Articles by Steve Bunk

One spring morning in the year 2025, Joe Smith might be tending the begonias when the computer on his wrist receives a message from the gene chip under his skin. The 78-year-old Smith's colorectal cancer is in remission, but its potential to genetically mutate is monitored by the biochip, which is spotted with thousands of molecular markers that bind to DNA fragments containing colon cancer's many known mutations. When blood carrying such DNA comes into contact with the chip, resultant bindin

In 1992, American writer Andrew Solomon, then in his late-20s, was about to publish his first novel when he unexpectedly slid into a major depression. In a subsequent book, he wrote that the experience is "almost unimaginable" to the uninitiated. Describing it, he likened himself to an oak being strangled by a vine, "a sucking thing that had wrapped itself around me, ugly and more alive than I." He called up the image of falling into an abyss: "You hit invisible things over and over again, un

Given the daily onslaught of advice--sagacious and otherwise--on seemingly every topic delivered by anyone within earshot of a soapbox, it's pleasant to consider what societies might be like if lateral thinkers, such as scientists, led the way. What if even just a few prominent voices, clearly heard above the ruckus of opinion-giving and decision-making, were more idealistic than pragmatic, pensive rather than reactive, and beholden to no special interests but life and peace? Okay, that isn't

5-Prime | NMR: Spin Doctoring WHO? Stanford's Felix Bloch and Harvard's Edward Mills Purcell shared the 1952 Nobel Prize in physics "for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connections therewith." WHAT? Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) concerns atomic nuclei, which carry positive charges. Many nuclei spin on their axes and generate magnetic fields, like billions of tiny bar magnets. Slightly more than half of these nuclear magne

Courtesy of Stephen Naylor, Beyond Genomics Inc. Like any good board game, proteomics requires a blend of strategy and serendipity. But while the former is about winning, the latter is about achievement, and its rules are still being made. Without such rules, it's hard to measure success, which is why nobody at a recent proteomics conference in San Diego could gauge exactly how far the field has advanced since the human genome was sequenced almost two years ago. Nevertheless, several speakers

It's a shame that most nonscientists probably would be bored silly by the fundamental unit of scientific communication: the paper describing original research. The content of such work is often anything but dull; yet even scientists have to admit that the quality of presentation can vary. That's why the standard format prevails of abstract, introduction, materials, methods, results, and discussion. This structure aims to ensure that the information will be organized in a rational and comprehe

One day, genomic data will be translated into language that can be used to find new diagnostic and therapeutic targets for disease. Computers will mine DNA codes to build nanomachines, and "smart fabrics" will contain sensing capabilities modeled on living things. So says Shankar Shastry, chairman of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California at Berkeley. "Bio is my bet on where the new set of glamour technologies will be," he predicts. But even the small step

For young journalists, interviewing a scientific expert can be a queasy experience. This feeling doesn't arise directly from relative ignorance, to which the interviewer may be modestly resigned. It stems from uncertainty about how that ignorance might be perceived and tolerated. The patience of some scientists can be short, although many are receptive and responsive to the media. Those differences not only show the danger in generalizing about personalities, but also point out the real sourc

5-Prime | The Null Hypothesis: More than Zero What? Perhaps primary among the challenges and conditions that face life scientists is the infinite variability between individuals. An important tool for measuring those disparities is the Null Hypothesis Significance Test (NHST). It begins by proposing no difference between samples or populations being tested. Of course, "no difference" is an exact point among infinite alternatives, the probability of which is virtually zero. That's why resea

International group sets priorities in coordinating proteomics efforts.

Photo: Getty Images WHO? In 1996, Internet2 was but a gleam in the eyes of 34 university researchers huddled in the basement of a Chicago area hotel, trying to reclaim a piece of the technology that science had given to the world. By then, the Net had become a gridlock for those in need of high-capacity transmission with low, controlled delays in signal processing. Nowadays, Internet2 comprises more than 200 US universities, about 60 companies, and governmental agencies coordinated by the nonp

Jargon, the cognoscenti's verbal equivalent of a secret handshake, is the bane of the science writer (SW). Confronted with the opacity of this linguistic shortcut, the mournful SW has two choices: ignore it or learn it; the former untenable, the latter distasteful, given the risk of becoming part of the problem. Hopefully, every nascent SW opts for the only honorable choice, on the grounds of knowing thine enemy. But the impossibility of really knowing jargon soon reveals itself. Irritatingly

Photo: Courtesy of King Pharmaceuticals OLD DRUG, NEW USES: Ace inhibitor ALTACE Clinical trials are under way in the United States to test new uses for angiotensin I-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, as lab researchers around the world continue to compile evidence of further possibilities for the antihypertensive drugs. Meanwhile, a paper to be published this month presents a detailed theory that ACE functions at the start of a signaling pathway common to major diseases that are other

Image by Joel Ito and P. Michael Conn The first clinical trials to test protein misfolding therapies are so new that researchers haven't yet agreed on a collective name for the compounds being administered. Variously dubbed chemical chaperones, pharmacological chaperones, and pharmacoperones, these small molecules correct the misfolding of proteins that recent research has implicated in a host of diseases, both rare and prevalent. In such "conformational" diseases, misfolded proteins may lose

Photo: Courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service, Thomas L. Wellborn, Jr. DEADLY PARASITE: Myxobolus cerebralis causes whirling disease, a trout-killing infection that is devastating in some wild trout populations. In a Quonset hut dubbed the "parasite factory" on the University of California's sprawling Davis campus, the bed in a tankful of water is strewn with what looks like snippets of rusty thread: worms that harbor a deadly European parasite called Myxobolus cerebralis. It causes wh