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A US company's plans to sequence the rice genome in weeks rather than decades should inspire a more venturesome spirit in the Japanese research community.
The Japanese government's Rice Genome Sequencing Project has been thrown into a turmoil by the news that a US company plans to sequence the rice genome in just six weeks.
Ten of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies and Britain's Wellcome Trust are to fund a US$45-million map of the variations in the human genetic code that could be linked to common diseases.
The pharmaceutical company Glaxo Wellcome has been actively pursuing ways of incorporating information about variations in gene sequences into its drug discovery programme.
Classified computer operations at the US nuclear weapons laboratories are expected to return to normal this week after a week-long 'stand-down' intended to focus attention on security issues.
A grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation has provided the final funding for a Can$173.5 million national synchrotron to be built at the University of Saskatchewan.
South Africa's new National Research Foundation has been officially established as a single funding agency covering all research at the country's universities, technikons (polytechnics) and museums.
The UK government is to contribute a further £100,000 (US$165,000) to a bilateral research fund between Britain and South Africa, extending its activities for a further year.
The US Food and Drug Administration has announced a de facto ban on clinical trials of transplants of living cells, tissues and organs from non-human primates into humans.
One of Germany's largest national research centres has advertised tenure-track positions reserved for women in a bid to increase the number of women in top research positions.
The National Institutes of Health has moved one step closer to funding stem cell research, after a working group met to refine a draft set of ethical guidelines that scientists would have to obey in order to proceed.
Two British organisations are proposing to set up an International Centre for the Communication of Science, to train science journalists, broadcasters and exhibition organizers from developing countries.
Japan's candidate to head the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has promised to increase its efficiency and its emphasis on education.
The discovery that plant photopigment-like molecules are essential for the mouse biological clock adds to knowledge of the clock's molecular mechanism.
An instrument on board the Hubble Space Telescope, orbiting high above the Earth's atmosphere, has discovered the most distant galaxy ever recorded, at a redshift of 6.68. The observation of this galaxy at a time when the Universe was only 5% of its present age may help improve existing theories of galaxy formation.
Just under a year ago the El Niño of 1997-98 came to an end. By several measures it was the strongest ever documented. But why was this El Niño so strong? Attempts to provide an answer must grapple with a variety of possible contributory causes on timescales ranging from the seasonal to the centennial.
Mosquito-bornePlasmodium parasites that cause malaria have developed a variety of strategies to escape the defences put up by their hosts. A new one has been discovered in a Plasmodiumspecies that affects rodents -- the invading parasites each express a different set of proteins to increase their chances of breaking into and occupying red blood cells so that they can continue their life cycle.
Much research into understanding how the Earth's iron-rich core formed centres on how nickel and cobalt behave at high temperatures and pressures, and so might have partitioned between the mantle and core early in Earth history. Experiments employing a diamond anvil cell now take this line of research into new territory by reaching pressures of up to 80 gigapascals, equivalent to a depth of about 1,900 km.
Carbon nanotubes may find an application as additives to molten metal, which would allow the metal to be shaped in the same way as glass or plastics. This could revolutionise the production of cans, boxes or cars, which are now fabricated from sheet metal.
We know how many drugs of abuse – cocaine, heroin and nicotine – work, but less about how they lead to addiction. Studies of the brain-learning systems concerned are addressing the causes of addiction, with the intent of developing better treatments.
A selection of new products for the lab with the emphasis — in an issue distributed at this year's FASEB gathering in Washington DC — on experimentation and the controlling the hazards it can bring.
