Editor's Note: This is the first installment of a four-part series on regional hot spots for life sciences employment. Additional installments will appear in the May 14, July 9, and October 29 issues. The next article will focus on the San Francisco Bay area. Boston Area Life Science 12-Month Hiring Intent Please come to Boston," pleads the singer. Biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms in the Boston area sing the same tune as they woo prospective employees to fill jobs at all levels. Ernst &a

When John Ruffin, former head of the National Institutes of Health's Office of Research on Minority Health (ORMH) was sworn in as the director of the new NIH National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NCMHD) on January 9, the ceremony took place against a background of support from unlikely political corners. The problem of health disparities between ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups in the United States has been discussed by NIH for several years.1 But the issue ca

As a university faculty member, you helped develop a technology that was licensed to industry. As part of the deal, you were given a share of the royalties from future products. The future is here, and the royalty checks may not be rolling in--or if they are coming in, they're not enough to fund your life's dream. Perhaps you should consider doing what companies, universities, and more and more individuals are doing: in the words of Walter Flamenbaum, a partner in Paul Capital Partners in New Yo

At a Sept. 11 meeting of the Royal Society of London, convened to discuss the origin of HIV/AIDS, researchers aired scientific data showing that the hypothesis that HIV/AIDS originated from an experimental oral polio vaccine had no scientific merit. The hypothesis was popularized by journalist Edward Hooper in his 1999 book, The River,1 and supported by the late evolutionary biologist William Hamilton. It states that a type of oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) called CHAT, produced by Hilary Koprows

Photo: Marco Langlois. University of Montreal This female beluga whale was found dead floating in the St. Lawrence near Tadoussac, Quebec. The head of her calf was visible at the external genital opening when the whale was submitted for postmortem. The St. Lawrence River is so polluted, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation warns people who fish the river off New York's shores not to eat any American eel, channel catfish, carp, Chinook salmon, lake trout over 25 inches in

On Aug. 29, the political action committee (PAC) 80-20 announced its endorsement of democratic presidential candidate Al Gore. Making that announcement at the Universal City Hilton in California was not a usual political activist, but rather former University of California (UC) at Berkeley chancellor and current UC-wide University Professor and UC-Berkeley NEC Professor of Engineering Chang-Lin Tien. Tien was chairman of the PAC's endorsement committee. His committee vice chair was molecular bio

©Wonderfile U.S.A. Corp. The cat could serve as a model for more than 200 human inborn genetic errors. The Canine Genome Project is big news--not as big as the Human Genome Project, but still "visible," reported on in magazines and newspapers. Ongoing research on the house cat's genome is "not so visible," says geneticist Marilyn Menotti-Raymond of the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity (LGD) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Frederick, Md. But the feline research is more advanced and

Gregory Ogilvie works with both animal and human cancers. Not too long ago, when a dog or cat owner learned that a pet had cancer, it meant a death sentence for the animal. But things have changed. There is a "very sophisticated population of animal owners," notes Donald Thrall, professor of radiology and radiation oncology at North Carolina State University (NCSU) College of Veterinary Medicine. These people are "very informed and sometimes almost demand state-of-the-art cancer treatment" for

Photo: Myrna E. WatanabeBoston University's "MobileLab," a bus outfitted with biotech lab equipment, visited the Connecticut state capitol in Hartford May 1, the day Connecticut United for Research Excellence announced plans for a like vehicle called "Connecticut's BioBus." In 1999, the U.S. biotechnology industry employed 153,000 people, up 48.5 percent from 1995, according to Ernst & Young. In the state of Connecticut alone, total bioscience (biotech and pharmaceutical) R&D expenditures equal

Henry Lee How many scientists can claim the simultaneous titles of state police commissioner, chief state fire marshal, chief building inspector, director of the state forensic laboratory, and university professor? Probably a safe answer is only one, Connecticut's Henry Lee. The development of the field of forensic sciences, the application of science in solving legal issues, parallels Lee's career. As a young man, Lee was a police captain in the Taipei Police Department in Taiwan. There,

Graphic: Cathleen Heard Although a smaller percentage of African American women are diagnosed with breast cancer than white women, African Americans are more likely to die from breast cancer than women from other ethnic groups. Vietnamese American women have the highest cervical cancer rates of any ethnic group. And poor Americans of all races have higher rates of cancer incidence and mortality than do people from other socioeconomic groups. The Institute of Medicine's (IOM) report The Une

Although the Institute of Medicine report1 on health disparities between ethnic and socioeconomic groups in the United States has focused government agencies on improving health of minorities and the poor, National Institutes of Health leaders say their institutes began dealing with these issues before the report was released. And their forthcoming plan will be major. At the Intercultural Cancer Council's Biennial Symposium held in Washington, D.C., in early February with a focus on health