October 2006

Doug Bergman drove 240 miles to have his heart stabbed by a needle from the inside out. Now he hopes the stem cells that may be in that needle will change his life. By Ivan Oransky WEB EXTRA View Slideshow of Bergman's day Related Article: Making a Play at Regrowing Hearts Results from the first round of controlled human stem cell trials for heart disease are in. What have we learned? Web Extras: Clinical Trials Database A sortabl

How a single protein was found to link schizophrenia and depression to drugs of abuse and addiction. 

Past BPTW Performance of the 2006 Top 15 US Academia Institutions // create ActiveWidgets data model - CSV text table var table = new AW.CSV.Table; // provide data URL - plain text comma-separated file table.setURL("/supplementary/csv/24822/pasttop15us.csv"); // start asyncronous data retrieval table.request(); // define column labels var columns = [ "Past Rank", "US and Canada","Postdocs 03", "Academia 03", "Postdocs 04", "Academia 04", "Postdocs 05","Acad

Related Article Let's get political President Bush has done his fair share of interfering in science and the scientific process. How can you fight back? By Alison McCook ARTICLE EXTRAS Related Articles: Enemies of the State Science and the President Find out what your candidates think of research Poll: Voice your opinion on the Bush administration Featured Article: Sizing Up Bush on Science

Best Places to Work 2006: Academia © JENNIFER TRENCHARD © THOMAS ROPKE/CORBIS Our annual survey picks the 40 best academic institutions. See where yours - or the one you're considering moving to - fared. Assistant publisher MARIA W. ANDERSON highlights trends and zeroes in on what made top schools great. By Maria W. Anderson, with reporting by Juhi Yajnik Related Articles: Best Places to Work Survey Index Best Places to Work in Academia 2006

Top 50 Institutions in the U.S. // create ActiveWidgets data model - CSV text table var table = new AW.CSV.Table; // provide data URL - plain text comma-separated file table.setURL("/supplementary/csv/24822/institutions.csv"); // start asyncronous data retrieval table.request(); // define column labels var columns = [ "Rank in 2006", "Rank in 2005","Name/Location", "State", "Type", "Strengths", "Strengths","Weaknesses","Weaknesses"]; // create ActiveWid

COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION Bush's isn't the only administration to use science selectively. Here's a sampling of previous incidents: Truman Subjected almost 60,000 federal scientists and those with access to classified information to security reviews, costing some clearances and work. Nixon Dissolved the office of the presidential science advisor. Asked candidate to head Nat

Top 15 US Academic Institutions // create ActiveWidgets data model - CSV text table var table = new AW.CSV.Table; // provide data URL - plain text comma-separated file table.setURL("/supplementary/csv/24822/top15us.csv"); // start asyncronous data retrieval table.request(); // define column labels var columns = [ "Rank in 2006", "Rank in 2005","Institution", "Type", "No. of Full-Time Life Science Researchers", "Federal Funding (in millions of dollars)", "

Most Important Factors for US Academic Scientists // create ActiveWidgets data model - CSV text table var table = new AW.CSV.Table; // provide data URL - plain text comma-separated file table.setURL("/supplementary/csv/24822/topfactors.csv"); // start asyncronous data retrieval table.request(); // define column labels var columns = [ "Rank in the US in 2006", "Rank in the US in 2005","Category", "Factor"]; // create ActiveWidgets Grid javascript object

Top Canadian Academic Institutions // create ActiveWidgets data model - CSV text table var table = new AW.CSV.Table; // provide data URL - plain text comma-separated file table.setURL("/supplementary/csv/24822/can.csv"); // start asyncronous data retrieval table.request(); // define column labels var columns = [ "Rank in 2006", "Name"]; // create ActiveWidgets Grid javascript object var obj = new AW.UI.Grid; // provide column labels obj.setHeade

Top UK Academic Institutions // create ActiveWidgets data model - CSV text table var table = new AW.CSV.Table; // provide data URL - plain text comma-separated file table.setURL("/supplementary/csv/24822/uk.csv"); // start asyncronous data retrieval table.request(); // define column labels var columns = [ "Rank in 2006", "Name"]; // create ActiveWidgets Grid javascript object var obj = new AW.UI.Grid; // provide column labels obj.setHeaderText(c

FEATURE BPTW Academia Survey 2006 Methodology ARTICLE EXTRAS Related Articles: Best Places to Work Survey Index Best Places to Work in Academia 2006 Ranking Tables: Top 50 US Academic Institutions Top 15 US Academic Institutions Factors Most and Least Important to US Academic Scientists Top 10 UK Academic Institutions and Factors Most Important to UK Academia Scientists Top 5 Canadian Academic Instit

Is the 43rd President of the United States really science's worst-ever enemy? By Alison McCook ARTICLE EXTRAS Related Articles: Enemies of the State Bush's isn't the only administration to use science selectively. Here's a sampling of previous incidents. Science and the President Is Bush science's nemesis? Or are we being unreasonably rough on his record? Let's get Political: President Bush has done his fair share of interfering

Top UK Academic Institutions // create ActiveWidgets data model - CSV text table var table = new AW.CSV.Table; // provide data URL - plain text comma-separated file table.setURL("/supplementary/csv/24822/uk.csv"); // start asyncronous data retrieval table.request(); // define column labels var columns = [ "Rank in 2006", "Name"]; // create ActiveWidgets Grid javascript object var obj = new AW.UI.Grid; // provide column labels obj.setHeaderText

Top Canadian Academic Institutions // create ActiveWidgets data model - CSV text table var table = new AW.CSV.Table; // provide data URL - plain text comma-separated file table.setURL("/supplementary/csv/24822/can.csv"); // start asyncronous data retrieval table.request(); // define column labels var columns = [ "Rank in 2006", "Name"]; // create ActiveWidgets Grid javascript object var obj = new AW.UI.Grid; // provide column labels obj.setHeade

There's nothing romantic about Larry Katz's "lab." And yet...

How a car accident led to an important genetic discovery

Find out what happened when five US teenagers traveled to Argentina to compete

What the Park Grass Experiment has to say about seed, fertilizer, and more

What's on tap at this month's American Association for Laboratory Animal Science meeting

An expert on the technique shares his secrets.

http://www.the-scientist.com/supplementary/flash/24912/1.html Click here to view diagram _blank Credit: ILLUSTRATION: ANDREW MEEHAN" />http://www.the-scientist.com/supplementary/flash/24912/1.html Click here to view diagram _blank Credit: ILLUSTRATION: ANDREW MEEHAN Related Articles A Master Regulator in the Brain Meeting of the Minds Singing in the Bird Brain Patch Clamping Unhooked Ten Steps to Better Patch Clamping Paul Greengard and Per Svenningson discuss DARPP-

An unusual HCV strain opens the pathogen's entire life cycle to scrutiny.

Deciphering Kinesin's Step

Fluorescent repertoire expands with oranges, cherries

I.C. Lorenz et al., "Structure of the catalytic domain of the hepatitis C virus NS2-3 protease," Nature, 442:831-5, Aug. 17, 2006. This paper reports that the NS2-3 protease of hepatitis C virus is a cysteine protease with a novel fold, and that the active site is located at the interface of a dimer. The results suggest that dimerization (or NS2 concentration) may be a regulatory mechanism in the auto-processing of the viral polyprotein. Liang Tong

How to record a single neuron in a moving animal

Research suggests a 'code' at work

Coleen Murphy: Immersed in the Inevitable

Should you be using screening tests?

Paul Greengard of Rockefeller University shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for his work on signal transduction in the brain. He and Per Svenningsson, of the Rockefeller and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, write on page 40 about the discovery of DARPP-32 and its subsequent characterization as a master regulator in the brain, integrating signals involved in drugs of abuse as well as schizophrenia and depression. "One of the major challenges was to prove

"The only immortal aspect of living material is the message found in information-containing molecules, and even that is subject to mutation and change." The never-ending story of HeLa Re: "HeLa Herself"1 and "The First Immortal Cell Line."2 HeLa was not the first immortal cell line. That honor goes to Strain L, which was isolated by Wilton Earle from mouse mesenchyme eleven years earlier.3 HeLa's distinction is that it was the first immortal human cell line. HeLa

ASHG IN NEW ORLEANS » Just over a year after Hurricane Katrina began forcing many conferences scheduled for New Orleans to relocate, the American Society of Human Genetics expects the Society?s annual meeting there, from October 9-13, to draw numbers comparable to previous years. Health officials will speak on identifying Katrina victims, and members can participate in outreach efforts to repair science education in New Orleans schools. For more, see http://www.ashg.org/.

Aided and abetted by the press, researchers are relying more on case reports.

We must step up to counter the misinformation that is destroying poultry markets.

You have $200,000 to spend in your new lab. What should you buy?

The songbirds studied by Fernando Nottebohm aren't the only ones singing his praises.

What started as a wild idea in 2000 languished, until a chance meeting in Washington gave an opportunity to jumpstart a new business.

Forecast models can become complex, but the principles for gathering and vetting data for good predictions should remain basic.

Industry has long questioned the feasibility of drugs mass-produced by transgenic animals, but recent first-time approvals by the European Commission and the US Food and Drug Administration suggest concerns are subsiding. The first transgenic drug approved in Europe, ATryn, is recombinant human antithrombin, an anticlotting protein secreted into the milk of transgenic goats developed by GTC Biotherapeutics in Framingham, Mass. Biotechnology analyst Philip Nadeau at Cowen and Com

What happens when founders stick around companies?

Biotechnology is a failed 30-year experiment, says Harvard Business School professor Gary Pisano. For most of its existence, income has been nonexistent - the total for public companies broke zero for the first time in 2002 and hit total operating income of about $2.5 billion on just over $35 billion in sales in 2004, Pisano observes in his book Science Business (Harvard Business School Press, Nov 2006). Remove Amgen from the picture, and income dips below zero. Pisano says he think

Are women patenting as much as men?

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences will award $13 million to four centers over four years, or up to $944,000 annually per center, to create innovative therapies for wound healing. The centers in total will include 36 investigators at eight universities and medical institutions and are aimed at drawing together interdisciplinary teams. "A major goal is to set up a framework to establish larger centers in the future," says Gregg Semenza at Johns Hopkins University in

With no absence of fanfare, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus has finally opened its doors. It is now looking for life scientists with backgrounds in mathematics, computer science, optical physics and chemistry in addition to biology - to walk through them. The institute's focus is on two main areas of research: understanding the brain's information-processing system and developing technologies for creating and interpreting biological images. "It's a hig

Credit: COURTESY OF TERRY SHARRER" /> Credit: COURTESY OF TERRY SHARRER In a series of experiments in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Stanley Cohen, Herbert Boyer, and their colleagues developed the techniques necessary to recombine genes in bacterial plasmids, allowing for their mass production and launching recombinant biotechnology as we know it. In 1973, the Cohen-Boyer team introduced a plasmid fragment from one strain of Escherichia coli, conferring kanamycin resistance in

Is Bush science's nemesis? Or are we being unreasonably rough on his record?

37 recommendations Europeans came up with when they gathered to talk about brain science.