FEATUREPodcasts   Illustrations by John MacNeill For some, science podcasts are time-savers that open their minds to new fields. For others, they're just another fad. What's the future? BY ISHANI GANGULISeventy-three-year-old Franklin Leach, professor emeritus of biochemistry and molecular biology at Oklahoma State University, was nearing the last leg of his daily neighborhood walk when he first heard that private medical in

FEATUREPodcast 8 Reasons to Tune InBY ISHANI GANGULIILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN MACNEILLThough the Top 25 podcast lists are still dominated by the likes of MTV and Dave Chappelle, science podcasts are coming into their own as journals, magazines, and radio shows throw their contributions into the mix. Here are eight that are worth checking out, and what our respondents think of them. For a more comprehensive listing of s

FEATUREPodcast   A science podcaster bares allBY ISHANI GANGULIILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN MACNEILLChris Smith isn't afraid to shed a little clothing in the name of science. A clinician and Cambridge virology lecturer by day, he moonlights as a popular radio personality turned podcaster: the original Naked Scientist and the voice behind the Nature podcast.It all began at a Cambridge science festival in early 1999, whe

FEATUREPodcast   Podcasts go to schoolBY ISHANI GANGULIILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN MACNEILLJustin Gallivan was starting off the fall 2005 semester with his biochemistry course at Emory University in Atlanta when he noticed the front row of desks was covered with tape recorders and microphone-equipped iPods that students had brought to record his lecture. One coed even posted to the class website, offering five dol

Lee Jong-Wook was director-general since 2003; WHO appoints Anders Nordström as acting director-general

On its hundredth birthday, the Food and Drug Administration is having a bit of an identity crisis. The FDA has long been conflicted as to whether it is primarily a regulatory or a scientific entity, said Peter Barton Hutt, former chief counsel for the administration, at yesterday?s FDA Centennial Conference in Philadelphia. In fact, it was the subject of what Hutt called "one of the funniest congressional debates I?ve sat through" during his FDA tenure in the 1970s. Now, as various ?o

Like any other deer hunter, John Porcari must drag his killed quarry out of the forest. But unlike most others, he knows just how many calories that effort takes him: 13 per minute. (That means he needs to drag a deer 12 minutes to burn off each 3-ounce venison steak he eats.) Porcari also knows the number of calories burned by a vigorous game of paintball (7 per minute), yoga (4 per minute), and sex (5 per minute).Porcari is not so much an exercise nut as an exercise physiologist

Credit: COURTESY OF MIKE TUCKER, UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA" /> Credit: COURTESY OF MIKE TUCKER, UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIAThree years ago, George Vellidis, an agricultural engineer at the University of Georgia in Tifton, was speaking to an electrical engineering colleague who was working for the military to develop radio frequency identification (RFID)-equipped "smart dust" that could be sprinkled on battlefields to gain information. She planted a seed in his head: Could the same technology used t

Thanks to engrained lessons from cytogenetics, researchers largely regarded variations in gene copy a rarity, synonymous with defects. Increasingly, however, researchers have found that large-scale deletions and duplications are the norm and represent a significant source of human variation.Jonathan Sebat and colleagues based at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory published a highly cited paper on this topic in 2004,1 as did Charles Lee at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.2

Credit: © EYE OF SCIENCE / PHOTO RESEARCHERS, INC" /> Credit: © EYE OF SCIENCE / PHOTO RESEARCHERS, INC Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a longtime bane of hospitals, thwarts the antibiotic by integrating a mobile genetic element, staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec). More than 10 years ago, Keiichi Hiramatsu's group at Juntendo University in Tokyo started to notice variations of SCCmec, with different combinations of recombinases to transfer the el

Latest review of directly observed therapy paints the healthcare policy as ineffective, stirs existing controversy

Substitute for cattle drug that has nearly wiped out Asian vultures presents new options, new conflicts between conservationists, drug manufacturers, and gov't