NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 31st March 2008 01:39 PM GMT] At the end of last year, The Scientist editors spotted a warning notice on the Quanta Biosciences Web site that their supply relationship with Bio-Rad had been terminated. In particular, certain PCR reagents that Quanta had been manufacturing for Bio-Rad were no longer the same and Bio-Rad was now making its own formulations.
The key question is: Are the reagents any different? If so, how? The answer, so far, has proved elusive.
I heard... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 27th March 2008 06:16 PM GMT] Recent comments by California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) President Alan Trounson imply that the agency may be looking for ways to pay women for their eggs for stem cell research.
Currently, laws in California and Massachusetts — two leader states in stem cell research — prohibit compensation for eggs. But with a shortage of available human eggs for research purposes, the issue remains a national sticking point to the progress of stem cell research and... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 26th March 2008 10:24 PM GMT] In FY2008, more Congressional pork-barrel project money flowed into US academic institutions that ever before, according to an analysis published in this week's issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The Chronicle's data showed that lawmakers directed more than two billion non-competitive dollars from more than 2,300 projects to 920 universities and colleges, an increase of 25 percent in the number of institutions receiving... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 26th March 2008 10:05 PM GMT] The New York Times reported today (March 26) that a major tobacco company -- the Liggett Group -- sponsored a controversial lung cancer study last year totaling about $3.6 million in grants. Interestingly enough, I got an Email a couple of weeks ago from Stanton Glantz, University of California... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 26th March 2008 09:55 PM GMT] The conversation is not over regarding two recent retractions of papers on enzyme engineering. Two letters published this month in Science say that the explanation of retraction issued by Homme Hellinga's group at Duke University does not account for many of the errors in the original publications. The ... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 26th March 2008 07:06 PM GMT] A new type of retinal cell with tree-like dendrites detects upward motion, researchers report in today's issue of Nature.
The method used in the current study to detect cell subtypes may prove useful in finding molecular markers of other retinal cells, as well as brain neurons.
It was a fortuitous discovery, said author Markus Meister from Harvard University. The researchers had set out to look for retinal... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 25th March 2008 10:25 PM GMT] With the recent failure of HIV vaccine clinical trials, the HIV/AIDS research community has resolved to concentrate more on the basic science behind the disease, shifting the main focus from vaccine product development towards immunology and virology research, they said at a meeting in Maryland held today (March 25).
"We need to turn the knob towards discovery," said ... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 25th March 2008 07:39 PM GMT] Labour party politicians can vote with their conscience on three "ethical" parts of the proposed legislation on embryo research, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced today (March 25).
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which has been mired in controversy, proposes to legalize new areas of research, including the creation of hybrid animal-human embryos, and to... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 24th March 2008 10:05 PM GMT] Species of ants that practice a complex form of fungi agriculture developed their knack for farming about 50 million years ago and have employed several different, successful strategies to culture their crops in the intervening millennia, according to a study published in PNAS today.
Smithsonian Institution entomologist Ted Schultz told The Scientist that humans - who... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 23rd March 2008 11:20 PM GMT] Chatter between neurons can help protect them from the ravages of free radical damage, according to a report published today (Mar 23) in Nature.
Free radical, or oxidative, damage besets neurons as they age normally or degenerate due to chronic disorders, such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, or in acute events, such as strokes. University of Edinburgh... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 21st March 2008 07:30 PM GMT] A federal agency has told an African-American MIT stem cell researcher, who last year went on a 12-day hunger strike in to protest his tenure denial, that his claim of racial discrimination was too little, too late.
According to MIT's school paper, The Tech, The US Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) rejected James Sherley's claim that the university refused him tenure... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 21st March 2008 04:30 PM GMT] At the National Institutes of Health open meeting on the new public access mandate yesterday (March 20), publishers continued to criticize the plan and called for the agency to delay implementing it.
As part of the Congressional appropriations act for FY2008, all articles arising from research funded by NIH funds must be submitted to PubMed Central within 12 months of publication. ... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 20th March 2008 10:54 PM GMT] The House Committee on Small Business is calling on legislators to overhaul the federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, which awarded more than $2 billion last year to biotech and other start-ups with promising and salable ideas or technologies. The committee is crafting legislation to reauthorize the SBIR program, which is managed by the US Small Business Administration (SBA) and... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 20th March 2008 07:15 PM GMT] Researchers have identified a small group of neurons in Drosophila that are key to determining how female flies choose where to lay their eggs, a study in Science reports. The neurons are part of a neural circuit that could serve as a model to probe the molecular basis of decision-making, the study's authors say.
Chung-hui Yang, a postdoc in Yuh-Nung Jan's lab at the University of California, San Francisco, was... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 20th March 2008 04:53 PM GMT] The Indian government is moving towards approving a law that will create a framework for universities to patent their discoveries.
Currently, ownership of innovations made through government-funded institutions belong to the Indian government, much like the situation in the US before the Baye-Dole Act was passed in 1980. That law stated that technologies developed with federal funding at a university belong to the institution. Its passing spurred universities to establish ... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 19th March 2008 09:38 PM GMT] Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 19th March 2008 07:34 PM GMT] Last December, we asked our readers to tell us what they thought of the proposed changes to the peer review system. A number of readers commented that they would like to see a limit on the number of grants given to any one PI, noting that small labs are usually more efficient at training students and produce more publications per trainee.
Indeed, limiting the number of NIH grants to five per principal investigator was one of the... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 18th March 2008 08:06 PM GMT] Tomáš Grim, an ornithologist at Palacky University in the notoriously beer besotted Czech Republic, came down with a bad case of mononucleosis in 1999. His illness prohibited him from drinking for about a year. Soon after he recovered, he began publishing papers in more high profile scientific journals, such as Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 18th March 2008 07:58 PM GMT] Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 18th March 2008 01:57 PM GMT] Mammals lost their egg yolk genes after acquiring genes for milk proteins, according to a study published yesterday in PLoS Biology. The results pinpoint an important step in how mammals evolved, the authors say.
Lactation is "what makes us mammals, basically," said Henrik Kaessmann, who led the study. "Using egg yolk genes as markers,... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 17th March 2008 06:08 PM GMT] A federal judge in Chicago last Friday denied Pfizer's efforts to obtain confidential peer review documents related to two of its drugs from the New England Journal of Medicine, stating that any benefits of disclosing the subpoenaed documents would be "outweighed by the burden and harm that would result" to the journal.
In January, Pfizer filed a motion to force the... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 14th March 2008 08:42 PM GMT] The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) closure of several of its research libraries is flawed, unjustified and is depriving academics, government employees, and the public of crucial environmental data, according to a Congressional report released yesterday (Mar. 13).
Of the EPA's 26 libraries, six libraries have changed their hours of operation, and four others have been shut since 2006. These include its Office of Environmental... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 14th March 2008 04:26 PM GMT] The US Senate voted two amendments into the current version of the 2009 budget blueprint yesterday that increase NIH funding by $2.1 billion. This increase in addition to the $950 million the House voted into the resolution last week, bringing the grand total to $3 billion in additional funding. These increases to the $29.5 billion that the White House proposed on February fourth, would bring NIH funding in line with inflation rates,... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 13th March 2008 09:12 PM GMT] Though bacteria usually reproduce asexually, they do occasionally yield to baser desires and have sex; or at least they exchange DNA through a sex-like process known as conjugation, or horizontal transfer. For the first time, scientists have filmed Escherichia coli in the act. The videos —... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 13th March 2008 08:56 PM GMT] The oblong shape of some tomatoes arose from a gene duplication caused by a selfish genetic element, according to a study published today in Science.
Before tomatoes were cultivated and grown around the world, wild tomatoes were a little-known, small, round South American fruit. But go down to the market today and you'll find juicy, ripe tomatoes of all... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 13th March 2008 04:22 PM GMT] A 17-year-old high school student from North Carolina has won the 2008 Intel Science Talent Search for developing a genetic method that predicts the likelihood of relapse in early-stage colon cancer patients.
Intel awarded Shivani Sud a $100,000 college scholarship for her work in labs at Temple University and the National Cancer Institute. Sud has been pursuing her interest in... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 12th March 2008 11:49 PM GMT] A nuclear watchdog group filed a federal lawsuit on Monday (March 10) to suspend work at a Biosafety Level 3 lab at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which opened to little fanfare earlier this year and conducts research on pathogens such as Ebola, anthrax and Q fever.
The suit, filed by Tri-Valley CAREs, a Livermore-based community group that monitors nuclear weapons and environmental cleanup activities locally and... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 12th March 2008 07:02 PM GMT] Researchers have identified a master protein that regulates some 1,000 genes controlling for tumor growth and metastasis in breast cancer, according to a paper published today in Nature.
The researchers, led by Terumi Kohwi-Shigematsu at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, stumbled upon SATB1's heightened expression while screening... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 12th March 2008 05:07 PM GMT] The "shabby and dilapidated" animal disease research laboratory in Pilbright, UK — the site of last summer's foot-and-mouth disease leak — must be replaced by a new, expanded research center for infectious human and animal diseases, an official report said yesterday.
The independent inquiry into last summer's outbreak in southeast England said that a "creeping degradation of standards" at the government-funded... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 12th March 2008 02:24 PM GMT] Wiping out malaria in much of sub-Saharan Africa is an attainable goal that can be reached with targeted and consistent intervention, according to research published today (Mar. 12) in PLoS ONE. ( UPDATE: A link to the study has been added.)
Scientists mathematically modeling the spread of... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 11th March 2008 09:29 PM GMT] The National Institutes of Health is seeking public comment on its new public access mandate, according to an announcement the NIH posted Friday on their Web site. To submit your comment to the NIH click here.
Some 50 commenters will be given five minutes each to present their comments at a meeting next Thursday (March 20) in Bethesda, Md.
The NIH implemented a public access mandate in... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 11th March 2008 05:41 PM GMT] Science and health publishing giant Elsevier has acquired Windhover Information Inc., a leading biotech and pharma business intelligence provider. Windhover publishes several journals, such as In Vivo, Start-up and The Regulation Policy Market Access Report, which cover health care marketplace trends, business strategy, industry deal making, and medical start-ups.
Acquiring Windhover adds more than 100 journalists to Elsevier's staff... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 11th March 2008 05:20 PM GMT] The US Patent and Trademark Office has upheld the two remaining stem cell patents out of a contested trio held by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), according to the final ruling posted last week by the USPTO.
The third patent was upheld in a ruling last month (read more here) and can still be challenged by appeal. Last week's rulings are final and cannot be appealed.
"The patent office has conducted a thoughtful and... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 10th March 2008 07:33 PM GMT] The British government said yesterday it is considering lifting a ban that prevents babies from being conceived using sperm and eggs derived from stem cells.
Currently, gametes derived from stem cells are used for medical research, but British law imposes a blanket ban on their use in assisted reproduction. Following pressure from MPs to relax the ban, the Department of Health has agreed it will "look further into this matter," according to the ... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 10th March 2008 06:48 PM GMT] The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) will likely close 12 intramural labs, Science reported last Friday.
The NICHD may close the labs as part of $15 million in savings, according to Emails sent to Science and circulated to employees. Michael Gottesman, NIH deputy director of intramural research, said that this isn't the first time the intramural research program has been... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 10th March 2008 05:11 PM GMT] Inhibiting a key signaling pathway causes permanent damage to bones in young mice, researchers report in this week's issue of Cancer Cell. The findings suggest that drugs targeting this pathway, under development for solid tumors, may have unexpected drawbacks if used in... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 10th March 2008 01:13 PM GMT] The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is opening a $300 million competition today for early career scientists. As many as 70 scientists will receive six year, non-renewable appointments with HHMI. The competition is open to tenured or tenure-track researchers between the second and sixth year of their appointment. Applicants are required to submit an intention to apply letter by April 30, 2008, and send in a completed application by... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 7th March 2008 10:42 PM GMT] Members of the British government will be able to abstain from voting on the controversial Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, senior Labour MP, Geoff Hoon, announced today.
The bill aims to update the regulation of embryo research and assisted reproduction in light of new attitudes and technological developments. The legislation will allow research using human-animal hybrid embryos, created by inserting animal cells or DNA into... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 7th March 2008 08:19 PM GMT] The April 7 deadline is rapidly approaching for submitting all publications based on NIH-funded work to PubMed Central. But some publishers are still grumbling about how the NIH plans to implement the public access mandate, which was put in place in January.
Last month, Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter asked NIH director Elias Zerhouni in a letter whether the NIH had adequately... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 7th March 2008 03:35 PM GMT] Editorial administrator Margaret Guthrie reportsWho hasn't invoked the five second rule? After all, food that falls to the kitchen floor is still safe to eat, if you pick it up fast enough. Isn't it? Paul Dawson, of Clemson University's food science program, roots out the science behind such questions and in doing so has found a way to engage undergraduate students, teach them the rigors of scientific investigation, and even encourage... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 7th March 2008 01:05 PM GMT] A comparison of transfer RNAs has revealed the roots of the tree of life, indicating ancient origins for Archaea and viruses, according to research published yesterday in PLoS Computational Biology.
Since the discovery that ribosomal RNA can reveal evolutionary relationships between organisms, researchers have split the universal tree of life into three main branches: the superkingdoms Archaea,... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 6th March 2008 09:51 PM GMT] The co-lead author of an olfactory paper retracted yesterday from Nature by Nobel laureate Linda Buck says he stands behind the conclusions and does not admit any wrongdoing.
Zhihua Zou, an assistant professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, wrote in a statement E-mailed to The Scientist by the University of Texas that he is "disappointed" by the retraction. In the... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 6th March 2008 06:22 PM GMT] NIH has established a new panel to review safety considerations in the biocontainment lab currently under construction in a densely populated Boston neighborhood, the agency announced today in a press release.
Boston University has had plans to build the Biosafety Level 4 facility since 2003, when it received a $120 million grant from the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 5th March 2008 08:08 PM GMT] Nobel laureate and olfactory researcher Linda Buck has retracted a paper published in Nature in 2001, after her team failed to reproduce the results. In the retraction, published in the March 6 issue of Nature, the authors report "inconsistencies between some of the figures and data published in the paper and the original data."
In the... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 5th March 2008 06:45 PM GMT] Brazil's Supreme Court will rule today (March 5) on the legal status of scientists using human embryos, following an appeal that embryonic stem cell research is "unconstitutional."
In March 2005, the Brazilian parliament passed legislation allowing scientists to work with stem cells derived from human embryos. That law approved research with embryos produced by in vitro fertilization and frozen for at least three years. But... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 5th March 2008 04:22 PM GMT] Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are generated in the placenta, before the circulatory system is fully operational, researchers report is this week's issue of Cell Stem Cell. The finding offers researchers a better shot at defining the microenvironment required to grow HSCs in vitro.
Researchers have known that the placenta holds a reserve of HSCs, and had observed that when placental HSCs decline in number, the liver's reserve expands. Here, Katrin Rhodes... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 4th March 2008 10:50 PM GMT] Researchers have proposed a new scheme for ranking the quality or impact of scientific journals that they say is more accurate than the Impact Factor, according to a paper published last week in PLoS ONE.
Rather than relying on an average of citations to rate a journal, the system uses a mathematical model to characterize the typical number of citations that papers in specific journals are likely to... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 4th March 2008 06:06 PM GMT] Massachusetts may become the first state with a complete ban on pharmaceutical company freebies to doctors.
The president of the Massachusetts Senate, Therese Murray (D), yesterday (March 3) filed a bill that seeks to reduce conflicts of interest and healthcare costs by stemming the flow of gifts from pharmaceutical companies to doctors in the state, according to ... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 3rd March 2008 09:19 PM GMT] A South Korean scientist who once said he wanted "to become another Hwang Woo-Suk for Korea" has come ironically close to his goal. Kim Tae-kook, a bioscience professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in the central South Korean city of Daejeon, was suspended on Friday for fabricating data in two papers, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
One of the papers published in Science in... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 3rd March 2008 02:43 PM GMT] Comment on this blog
NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 2nd March 2008 07:40 PM GMT] A microRNA mechanism may lie at the heart of why some skin cell growth goes unchecked, according to a paper published today in Nature. The authors found that one microRNA regulates the differentiation of progenitor skin cells into the stratified outer layers of the skin.
... Click to continue
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