Credit: © Leah Fasten Photography" /> Credit: © Leah Fasten Photography As a postdoc in Irving Weissman's laboratory at Stanford University, Amy Wagers earned a reputation for putting other people's findings to the test. In 2002 Wagers published evidence contrary to claims that bone marrow-derived stem cells could transdifferentiate into brain, muscle, and other tissues.1 In 2004, she found that hematopoietic stem cells could not repair damaged myocardium,2 despite other ev

A Sensitive Reaction Global warming could speed up decomposition, but how much might decomposition speed up global warming? By Kerry Grens 1 "In a sense there's some kind of natural break in the system that would bring this positive feedback to a halt," says Jerry Melillo at the Marine Biological Laboratory. For example, in a 10-year study Melillo led in the Harvard Forest, the response to warming, as measured in carbon flux, jumped an average of 28% in each of the firs

Scientists have sorted out another piece of the DNA replication puzzle by showing what might happen to histones through the process of unwinding DNA. The linkurl:findings,;http://www.sciencemag.org published in today's (December 20) __Science__, identify a complex that can shuttle histones from parent to daughter strands of DNA as it replicates. As the replication fork moves along a strand of DNA, the linkurl:nucleosomes;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/23392 - the 4-histone pair c

Both chambers of Congress this afternoon (December 19) agreed to a suite of government spending bills that included roughly $29 billion for the National Institutes of Health, according to Nancy Granese from the Campaign for Medical Research. This budget, for FY08, is $130 million more than FY07. The linkurl:raise;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/54025 was smaller than some medical and research organizations had hoped for. In a press release from CMR, the group's chairman, G. Steven Bur

The US Food and Drug Administration yesterday (December 17) linkurl:approved;http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2007/NEW01757.html a beta blocker that I wrote about last month in an linkurl:article;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53869 about the value of race-based medicine. The FDA's approval notice did not mention any particular race or ethnicity, and a linkurl:press release;http://www.frx.com/news/PressRelease.aspx?ID=1088188 from the drug's manufacturer noted that the drug, nebiv

The latest proposal for the 2008 budget for the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gives the agencies a slight bump over last year's levels. Over the weekend, Congress prepared a new version of appropriations following President George Bush's linkurl:veto;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53858 of previous bill in November. This new bill includes $760 million less for NIH and $240 million less for CDC than the vetoed bill, according to linkur

A new dating service matches singles using major histocompatibility complex genes

Allerca - the company that claims to breed and sell hypoallergenic cats - may have just exhausted at least one more of its nine lives. I learned this week that the company has skipped out on filing three years' worth of state taxes, and recently penalized a customer and told her they would refund her deposit because of linkurl:comments;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/52947/#comments she wrote on __The Scientist's__ website. The story begins with an linkurl:investigative feature;http:

Following a linkurl:lengthy dispute;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53902/ with community residents, Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia got approval from the city council last night (December 13) on its master plan for an $800 million expansion. According to linkurl:Fox Chase's website,;http://www.fccc.edu/news/2007/IDD-12-14-07.html this is the first of two ordnances to get approval. The next step - and the point of contention with opponents - will be to get the council's approva

What a year for felines - first a company linkurl:claims to have bred;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/39383 them to be hypoallergenic and now South Korean scientists have made them glow in the dark. According to news linkurl:reports;http://tinyurl.com/2cseps this week, Kong Il-keun at Gyeongsang National University cloned Turkish Angora cats with red fluorescent protein inserted into their genome. According to Korea.net, Il-keun is excited about the possibility of using the cat as a

Following the recent linkurl:failure;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53633 of a linkurl:Merck HIV vaccine,;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/53517 the NIH has still not decided whether to continue with planned clinical trials of a similar HIV vaccine. Yesterday (December 12), the AIDS Vaccine Research Committee of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases met to discuss the PAVE100 study, which was suspended after linkurl:data from the Merck trials;http://w

Doing research in an evolutionary biology lab and not believing in evolution might spell trouble for your career - at least it did for Nathaniel Abraham. The former postdoc at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is suing the institution because he says he was fired for his linkurl:creationist beliefs,;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/15273 the __Boston Globe__ linkurl:reports;http://tinyurl.com/287an3 today. According to the Globe, Abraham joined the lab of linkurl:Mark Hahn,;h