November 2005

The classic description of the scientific method begins with devising a hypothesis.

Sister Mary Jane Paolella blames herself.

No doubt plenty of nasty things have been said about food poisoning bacteria over the centuries, but one thing they've never been accused of is political bias.

There's always been an air of mystery around whale sharks.

When an oscilloscope's audio monitor starts to screech rhythmically in a neurophysiology lab, its waves hint at one of the most puzzling patterns in biology.

Although arguments remain over whether autism is genuinely on the rise to the astonishing degree reported in places like California, there is general agreement among scientists that the condition has a genetic basis.

Since long before the word neuroscience was coined, the community has devoted substantial resources to studying the visual system, and for good reason.

Twenty-five years after the enactment of the Bayh-Dole Act, scientists and administrators in academia who are interested in moving bench discoveries to the clinic are learning what travelers in London's subway system already know: It's important to "mind the gap."

While politicos continue to debate the ethics of expanding research on embryonic stem cells, the scientific debate persists as to whether adult stem cells are multipotent, or if they even need to be in order to be therapeutically relevant.

These papers were selected from multiple disciplines from the Faculty of 1000, a Web-based literature awareness tool http://www.facultyof1000.com.A. O'Doherty et al., "An aneuploid mouse strain carrying human chromosome 21 with Down syndrome phenotypes," Science, 309:2033–7, Sept. 23, 2005.This is the first study to show that a human chromosome can be introduced into a mouse's germline and transmitted to successive generations. The authors introduced a copy of human chromosome 21. The mice

Dope may help the growth of new brain cells.

Take the bully out of the schoolyard and another quickly takes his place.

Short of sticking electrodes directly into an organism's brain, scientists looking to image neural signaling in living systems have few options.

Irene Pepperberg, a Harvard University research associate who studies cognition and communication in African grey parrots, has moved her lab four times since 1984.

So, you've been working with small animals and you want to move up to larger experimental models.

An interdisciplinary team at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY, has developed a computer program that uses protein structural information to predict how proteins separate on a chromatography column.1 "This is something that is usually done by trial and error, but in this case we've used information from the experiment to build a computer model that enables us to make that prediction," explains coauthor Curt Breneman, a computational chemist at RPI.The technique first takes exper

Foot soldiers in the "Omics revolution" have an ally in the BioOdyssey Calligrapher MiniArrayer, a new entry into the benchtop microarray printing arena from Bio-Rad Laboratories.

they have been a boon to scientists.

Researchers imaging DNA gels can put away their UV-protective gear.

has just released the G:BOX, a modular image analysis system designed for a range of applications and budgets.

During the early and mid-1990s, Purdue Pharma filed three patent applications for oxycodone formulations.

third annual Best Places to Work in Academia survey conveyed a clear message: The people that they work with, the resources at their disposal, and their opportunities for career advancement are the leading factors in determining their satisfaction with their work environment.

Anyone can buy naming rights to a star, but Gary and Linda Dower are hoping to pick up their very own observatory.

Neuroscience is intellectually the broadest and most taxing field in life sciences, and technologically it is the most challenging.

, scientist at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco.

Re: "Will open access work?"1 It is quite untrue to suggest that our report is biased because its funders all have an interest in the existing subscription/license journal publishing model. We deliberately engaged an impartial consultancy to carry out the work in order that the study should be entirely objective – we are perfectly willing to make the anonymized data freely available for others to analyze. And all three organizations have a strong interest in the Open Access model. The Asso

in the September 12, 2005 issue addressed the issue of animal rights terrorism.