A leading child psychiatrist got thousands of emails this week criticizing a provocative advertising campaign by his center to raise awareness of mental illness in children.

The New York Times reported that Harold Koplewicz, the director of New York University's Child Study Center, received more than 3,000 emails in response to the ads, which used fake ransom notes to call attention to autism and depression in... Click to continue

For Bruce Alberts, the week Science announced he would be the journal's new chief editor was, decidedly, "hectic." Already, "I've got a lot of people sending me advice on how Science magazine could be improved," he told me Wednesday (December 19). His response: Bring it on. "A thousand minds are better than ten," he said, so he's going to be collecting suggestions from all corners about... Click to continue

Scientists have sorted out another piece of the DNA replication puzzle by showing what might happen to histones through the process of unwinding DNA. The findings, published in today's (December 20) Science, identify a complex that can shuttle histones from parent to daughter strands of DNA as it replicates.

As the replication fork moves along a strand of DNA, the nucleosomes - the 4-histone pair... Click to continue

A fertility researcher who published a study suggesting that prayer improves in vitro fertilization success rates has renewed his legal battle against an obstetrician/gynecologist who has criticized his work.

Kwang-Yul Cha, a fertility researcher and chancellor of the medical school at Pochon CHA University in Korea, filed a motion on Tuesday (Dec 18) for a new trial after a judge threw out his defamation lawsuit against University of... Click to continue

In case you have never attended an open house workshop at the NIH's Center for Scientific Review, in which people who participate in NIH peer review gather to discuss how the process is going and could improve, here's how it typically goes:

Tuesday morning (December 18), about 80 stakeholders such as study section leaders in the Biomolecular group (about one-sixth of the entire CSR) gathered in a large auditorium of the Natcher Building on the NIH campus to consider two... Click to continue

Both chambers of Congress this afternoon (December 19) agreed to a suite of government spending bills that included roughly $29 billion for the National Institutes of Health, according to Nancy Granese from the Campaign for Medical Research.

This budget, for FY08, is $130 million more than FY07. The raise was smaller than some medical and research organizations had hoped for. In a press release from CMR, the group's chairman, G. Steven... Click to continue

The National Institutes of Health launched a project today (Dec. 19) aimed at sequencing the myriad microbes that inhabit the human body. NIH has already awarded several millions of dollars in grant money to researchers engaging in the Human Microbiome Project, and ... Click to continue

The protein Nanog, long considered essential to maintaining pluripotency and promoting differentiation in embryonic stem cells, may play a lesser role in those processes, according to a study published this week in Nature.

"The previous paradigm was that Nanog was infinitely coupled to differentiation," Ian Chambers of the University of Edinburgh, lead author of the study, told The Scientist. This new work has shown,... Click to continue

The US Food and Drug Administration yesterday (December 17) approved a beta blocker that I wrote about last month in an article about the value of race-based medicine.

The FDA's approval notice did not mention any particular race or ethnicity, and a press release from the drug's manufacturer noted that the drug,... Click to continue

A provision mandating public access to research published by NIH-funded scientists has survived in the funding bill making its way through Congress this week.

The provision was originally part of a funding bill that President George W. Bush vetoed last month. It mandates that the NIH adopt a policy requiring agency-funded scientists to post their published research on the agency's... Click to continue

Hwang Woo-Suk, the disgraced South Korean stem cell scientist, is part of a research team in South Korea requesting permission to work on human embryonic stem cells, the Associated Press reported yesterday.

Hwang was one of eight researchers from the Suam Biotechnology Institute, a lab he founded last year, who filed the request, an anonymous... Click to continue

Bruce Alberts' colleagues are -- not surprisingly -- celebrating his decision to be the 18th editor-in-chief of Science, which the journal announced Monday (December 17).

"I don't think [the journal] could have picked a better person," Peter Walter, chairman of the department of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, told The Scientist.

The announcement followed months of speculation, during which Alberts' name... Click to continue

The latest proposal for the 2008 budget for the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gives the agencies a slight bump over last year's levels. Over the weekend, Congress prepared a new version of appropriations following President George Bush's veto of previous bill in November. This new bill includes $760 million less for NIH and $240 million less for CDC than the vetoed bill, according to... Click to continue

I just received a call from Science - the new editor in chief is Bruce Alberts. The journal made him the offer, and he accepted over the weekend.

Alberts will assume his duties March 1. Current editor-in-chief Don Kennedy will remain in the position until then.

AAAS spokesperson Ginger Pinholster said I was the first call she made with the news.

Alberts was one of many names that surfaced during the months of speculation over... Click to continue

The University of California, San Francisco fired dean David Kessler on Thursday, after he refused a request to resign earlier in the year.

In announcements about the firing on Friday, Kessler and the university noted that he had raised questions about the school's finances, but that the university had denied there were any improprieties. In June, the school asked him to step down by January 1, but he refused. After his firing,... Click to continue

Last week the Animal Liberation Front targeted an obstetrician/gynecologist who is funded by the National Institutes of Health and uses non-human primates in his research. The Associated Press reported that Oregon Health & Science University researcher, Miles Novy, woke up last Thursday (Dec 6) to find one of his cars spray painted with the word "sadist" and another painted... Click to continue

Following a lengthy dispute with community residents, Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia got approval from the city council last night (December 13) on its master plan for an $800 million expansion. According to Fox Chase's website, this is the first of two ordnances to get approval. The next step - and the point of contention with opponents - will be to get the council's... Click to continue

Allerca - the company that claims to breed and sell hypoallergenic cats - may have just exhausted at least one more of its nine lives. I learned this week that the company has skipped out on filing three years' worth of state taxes, and recently penalized a customer and told her they would refund her deposit because of comments she wrote on The Scientist's website.

The story begins with an ... Click to continue

Plans for a Biosafety Level 4 containment lab at Boston University hit another bump in the road yesterday (December 13), when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled unanimously that the state's environmental approval process for the project had been deeply flawed.

The assessment echoed a recent National Research Council review, which concluded last month that the NIH had... Click to continue

Despite billions of dollars invested by the Singapore government to turn the country into a global biomedical research hub, another prominent researcher is leaving, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported yesterday. Alan Colman, who contributed to cloning Dolly the sheep, is abandoning his post as executive director of the Singapore Stem Cell Consortium. He is the... Click to continue

Following the recent failure of a Merck HIV vaccine, the NIH has still not decided whether to continue with planned clinical trials of a similar HIV vaccine.

Yesterday (December 12), the AIDS Vaccine Research Committee of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases met to discuss the PAVE100 study, which was suspended after ... Click to continue

A shuttered Canadian nuclear reactor that normally produces radioisotopes crucial to a variety of medical diagnoses will reopen soon.

Emergency legislation passed by the Canadian government late Tuesday (Dec 11) will allow the reactor to open for 120 days and resume production of the isotopes.

Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, was apparently none too happy with the parties... Click to continue

What a year for felines - first a company claims to have bred them to be hypoallergenic and now South Korean scientists have made them glow in the dark. According to news reports this week, Kong Il-keun at Gyeongsang National University cloned Turkish Angora cats with red fluorescent protein inserted into their genome. According to Korea.net, Il-keun is excited about the possibility of using the cat as... Click to continue

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) announced 22 New Faculty Awards yesterday (Dec 12) while releasing the names of five institutions from which applications were rejected for apparent conflicts of interest.

The grants, awarded to young researchers at institutions throughout the state, total more than $54 million, bringing the amount of research dollars awarded by California's stem cell agency to $260 million since its 2004 inception.

The institute confirmed it had... Click to continue

Adult stem cells taken from humans suffering from Duchenne muscular dystrophy can be genetically modified and used to treat the disease in a mouse model, researchers report today in Cell Stem Cell.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a progressive condition caused by a mutation on the X chromosome that leads to a lack of dystrophin protein in muscle. The mutation is usually caused by a deletion or mutation in the gene, leading to a shift in the reading... Click to continue

There's an interesting "P.S." to the story of James Watson's early retirement after public outcry when he told a UK newspaper that he believed people of African ancestry were less intelligent - he has 16 times more genes of African origin than the average Caucasian.

The company deCODE Genetics performed the analysis using Watson's entire genome, which he released publicly this year.

"This level is what you... Click to continue

The makers of the antibody-based cancer drug Erbitux have settled a patent dispute with Israeli researchers who claimed to have invented the process for making the drug.

Last year, Yeda Research and Development, the tech transfer office of the Weizmann Institute, sued ImClone and Sanofi-Aventis over the Erbitux patent. (The patent was owned by the latter and licensed by the former.) The dispute centered on a long-standing argument between Yale researcher ... Click to continue

The shutdown of a Canadian nuclear reactor that produces radioisotopes is causing delays in medical diagnoses and treatments, but nuclear medicine researchers seem unaffected so far.

In mid-November, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) shut down its National Research Universal reactor in Chalk River, Ontario for what was supposed to be five days of routine maintenance. But the reactor remains powered... Click to continue

A California state political oversight commission has agreed to investigate a conflict of interest complaint filed against a board member at the state's stem cell agency.

California's Fair Political Practices Commission said yesterday (Dec 10) that it will look into an incident involving John Reed, a member of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine's (CIRM) governing board and CEO of the Burnham Institute for Medical Research... Click to continue

The Lasker Foundation announced today that Maria Freire will replace president Neen Hunt on March 1 of next year.

Freire was most recently CEO of the non-profit Global Alliance for TB Drug Development, and previously directed the Office of Technology Transfer at the NIH.

Hunt, 65, has been president since 1995. She said she will work to support medical research philanthropy, according to the foundation's spokesperson, Kendall... Click to continue

A former Cleveland Clinic physician is suing the hospital for firing him over conflicts of interest, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Jay Yadav, who was fired last year from his post as head of the vascular intervention unit, invented a device to prevent blockages caused by neck stents. He tested the device at the Cleveland Clinic, and received shares from the company that commercialized it. However, he insists that... Click to continue

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) announced today that it is eliminating ten grant applications from consideration to avoid breaking its conflict of interest rules regarding grant applications and accompanying letters of support.

"CIRM has opted to act conservatively by refraining from considering these applications," the release said, "and the agency will take steps to clarify future requirements for... Click to continue

Nature Publishing Group has adopted a new formal policy that will allow researchers to freely access, distribute, and reuse all papers which provide organisms' genomic sequences, according to a Nature editorial published online Wednesday (December 5).

The policy does not mark a big change in practice -- Nature has always made genomic papers immediately and freely available on their Web site. But the new "creative... Click to continue

Doing research in an evolutionary biology lab and not believing in evolution might spell trouble for your career - at least it did for Nathaniel Abraham. The former postdoc at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is suing the institution because he says he was fired for his creationist beliefs, the Boston Globe reports today.

According to the Globe, Abraham joined the lab of ... Click to continue

Following President Bush's veto of a spending bill that included $30 billion for the National Institutes of Health, Congress continues to work on revised appropriations levels for fiscal year 08, which began two months ago. With a temporary funding resolution running out next week and the holiday break looming ahead, lawmakers are pushing to get a bill to the President next week.

A... Click to continue

I absolutely cannot resist blogging about this - the web site "Oddee," which describes itself as a "blog on the oddities of our world," has listed the 10 most bizarre scientific papers.

Obviously, some experiments make the list that could be termed "life science" - including, for example, a 1992 analysis of the effect of country music on suicide rates, detailed... Click to continue

Advocacy groups are calling for resignations from the board chairman of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) and another CIRM board member in the wake of a violation of the institute's own conflict of interest rules.

Meanwhile, California's state controller, John Chiang, has asked the state's Fair Political Practices Commission to investigate the allegations while his office conducts a financial audit of CIRM.

The conflict of interest occurred in August, when John Reed, a... Click to continue

When it comes to the quality of research, does it matter who foots the research bill? A government task force will gather on Friday (December 7) to study whether a 2004 decision to reduce universities' share of the cost of federally funded projects might have had some negative consequences.

The current funding deal is that institutions have to chip in 1% of National Science... Click to continue

Skin cells reprogrammed for pluripotency can be used to treat anemia in a mouse model of the disease, reports a study published online in Science today (December 6).

The researchers, led by Rudolph Jaenisch and Jacob Hanna at MIT, say the study provides proof of principle that induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) can be used to treat diseases.

The scientists first... Click to continue

MIT will grant tenure to just one woman this year, a professor in economics, compared to 24 men, reports the Boston Globe today (Dec 6).

Last year, five women were granted tenure compared with 19 men. The school's president, Susan Hockfield, said MIT is committed to increasing the rate of women in tenure positions. "We want to be able to show that progress every single year," she told the... Click to continue

Apparently, the punishment the World Health Organization (WHO) meted out to the New York Times for breaking an embargo last week didn't deter other media outlets from doing the same yesterday and today.

Early this morning -- 4:28 EST, to be precise -- the WHO sent out a notice to its media list saying that an embargo on a story about children's medicines was being lifted immediately because it had been broken.

I searched Google News... Click to continue

The Scientist intern Jonathan Scheff reports:

Seymour Benzer, whose research into the structure and function of genes as well as the connection between genes and behavior laid the foundation of modern genetics, died on Friday, November 30, at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena. He was 86.

David Anderson, a colleague at the California Institute of Technology, where Benzer was a professor of neuroscience, in a statement called Benzer "a giant in science...... Click to continue

The British government has finalized a contentious plan to build a new medical research center in the heart of London, according to a statement posted by the Medical Research Council (MRC) today (December 5).

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will sell a plot of land next to the British Library and the new Eurostar train station for the construction of the UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation (UKCMRI) -- scheduled to be... Click to continue

Jeff Perkel, a past editor at The Scientist, reports:

It would seem that, when it comes to the Archon X Prize for Genomics, George Church has had a change of heart.

The $10 million prize will go to the first group that can sequence 100 genomes (to at least 98 percent coverage and with less than one error per 100,000 bases) in 10 days, for under $10,000 per genome. Last year, Church, a Harvard geneticist and DNA sequencing... Click to continue

NIH is nearing the end of a review of the peer review facet of their granting process, and this Friday (Dec. 7) NIH director Elias Zerhouni will meet with his Advisory Committee to the Director to discuss, among other things, the NIH grant peer review process.

This afternoon (Dec. 4), Zerhouni took the discussion to the internet in a live chat session with researchers across the... Click to continue

"I guess it must be two o'clock." NSF's Eve Barak was standing at a podium looking out at a large room that was only about one-fifth full. It was day 3 (December 3) of the American Society for Cell Biology's annual meeting, and Barak was here to outline what biologists need to do to receive an NSF grant.

During the session (during which more scientists trickled in, making the room half-full), Barak, who has spent the last 20 years helping review biology grant applications... Click to continue

Conflicts of interest among US Food and Drug Administration advisory committees are more easily solved than the agency is letting on, suggests a Washington-based think tank.

A report issued today (Dec. 3) by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) reinterprets an FDA-sponsored study on conflicts of... Click to continue

This morning, a group of panelists issued a call to action to a standing-room-only crowd at the American Society for Cell Biology's 47th Annual Meeting: Scientists must get involved in policy issues, and they have to start now.

The session - which included scientists, a congressional staffer, and other advocates - focused on how scientists can become involved in advocating for federal dollars for embryonic stem cell... Click to continue

The US Food and Drug Administration suffers from "serious scientific deficiencies," potentially compromising the agency's ability to protect the health and safety of consumers, a report by the FDA's science board has concluded. The agency has had the most trouble regulating areas such as systems biology, nanotechnology, and ... Click to continue

Iowa State University has denied tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez, an astronomer who has publicly supported intelligent design. One of his colleagues told the Des Moines Register that he thought the decision was based partly on Gonzalez's statements on the subject.

When the school announced the decision last spring, officials said it was based on his publication record. But the ... Click to continue

An experimental gene therapy treatment did not cause a patient's death earlier this year, according to a federal advisory committee. The National Institutes of Health's Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee announced the findings this morning (Dec. 3) and made recommendations to alter the design of the study, which was cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration to resume last week.... Click to continue

The $1 billion life sciences initiative posed by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is dealing with some scrutiny lately. The new president of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council faces a state ethics investigation about his transition from the public to the private sector, and has declined to publicly discuss the bill.

Massachusetts Biotechnology Council President Robert Coughlin has announced he will not publicly discuss the bill,... Click to continue