The Scientist articles from November 2003

The Scientist archives from November 2003

Vaccination undermined.(Editorial)(Editorial)
November 17, 2003... For more than 200 years, vaccines have made an unparalleled contribution to public health. The writer and commentator Samuel Butler (1835-1902) wrote: "Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism." Considering the list of...

Natural is not necessarily better: breastfeeding mothers can pass on the HTLV-I virus to their infants.(Opinion)
November 17, 2003... The benefits of breastfeeding are so well recognized that pointing out a flaw usually meets with considerable doubt, if not with outright hostility. Yet what holds true for other areas of physiology and medicine holds true here: What is...

Errata.(Correction Notice)
November 17, 2003... Errata: Owing to an editorial error, the drawing by Joseph Leidy in the Sept. 22 issue (p. 14) was misidentified; it is a nerve cell. In the article "Shuttle Squeezes Science in Space Program" in the Oct. 20 issue (p. 46-7), the number of...

Shooting darts and counting eggs.(Frontlines)(Brief Article)
November 17, 2003... Garden snails might seem dull, but the reproductive behavior of Helix aspersa is far from it: These hermaphroditic animals shoot darts at their intended after copulation. They also count their eggs before laying them. Tomasz Antkowiak...

Political scientists: politics, like science, generates a whole lot of opinions.(Snapshot)(Brief Article)
November 17, 2003... Our 344 readers who answered our recent survey on political attitudes and involvement show that scientists are not sitting in ivory towers and turning their backs on politics. The majority of the respondents, 76%, regularly discuss politics...

DNA damage response.(Foundations)
November 17, 2003... "In 1986, I was trying to identify a RecA-related protein in Sacchoromyces cerevisiae whose abundance increased in response to DNA damage. I expected a recombinase but when I cloned the gene, it encoded ribonucleotide reductase, which...

Smallpox vaccination plan is 'kaput'--or is it?(Frontlines)(Brief Article)
November 17, 2003... on Dec. 14, 2002, the Bush Administration announced its plan to vaccinate within a 30-day period about 400,000 to 500,000 healthcare workers and "other critical personnel" against smallpox. (1) That plan fizzled amid concerns about possible...

Birds in biology: a chronology.(5-Prime)
November 17, 2003... 1835 Charles Darwin first surveyed the now famous finches of the Galapagos Islands, but not until a decade later did he fully understand the implications of his observations and incorporate them into his theory of speciation by natural...

So they say.
November 17, 2003... "Our research implies that genes account for some of the differences between male and female brains.... If we accept this concept, we must dismiss the myth that homosexuality is a 'choice'..." --UCLA geneticist Eric Vilain, on his...

No pumpkin here.(Science Seen)
November 17, 2003... * NO PUMPKIN HERE: This electron micrograph, taken by the German science graphics firm Eye of Science; shows the surface of a lavender leaf. The herb's thistly hairs protect the oil sac, but when stressed enough, they pierce the sac and...

December.(Calendar)
November 17, 2003... SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY 2 CORDIA-Europa Bio Convention, ...

Mechanisms of specification: new examples of sympatric speciation revive some nagging questions.(Feature)
November 17, 2003... "A new species develops if a population which has become geographically isolated from its parental species acquires during this period of isolation characters which promote or guarantee reproductive isolation when the external barriers break...

Ernst Mayr, Darwin's disciple.(Interview)
November 17, 2003... His hair is pure white; his speech, still tinged with his native German is a tad slow. The body bows a bit to its achieved 99 years--even living legends shuffle in slippers and need sweaters. Ernst Mayr, who began studying birds and ended...

All in the superfamily: back to basics with the ABCs.(Research)
November 17, 2003... ATP Binding Cassette (ABC) Transporters are a family of proteins that share fairly conserved ATP binding domains and diverse transmembrane regions. They are found in mutant form in various genetic diseases and are conserved across plants,...

High throughput technology tackles circadian rhythms: microarrays aid clockwatchers in finding the molecules that mark time.(Research)
November 17, 2003... Like watchmakers, biologists have hunkered down over their respective model organisms, meticulously seeking out biological timekeepers, the genes important For regulating life's internal clock. Up until now, classical approaches had not...

Saving statins: evidence suggests beneficial secondary effects from these cholesterol-lowering drugs.(Research)
November 17, 2003... Recent findings have some researchers and health professionals calling statins the next aspirin. Some 25 million people worldwide take these enzyme inhibitors to lower cholesterol, creating a nearly $20 billion (US) market in the process. But...

Hormone therapy in rehab: researchers hope new progestin compounds might reduce the risks.(Research)
November 17, 2003... Progestins, synthetic progesterone analogs, joined estrogen as part of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) some two decades ago, to reduce perceived risks of endometrial cancer from estrogen alone. But for almost as long, researchers have...

A tale of two transporters: the first high-resolution structures both please and puzzle the ABC transporter field.(Hot Papers)
November 17, 2003... The ATP binding cassette transporters epitomize nature's ability to re-use a successful protein motif. With diverse membrane-spanning regions, but highly conserved soluble ATP binding domains, the ABC transporters serve a wide variety of...

Boycott highlights Open Access alternatives.(Editorial)
November 17, 2003... October was quite a remarkable month for the Open Access movement. The Public Library of Science (PLoS) became a fully fledged publisher with the launch of its flagship journal PLoS Biology. The Wellcome Trust and the Max Planck Society...

European institutions support Open Access with the 'Berlin Declaration'.(News)
November 17, 2003... German funding bodies gave a major boost to Open Access publishing by signing a document, 'The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities', that recognizes the importance of access to scholarly information...

A crisis on campus.(Interview)(Interview)
November 17, 2003... Librarians have been concerned for decades about the rising costs of academic publications sometimes referred to as the 'serials pricing crisis'. Scholarly journal prices have been rising faster than inflation, and faster than library...

UCSF faculty call for a boycott of Cell Press.
November 17, 2003... Two senior scientists at the University of California San Francisco (UCFS) have appealed to colleagues to boycott all journals published by Cell Press, to protest against the prices of electronic access. Peter Walter and Keith Yamamoto wrote...

Are walruses right-handed?(Research news from BioMed Central journals)(Brief Article)
November 17, 2003... Walruses are 'right-flippered', according to research published in BMC Ecology. The first study of walrus feeding behavior in the wild shows that the animals preferentially use their right flipper to brush sediment from buried clams. The...

Poor prognosis linked to BRCA1 mutation.(Research news from BioMed Central journals)(Brief Article)
November 17, 2003... Breast cancer patients have a lower chance of long-term survival if they carry an inherited mutation in the BRCA1 gene, according to research published in Breast Cancer Research, but the poor prognosis associated with the mutated gene is...

An open access author speaks.(Interview)
November 17, 2003... David Levitt is Professor of Physiology at the University of Minnesota. He has worked in many areas of biophysics, including membrane ion channels and X-ray crystallography. His current research focus is pharmacokinetics. What prompted...

Risky trials could herald cure for prion disease.(Research)(Brief Article)
November 17, 2003... Patients with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease generally face inevitable neurological decline and death. But, researchers are following closely the case of UK teenagerlonathan Simms, whose symptoms have been halted after he received 12 intracerebral...

Chicken toe-growth explained.(Research)(Brief Article)
November 17, 2003... Rather than questioning fowl motives, UK developmental biologists have delved more into the physiological quandaries of crossing the road. Cheryll Tickle and Juan Jose SanzEzquerro, while at the University of Dundee, characterized several key...

A kinesin conundrum.(Research)(Brief Article)
November 17, 2003... A new kinesin motor crystal structure could reveal how these intracellular cargo carriers move. Sharyn Endow of-Duke University Medical Center and Hoe-Won Park of" St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tenn., reported a structure of...

Green tea, anyone?(Software Watch)(Brief Article)
November 17, 2003... Scientists who have unlimited hardware budgets, a dedicated IT staff-versed in the arcana of networks, and lots of time on their hands probably find setting up a computer cluster a breeze. Everyone else knows it's difficult and expensive. ...

Counting viral vectors.(Patent Watch)(Brief Article)
November 17, 2003... Quantifying virus particles is an important part of gene-therapy experiments, but researchers need more sensitive methods of doing so, according to C. Richter King, vice president of research at GenVec. The company's latest patent (US patent...

Two thumbs up for 'thumbless' tube opener.(Gadget Watch)(Brief Article)
November 17, 2003... You're all thumbs when it comes to uncapping a microcentrifuge tube: It's so small, and your hands are so big. The process is like trying to open a beer bottle without a can opener and is only slightly easier on the thumbs. The task is made...

Antibody drug development: on target: as researchers grow ever more clever in their manipulations, monoclonal antibody therapeutics stage a comeback.(Lab Consumer)
November 17, 2003... As soon as Kohler and Milstein described hybridoma technology for generating monoclonal antibodies in 1975,1 the biomedical community began working to convert these tailor-made reagents into pharmacological magic bullets. Success didn't take...

Microplate reader madness: can't choose among fluorescence, luminescence, and absorption? Now you don't have to.(Lab Consumer)
November 17, 2003... Microtiter plates have become standard consumables in both research and clinical laboratories. Also known as microwells and microplates, microtiter plates essentially are flat trays bearinga number of isolated reaction chambers, from six to...

Hands-on power: the next-best thing since paper, personal digital assistants are transforming science, medicine, and education.(Lab Consumer)
November 17, 2003... In the 1830s, Charles Darwin used a pen and paper to document Finches and other fauna and flora in the Galapagos Islands. For the next century and a half, most scientists relied on the same tools to take notes or collect data. Today, Dave...

GMO shade.(Funding Forum)
November 17, 2003... Genetically modified organisms are growing on trees. No, they are trees. More than 200 notices of field trials for genetically-engineered (GE) trees have been filed in the United States during the past decade, with about half coming since...

Biotech funding flow.(Data Points)(Brief Article)(Illustration)
November 17, 2003... Biotech Venture Capital Funding: First Half, 2003 Major Category No. of Funding Investments Drug Discovery and Development Companies 94 $1.03 billion Genomics and...

Committees keep tribal balance.(Tip Trove)
November 17, 2003... Departments are like tribes, and universities are collections of tribes. Committees are a good way of getting to know people in the tribe and for them to get to know you. Despite the much vaunted collegiality that most departments claim, a...

AstraZeneca early-risk research strategy on trial: drug company puts new emphasis on preclinical research to boost drug candidate quality.(Profession)
November 17, 2003... The purple profit machine driven by AstraZeneca's $6 billion flagship medication, Prilosec, finally wound down last year. Once the world's largest selling prescription drug, the patents have expired, and the bright purple pill is now pink and...

Explore the world at your bench.(Postdoc Talk)
November 17, 2003... In today's fast-paced, publish. or-peril world of science, it is difficult for a postdoc to focus on anything but work. We can be so focused on research that we fail to take the time to get to know our colleagues. Yet, academia offers a...

Tempted by biotech in Toronto: Canadian city concentrates financing and research in life sciences.(Profession)
November 17, 2003... After 14 years in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park, Judd Berman decided it was time for a change. As he looked around, says Berman, former director of high-throughput chemistry for GlaxoSmithKline, he was certain he'd end up in San...

Fitting into research careers: fledgling scientists struggle with multiple options, multiple demands.(Profession)
November 17, 2003... As the October sun streams through the seventh-floor windows at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, Andrey Frolov ponders a career choice that he didn't expect to wrestle with for another decade. "I'm still thinking about what I want...

Rejection: it may sting your ego, but it doesn't harm your career.(Profession)
November 17, 2003... Your grant went unscored; the review panel returned the manuscript without review. Your reaction may reveal how well you deal with rejection, and even whether you want to pursue a science career. Still angry? You say the reviewers were,...

Cell viability & cytotoxicity assay kit.(Guide)
November 17, 2003... Cell Counting Kit-8 is a reagent used to quantify the number of viable cells, and is suitable for cell proliferation and cytotoxicity microplate assays. Packaged in a one-bottle solution, it can be directly added to the cell media for fast,...

Ecis[TM] an in-vitro invasion assay.(Guide)
November 17, 2003... Electric Cell-substrate Impedance Sensing is a powerful new method to study the invasive activities of the metastatic cells in tissue culture. * The approach provides real time, quantitative measurements of extravasion of endothelial...

Micro-Infusion single and dual syringe pumps.(Guide)
November 17, 2003... Mi60 Series Micro-Infusion syringe pumps utilize either 20 mL or 60 mL disposable syringes. Once installed, syringe sizes are automatically detected by the pump, which then adjusts to deliver precise infusion rate as entered by front panel...

Soar with this Eagle[TM].(Guide)
November 17, 2003... These new adjustable pipetters have the same feel as more expensive instruments, yet a set of any six is only $665 with stand. Volume ranges are 0.2-2 [micro]l, 0.5-10 [micro]l, 2-20 [micro]l, 20-100 [micro]l, 50-200 [micro]l, 100-1000...

Microarray analysis online.(Guide)
November 17, 2003... Try GeneSifter.Net, the convenient new Web-based system first profiled February 10th in The Scientist. So far, the GeneSifter program is EXCELLENT! I just did 2 hours of analysis that took me 2 months to do with another program." ...

Gift array! Science-based fashion.(Guide)
November 17, 2003... * Nosocomial Neckwear[TM] on 100% silk * BioBoxers[TM], connecting science to your 100% cotton shorts * BioNotes[TM], notecards rescuing you from digital quarantine! Dozens of designs, including Stem Cells, Anthrax (BioHazard),...

Active Motif's 2004 cell & molecular biology catalog.(Guide)
November 17, 2003... Active Motif's new 2004 catalog features a variety of products for transcription factor, cell signaling and DNA repair research, including DNA-binding & cell-based ELISAs, fluorescent markers, antibodies and cell extracts, as well as tools...

This star drive won't cost you the moon.(Guide)
November 17, 2003... A high performance peristaltic pump with minimal pulsation and low noise, Peri-Star[TM] delivers fluid at flow rates of 0.01 to 300 ml per minute. Unique planetary gear design, featuring 8 active y driven rollers, together with independent...

Kodak introduces Multi-Modal imaging system.(Guide)
November 17, 2003... The new KODAK IS2000 Multi-Modal imaging system provides quantitative imaging of luminescent, fluorescent, radiographic and colorimetric labels in membranes, gels, plates, and in-vivo assays. With selectable multi-wavelength illumination,...

Fully Programmable Syringe Pump.(Guide)
November 17, 2003... "The Most Versatile, Programmable Syringe Pump on the Market for your Money" * Infuse/Withdraw Capabilities * 41 Programmable Phases * Fully Automatic Operations * 2 Year Warranty * Networking Capabilities KENT...

Primers for high throughput expression cloning.(Guide)
November 17, 2003... Xpression Primer is a web savvy Windows and Mac program with a sophisticated algorithm for designing thousands of optimal tagged or untagged primers at lightning speed. It dramatically improves the success of assays for high throughput...

Microprocessor-controlled microforge.(Guide)
November 17, 2003... Offering unmatched performance, the DMF1000 fabricates both small patch clamp glass pipettes and larger injection pipettes. System includes compound microscope equipped with a high quality metallurgic 40x long-working distance objective. A...

A biomedical DARPA? Yes, but not at NIH: a cutting-edge research center would suffocate in the NIH's institutional quagmire.(Closing Bell)
November 17, 2003... Creating a health-research counterpart to DARPA, the Pentagon's legendary Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, makes tremendous sense. DARPA, the freewheeling, cash-laden nest of sci-tech wizards, sired the Internet, stealth technology,...

Spraffing about science *.(Editorial)(Editorial)
November 3, 2003... Three recent conversations: 1. While in a bookstore perusing the bicycling magazines at length (with only the vaguest intention to buy), a disheveled man beside me starts making loud pronouncements on the nature of time, triggered by the...

The art of the scientific metaphor.(Opinion)
November 3, 2003... It is not too much to say that science and the technologies that derive from it have altered the very nature of human society. It is surprising, then, if science is all that important in human culture, that people would seem indifferent about...

Erratum.(Letters)(Correction Notice)
November 3, 2003... Erratum: The Mires Web site listed an page 47 of the Sept. 9, 2003 issue should read www.genetransfer.com.

Lying about your age is getting tougher.(Frontlines)(Brief Article)
November 3, 2003... A person's voice is an age indicator, say researchers at the University of Florida, Gainesville. The team, led by Rahul Shrivastav, assistant professor of communication processes and disorders, determined that two key elements, pitch and rate...

Scientist by nature ... and nurture: pinpointing the influences that led to the lab.(Snapshot)(Brief Article)
November 3, 2003... Some 425 readers told us about the influences that guided them to become scientists; they cited an average of three influential factors. By far the most important, according to 70% of our respondents, was innate curiosity. "I cannot held but...

The birth of the Southern blot, 1975.(Foundations)(Brief Article)
November 3, 2003... "Gels used for electrophoresis of nucleic acids and proteins are permeable. This obvious fact didn't dawn on me until I tried to dissolve some agarose by floating it on a solution of sodium perchlorate and noticed a bead of liquid form on the...

Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon: equals in the hunt.(Frontlines)(Brief Article)
November 3, 2003... The hunting prowess of the Neanderthal matched those who supplanted them, the Cro-Magnon, say researchers who have examined ungulate teeth and bones found in a cave in which both types of hominids lived. (1) The Grotte XVI in southwestern...

Ann Graybiel.(First Person)(Interview)
November 3, 2003... Talk to neuroscientist Ann Graybiel for a short period of time and she immediately generates certain impressions: The words tenacious, steadfast, and curious come to mind. Since 1971, Graybiel has stayed the course at the Massachusetts...

The myriad definitions of self.(5-Prime)
November 3, 2003... The Biological Basis For each of the genome's thousands of genes, multiple alleles exist. No two people have the same combination of alleles, so each individual's genotype is unique. DNA, found in each cell, is both a genetic fingerprint and...

Your life- or lab-partner in scientific terms.(Off The Cuff)
November 3, 2003... With my life partner there can be some friction, but it's that gravity that keeps us together. --Leslie Hoyt (mlkh1@aol.com) Approximately 100-kg bilaterally asymmetrical male hominid currently imbibing 100-200 ml of aqueous...

How the visionless dream.(Science Seen)
November 3, 2003... HOW THE VISIONLESS DREAM: A congenitally blind person drew this scene, which was taken from a paper about visual dreaming. (1) Up until now, such images were considered the sole domain of the sighted. (1.) H. Bertolo et al., "Visual dream...

Cutting neurons down to size: new studies explore the extensive pruning of axons and dendrites during nervous system development.
November 3, 2003... A typical neuron's axons and dendrites, when loaded with dye and magnified resemble long, untended tresses on an extremely bad hair day. They extend wildly, usually to one side, and then bend at weird angles as their ends split into branches...

Schizophrenia's complexity: simplifying the origins of a mystifying disease.(Research)(Brief Article)
November 3, 2003... To purpose of this schematic, developed Irving Gottesman, psychiatric geneticist and professor in adult psychiatry at the University of Minnesota, is to dissect the complexity of schizophrenia into more researchable components. At the genetic...

The infection connection in schizophrenia: researchers revive age-old questions about mental illness etiology.(Research)
November 3, 2003... It's a scary thought that one could develop a debilitating mental illness such as schizophrenia as easily as catching a cold. Well, it's more complicated than that, say advocates of the so-called infectious hypothesis, which states that viral...

It's neuron time: investigators seek the tick and took of the brain's clock.(Research)
November 3, 2003... British novelist Aldous Huxley in a bid to study perception supposedly taped his conversations after swallowing the hallucinogenic drug mescaline. During one such chat, a researcher asked him to describe how time felt. "There seems to be...

BioMed Central welcomes PLoS.(Editorial)(Editorial)
November 3, 2003... The first journal published by Public Library of Science, PLoS Biology, has just published its first issue, with outstanding research articles and an absolute commitment to full Open Access. After three years on our own, we at BioMed Central...

Open access gets a Wellcome boost.(News)
November 3, 2003... The Wellcome Trust, the UK's leading biomedical research charity, issued a position statement in October that expresses its commitment to supporting open and unrestricted access to research findings. "As a funder of research. we are committed...

An Oxford NARrative.(Interview)(Interview)
November 3, 2003... Researchers enjoy the process of designing a carefully thought-out experiment and interpreting the data it generates. Oxford University Press (OUP) is currently conducting an experiment in publishing that is likely to provide insights into...

Hand-to-ear link forms after minutes of piano learning.(Research news from BioMed Central journals)
November 3, 2003... Contrary to what your music teacher told you, it doesn't take decades of piano practice to learn to play musical phrases without looking at your fingers. A brain map linking finger movements with particular notes begins to form within minutes...

Pathways of emotion.(Research news from BioMed Central journals)(Brief Article)
November 3, 2003... Walking down a dark alley late at night is enough to give anyone the heebie-jeebies. Your heart starts racing, your palms get clammy and you get ready to run. Now, researchers from Boston University have unravelled the neural pathways that...

An Open Access author speaks.(Interview)
November 3, 2003... Michael Costigan, Harvard Medical School Michael Costigan works in the Neural Plasticity Research Group at Harvard Medical School. His research interests include using microarrays to analyze the transcriptional response of peripheral...

Who, what & why?
November 3, 2003... 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 SHERPA. What is SHERPA? SHERPA--'Securing a...

Young minds adulterated: gauging the effects of alcohol and nicotine on adolescent brains.(Research)
November 3, 2003... It seems that the adolescent brain may be particularly vulnerable to the effects of nicotine and alcohol. At a recent conference where researchers discussed published and unpublished work, studies showed that alcohol's impact on a variety of...

Caution: brain working: functional MRI offers a compelling neurological view, but of what?(Hot Papers)
November 3, 2003... For centuries, philosophers and biologists alike dreamed of watching the brain operate to see its active response to sensations, actions, or even thoughts. In some ways, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) provides such a view. This...

A sperm finds its egg.(Brief Article)
November 3, 2003... For sea urchins, sex is an out-of-body experience. And in external fertilization, species-specific gamete receptors serve as one way to prevent cross-fertilization. The discovery of an egg protein responsible for this specificity ended a...

Gobbler genome tapped.(Brief Article)
November 3, 2003... Researchers mapped 113 genes among the 22 chromosomes of Meleagris gallopavo, the domestic turkey, providing a framework for genome sequencing. (1) "It's too early to tell what will be economically important and what will not," says David...

Interdisciplinary research.(Brief Article)
November 3, 2003... These papers were selected from multiple disciplines from the Faculty of 1000, a Web-based literature awareness tool (www.facultyof1000.com). A.A. Aravin et al., "The small RNA profile during Drosophila melanogaster development," Dev...

Object inspector in your pocket protector.(Gadget Watch)(Brief Article)
November 3, 2003... Chris Chou wants you to put your microscope where no microscope has gone before: in your pocket. Chou is the inventor of the microscope pen, a portable, lightweight, but durable microscope that fits easily into a shirt or pants pocket and...

Thioredoxin in the kitchen--and in the field.(Patent Watch)(Brief Article)
November 3, 2003... What do bread, beer, and bee stings have in common, other than a picnic? Why, thiol reduction chemistry, of course. A group of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, was recently awarded US patent 6,610,334 for a method that...