Courtesy of Steve Scadding and Sandra AckerleyResearchers aren't sure whether chromosomes maintain their place in the nucleus through mitosis or get lost in the shuffle. Biochemist Wendy Bickmore says it's the latter. Last March, two German research teams reached opposite conclusions about the heritability of chromatin organization – where chromosomes are within the nucleus and in relation to each other.1 Now Bickmore and colleagues in the Medical Research Council's Human Genetics Unit, Ed

Hope is that current cost of $10-50 million per mammalian genome can be reduced in 10 years

What are circadian rhythms?These timing systems dictate when plants will bloom, force people to fall asleep at their desks, urge birds to fly south, and influence a host of other activities. While circadian rhythms run on a 24-hour clock, others also exist, including tidal, lunar, and annual rhythms.Which organisms have them?A lot; from bread molds to humans. Well-studied rhythms include those in cyanobacteria, the bread mold Neurospora crassa, rice, Arabidopsis, fruit flies, mice, Syrian hamste

Give a postdoc an environment that encourages collegial work, and not competitive strife, and that person will respond with ample praise. At least, that's the lesson of The Scientist's Best Places for Postdocs 2004 survey; it's the magazine's largest yet, with 3,529 usable responses from postdoctoral researchers in Western Europe, Canada, and the United States.Postdocs rated access to publications and journals as the most important attribute of a university. High-quality research tools attracted

Institutions that nurture postdocs' scientific development dominated this year's Best Places for Postdocs survey. Participants ranked five federally funded research facilities among the top 15 institutions, all of which earned high marks for scientific development and resources.US government labs have become fertile greenhouses for some of the country's best and brightest researchers. Because government labs also dole out grants to institutions and scholars, they have become exemplars for other

Nat'l Institute of Standards and Technology director Arden Bement to be acting director

How do ants differ from other social insects?Bees, wasps, and ants belong to the order Hymenoptera. Bees feed on flowers; wasps hunt other insects; ants "feed on a whole variety of things," from flowers to dead animals, says University of Georgia entomologist Ken Ross. Morphology also differs: worker bees and wasps with different jobs are all the same size, but the sizes of worker ants vary according to their role in the colony.What are some differences among ants?With more than 11,000 known spe

Grants cancelled by embattled chief research and development officer are reinstated

5-Prime | The Headline Grabbers This year's science newsmakers, besides comparative genomics and systems biology, include ... McSequence Remarkably, scientists completed the genomic sequence of the coronavirus responsible for the SARS pandemic less than two months after it was first identified. "We never had a disease [that] was so much into the public news," says Bhagirath Singh, scientific director of the Canadian Institute for Health Research's Institute of Infection and Immunity. He

New 30- to 40-scientist branch will work to translate genomic work into health care gains

Frontlines | Selling Directly to the Mind Erica P. Johnson You see a sweater for sale and think, "I have to have that!" Clint Kilts wants to know why. Kilts, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University in Atlanta, is investigating the underlying neural organization that governs personal preferences and the decision-making process. Regarding a product, there's not a lot of conscious deliberation, he says. People decide quickly whether they like something. Kil

5-Prime| Bacteria--109 Tough Cookies Courtesy of CDC Is there any place where bacteria can't be found? Pick an environment, a temperature, an elevation, a climate, and a bacterial species calls it home. Scientists have found bacteria in every exotic habitat in the biosphere, says Thomas Whittam, a microbiologist at Michigan State University, East Lansing. Why are they so ubiquitous? One ecosystem can't supply enough resources for the more than 109 bacterial species1 that exist, so t