NewsBlog: Glaxo stalls new patent rules Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 31st October 2007 10:15 PM GMT] At an 11-th hour hearing, a Federal court in Virginia today issued an injunction that will temporarily block controversial new patent rules from taking effect tomorrow (November 1). The court hearing concerned the lawsuit filed by GlaxoSmithKline against the US Patent and Trademark Office earlier this month, on the grounds that the patent agency did not have the authority to create the new rules. The final version of the ... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Animal rights group targets neuroscientist Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 31st October 2007 07:39 PM GMT] An animal rights group says it vandalized the home of a Los Angeles neuroscientist, adding yet another incident to a string of recent attacks on UCLA researchers. The incident is being investigated by the FBI and local authorities. An anonymous statement posted on the Web site of the North American Animal Liberation Press Office described in detail how the perpetrators, members of the Animal Liberation... Click to continue View comments (5) | Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Retracting findings after 52 years Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 25th October 2007 08:44 PM GMT] What would you do if you realized you'd made a mistake in a paper you wrote half a century ago? When an 84-year-old retired chemist Googled himself ("I wanted to see, what have I done in all these many years?") he wasn't so happy with what he found, The New York Times reports. A paper of his, published in American Scientist in 1955, had become fodder for creationist arguments about the origin of life. But not only... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: White House "eviscerated" CDC report, says official Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 25th October 2007 03:10 PM GMT] CDC director Julie Gerberding spoke on Tuesday (Oct. 23) at a Senate hearing about the public health effects of climate change. But according to a story in the AP (thanks, WSJ Health Blog ), six pages... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: NIH nearing the end of peer review review Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 25th October 2007 02:51 AM GMT] NIH will hold a final working group meeting tomorrow (October 25) to discuss how to amend peer review. The agency kicked off its review of peer review this summer with the aim of "optimizing its efficiency and effectiveness" - a process many researchers have agreed is needed. The plan is to present results of the series of meetings at the end of this year, and to propose... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Watson cancels book tour Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 19th October 2007 04:45 PM GMT] According to the Science Media Center in the UK, James Watson has cancelled all his remaining speaking engagements in the UK and will be returning to the US, in the aftermath of the uproar created by his comments on race and intelligence. In today's news reports, Watson appears almost befuddled by the words that came out of his mouth. "I am mortified about what has happened,"... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this blog NewsBlog: FDA approves second novel HIV drug Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 16th October 2007 02:07 AM GMT] Till recently, just two classes of antiretroviral drugs, reverse transcriptase inhibitors and protease inhibitors, were on the market to treat HIV infection. Last week, the FDA approved Merck's raltegravir (Isentress), which interferes with viral replication at a different point, blocking the enzyme integrase to prevent the integration of the viral genetic material into host DNA. In our September issue, The Scientist... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Geneticist pleads guilty to misdemeanor in "art bioterror" case Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 12th October 2007 07:27 PM GMT] Robert Ferrell, a geneticist at the University of Pittsburgh who was indicted in June, 2004, along with Steven Kurtz, an artist at the State University of New York in Buffalo, after Ferrell shipped bacteria to Kurtz to use in an art project, pled guilty yesterday to charges of "mailing an injurious article," according a report by the... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Gore, IPCC win Nobel Peace Prize Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 12th October 2007 04:51 PM GMT] This morning former vice president Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) were awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." According to a statement posted on his Web site,... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Gerhard Ertl takes 2007 Chemistry Nobel for solid surface chemistry Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 10th October 2007 12:52 PM GMT] Gerhard Ertl, a German physical chemist, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry this morning for research that defined how molecules interact at interface between solids and gasses. His work laid the foundation for the modern field of surface chemistry, and had important implications for understanding processes such as how catalytic converters clean up car exhaust, how the ozone layer gets depleted, and how iron... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Venter makes synthetic chromosome... or does he? Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 8th October 2007 08:51 PM GMT] Rumors of J. Craig Venter's achievements in creating artificial life are again circulating in the press - the Guardian reported this weekend that Venter has successfully made a fully synthetic chromosome, dubbed Mycoplasma laboratorium. The chromosome reportedly consists of 381 genes, and in total contains 580,000 nucleotide base pairs. In a... Click to continue View comments (2) | Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Stem cells to test medicines? Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 3rd October 2007 07:05 PM GMT] The British government and three big pharma companies announced a partnership today (October 3) to develop techniques for using stem cells to test the safety of new medicines, the Financial Times reports. So far, the article notes, big companies have stayed away from the controversial field. The group, launched today as a nonprofit called Stem Cells for Safer... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Biosafety accidents on the rise Posted by Alla Katsnelson [Entry posted at 3rd October 2007 02:44 AM GMT] On the heels of recent revelations of unreported accidents in Texas university labs and breaches of safety regulations at the University of Wisconsin, an AP article today reports on mishaps at biosafety labs across the country. More than 100 such incidents have occurred since 2003, and some were not reported as required, according to the... Click to continue Comment on this blog

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