Agencies decline to fund "pointless" inquiry, despite legal mandate.

Legislators want to ensure National Science Foundation can handle bigger budget.

Image: Anne MacNamara Life sciences contribute the lion's share of patent revenues at leading US universities, outpacing contributions from physical science, information technology, and other fields. Life scientists also supply most of the inventions patented by the 10 technologically strongest US institutions, according to a study provided to The Scientist by research and consulting company, CHI Research. In 2001, the top 10 US universities generated 689 life science patents, compared with 26

Image: Courtesy of Georgia Department of Industry, Trade and Tourism NO SMALL PEANUTS: The state houses 500 bioscience companies that employ 13,000 workers. Anne Whalen, a molecular biologist, had no job when she and her husband relocated to Georgia three years ago from Jackson Hole, Wyo., so he could take a position at an Atlanta-area biotechnology company. She figured it would take her a while to land a life science job as well, but the market surprised her. "I didn't expect to find as

Image: Erica Johnson Life scientists looking for work can take heart in the fertile job market despite worldwide economic doldrums: Jobs exist in plenty and should remain abundant for some time. Nevertheless, some market trends make it trickier now to snag a high-paying position than in recent years. Venture capitalists reluctant to risk investments in biotechnology have pressured small and midsize companies to reduce expenses and bring products to market more quickly. Also, mergers and consol

Photo: Keith Weller Advances in plant and animal genomics promise to open thousands of new life science jobs in agriculture when the industry clears regulatory and cultural obstacles. With the potential to generate billions of dollars in economic activity, these advances are expected to trigger an increased demand for life scientists and researchers not only trained in classical laboratory techniques, but also skilled in bioinformatics and sequencing. "Bioinformatics will be a major career ar

Image: Anne MacNamara Donald Young, a physician and biochemist at the University of Rochester Medical Center, spent three decades conducting research into steroids and protein production in cells. He and fellow researchers Michael K. O'Banion and Virginia D. Winn spent the last 10 of those years identifying the human gene responsible for coding the enzyme cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2). They determined the mechanism by which the enzyme could be selectively inhibited, thus reducing inflammation and p

Genentech, the South San Francisco, Calif., biotech powerhouse, suffered a legal setback in June when a court ordered the company to pay more than $500 million (US) in damages to the nonprofit City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, Calif. A Los Angeles County Superior Court jury ruled that Genentech breached a 1976 contract with the institution when the company failed to pay the cancer center royalties from numerous third-party licenses that the company fraudulently concealed. In 197

In the mid-1980s, cardiologists faced a particularly vexing problem: how to measure, accurately and noninvasively, the thickness of heart tissue as it changed over time. Elias A. Zerhouni, a young radiology professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, struggled over the issue with a small team of physicists. "One day, he walked into the room with this incredible smile on his face, like you would have if you made a great molecular discovery," recalls Myron Weisfeldt, director of Hopkins' Depart

A scientist at the University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, Kans., pleaded guilty in May in a case involving theft of research materials from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio. In a plea bargain with prosecutors, Hiroaki Serizawa, an assistant professor of biochemistry at KUMC, admitted he lied to FBI agents who were investigating the theft of DNA, cell line reagents, and other genetic research materials used in Alzheimer research at the Cleveland Clinic. Officials say that the 19

After working as a research fellow for nearly seven years at the University of California, San Francisco, Alex Duncan wanted to settle down and raise a family. Rather than stay in the United States, he decided to put down roots in Cambridge, England. The decision wasn't difficult, since both he and his wife were from the United Kingdom, and he had done graduate work at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. "Cambridge is a vibrant university town with a

The three top-earning US medical schools, which together garnered nearly $1 billion (US) from the National Institutes of Health in 2001, employ strategies that lesser known institutions can also use, according to administrators. The medical faculties at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of California, San Francisco, acquired nearly $982 million in NIH grants, more than 11% of the $8.67 billion awarded to 122 US medical schools in fiscal year 2001. Johns