002 Contact: Steven Zottoli (grassfdn@aol.com) (781) 843-0219 Columbia

Illustration: Erica P. Johnson After years of methodically lumbering along with antisense and gene knockout technologies, gene therapy has been given fresh legs. Techniques such as RNA interference (RNAi)--small nuclear RNAs to mask aberrant splice sites--and transposon technologies that extend the lives of transgenes are offering more applications than previously thought possible. A trio of recent papers highlights these approaches to gene therapy. RNAi is being used to boost gene therapy ef

Researchers in targeted therapies aim for specificity and safety. Knowing the specific genetic defects connected to cancer may help scientists develop customized drugs to maximize therapeutic efficacy. In 2001, the development of targeted therapies got a boost with the Food and Drug Administration's approval of Gleevec, a drug developed by Novartis to treat chronic myelogenous leukemia, and the completion of Phase II clinical trials of Mylotarg, which applies antibody-targeted chemotherapy to

Frontlines Image: Erica P. Johnson Size (in some cases) does matter For those who dismiss the stereotype of males behaving more aggressively than women as being 'all in your head,' it might be time to eat crow. Magnetic resonance imaging scans have provided neurological evidence that men are more hot-tempered than women (R.C. Gur, "Sex difference in temporo-limbic and frontal brain volumes of healthy adults," Journal of the Cerebral Cortex, 12:998, September 2002). Scans of the temporo-limb

Image: Erica P. Johnson Advances in gadgetry make a scientist's job easy. Finding the scientists who can wield the new instruments and assays poses a challenge. Companies now demand that scientists be veritable Swiss army knives of capability, posessing lab skills, scientific knowledge, and computer savvy. But employers and candidates sometimes end up building bridges from opposite shores, only to find they don't connect in the middle. "Hiring managers are often ludicrous about what they want

In the postgenomics era, many scientists have shifted focus from determining DNA sequence to unraveling gene function. With the possibility of tailoring drugs to individuals, pharmacogenomics holds the promise of turning the prescription of drugs into a more exact science. By analyzing patients' genetic profiles and their reactions to medication, the guesswork of trial-and-error prescriptions can be eliminated, providing for greater efficacy and safety. "Using molecular guidance and genetic m

Frontlines Image: Anna Powers Social thinking Planning a future, knowing your limitations, following moral rules--these and other uniquely human capacities will be the focus of a research project at California Institute of Technology funded by a million dollar grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Associate Professor of philosophy Steven Quartz will lead an interdisciplinary team of social scientists and neurobiologists who will use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMR

Image: Erica P. Johnson When he landed in Chicago after dark for an interview with a large pharmaceutical company, Robert "Duffy" Dufresne received the sobering news that his luggage had been lost. In anticipation of such a mishap, Dufresne had packed a gray suit in his carry-on bag, but he says he overlooked a single detail. "When I arrived, the only shoes I had were the ones I was wearing: my blue suede tennis sneakers." With no shoe stores open at the late hour (let alone any accustomed to