Scientific experimentation is based on examining falsifiable hypotheses, and not simply using relatively meaningless experiments to prop up thedogma du jour.
Last month the World Health Organization's external committee on smallpox recommended that the two scientific teams possessing smallpox virus be allowed to insert a green fluorescent marker gene into the virus to test the efficacy of potential antismallpox drugs.
The European public's dislike for genetically modified foods shows no sign of waning, but Denmark's ingredient firms aren't letting a little thing like overwhelming public distrust stop them.
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.
The ion channel field has been a bit charged up lately, thanks largely to an impressive series of crystalline structures published by Rod MacKinnon's group at Rockefeller University.
These papers were selected from multiple disciplines from the Faculty of 1000, a Web-based literature awareness tool http://www.facultyof1000.com.T.A. Allen et al., "The SINE-encoded mouse B2 RNA represses mRNA transcription in response to heat shock," Nat Struct Mol Biol, 11:816–21, September 2004.A small, noncoding RNA, called B2, is expressed during heat shock and represses transcription from RNA polymerase II. Interestingly, B2 RNA is transcribed from a DNA region previously thought to
RNA interference can turn off morphine production in poppies, according to a group from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) Plant Industry in Canberra, Australia.
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
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.
Embryonic stem cell research is proceeding apace in many nations but continues to face political and economic hurdles in the United States, despite California voters' approval of a $3 billion war chest for stem cell research conducted in that state.
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.
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).
As the largest city in the northwest United States, Seattle is probably known less for biotech than it is for aerospace (Boeing), software (Microsoft in nearby Redmond), coffee (Starbucks), and online retail (Amazon.com).
