The Scientist articles from August 2001

The Scientist archives from August 2001

CLONING CAPSIZED?
August 20, 2001... After the House of Representatives votes to ban cloning, biopharmaceutical researchers ponder their alternatives Biopharmaceutical researchers fear how pending federal legislation outlawing the cloning of human cells will restrict their...

NCI, Cray Blaze Through Genome Map.
August 20, 2001... Now the question is how to `make sense' of all that data Late last year, while watching a news report that examined the challenges of annotating the human genome sequence, Bill Long had an epiphany. A programmer at Seattle-based Cray...

How to Create a Successful Fish Tale?
August 20, 2001... Aquatic researchers to seek more funding, coordination for marine cell lines, repositories More than 80 percent of the planet's living organisms exist only in aquatic ecosystems. Some may harbor secrets to human origins, and clues,...

Easing the Suffering of Cancer Patients.
August 20, 2001... The good news made headlines nationwide: Deaths from several kinds of cancer have declined significantly in recent years. But the news has to be bittersweet for many cancer patients and their families. Every year, more than 500,000 people in...

Society Honors Golden Corn Inventor.(Ingo Potrykus )
August 20, 2001... Ingo Potrykus talks of social responsibility for scientists Scientists who gathered in Providence, R.I. in late July for the annual meeting of the American Society of Plant Biologists paused one evening to honor a pioneer in plant...

ASPB Research Points to Biotech Potential.(Brief Article)
August 20, 2001... The American Society of Plant Physiologists recently changed its name to the American Society of Plant Biologists and celebrated the event during its summer meeting in Providence, R.I. More than 1,400 scientists, including members of the...

Environment vs. Genes.
August 20, 2001... Researchers grapple with the complexity of how molecular structure can be altered through interaction with life on Earth Unlike the chicken-and-egg dilemma, scientists know that genes come before the environment. In genetically based...

HHS Limits Employee Travel.(United States. Department of Health and Human Services)(Brief Article)
August 20, 2001... While touting its support for large increases in research funds for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Bush administration engaged in a backhanded slap to scientists in all divisions of the Department of Health and Human Services...

New Arthritis Initiative Launched.(Brief Article)
August 20, 2001... Four pharmaceuticals have joined the National Institutes of Health to find early warning signs and potential drug targets for osteoarthritis. The Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) will provide approximately $8 million a year over the next...

New Panel to Police Human Research.(Brief Article)
August 20, 2001... A group of patient and social justice advocates plan to form an Alliance for Human Research Protection (www.researchprotection.org) to provide oversight on clinical research from laypersons' point of view, says John H. Noble Jr., a founder...

A New Home for Mutant Mice.(Brief Article)
August 20, 2001... A new network, the Mutant Mouse Regional Resource Centers (MMRRCs), funded by the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), will store and catalog new mutant mouse strains donated by researchers. The University of North Carolina at...

Crohn's: An Autoimmune or Bacterial-Related Disease?
August 20, 2001... Genetics research might help to answer questions about the etiology of Crohn's disease In 1996 geneticist Gilles Thomas and colleagues at the INSERM, the French Institute for Health and Medical Research in Paris, reported that IBD1, a...

One Human Enemy Against Another.
August 20, 2001... Researchers are building a viral arsenal to fight cancer The idea that a virus could aid in killing cancer began to take hold after 1904, when scientists observed tumor regression in a cervical cancer patient after she received a rabies...

R Genes Help Unravel Signaling Paths.(disease resistance)(Brief Article)
August 20, 2001... Researchers investigate whether these pathways are separate or merging Compared to what's known of how mammals respond to potential harm, the defense mechanisms of plants remain largely mysterious. "The signaling cascade from receptor...

Creating Healthy, Long-Living Cloned Animals.(Brief Article)
August 20, 2001... Activating the egg before fertilization improves success rates One of the most difficult challenges in producing cloned animals is producing healthy adults. Abnormalities vary with the species. Cattle, for example, often suffer at birth...

New Magnet Clarifies fMRI Signals.(Brief Article)
August 20, 2001... Despite the widespread use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural basis of everything from digestion to facial recognition, scientists have never definitively shown that fMRI measurements directly reflect...

New Class of Transposons Found.
August 20, 2001... Likening his discovery to a paleontologist unearthing a new dinosaur species, Vladimir Kapitonov, a staff scientist at the Genetic Information Research Institute, recently revealed a new class of transposable elements in eukaryotes. These...

Boosting Nerve Cell Regeneration.
August 20, 2001... Most attempts to jumpstart regeneration in the central nervous system (CNS) change the chemical milieu. Maureen Condic, an assistant professor of neurobiology and anatomy, University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, is working on a...

Mining for Microarray Gold.(Brief Article)
August 20, 2001... Rosetta Inpharmatics' Resolver and GEML integrate gene expression datasets The use of high-throughput gene expression analysis technologies, such as microarrays, yields reams of data. Unfortunately, data stemming from competing and...

The Pick of the Litter.(Brief Article)
August 20, 2001... Bio-Nobile Oy of Turku, Finland, has introduced the PickPen[TM], a novel magnetic particle transfer device. Unlike traditional magnetic separation methods, which generally require aspiration of liquids after separation of bound materials via...

Going Retro.(retroviruses)(Brief Article)
August 20, 2001... BD Biosciences--CLONTECH of Palo Alto, Calif., is offering 25 percent off one retroviral packaging cell line with the purchase of any retroviral vector or system. CLONTECH's retroviral systems include vectors for standard retroviral delivery...

Exiting the Carpal Tunnel.(Brief Article)
August 20, 2001... Westbury, N.Y.-based Brinkmann[TM] Instruments Inc. introduces the Eppendorf[R] Pipet Helper[R], a device that applies a vacuum to glass and plastic pipets via an easy-to-use slide lever. The slide mechanism permits one-handed pipetting and...

Integral Connections.(integrin proteins)
August 20, 2001... Integrins mediate bidirectional transmembrane signaling Adherent cells secrete, mold, reside in, and interact with a dynamic, proteinaceous milieu known as the extracellular matrix. Although it occupies the intercellular space and binds...

Mass Spectrometry Applications for Proteomics.
August 20, 2001... Recent advances to an old technique aid protein biochemists Early in the twentieth century, scientists puzzled over the observation that certain elements that were otherwise physically indistinguishable from each other nevertheless...

Scientists Seek Passports to Freer Environments.(cloning in the UK)
August 20, 2001... Opposition to federal funding of stem cell research has some scientists entertaining plans to move abroad While US lawmakers and scientists clash over the cloning of human embryonic stem cells for therapy, researchers in the United...

Get Thee to the Market, Scientist.(commercial applications for research)
August 20, 2001... Researchers surveyed by The Scientist urge their colleagues to develop commercial products Dream inventions may fizzle. Managers and marketers can interfere with research and nudge scientists out of key decisions. Commercial product...

The `Uncompany' Answer to Building a Company.
August 20, 2001... When management is outsourced, scientists concentrate on science Life scientists who want to see their ideas pay off but who don't want to get bogged down in bureaucratic drudgery can take heart from a new trend in business organization....

Harvesting a Field of Science Dreams.(training laboratory technicians)(Brief Article)
August 20, 2001... The Wistar Institute provides hands-on experience to lab technicians in training For Ella Ofori, the dream of scientific research required more than the usual long hours: she had to work full time and squeeze night courses at the...

Roche and Mayo Test Alliance.(Brief Article)
August 20, 2001... Roche Diagnostics of Basil, Switzerland, and the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research have signed a pact to create a new line of tests using PCR technology. The deal between Roche and Mayo--the first of its kind for the research...

Funding Opportunities in the Life Sciences.
August 20, 2001... Funding Opportunities in the Life Sciences ORGANIZATION/ SUBJECT WEB ADDRESS AIR FORCE OFFICE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH Chronobiology and neural afosr.sciencewise.com ...

IN CLONING, WILL ONE PERSON REALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
August 20, 2001... In just a week, two developments in Washington restored cloning to the very top of the policy agenda in the United States, knocking stem cell research off the perch it had enjoyed--or just endured--for months. On July 31, by a vote of 265 to...