Researchers can save time and reduce the number of rats sacrificed for toxicity studies by using cell lines, according to a National Toxicology Program official. One human and one mouse cell line tested in Europe show high correlations between lethality in the cell lines and in animals, explains William Stokes, director of the NTP Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods. That center recently released the "Report of the International Workshop on In Vitro Methods

See also, "Making Every Nanoliter Count," Microfluidics, the technology of handling liquids on an extremely small scale, promises to enter the commercial marketplace in a big way during the next three years. This so-called lab-on-a-chip technology may offer enormous cost advantages in scientific processes ranging from artificial insemination in cattle to lab analyses in hospitals. Scientists expect it to increase the efficiency of biological tests and analyses by requiring far smaller amounts o

While estrogen replacement therapy shows promise in helping post-menopausal women preserve important cognitive abilities such as memory, its effectiveness is still being questioned. In studies at the National Institutes of Health and at the University of California, Los Angeles, researchers have demonstrated that in some women, this hormone alters brain blood flow and improves performance on certain mental tests. But other studies are not as definitive, suggesting that improved cognitive abiliti

The amygdala, an almond-sized and -shaped brain structure, has long been linked with a person's mental and emotional state. But thanks to scientific advances, researchers have recently grasped how important this 1-inch-long structure really is. Associated with a range of mental conditions from normalcy to depression to even autism, the amygdala has become the focal point of numerous research projects. Derived from the Greek for almond, the amygdala sits in the brain's medial temporal lobe, a fe

After Tropical Storm Allison struck Houston last month, researcher Jocelyne Bachevalier wasn't thinking about science when she learned that her 47 monkeys had died at the University of Texas Health Science Center. "We got very attached to these animals, because we work every single day with them," says Bachevalier, a professor of neurobiology and anatomy. "They've become our pets .... They react to their names, It's very painful." Bachevalier had used the monkeys in her research on the amygdala,

Chills, fever, headache, muscle pain, and appetite loss are classic flu symptoms; they are also markers of the biological warfare agents tularemia, Staphylococcus enterotoxin B, and Q-fever. At the moment, the diagnostic methods that would distinguish, within a timely manner, the cause of these symptoms do not exist. But researchers are working towards that end, as well as trying to find the appropriate treatments. Advanced diagnostic methods, ranging from genetic analyses to breath analysis, a

Investigation into the brains of aged rhesus monkeys show damage in the white matter (the myelin sheath covering the axons), while the gray matter (the cell nuclei and dendrites in areas such as the frontal cortex and hippocampus)saa remain intact, according to research presented by Douglas Rosene, associate professor in the anatomy and neurobiology at Boston University at the Successful Aging Conference on June 1-4 in Madison, Wis. The greater the degree of damage Rosene found, the poorer the a

Male rhesus monkeys with destroyed amygdala will abandon their normally slow and cautious familiarization process and immediately approach other monkeys with whom they are unfamiliar, according to David Amaral, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the University of California, Davis. His study on these animals is slated to appear in an upcoming issue of Behavioral Neuroscience. The study involved six lesioned monkeys, each meeting for many 20-minute sessions with a "stranger" monkey. The

To improve the application of basic research to clinical treatment, the National Institute of Mental Health has established a $2.75 million translational research program. The program evolved in response to NIMH concerns that findings in basic research were not being put into practice, explains Bruce Cuthbert, chief of the Adult Psychopathology and Prevention Research Program at NIMH. An example of such translational research, Cuthbert says, would be to apply basic findings in motivational psych

Editor's Note: This is the second installment of a four-part series on regional hot spots for life sciences employment. Additional installments will appear in the July 9 and October 29 issues. San Francisco Bay Area boosters like to claim the title "Birthplace of Biotech" as their own. After all, the initial developments in recombinant DNA research took place through a collaboration by the labs of Herbert W. Boyer at University of California at San Francisco and Stanley Cohen at Stanford Univers

The Federal government's Interagency Task Force on Microbial Resistance has issued an 84-item plan to combat the growing public health problem presented by microbes' increasing ability to shrug off antibiotics. This recently released first part of the plan is aimed at domestic concerns, including the use of antibiotics and other drugs in agriculture (H. Black, "Agricultural antibiotics scrutinized," The Scientist, 14[12]:1, June 12, 2000). The Food and Drug Administration is proposing to withdra

The Scientist 15[5]:18, Mar. 5, 2001 NEWS News Notes D2 Receptors Fight Addiction By Harvey Black Mice, which have been experimentally addicted to alcohol show a decrease in alcohol consumption when the population of D2 receptors in their brains is increased, Nora D. Volkow, associate director of Brookhaven National Laboratory reported at a symposium on addiction and the brain. In imaging studies, Volkow found that cocaine addicts had lower numbers of these receptors fo