FISHING FOR A HEALTHY BABY:Courtesy of the Reproductive Science Center of the San Francisco Bay Area, http://www.rscbayarea.comMulticolor Fluorescence in Situ Hybridization (FISH) can detect chromosomal abnormalities, such as aneuploidy, in cells removed from a developing embryo.Fast improving techniques for detecting genetic and chromosomal abnormalities via preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) may boost the success rate of in vitro fertilization (IVF). Some clinics report a twofold to three

Courtesy of Imperial College UnionAndras Dinnyes runs the first nuclear-cell-transfer technology lab in Eastern Europe, at the Agricultural Biotechnology Center near Budapest. Amply accoutered with high-tech equipment, the lab is designed to eventually provide knockout mice for scientists across the continent. It has also attracted funding from outside sources, including the Wellcome Trust and the European Union's Sixth Framework Programme.Like a smattering of research labs with connections to W

When James Joyce, the great Irish novelist and self-proclaimed artist of life, settled in Zurich in 1915 to escape the War, he little imagined that almost 90 years later people would flock to a pub there bearing his name, to smoke. Joyce wrote most of Ulysses in Zurich and became quite fond of the city, precisely because it seemed the polar opposite, in attitude, of his native Dublin. It was spotlessly clean and homogeneously handsome without any notable landmark or character. Joyce described th

SELECTIVE PRESSURE:Courtesy of Richard DaviesInvertebrate seed predators, like this Alcidodes ramezii from Thailand, may exert selective pressure influencing El Niño-associated dipterocarp bumper crops.Human activities often disrupt the delicate balance between predators and prey, but an unusual example has come to light among the equatorial rainforests of Indonesia. Dipterocarp, the economically important canopy trees that account for 70% of the region's biomass, are vanishing. Indeed, pro

Like it or not, biologists have to deal increasingly in informatics as their experiments generate ever larger and more complex data sets. Few laboratories have the resources to develop their own microarray analysis software, so they must use one of the many commercial packages. With the list of options growing fast, Affymetrix of Santa Clara, Calif., one of the world's leading makers of DNA microarrays, hit on a novel way to help its customers sample the field: They held a series of Web-based se

The University of Alberta's pre-eminence in The Scientist's postdoc survey came as little surprise to many of the institution's researchers. These scientists cited as particularly important the April 2003 opening of a campus postdoc office, which provides a wide range of training and support services. The new office has encouraged postdocs to attend sessions on teaching, communication, and leadership, with which science graduates all too often lack experience, says postdoc Sheryl Gares.Carlos Fl

PSII REFINED:Helices are represented as cylinders. Chlorophylls of the D1/D2 reaction center are light green, pheophytins are blue. Chlorophylls of the antenna complexes are dark green, β-carotenes are in orange, hemes are in red. The oxygen evolving center (OEC) is shown as the red, magenta, and cyan balls representing oxygen atoms, Mn ions, and Ca2+ respectively.The planet's most prolific atmospheric oxygen source has just given up its most detailed mug shot yet. Jim Barber, a professor a

As life's diversity demonstrates, nature has a pretty large toolbox for designing adaptations. While in many ways an efficient builder, it often reuses blueprints, even if not starting with the same tools. Analogous wing structures in bird and bat suggest a why-mess-with-success ethos. New World cacti and desert-dwelling Euphorbiaceae in the Old World share protective spines and photosynthesizing stems even though the last common ancestor predates such modifications.Beyond structural adaptations

At the start of this year's particularly worrisome flu sea-son, researchers at London Imperial college in the United Kingdom posed a comforting thought. Suppose the bug's nasty symptoms could be avoided without vaccination or antiviral drugs by targeting the immune responses responsible for influenza's misery. Their tests on mice showed positive results, they say. Maybe so, say the skeptics, but that doesn't prove how humans would respond.The Imperial College researchers have found that a recept

Courtesy of Nadya Lumelsky and Ron McKay  PANCREATIC CELL PUZZLE: A cell sub-population in differentiated embryonic stem cell cultures produces pancreatic islet hormones, insulin (red) and glucagon (green). Although most cells produce only one type of hormone, the cells shown in yellow produce both. The co-production of the two hormones might signify developmental immaturity. The ethical dimension of embryonic stem cell research looms so large in the public consciousness that the underly

Michel Tcherevkoff Ltd. Grid computing is hot these days. With high-profile projects ranging from a search for extraterrestrial intelligence to a search for smallpox therapeutics, many researchers are looking to the grid as a way to get supercomputing power without dishing out supercomputing prices. The Grid Computing Info Centre defines a grid as "a type of parallel and distributed system that enables the sharing, selection, and aggregation of geographically distributed 'autonomous' resourc

Oxford drawing (1731) courtesy of Marc Edwards Oxford and Cambridge Universities continue to top UK rankings for research and academic attainment, yet despite a recent streamlining, both are under strong pressure from the government to make further changes in management structures that until recently had survived almost unchanged for centuries. The universities enjoy considerable self-rule, and individual colleges have autonomy over aspects of teaching and the ability to fund some of their ow