August 2006

Kenneth Chien, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cardiovascular Research Center and a professor in the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School, says that the regenerative qualities of stem cells hold great long-term promise in treating heart disease. But the scientific vision of cardiac muscle regeneration has yet to be proven in clinical trials, and a growing body of evidence suggests that any benefits may actually be due to a secondary effect rather t

The East and West coast powerhouses aren't the only places where good science flourishes.

Restoring natural capital As scientists and practitioners committed to ecological restoration, we found the analogy you made in your April issue1 between restoring natural capital (RNC)2 and new forms of cancer treatment3 to be an extremely powerful one. To a certain degree, RNC and ecological restoration in general, are indeed related to ecosystem degradation in the way that tumor ecology-based treatments are related to traditional cancer therapies, e.g., combined

Credit: COURTESY OF CURTIS RICHARDSON" /> Credit: COURTESY OF CURTIS RICHARDSON Duke University's Curtis J. Richardson, a wetlands expert, was part of the first scientific team to visit the Iraqi Mesopotamian marshes after Saddam Hussein's fall in 2003. Lying between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the marshes - once nearly twice the size of the Everglades - were the main stopover on the Siberia-Africa bird migration route, and a crucial filter that cleansed the rivers as the

Credit: COURTESY OF JIM MCQUAID" /> Credit: COURTESY OF JIM MCQUAID In the tiny village of Wankama, Niger, sits a rounded thatched hut. Except for its solar panels, it looks much like the twenty or so other huts that blend into the stark desert of the Sahel. Woven from brown straw, the hut measures about five meters in diameter. It is 1.5 meters high at the wall and reaches a height of three meters at the apex. The floor is plain soil. A floppy lean-to door covers the entran

Credit: COURTESY OF TASER INTERNATIONAL" /> Credit: COURTESY OF TASER INTERNATIONAL A few years ago, John Webster heard that the US Department of Justice was looking for applications to study the possibility of a link between Tasers and ventricular fibrillation. Amnesty International has claimed that 70 people in the United States have died in association with Tasers since 2001, and "there was an allegation that the heart was getting electrocuted," says Webster, a professor

Credit: COURTESY OF HEATH SMITH" /> Credit: COURTESY OF HEATH SMITH If you're on Washington State's Puget Sound this summer, you may glimpse a boat carrying a stocky Australian cattle dog named Gator. When Gator's body is stiff, his mouth open, ears forward, tail erect, and nose twitching in the wind, you can plausibly conclude one thing: A killer whale has pooped nearby.Gator is one of 11 scat-detection dogs at the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of

By her own admission, Melissa Bateson has spent most of her research career knowing very little about how the European Union sets science policy. Any scraps she did pick up were routinely distorted by the snide lens of the UK's tabloid newspapers.So when Britain's Royal Society offered her the opportunity to join in a partnering scheme with her local representative in the European Parliament (her "MEP" in Euro-speak) she jumped at the chance. "I was interested to see whe

Credit: SCIENCE SOURCE / PHOTO RESEARCHERS, INC." /> Credit: SCIENCE SOURCE / PHOTO RESEARCHERS, INC. OLD-TIME DRUG DISCOVERY >> Had he lived, penicillin co-discoverer Alexander Fleming would have turned 125 on August 6, and to celebrate, he could have keynoted the 11th annual Drug Discovery Technology conference in Boston from August 7-10. For more, see www.drugdisc.com/section.asp.BUILDING ECOCITIES >> If the lab design feature on page 40 gets your architectural ju

Seven questions for the industry to answer as it moves forward

Emergency research raises the question: Can trials without consent work?

Sure, the world will end. What will rise up to take the place of human civilization?

What would you do if you could apply modern technologies to yesterday's scientific questions?

Changes in investment strategies in the midst of a volatile market point the way towards stability.

To create a niche for yourself and make sure people are aware of what you do best, approach networking as a long-term strategy.

FEATUREThe Inequality of Science   © JOELLE BOLTIn 2004, close to one in five extramural NIH dollars went to only 10 of the 3,000 institutions that received grants. Five US states get almost half of all funding. What about everyone else? BY ALISON MCCOOKThe ceiling in the medical school at the University of South Dakota (USD) in Vermillion is visibly water-stained and falling down in spots. Walking through the fac

FEATUREThe Inequality of Science   Web Extra: Hot science from USD, UNDHere are examples of some notable papers that have come out of the University of North Dakota and the University of South Dakota in recent years. Citations are as of July 18, 2006.S.A. Denome et al., "Escherichia coli mutants lacking all possible combinations of eight penicillin binding proteins: viability, characteristics, and implications for peptidoglycan synthe

FEATUREThe Inequality of Science   How to get to the topPrincipal investigators on last year's list of the 20 biggest grants offer advice about how to get where they are. BY ALISON MCCOOK1. Experiment with your experimentsOne of the keys to scientific success for Lawrence Corey at the University of Washington in Seattle was doing different things at different times in his career, then finding a way to marry the experiences

FEATURECardiac Stem Cells Results from the first round of controlled human stem cell trials for heart disease are in. What have we learned?BY KENNETH CHIENA bleedng heart, Dicentra formosa © ROBERT ESSEL NYC/CORBISFor patients with chronic degenerative diseases such as heart failure, regenerative medicine holds great promise. It is this compelling need that has created a sense of urgency, leading t

FEATURELab Design   Main image: © Getty ImagesSmaller images: Justin MacNochie Photography/SmithgroupWith billions being spent on new labs and renovations, do shinier labs really make for better science? BY ISHANI GANGULIARTICLE EXTRASRelated Articles:Lab Rehab Redesign and the Bottom Line It's Easy Going GreenAnatomy of an energy-sustainable lab renovationWeb Extra:Lab Rehab: Laying out other options

FEATURELab Design Redesign and the Bottom LineBY ISHANI GANGULI PHOTOS: ISHANI GANGULI Above, a soon-to-be production room, where production manager Randy Caise "went through 40 rolls of tape" to fit as many centrifuges, laminar flow hoods, and incubators as possible. Percifield calls it an efficient use of space.Left, Percifield draws out a production schematic for Lentigen. According to him, the company

FEATUREProtein Misfolding Transmission Electron Micrograph of Protein Filaments in Alzheimer's DiseaseCOURTESY OF HUNTINGTON POTTERHow an apolipoprotein E isoform wreaks havoc in the brain, and what we might be able to do about itBY ROBERT MAHLEY AND YADONG HUANGFor much of the 20th century, scientists have looked at brain cells from patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), Huntington's disease, and other neurodeg

Stefan Kappe's insights into parasite development have already led to a live malaria vaccine for mice.

Race to understand mammalian longevity marries SIRT1 to FOXO

Credit: © PASIEKA/PHOTO RESEARCHERS, INC." /> Credit: © PASIEKA/PHOTO RESEARCHERS, INC. Mutations in mitochondrial DNA have long been suspected as a culprit in aging. But whether these mutations are a cause or a result of aging has been debatable. In 2004, work from Nils-Göran Larsson's group at the Karolinska Institute suggested that mitochondrial mutations indeed promote aging, and a new debate has since arisen.Larsson's group engineered mice to carry an error-prone mitochondri

Credit: © DAVID SCHARF/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY" /> Credit: © DAVID SCHARF/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Genomic quirks make Candida albicans a troublesome creature in the lab. Unlike Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which was sequenced in 1996, C. albicans has no known haploid or homozygous form. Using whole genome shotgun sequencing is tricky, because multiple alleles confound standard assembly software. Moreover, the C. albicans genome is full of repeated sequences and recently diverg

Credit: © KAREN KASMAUSKI/CORBIS" /> Credit: © KAREN KASMAUSKI/CORBIS HIV-1 is unable to replicate in Old World monkeys, even though it can enter their cells. In 2004, Joseph Sodroski at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and his colleagues identified the factor responsible. They transduced human cells with a complementary DNA (cDNA) library prepared from rhesus monkeys. Resistant cells commonly harbored cDNA for the cytoplasmic body component TRIM5α. The research revealed a

Building the synapse

Bighorns outbred

X. Zhang et al., "An allosteric mechanism for activation of the kinase domain of epidermal growth factor receptor," Cell, 125:1137-49, June 16, 2006.This structural/biochemical study provides compelling evidence that the epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor kinase domain is activated through formation of an asymmetric dimer, in which the C-lobe of one kinase domain impinges on the N-lobe of the other kinase domain, activating the latter.Stevan Hubbard New York Unive

Neil Kelleher: Thinking big then doing it

New reagents designed to make liposomal transfection more versatile and efficient

Manufacturer's online tool lets you custom design a lentiviral vector

Configure your own lab chair online

New stain may work where others don't

Surprise: study finds good cross-platform comparability

http://www.the-scientist.com/article/flash/24106/1/ Click to view enlarged diagram Credit: ILLUSTRATION: ANDREW MEEHAN" />http://www.the-scientist.com/article/flash/24106/1/ Click to view enlarged diagram Credit: ILLUSTRATION: ANDREW MEEHAN There are a number of ways to multiplex, but one of the most common relies on solution-based arrays of microscopic beads measuring several microns in diameter.Like planar microarrays, these arrays are addressable - that is,

Confronted with unfavorable clinical data, CEO Garo Armen is working to pull Antigenics out of its downward spin.

Credit: COURTESY OF EPPENDORF AG" /> Credit: COURTESY OF EPPENDORF AG Near the end of 1962, Wilhelm Bergmann, an Eppendorf development engineer, designed the first successful disposable tube for handling microliter volumes. Employing the durability of polypropylene, which can withstand centrifugation speeds up to 30,000 times that of gravity (or more depending on the fit of the centrifuge), and designed with a tight-fitting, attached lid that can be opened and closed with one han