The science circulatory system that sends so many European researchers to the United States flows in two directions, as most European governments run programs to attract US researchers as well. As science has become truly international, and projects exceedingly expensive, cross-border flow of scientists has become vital to research progress. While European leaders of science are anxious to build one Europe by sponsoring partnerships with former Soviet Union satellites, they also encourage col

Frontlines | Birds of a Feather, Banking Together More than fluff makes a feather. Tucked away in its vane and shaft is a surprising amount of valuable data. Thanks to recent technology breakthroughs, researchers can glean a lot of information about a bird's diet, mating behavior, and migratory habits by merely examining its plumage. "With improved PCR-based genetics, stable isotope analysis, and trace element fingerprinting, feathers have become a great research tool," says Keith Hobson o

It's a day neurobiologist Oliver Bruestle remembers well. He dropped the letter into the mailbox in August, two years ago. Addressed to the German Research Society, Germany's main funding organization for biomedical research, the envelope contained a grant proposal for work on human embryonic stem cells (ESCs), to be imported from Israel. "I knew this would generate some waves," relates Bruestle, "but I definitely did not count on a tempest of these proportions." His proposal, routine by mos

Frontlines | Wham, Bam, Now I'll Die, Ma'am Courtesy of Matthias Foellmer Sex does not come easy for male spiders. In many species, the female attacks and eats its mate, and sometimes, the male offers itself as a morsel for the female to feast on after mating. But the male Argiope aurantia takes this to the extreme by spontaneously dying during copulation.1 It's not fatal attraction, but a smart way to protect paternal investment, says Daphne Fairbairn, University of California, Riverside.

Frontlines | Golden Oldies-Piscine Style Erica P. Johnson It's not Mozart or Elvis that does so, but a cacophony of noises, resembling those that emanate from a reef, that makes the embryo of a clown fish heart's throb for a home. After birth, the ant-sized juveniles swim away, but eventually they return to a reef to live. In trying to determine how these flashy reef fish do so, marine biologist Stephen Simpson, University of York, investigated sound as a possible cue. He and colleague Ho

Frontlines | Shopping on the Wing Diana Lynn Boyle It's a marketing ploy that routinely traps shoppers. Faced with only two choices, say microwave A, small and cheap, and microwave B, large and pricey, a buyer is apt to pick either one. But throw in choice C, which is slightly more expensive but also slightly smaller than B, and shoppers flock to microwave B. "Item C," says behavioral economist Dan Ariely, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "is used as a decoy to draw attention to targe

©Paul Barton, Corbis Rigid retirement policies are prompting scientists to flee Europe at the height of their professional lives to start second careers in the United States. Many of these researchers are still conducting experiments and are in no mood to slow down. But because nearly all European universities are government run, professors are left little choice when they reach mandatory retirement age, which in most countries is 65 years or even younger. Some scientists leaving for the

Frontlines | A Peek Inside a Medieval Medicine Cabinet Courtesy of Wolfgang Eckart For centuries, the University of Heidelberg, Germany, has housed hundreds of medieval medical texts, but their contents--the conditions that were described, the prescriptions that were advised--have remained largely unknown. Until now. Historians have begun cataloging 298 handwritten manuscripts from the 14th to 16th centuries, says medical historian Wolfgang Eckart, who heads the project. Written by doctors

Photo: Courtesy of G.J.H. Grubben GENETIC DIVERSITY: Fruits of the Scarlett eggplant (Solanum aethiopicum), of which the immature fruits and leaves are used as vegetables. European and African scientists have launched an ambitious project to review the current literature about useful plants of tropical Africa. From 2003 to 2013, researchers will examine and update all written documentation about approximately 7,000 commodity plants in 47 African countries and islands from the Tropic of C

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology (MPIEA) in Leipzig, Germany, recently concluded that differences in the expression patterns of genes distinguish humans from chimpanzees, though they share 98.7% of their DNA sequences.1 The team, led by geneticist Svante Pääbo, found that human expression patterns in the brain exhibited pronounced differences from those of chimpanzees and other apes, in effect, pointing to an accelerated rate of evolution of our ment