Graphic: Courtesy of Orchid Biosciences  SNP-based identifications are possible with fragments one-fourth the size needed for other methods. A well-lit, chrome-and-steel room hums as a robot uses multiple arms to carry 384-well plates from their platforms into readers, where an "SNPscope"--which has the capacity to read just a few pixels of fluorescence--captures data from the entire plate in six minutes and automatically transfers it to computer screens. A half-dozen researchers and ana

Attending the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting is always a rejuvenating—yet exhausting—experience. First, you get to go to some nice places: New Orleans, San Francisco (twice in three years), even Philadelphia one year. But it's not the places where these meetings are held, but the research you hear about that is simply overwhelming when compressed into a five-day time frame. In this issue, our cancer research focus for this year, we discuss some of the themes

For some issues of The Scientist, themes emerge from a collection of articles that, when originally assigned to writers, were just about various individual topics. For this issue, many of our stories could have been based on a three-M theme: motivation, merit, and meaning. Mostly, the stories are about how scientists feel about their science. Starting with "Early Warning" by Steve Bunk, scientists have been highly motivated since last Sept. 11 to develop more ways to deal with terrorism, partic

When we ask what you would like to see more of in The Scientist, one of the suggestions we always get is "more personal stories of science." We're taking steps in that direction. We introduced a new feature Feb. 18 called Profile, which we are publishing as a closing element on the last editorial page of each issue. Appropriately enough, that first one was about John Marburger, the science adviser to US President George W. Bush. We followed that March 4 with a "look-ahead" type of article about

Traveling the road from basic research to marketable product takes a vehicle that can make many turns, twists, dips, and climbs, much of which takes place in the valley of death. That's the period during which a technology or product of research is too new to market; it shows commercial promise, but more research is needed to validate its apparent potential. Until that research is done, and the potential affirmed, traditional funders of commercial ventures—who generally want to know what t

A multiple-sponsor distributed computing project launched Jan. 22 aims to derail anthrax's ability to enter human cells and eliminate the toxin as a terrorists' weapon. The ambitious project has the backing of computer giants Intel and Microsoft, distributed computing specialist United Devices, the chemistry department at the University of Oxford, UK, and the National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR). The anthrax project comes on the heels of a successful similar effort in cancer research t

The latest project to harness the power of idle PCs will seek molecules to block the anthrax toxin.

A new year often brings about change. If you are reading this from the print version, you already see a smaller, more convenient, size. With this first issue in a new design and format, we are happy to welcome 25,000 new subscribers in Europe and Canada. We hope you will find The Scientist as enlightening, valuable, and entertaining as the 50,000 US life scientist subscribers have. The start of a new year also prompts people to reflect on what they can do to improve their lives and the lives of

At The Scientist, we try to make incremental improvements in our publication every issue. The improvements may include spending extra time editing stories to make them easier to read, or calling additional sources to procure artwork to properly illustrate an article. A 24-times-a-year publication schedule leaves little leeway between issues to make major changes, but we still keep our sights set on making each issue better than the last. Now, after this, our final issue of 2001, we really have

How do you "rapidly" screen 250 million small molecules--eventually 1 billion small molecules--for their cancer-fighting potential? Enlist, literally, a "world" of computers to perform the computational chemistry. That's the goal of Graham Richards, chairman of the chemistry department at Oxford University and director of the National Foundation for Cancer Research Center for Computational Drug Design, a virtual collaboration set up last August with a $750,000 NFCR grant. Richards recently got

A few days after the White House announcement that scientists had finished mapping the first working draft of the human genome (see page 1), James Watson came to Philadelphia to accept another award in his long, illustrious career. But it wasn't a science award. Philadelphia awarded Watson and Francis Crick the 2000 Liberty Medal on the 224th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The discoverers of the structure of DNA became the first scientists to receive the L

The numbers are astounding: $57 trillion, $31 trillion. The first figure represents the estimated dollar value of the increases in life expectancy of Americans during the 1970s and 1980s. The second represents the estimated dollar value of advances made just in prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease. These and other assessments appear in a new report, "Exceptional Returns: The Economic Value of America's Investment in Medical Research," released May 9 by Funding First, an initiative