Agency hopes to reduce development costs by using diagnostic and imaging technologies

Courtesy of Chrissa KioussiLike ants marching to an unspoken command, embryonic heart cells follow distinct orders for organ formation, according to a group at the Pasteur Institute. Although many cardiac regulator genes have been isolated, researchers do not understand the cellular mechanisms that form a four-chambered heart from a simple tube. To track dividing cells in an embryonic mouse heart, researchers in Margaret Buckingham's lab created a transgenic line harboring an inactivated reporte

dimpleart.com Art Caplan Terri Schaivo lies on life support in a Florida hospital and Art Caplan has work to do: an appearance on CNN's Wolfe Blitzer Reports and telephone interviews with reporters from Time magazine and US News and World Report. A driver awaits Caplan in an immaculate blue Cadillac parked in front of Montreal's Ritz Carlton Hotel. Caplan is attending the annual meeting of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) in Montreal, and the cable news network ha

Front Page A Better Bottle; Turning to Yeast for Human Antibodies; An Open-Source Alternative to SMD GADGET WATCH | A Better Bottle? Courtesy of USA Scientific Glass reagent bottles may be standard fixtures in the lab, but they are not without problems. Their height can make them awkward to use, especially in a hood, and their narrow openings do not easily accommodate micropipettes. USA Scientific's new reagent bottles address these concerns. The Ocala, Fla.-based company's durable polypr

FASHION WATCH | I Spy ... Something Green! To most eyes, a mouse is a mouse is a mouse. It's the underlying genetics, of course, that matter, and those are usually hard to see. But scientists working with green fluorescent protein (GFP)-expressing transgenic mice have a new gadget that will help them spot their mice with ease. Constructed like goggles with a miner's headlight, the GFsP-5, manufactured by Biological Laboratory Equipment, Maintenance, and Service (BLS) in Budapest, Hungary,

Briefs Hydrocephalus and the Accidental Transgene; Redox RNA; To Be a Bee, but He or She? Hydrocephalus and the Accidental Transgene Courtesy of Perry Blackshear, NIEHS A chat in an elevator at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences led to the discovery of a protein possibly linked to early brain development. Darryl C. Zeldin mentioned to an NIEHS colleague that a line of transgenic mice created by researchers studying the role of the CYP2J2 enzyme in heart function had de

Frontlines | Open Wide and Say "Ribbit" Some frogs may be croaking before they go 'a courting. Scientists working with students in Acadia National Park in Maine have observed plenty of dead tadpoles among the preserve's vast wetlands. But it's impossible to know whether the death rates are unusually high--the park's 47,633 acres span two islands and a peninsula--or whether some species are dying at higher rates than others, says Aram Calhoun, assistant professor of wetlands ecology, Unive

Photos courtesy of TransForm Pharmaceuticals (left) and Pioneer Hi-Bred(center and right) The majority of participants in The Scientist's "Best Places in to Work for Scientists in Industry" survey reported that they valued their workplaces because the companies maintained industry standards, kept promises, and sustained the staffs' pride in their work. The magazine asked employees in life sciences companies to evaluate their own workplaces and identify company characteristics that employees c

Image courtesy of Magnus Stark The Broad Center for the Biological Sciences, at the California Institute of Technology, designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners James Spudich, a Stanford University biochemist, likens the cell to a city. It incorporates roads and pathways, he says, and houses large structures, akin to buildings, such as the mitochondria and nucleus. But unlike the city, the cell can completely transform its own structure according to its needs. The right signals can convert t

Bigwigs urge new infrastructure and focus on finding and delivering health applications.

Journal editors propose international guidelines to prevent publication of sensitive information.

* Based on average score for 34 factors SURVEY METHODOLOGY We posted a Web-based survey and invited our postdoc readers to respond. From about 30,000 invitations, we received 2,800 usable responses from postdocs in the United States, Canada, and western Europe. We asked respondents to assess their postdoc experience by indicating their level of agreement with 34 positive statements about various factors. We identified responses from 681 separate institutions but included only the 150 instituti