The Scientist articles from March 2004

The Scientist archives from March 2004

Above and beyond open access.(Editorial)(Editorial)
March 29, 2004... Information technology, an innovative publishing practice, and public debate synchronized in a most satisfying way over the past month. On Feb. 28, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published an article (1) entitled, "Where Is The...

The digitization of museum specimens: much is at stake as museums worldwide work to put their collections and data online.(Opinion)
March 29, 2004... Natural history museum collections contain a world of knowledge that can be used to support the needs of science and society. We need to develop the infrastructure, technology, and collaborative framework to make these collections...

Getting water to the desert, the old-fashioned way.(Frontlines)(Brief Article)
March 29, 2004... They may be the world's first exam pie of technology transfer: ancient Persian irrigation systems known as qanats, whose use later spread as far east as Japan and as far west as Chile. Now, a new international qanat center based in Yazd,...

Science museums.(Snapshot)(Brief Article)(Illustration)
March 29, 2004... Of the 352 readers who responded to our survey: 89% agree that science museums play an important role in educating the pubic about science 45% regularly visited science museums as children 35% were...

A powerful tool in the silencing trade.(5-Prime)
March 29, 2004... 1. What is this powerful tool? RNA interference (RNAi) is a type of posttranscriptional genetic regulation that occurs naturally in the cytoplasm to protect the cell against excess and foreign RNAs. Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA), an unusual...

Philippa Marrack.(First Person)(Interview)
March 29, 2004... In the 1970s, immunologist Philippa Marrack fell in twice. The first object of her affection was the T intricacies and mysteries captivated her. Then, she fell in love with i John Kappler, who, as fate would have it, also had been smitten by...

Rediscovering heat shock proteins.(Foundations)(Brief Article)
March 29, 2004... Often in science, what seem to be definitive answers lead to new questions, which lead to new answers and the cycle goes on. That's what happened when I came across heat shock proteins. I was a postdoc at Sloan Kettering in 1985, and I had...

Radical findings in the mountains.(Frontlines)(Brief Article)
March 29, 2004... When physicians examined members of a Swiss expedition to Mount Everest in the 1920s, they discovered widespread damage to the climbers' muscles. Mitochondrial volume had decreased by 20% and there was evidence of cell deterioration in tissue...

April calendar.(Calendar)
March 29, 2004... SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY 4 5 6 9th The British 2nd Annual International Museum is Bio-Capital Human Genome Founded Europe, 6th Meeting, ...

Science museums exhibit renewed vigor: stewardship and educational dialogue with the public form twin missions.
March 29, 2004... A preschool girl with black braids presses a finger to a disk that twists a brightly lit DNA model, transforming its ladder shape into a double helix. Her head bops from side to side in wonder as the towering DNA coils and straightens. When a...

Toothsome directions in research.(Research)
March 29, 2004... In the 1940s, the federal government created the National Institute for Dental Research in response to a pressing need: young men with an insufficient number of opposing teeth. World War II draftees were failing their physical examinations...

In saliva veritas: spit's potential diagnostic value has funding agencies putting money where the mouth is.
March 29, 2004... A trip to the doctor's office generally entails a deposit of blood or urine from which some diagnoses can be produced after a laborious process. Now, groups of biologists and engineers are working to make disease diagnoses quicker and more...

Mice model a silent killer: conditional knockouts may provide clues to early detection of pancreatic cancer.(Research)
March 29, 2004... A quiet killer, pancreatic cancer often eludes detection until it has progressed to late-stage metastatic disease. This is largely due to the organ's location in the body, which makes it difficult for physicians to evaluate. "You can't feel...

Assessing amyloid [beta]: research suggests a physiological role for the presumed villain.(Research)
March 29, 2004... Recent work has revealed a potential physiological role for amyloid [beta], often considered a major culprit in Alzheimer disease (AD) pathology. This suggests that A[beta], an ordinarily upstanding protein, turns bad as the result of a...

How sex may have started it all; birds do it, bees do it, even strands of As, Us, Cs, and Gs do it.(Research)
March 29, 2004... Some researchers delving into the origins of life have sex on the brain. The prevailing thought in the field says that sex, typically defined as reproduction involving the fusion of genomes, emerged no more than 1.2 billion years ago. This is...

Concocting a knock-out punch for HIV-1: investigators probe RNA interference as a possible therapeutic strategy against HIV-1 infection.(Hot Papers)
March 29, 2004... Since the technique hit lab benches across the world, researchers have assessed the specificity and power of gene silencing through RNA interference. RNAi has found use both as a research tool and as a potential therapeutic agent. In RNAi, an...

Pass the tanning oligos.(Brief Article)
March 29, 2004... Sunbathers at the beach could soon be applying DNA for protection rather than the highest SPF. Researchers led by David Goukassian and Barbara Gilchrest at the Boston University School of Medicine found that topical application of...

Knowing when to call it quits.(Brief Article)
March 29, 2004... When a yeast cell falls onto an apple in the spring, life is good. Plentiful food and good weather maintain growth and division. But the good times don't last forever. "When resources dwindle due to competition, it makes sense to kill the...

Bipolar understanding.(Brief Article)
March 29, 2004... Recent gene-expression findings may energize the search for a mechanism in bipolar disorder pathology. Christine Konradi and collaborators, from McLean Hospital, Belmont, Mass., and Harvard Medical School, showed that of 43 genes...

Exelixis releases fruit fly stocks.(Tech Watch)(Brief Article)
March 29, 2004... South San Francisco-based Exelixis has released nearly 18,000 strains of Drosophila melanogaster to the academic community. The collection is part of a larger assembly of 29,000 strains created by transposon insertion, and it represents,...

Lights, locus, flower!(Patent Watch)(Brief Article)
March 29, 2004... What if next Valentine's Day, you could time the flowers you bought to blossom just as your spouse walked in the door? If you enjoy giving bouquets of Arabidopsis, you're in luck: A new patent held by a group at the University of Wisconsin...

GMOD project rolls out first alpha release.(Software Watch)(Brief Article)
March 29, 2004... For every model organism whose genome is being sequenced, a community of researchers clamors for the data. Model organism databases often provide the necessary interface to such information, but they can be difficult to set up, maintain, and...

RNAi inches toward the clinic: as genome-wide research efforts continue, drug developers eye possible therapeutic approaches.(Technology)
March 29, 2004... When Andrew Fire of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, DC, set out to understand some confusing results obtained with antisense RNA in 1998, (1) he could not have known he was firing the opening salvo in a biotech revolution. What he...

Choosing the right bug: a buyers' guide to competent cells.(Technology)
March 29, 2004... The true workhorses of molecular biology are neither fruit flies nor nematodes, neither budding yeast nor mice. No, the diminutive Escherichia coli has to get that accolade. These bacteria take up foreign DNA in the form of a plasmid or viral...

Affymetrix showcases third-party microarray analysis software; eight vendors profile their wares in a series of Web-based seminars.(Technology)
March 29, 2004... Like it or not, biologists have to deal increasingly in informatics as their experiments generate ever larger and more complex data sets. Few laboratories have the resources to develop their own microarray analysis software, so they must use...

Scaling down flow cytometry: BD Biosciences' new BD FACSArray Bioanalyzer is a compact alternative to conventional flow cytometers.(Tools & Tech)
March 29, 2004... San Jose, Calif.-based BD Biosciences Immunocytometry Systems (www.bdbiosciences.com) has introduced a new bench-top high-content analysis system. Designed to handle 96-well plates, the BD FACSArray[TM] Bioanalyzer uses red and green laser...

Automated microscopy gets a new shape; TILL Photonics' iMIC motorized imaging platform is no ordinary microscope.(Tools & Tech)
March 29, 2004... Rainer Uhl, CEO of Grafelfing, Germany-based TILL Photonics (www.till-photonics.com), laments that while the field of microscopy has evolved dramatically over the last century, the classical light microscope itself has not. New applications...

The culture of mentors.(Tip Trove)(Brief Article)
March 29, 2004... Cultural differences can cause friction. "Mental models" also interfere with respect and communication, and can be both generational and gender-based as well For instance, some senior staff assume that anything less than full-time devotion to...

State-funded stem cell research.(Policy Place)(Brief Article)
March 29, 2004... New Jersey put it in the budget. California may put it on a ballot. The two states announced in recent weeks that they are looking to give stem cell research a cash infusion. A group in California is trying to get a bond initiative on the...

Budgeting for health.(Data Points)(Brief Article)(Illustration)
March 29, 2004... The US Senate has approved $27. 9 billion for the National Institutes of Health's fiscal-year 2004 budget, up 2.8% from last year. Here's a selected breakdown of its 27 institutes and centers. Power five The five biggest...

Do-it-yourself manufacturing: nonprofits are building factories to provide drug compounds for clinical trials.(Profession)
March 29, 2004... When Richard Webby heard through the grapevine that his employer, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., planned to build a factory on the hospital campus, he didn't express much interest, assuming it was a business...

Staffing for science.(Postdoc Talk)
March 29, 2004... The generous funding of US academic labs has helped dramatically advance our understanding of diseases and their underlying biology. But is the structure of the academic lab well-suited to optimize research? During the past 10 years work at...

Reform plan enrages Italian researchers; postdocs protest attempt to make university system more flexible.
March 29, 2004... Trooping through streets alongside empty hearses, Italian postdoctoral researchers mark what they consider the death of their role in the country's universities. Others cover themselves under sheets as a symbol of their ghostly presence in...

Feared rules save research time.(Science Rules)
March 29, 2004... The rush to put new rules in place for handling potentially dangerous materials in US laboratories last year put many in the research community on edge. Long before the prospect of bioterrorism became a national worry, scientists...

MRC director calls for discourse: researchers' public--communication projects are already a part of the council's reformed grant process.(Profession)
March 29, 2004... The UK Medical Research Council's major reform of its grants system, announced last month, has assuaged many scientists, but some still question the new CEO's radical plans to persuade researchers to communicate with the public. The CEO,...

Tracking a textbook: from idea to publication.(Profession)(Brief Article)
March 29, 2004... PROPOSAL PATHWAY Selling Yourself Part of a prospectus is convincing the publisher that you are the right person to write the proposed textbook. Teaching experience is a plus; prestigious publications do not show that you can explain...

Guide.
March 29, 2004... VARIANTSEQR[TM] RESEQUENCING SYSTEM FOR DISCOVERING DNA VARIANTS The VariantSEQr(tm) Resequencing System is the first complete solution for the discovery of DNA variants that includes high-confidence, ready-to-use primers for thousands of...

Long live the dodo! A museum model of Raphus cucullatus has more life in it than any stuffed bird.(Closing Bell)
March 29, 2004... I have never thought stuffed birds make good museum exhibits. A stuffed bird looks exactly that--stuffed. Compared to mammals or arthropods, birds lack physical diversity; their behavior and song are far more interesting, but neither survives...

The globalization of science: reality confronts an ideal.(Editorial)
March 15, 2004... To survive in the world we have transformed, we must learn to think in a new way. As never before, the future of each depends on the good of all. (1) --Statement by 100 Nobel laureates Globalization has multiple personas; one of...

Reducing risks, maximizing impact with cancer biomarkers: the goal is to match novel anticancer agents to the molecular profiles of individual tumors.(Opinion)
March 15, 2004... Biomarkers measure drug-induced changes in a patient's blood or tissue. Such changes can confirm drug activity and thereby help select patients more likely to respond to treatment. These biochemicals are revolutionizing cancer drug...

Erratum.(Letters)(Correction Notice)
March 15, 2004... In "Killing Tumors, One Clove at a Time," (18[2]:11, Feb. 2, 2004), several compounds were miscategorized. Alliin and allicin should be classified as nonprotein amino acids, and alliinase is an enzyme.

Seeing the whole picture, and then some.(Frontlines)
March 15, 2004... A quarterback decides where to throw the football based on the field's layout and the players' positions on it. Scanning the field, he sees loads of images that help him make his split-second decisions. He actually views even more that he may...

Five-year relative survival rates of pancreatic, female breast, and small-cell lung and bronchus cancers.(Snapshot)
March 15, 2004... Five-year relative survival rates of pancreatic, female breast, and small-cell lung and bronchus cancers Pancreatic Female Small Cell Lung Breast and Bronchus 1974-76 2.6...

A talk on the motor side.(5-Prime)
March 15, 2004... 1. What is a molecular motor? It's any protein that uses chemical energy, specifically ATP hydrolysis, to produce physical force. 2. How many types of motors are there? Proteins that transport molecules and vesicles along the...

On the trail of BRCA1.(Foundations)
March 15, 2004... After 16 years of exhausting research, data collection and computation, Mary-Claire King's lab determined in 1990 that a mutation on chromosome 17 was a common occurrence among women in families that had clusters of breast cancer. This Family...

Deducing the brain's evolution, scale by scale.(Frontlines)
March 15, 2004... David Crews' lab resembles an exotic pet store; there's not a mouse or rat in sight. This professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas, Austin, studies animals such as the inches-long whiptail lizard. "I'm interested in...

Mary-Claire King.(First Person)
March 15, 2004... In 1966, When Mary-Claire King arrived at of California, Berkeley, she was all set to study mathematics. But anthropological geneticist Allan C. Wilson persuaded her to switch to genetics. Her 1973 dissertation (and later a 1975 Science paper...

Investigating molecular motors step by step: recent discoveries begin to answer how dyneins, kinesins, and myosins actually work.(Cover Story)
March 15, 2004... The audience, several hundred biophysicists strong, was not expecting a James Brown impersonation. But there he was: Physiologist Yale Goldman, keynote speaker on motility at the Biophysical Society's annual meeting, doing his "asymmetric...

Vax facts.(Research)
March 15, 2004... Cancer vaccine therapies continue to inch toward approval. Even with the complex regulations controlling biologics and cell based techniques, over 100 such treatments are undergoing clinical trials with more than a dozen in Phase III trials....

Appraising aneuploidy as a cancer cause: a conference considers a theory that blames tumorigenesis on chromosomal gains and losses.(Research)
March 15, 2004... About 70 scientists recently attended an invitation-only California premiere tinged with controversy. But the event neither lit up a Hollywood theater nor unveiled an edgy new film. Billed as the "first conference on aneuploidy and cancer,"...

A deadly selection: mathematics models the evolution of intractable cancers.(Research)
March 15, 2004... Natural selection remains modern biology's leitmotif 145 years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species: Tumor resistance offers a devastating reminder of its potency. Clinicians often hope they have destroyed a tumor, only to see the...

Sensitizing cancer through mTOR: researchers look to exploit a common weak link in cancer progression.(Research)
March 15, 2004... Rapamycin could have been an anti-tumor contender. Indeed, for more than 30 years, researchers have sized up this immunosuppressant's potential in treating a variety of cancers, including prostate, brain, and lung. Currently, however, the...

The makings of a microarray prognosis: Researchers refine attempts to molecularly classify cancers and predict outcomes and response to treatment.(Research: hot papers)
March 15, 2004... Countless things can go wrong in the complicated cell division process. Checkpoints fail, genomic instability increases, and when anarchy reigns, cancers spread. In trying to assess what is doing the damage and predict the damage yet to be...

Stress and cancer: going with the gut.(Research)
March 15, 2004... Bacterially induced gut cancers may solidify the role of oxidative stress in tumorigenesis. Medical oncologist Fong-Fong Chu and colleagues at City of Hope's Beckman Research Institute, Duarte, Calif., found that mice missing the glutathione...

Turning out the pockets for narcolepsy and diabetes.(Research)
March 15, 2004... Paradoxically, a single MHC class II allele, HLA-DQ0602, confers susceptibility to narcolepsy but prevents development of type I diabetes. Clinical immunologist Lars Fugger and structural biologist Yvonne Jones, both at Oxford University,...

Interdisciplinary research.(Research)
March 15, 2004... These papers were selected from multiple disciplines from the Faculty of 1000, a Web-based literature awareness tool (www.facultyof1000.com). B. Van den Berg et al., "X-ray structure of a protein-conducting channel," Nature, 427:36-44,...

Declaring good intentions.(Editorial)
March 15, 2004... The last year has seen a plethora of declarations from various organizations stating their strong support for Open Access to scientific information. In January, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) added its voice...

Cornell launches an Open Access university press.(News)
March 15, 2004... Cornell University, located primarily in Ithaca, New York, announced in January that it has created Internet-First University Press, which will offer old and new books under Open Access. The new publisher was launched with a catalog...

The many-copy problem and the many-copy solution.(Commentary)
March 15, 2004... Too many copies? As soon as we provide open access to an article, we should expect copies to proliferate around the world. The archive or journal where the article first appeared will make back-ups and may have mirror sites. The Internet...

Food is tastier when you're hungry.(Research news from BioMed Central journals.)
March 15, 2004... People on diets should be forgiven for moaning that chocolate tastes better when you're hungry. Just missing breakfast makes you more sensitive to sweet and salty tastes, according to research published in BMC Neuroscience. Professor...

"We are the champions.(Research news from BioMed Central journals)
March 15, 2004... It's not just football supporters who join together in a rousing chorus to celebrate a victory. Winning a fight also appears to put an African bird, the tropical boubou, in the mood for a song, according to a recent BMC Ecology article. ...

Who, what & why?
March 15, 2004... As a short guide to the players and technical terms relevant to Open Access publishing, 'Who, What & Why?' keeps readers informed about the world of Open Access. This week we feature LOCKSS What is LOCKSS? The LOCKSS project...

Building a better buffer.(Tech Watch)
March 15, 2004... Every molecular biologist knows about Tris, but few have questioned its suitability as an electrophoretic buffer component. An intrepid pair of researchers at Johns Hopkins' Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center have studied Tris and...

A crystallographer's little helper.(Software Watch)
March 15, 2004... Creating a protein crystal structure diagram from raw X-ray diffraction data is a labor-intensive task that can take weeks to months. A new program called ELVES (http://ucxray.berkeley.edu/~jamesh/elves) from the Lawrence Berkeley National...

Rhodospirillum, your membrane proteins are showing.(Patent Watch)
March 15, 2004... For those who need to express recombinant membrane proteins, the use of Escherichia coli has been problematic because these proteins are often lethal, according to Mary Lynne Collins, a professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin....

Advances in cellular image processing: 3-D, 4-D, and live-cell imaging are just a few of the changes to microscopy in recent years.(Technology)
March 15, 2004... Like much of science, imaging has become almost entirely computerized, with digital capture devices replacing more traditional film. Capturing the data in digital form simplifies work, for instance by cutting out lengthy film processing...

TMA buyers' guide: tissue microarrays come in various sizes and shapes: here's what you need to know before making your first purchase.(Technology)
March 15, 2004... Barely five years ago, Juha Kononen, then at the National Cancer Institute, presented a straightforward way of constructing tissue microarrays (TMAs): a glass slide covered with as many as 1,000 cores of tissue, measuring from 0.6 mm to 2.0...

Probing the mind of Drosophila: a new approach to studying fly brains enables synaptic transmission assessment at the level of single cells in a functioning network.(Technology: tools & tech)
March 15, 2004... Drosophila, the winged workhorse of biology, has reached another milestone. Recently several labs have recorded electrophysiological data from the fly's central nervous system (CNS) neurons. "Drosophila is one of the most powerful...

SEM goes live: QuantomiX's QX capsule makes scanning electron microscopy of live cells possible.(Technology: tools & tech)
March 15, 2004... The ultrahigh resolution of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) makes it a powerful tool for examining microstructures. But while SEM is a great way to study the surface of a crystal or a silicon chip, its application to the life sciences has...

Arraying archives: new system allows gene expression analysis of FFPE samples.(Technology: tools & tech)
March 15, 2004... Microarray manufacturer Affymetrix of Santa Clara, Calif., (www.affymetrix.com) and laser-capture microdissection company Arcturus of Mountain View, Calif. (www.arctur.com), have teamed up, offering the GeneChip X3P array and the Paradise[TM]...

Refreshing idea for growth: culture media exchange gets automated.(Technology: tools & tech)
March 15, 2004... Standard mammalian tissue culture techniques usually require growth media refreshment every two to three days, accomplished by manually pouring or pipetting off the old medium and replacing it with new. To circumvent this tedious process, New...

Cancer spotlight: Cancer research funding in the United States and in Europe.(Data Points)
March 15, 2004... UNITED STATES The National Institutes of Health is the biggest funder of cancer research in the US. Figures include grants, contracts and intramural research. [GRAPHIC OMITTED] Grants dispersed for cancer research, in millions...

Good teaching equals learning.(Tip Trove)
March 15, 2004... 1. Get to know your students. By knowing the extent of your students' current knowledge of the subject, you can more effectively present what they need to know in ways they will understand. A pre-test can give you excellent information...

Cell Biologist multitasks for women: Mary Osborn uses her clout to promote gender balance among scientists.(Profession)
March 15, 2004... Mary Osborn helped pioneer immunofluorescence microscopy, and in her images, the three-dimensional cells dance across a black screen in flecks of colored light, helping scientists see new aspects to diseases such as muscular dystrophy and...

Biodefense squeezes US Science budgets: bioterrorism research grants outpace all others.(Profession)
March 15, 2004... When he addressed the nation in January, President George W. Bush left little doubt that he intends to invest enormous amounts of federal cash into homeland security, including efforts to protect Americans from bioterrorism. What the...

Funding deters scientists from developing new models: Researchers say grant agencies should promote research with untried organisms.(Profession)
March 15, 2004... In the 1950s, a young psychiatrist sought an animal with neurons large enough for electrophysiology experiments on learning and memory. The animal, Aplysia californica, eventually got dissected in neurobiology labs around the world. The...

How to be a cancer entrepreneur: Biotech scientists, now CEOs, share their stories and their secrets.(Profession)
March 15, 2004... Their Stories Dennis Brown left an assistant professorship at Harvard's Joint Center for Radiation in 1988 to start Matrix Pharmaceuticals. When that company sold, Brown's inner entrepreneur led him to create ChemGenex in 1999. The...

Man bests machine, this time.(Postdoc Talk)
March 15, 2004... Common knowledge says that the more expertise scientists gain in their specializations, the less they know about anything else. I know plant physiology: Biochemical assays chlorophyll fluorescence, and gas analyzers comprise my world. Yet...

Peers ponder review.(Science Rules)
March 15, 2004... The peer-review system of the German Research Foundation (DFG) is unique, as proposals are reviewed by experts nominated and elected by the scientific community. This will change in the spring, however, when the DFG will select the reviewers;...

Guide.
March 15, 2004... DESIGN SPECIFIC OLIGOS FOR MICROARRAYS Array Designer designs hundreds of specific oligos or PCR primer pairs for SNP detection or expression study microarrays. It reads GenBank annotations and designs primers and probes for selected SNPs...

The impossible dream of eliminating the Nobel prize: it's here to stay, however, so here are a few pointers on garnering your own.(Closing Bell)
March 15, 2004... Given the reverence that the Nobel science prizes command, there's but a scant chance that the century-old awards will be deservedly terminated for what they've become: anachronisms that caricature the workings of modern research and sow...

Make way for the Robot Scientist.(Editorial)
March 1, 2004... "[The VK is] a very advanced form of lie detector that measures contractions of the iris muscle and the presence of invisible airborne particles emitted from the body. The bellows were designed for the latter function and give the machine the...

The InterAcademy Council: inventing a new global organization: actions are needed to strengthen scientific capabilities worldwide.(Opinion)
March 1, 2004... Last month, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan presided over the launch of a report by the InterAcademy Council, Inventing a Better Future: A Strategy for Building Worldwide Capacities in Science and Technology. (1) The report is a call for...

Clarification.(Correction Notice)
March 1, 2004... According to NIAID, the BSL-4 facility in Hamilton, Mont., mentioned in "Science Under Glass" (18[2]:30-3, Feb. 2, 2004), is not currently being built. NIH has yet to decide to build the facility; it is now going through the federally...