December 2004

There are two quite distinct contributors to the "disagreements over status of scientific evidence"

I do not know what all the fuss is about over conflicts of interest and the ethics of NIH scientists consulting with biotech companies.

Psychiatrists can draw upon long clinical experience with adult patients to surmise why antidepressant medications foster suicidal thoughts and behavior in some children, as the US Food and Drug Administration warned this fall.

Low-calorie diets extend lifespan in almost every model tested, but scientists can't yet agree on what controls this phenomenon.

As formal and methodological as it sometimes appears, science remains at its heart a process of storytelling.

The entire patent system is a delicate balancing act.

When scientists make long-term research plans, they must try to anticipate how emerging technologies will influence their work in the coming years.

Scientists from Manhattan to Pasadena, Moscow to Johannesburg, responded to The Scientist's question, "What gift do you most want this holiday season, and why?" Answers included the practical (sliceable gel blocks), the whimsical (a Star Trek tricorder), and meteorological (another El Niño). But what they all had in common was the desire for that most intangible and elusive of gifts: hastened progress in the researchers' respective fields.TREKKIAN DELIGHTFor upcoming missions to Mars and Eu

Give your prof a dose of cheer this holiday season with this little USB-powered Christmas tree.

Membrane proteins comprise the majority of drug targets.

newly released confocal microscope, the Eclipse C1-Plus, sports a range of new features, including new adjustable lasers, according to Jeff Larson, Nikon's US product manager for confocal microscopes.

In the world of gene-expression profiling, microarrays reign, but they are not without drawbacks.

Research bodies in 10 European countries will allow scientists to take grant money with them when they move between their nations, according to a letter of intent announced in November by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

The German arm of the environmental lobby group Greenpeace is disputing a patent on the grounds that it allows the commercial exploitation of human stem cells.