Content by The Scientist

A snapshot of the highest-ranked articles from February on Faculty of 1000

Contributors “The greatest thing about science is being the first to know something,” says Fred Grinnell, a cell biologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas.“That’s such an incredible high.” Grinnell, who researches wound repair and tissue engineering, also enjoys pondering the philosophy of science. In an essay Grinnell writes about the dubious nature of scientific knowledge, one of the topics explored in his book Eve

The Evidence Argument   Re: about the use of evidence in medicine: “Evidence-based” is a simplistic and misleading buzzword. A single well-documented case is valid evidence, but the self-proclaimed “evidence-based” promoters and practitioners attack it as “anecdotal.”

Speaking of Science Fertnig / ISTOCKphoto.com Even the most unreasonable postdoc is more reasonable than a two-year-old. And the distraction strategies you apply to a two-year-old work equally well in the lab. So being a mum has probably made me a better lab manager. —Cambridge University molecular geneticist Fiona Watt, profiled in The Scientist (Jan. 2011)We cannot escape the troubling conclusion that some—perhaps many—cherished g

Top 7 From F1000 James Cavallini / Photo Researchers, Inc. 1. Immune response feeds parasite » Salmonella is able to outcompete resident gut microbes by deriving energy from the inflammatory immune response that is supposed to combat the pathogen.S.E. Winter et al., Nature, 467:426-29, 2010. Evaluated by P. Malik-Kale & O. Steele-Mortimer, NIAID; E. Guccione & D. Kelly, Univ Sheffield; M. Vijay-Kumar & A. Gewirtz, Emory Univ; D. Alpers, Wa

Contributors Samuel S. Myers and Aaron Bernstein are interested in the bigger picture. Both enrolled in interdisciplinary programs in college and moved on to medical school. But even their medical school and residency experiences were untraditional. Myers enlarged his view of the world by taking a two-year break from his medical residency at the University of California, San Francisco, when Tibetan officials invited him to become the health administrator of Qomolangm

Mail Really Learning Biology At least in the Unites States, most undergraduate biology majors are required to take an evolution course as part of their core curriculum, but I know of no undergraduate curriculum that requires a course in systematics. While evolution does indeed explain the “why” of homology, systematics tackles the more fundamental questions of “what is homology, how do we discover it, and use it to infer phylogene

Eavesdroppings Speaking of Science © T-Immagini / istockphoto.com Understanding brain code, and connecting it with a computer chip, is the next pivotal frontier, analogous to how cracking the DNA code astronomically progressed science. —Caroline Rothstein, in “Implant Memory Chips in Our Brains,” a Big Think interview with Gary Marcus When we’re shown trust, our brains motivate us to be trustworthy. It’s a beautiful ki

Top 7 From F1000 MedicalRF / Photo Researchers, Inc. 1. To stent or not? » A large randomized trial demonstrates that arterial stenting is as effective and safe as surgical intervention in treating narrowing (stenosis) of the carotid arteries, challenging previous work that showed stents were more risky. T.G. Brott et al., N Engl J Med, 363:11-23, 2010. Evaluated by G. Tang & J. Matsumura, Univ Wisconsin; M. Alberts, Northwestern Univ; M. Nishik

A snapshot of the highest-ranked articles from a 30-day period on Faculty of 1000

Contributors Irish geneticist W.H. Irwin McLean has devoted the better part of the past two decades to studying rare, single-gene skin disorders. His work on these diseases led him to filaggrin, “a really weird gene,” that plays a role in the development of dry, flaky skin. Surprisingly, mutations in that same gene are also involved in complex allergic disorders such as atopic eczema and asthma. McLean is a professor of human genetics at the Univer

Mail Thumbs Up for Blogging I absolutely agree that blogging is an excellent tool1 that allows us to extend our voices beyond the lab or scientific journal, whether it is for the purpose of getting suggestions or for finding a collaborator. However, there are many other aspects that affect the daily lives of scientists. Venturing in to the realm of the “confessional” blogosphere shouldn’t necessarily be labeled as “fluffy&

Eavesdroppings Speaking of Science Only_Fabricio/stock photo Nobody will deny that there is at least some roughness everywhere. —————————————————————Smooth shapes are very rare in the wild but extremely important in the ivory tower and the factory.—Mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot (Born Nov. 20, 1924; died Oct. 14, 2

By Cristina Luiggi Still Ticking Paul Ehrlich on why unchecked population growth continues to be a time bomb.The human population is set to hit the seven billion mark next year. Paul Ehrlich, entomologist, conservationist, and author, in 1968, of the seminal book on human overpopulation, The Population Bomb, discusses a recent article by ecologists Charles Hall and John Day that reconsiders a perennial question: is there a limit to our growth? (American Scientist,

TOP 7 From F1000 MedicalRF.com/Visuals Unlimited, Inc.1. How cilia talk» New findings show how primary (nonmotile) cilia retain membrane proteins needed to send and receive extracellular signals—a barrier at the base of cilia made up of proteins called septins.Q. Hu et al., Science, 329:436-39, 2010. Evaluated by A. Wittinghofer, Max-Planck Inst; J. Axelrod, Stanford; M. Labouesse, CNRS; S. Feng and W. Guo, U Penn; M Bettencourt-Dias, IGC; Y. Yama