March 2009

Associate editor Andrea Gawrylewski has graced the pages of The Scientist for more than three years, starting as an intern in October, 2005, fresh from journalism graduate school at Columbia University. Since then, she has written on the order of 200 articles for every section of the magazine and online, including seven features. Her favorite—and most challenging—piece,

Amateurs have the freedom to experiment and innovate – watch out for their impact.

Complexity vs. diversity Re: "Darwinian Time,"1 If the environment is relatively static, attributes that allow the organism to out-compete should slowly become more prevalent. The less complicated organism will evolve more rapidly. When we have large environmental perturbations, however, then the diversity within the existing population would seem to be the controlling factor; in a natural population

Kozul holding standard chow (left) and purified chow (right). Credit: Photo by Jon Gilbert Fox" />Kozul holding standard chow (left) and purified chow (right). Credit: Photo by Jon Gilbert Fox Three hours after a particular poster session began at the 2007 Society for Toxicology meeting, the line to see Courtney Kozul's poster still wrapped around the room, and she had collected 90 business cards. Cl

"These are from Justin," says Ruth McCarrick-Walmsley, as she slides a dish of cells under a microscope. The view through the eyepiece includes an array of silvery cells, fanned out in curved lines, looking like a school of fish. These bone progenitor cells, derived from an eight-year-old's baby teeth, represent a major advance in finding a cure for a rare, devastating disease that has stymied resea

Credit: Courtesy of kabils / www.flickr.com/creativecommons" /> Credit: Courtesy of kabils / www.flickr.com/creativecommons On their own, the symptoms don't sound deadly: despondence, weight loss, fatigue. But after a few months, or in some cases a few years, all birds with proventricular dilatation disease (PDD) wind up dead. PDD began appearing in veterinary clinics in the 1970s. It eventually spread to parrots wo

Paleo-ethno-what? Student archaeologists excavating a room next to where the chile seed (inset) was found. Coutesy Of Michael Whalen, University of Tulsa By Margaret Guthrie Paul Minnis of the University of Oklahoma in Norman is obsessed with a chile seed. He found it buried last summer, two meters below ground, in a pile of trash left behind a millennium ago by indigenous people in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico. "The

Frankenfish By Bob Grant Northern Snakeheads (Channa argus) A toothy jowl snaps shut; behind it, a spear-shaped body writhes to the surface of a stagnant pond. An angry hiss escapes from this ancient-looking fish, a northern snakehead (Channa argus). It has just been electrocuted with a backpack-mounted, gas-powered shocking apparatus, and is now in the grasp of fisheries scientist Paul Overbeck. "That one sneezed," Overbeck jokes, scooping the

All Systems Go Some peculiar microorganisms are showing systems biology can color in what's missing from models of biochemical and cellular networks. By Elie Dolgin n April 22, 2006, Nitin Baliga, a microbiologist at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, was spending a lazy Saturday afternoon at home, when he noticed an enticing email in his inbox from his ISB collaborator Richard Bonneau. The subject line: "woooooohoooooo!" Baliga'

Systems Biology Weathers the Storm By Elie Dolgin ast December, in the face of one of the worst winter storms in decades, the Institute for Systems Biology declared a snow day. Most researchers stayed home, and a calm stillness transcended the Institute's three-story home overlooking Seattle's snow-crested Lake Union. Rows of stacked PCR machines sat unused, and the room full of mass spectrometry machines was silent—hardly the poster-image of

MANIPULATING MEMORY Insights into the cellular and molecular basis of emotion and memory could help patients with post traumatic stress disorder. By Joseph LeDoux Original photo © David Pollack n 1999 a postdoc in my lab, Karim Nader, walked into my office with an idea for a new experiment. He outlined his plan to test a controversial theory in neuroscience called memory reconsolidation that contradicted wha

THE LEDOUX STRATEGY for finding the brain circuits involved in emotional memory (inspired by Kandel and Mishkin) By Joseph LeDoux Step one:Create a memory: pair an electric shock with a loud noise, so that the noise is remembered as the beacon for imminent shock. Step two: Identify the neural circuits that form and store the memory: make lesions in the brain by applying electrical current locally and testing if the animal can still learn to associate the tone

Best Places to Work Postdocs 2009 Questions Factors Categories My principal investigator takes time to discuss the science behind the experiments and other work that I do. Quality of Training and Mentoring I have learned much from my principal investigator about how to succeed as a scientist. Quality of Training and Mentoring My colleagues help me to learn to use equipment and to perform techniques that are new to me. Q

Related Articles Best Places to Work : Postdocs 2009 High mark for Denmark Survey Methodology Top 40 US Institutions Top US Institutions Top International Institutions Downloadable PDF's Best Places to Work 2008: Industry Best Places to Work 2008: Postdocs Best Places to Work 2008: Academia In our March issue, read about the institutions that ranked at the top of our Best Places to Work for Postdoc survey. Here, download the 2009 Top Institution Charts in printable PDFs.

Best Places to Work : Postdocs 2009 International postdocs often take on challenges that go beyond the lab. How do this year's top institutions help foreign fellows adjust to their new lives? By Jennifer Evans © Amac Garbe / ein-satz-zentrale.de Only moments after emerging from the plane, exhausted from his 23-hour flight, plant microbiologist Andry Andriankaja was met at the Dallas–Ft. Worth airport by a driver from the Samu

After his doctorate at University College London, Bjarke Abrahamsen packed his bags and returned home to Denmark in 2008 for a postdoc at the University of Copenhagen, which ranked second for international locations in our 7th Annual Best places to Work for Postdocs survey. One of the things that drew him back, he says, was a more fluid relationship between the university and industry than he

The Whitehead Institute shot to first place this year, up from 14th the year before, after not even making the list in 2007 or 2006. According to Jennifer Hughes, a recently-promoted research scientist and former genetics postdoc at the Whitehead Institute, one reason for the Cambridge, Mass., institution's dramatic rise in the rankings is a renewed focus on postdocs and a generous benefits

Survey Methodology Survey Form: A web-based survey form was posted from October 2 to December 1, 2008. Results were collected and collated automatically. Invitations: E-mail invitations were sent to readers of The Scientist and registrants on The Scientist web site who identified themselves as non-tenured life scientists working in academia or other non-commercial research institutions. The survey was also publicized on The Scientist web site and through news stories. Related

Top 40 US Institutions Related Articles Best Places to Work : Postdocs 2009 High mark for Denmark Whitehead comes into the spotlight Survey Methodology Ranking Tables: Top 40 US Institutions Top US Institutions Top International Institutions Downloadable PDF's Additional Articles Best Places to Work 2008: Industry Best Places to Work 2008: Postdocs Best Places to Work 2008: Ac

Top US Institutions Related Articles Best Places to Work : Postdocs 2009 High mark for Denmark Whitehead comes into the spotlight Survey Methodology Ranking Tables: Top 40 US Institutions Top US Institutions Top International Institutions Downloadable PDF's Additional Articles Best Places to Work 2008: Industry Best Places to Work 2008: Postdocs Best Places to Work 2008: Acade

Top International Institutions Related Articles Best Places to Work : Postdocs 2009 High mark for Denmark Whitehead comes into the spotlight Survey Methodology Ranking Tables: Top 40 US Institutions Top US Institutions Top International Institutions Downloadable PDF's Additional Articles Best Places to Work 2008: Industry Best Places to Work 2008: Postdocs Best Places to Work

Shiv Grewal has seen both late nights and early mornings in the lab – and connections between seemingly disparate elements that other molecular biologists might miss.

A fixed percentage of a country's GDP should be committed to research.

Your interpretation of results depends on more than just the results.

Researchers unlock a treasure trove of information about how cells sense and respond to DNA damage.

Using the bacterium Streptococcus thermophilis, a team led by Philippe Horvath at the Danish food ingredient company Danisco, integrated bacteriophage sequences into "clustered regularly interspersed short palindromic repeat" (CRISPR) regions to generate phage-resistant bacterial strains. "They directly confirmed the prediction," says Eugene Koonin, a computational biologist at the US National Center for Biotechnology Information.

Credit: WAPMC" /> Credit: WAPMC The paper: S. Lavergne and J. Molofsky, "Increased genetic variation and evolutionary potential drive the success of an invasive grass," Proc Natl Acad Sci, 104:3883–8, 2007. (Cited in 37 papers) The finding: To compare genetic diversity between invasive and indigenous plants, University of Vermont evolutionary ecologists Sébastie

Credit: Ajin Mandaokar / Washington State University" /> Credit: Ajin Mandaokar / Washington State University The paper: B. Thines et al., "JAZ repressor proteins are targets of the SCFCOI1 complex during jasmonate signaling," Nature, 448: 661-8, 2007. (Cited in 81 papers) The finding: John Browse of Washington State University and colleagues used transcript profiling and d

Credit: © Matt Kalinowski Photography" /> Credit: © Matt Kalinowski Photography At the end of his junior year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998, Ed Boyden was hanging out with friends in the basement of the famed Media Lab, trying to figure out what to do for the summer. "We saw this competition online and thought, hey, that's cool," recalls Boyden of the first International Underwater

Making the most of mass spectrometry imaging.

Frankie Trull wants to sell your company to Congress.

Tips for preventing research misconduct and maintaining the integrity of your research.

Alzheimer's drawing of a histological section from his second patient, Johann F. Credit: Image supplied by author, obtained from Zeitschrift fur die Gesamte Neurologie und Pyschiatrie, 1911." />Alzheimer's drawing of a histological section from his second patient, Johann F. Credit: Image supplied by author, obtained from Zeitschrift fur die Gesamte Neurologie und Pyschiatrie, 1911. On