Biotech needs to slow down Contrary to complaints, the FDA has become more--not less--willing to review drugs. Red Herring Oct 11 2002 10:34PM ET [Moreover - moreover...]

This is right on in many respects. There is so much pressure on biotech CEOs to advance molecules into clinical trials when they are not reasy. It is easy to set up a phase I and phase II clinical trial that looks pretty reasonable. But that is why they have phase III trials.  comment []7:26:15 PM    

5 Little Oryxes and the Big Bad Lioness of Kenya. A lioness from the Samburu National Reserve in Kenya that adopted five newborn antelopes finally ate one of her adoptees. By Marc Lacey. [New York Times: Science]

But she only ate it after it was already dead. Many carnivores do not recognize a dead animal as anything else than food. What is weird is that she does this at all.  comment []7:14:17 PM    

Superbug strikes again [Nature Science Update]

Anyone who thinks were can ever eradicate a bacterium like Staph is delusional. We will always have to come up with new approaches. That is what natural selection is.  comment []6:46:26 PM    

Special report: Personal genomics [EurekAlert!]

More on the dream of $1000 genome sequences. It sounds like a bad Popular science article. There is only 1 little blurb about accuracy. But that is the most important part!!. Think of the liability if your company get a sequence wrong. Way too much is placed on the genome sequence and not enough on stochastic effects. everyone wants to make it so easy - you have a gene for heart disease; you have a gene for breast cancer. In most cases, it is NOT that easy. It is most likely a combination of genes and their interaction with the environment that makes a difference. And, single cell experiements have shown that identical cell types under identical conditions can have a quite different patterns of gene expression. These are the stochastic effects at the cell level. All this will be much more complicated than expected. Who will do the critical counseling? It is immoral to just give someone their genomic sequences without any genetic counseling. I think we are a long way from personal genomics.  comment []6:05:37 PM    

Nobel raises question: How to keep innovators. Asahi Shimbun - A good work environment, not big money, kept Nobel laureate Tanaka from leaving his job. How can a company keep talented staff, especially researchers, on its payroll and motivate them to do their best work? That question is all the more pertinent ...
Company makes $2.8b but he gets only $160 Straits Times
How do you evaluate Koichi Tanaka's winning of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry? Japan Today
New York Times - Daily Yomiuri - Mainichi Shimbun - Japan Times - and 110 related » [Google Technology News]

This is so right on. If its scientists, or any creative talent, only work at a company because of the pay, you can bet money that the company is not an industry leader in innovation. Researchers are a finicky lot and most will stick around for quite a long time for relatively low pay if you simply provide a great place to do research. This means hire the best minds and let them do what they know best. Immunex was a great example of this. The largest raise I ever got was one that they gave all scientists. Why? Because we were going through a big round of hiring and we could not get anyone to accept the offers we were making. Immunex' salaries were quite low but none of us complained (well, most of us), because it was such a wonderful place to work. So, in order to hire the best scientists, Immunex had to offer them more money. To show you what a class act Immunex was, they raised all the scientist's salaries to equivalent levels. Not many companies would normalize their salaries like that. We all appreciated it and it made us even more committed to Immunex.  comment []10:48:27 PM    

Bush's Science Advisers Drawing Criticism. Democrats say the advisers are being selected for their ideology and ties to industry. By Sheryl Gay Stolberg. [New York Times: Science]

The government needs to be very careful about this, especially when it concerns the FDA or CDC. Both of these organizations are designed to protect public health. It will undermine each organization if iceive to put business first. This will need to bear watching.  comment []8:02:05 PM    

Pyrosequencing Sharpens the Axe [GenomeWeb]

I love it. Lay off 20% of your staff in order to 'accelerate the road to profitability.' Just think how profitable you could be if you laid everyone off.  comment []7:45:56 PM    

Genetics giants share Nobel [Nature Science Update]

Sydney Brenner richly deserves a nobel prize. He is one of the best scientists around and a genuinely nice man. He is one of a handful of Nobel winners I have had the opportunity to talk one-on-one with.A wonderfully creative man.  comment []2:57:42 PM    

Genome of potential bioremediation agent sequenced. Scientists at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and collaborators elsewhere have deciphered the genome of a metal ion-reducing bacterium, Shewanella oneidensis, that has great potential as a bioremediation agent to remove toxic metals from the environment. US Department of Energy [EurekAlert - Biology]

This could be an inportant environmental tool for bioremediation. I'd be interested in seeing what metabolic pathways it has developed that are unique.  comment []12:09:39 AM    

Chemists create synthetic cytochromes. When animals metabolize food or when plants photosynthesize it, electrons are moved across cell membranes. The "extension cords" of this bioelectrical circuit are mostly iron-containing proteins called cytochromes. University of Illinois scientists have created synthetic cytochromes by making a small cyclic peptide that binds to the iron millions of times more strongly than without the peptide. National Institutes of Health [EurekAlert - Biology]

Nice use of chemistry. Cytochromes are some of the most stable proteins and their interaction with heme is quite strong. The synthetic peptides bind iron in the heme much, much more tightly than natural cytochromes. It will be interesting to see what uses these synthetic cytochromes can be put to. Because just being a good binder does not a protein make.  comment []12:03:58 AM    

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Large world found beyond Pluto [Daypop Top 40]

Pretty nifty discovery. It's smaller than Pluto but no much further out from the sun. It brings up the question if we chould really call Pluto a planet or not.  comment []11:13:41 PM    

Dan Gillmor on Clayton Christensen

They launched 12 bonafide disruptive growth businesses from mid-50s to late 70s. Since then, great innovation but not disruptive. PlayStation an entry in established market. What halted disruptive innovation, he says: Founder Morito left in 1980, and he'd had a policy not to do market research. In 1982 Sony hired its first MBA.

comment []11:01:22 PM    

Swede researchers apply for psoriasis gene patent. ABC Online Oct 6 2002 3:59PM ET [Moreover - moreover...]

Of course they do not say what the gene is. Pharmnas have not contacted them about using the gene so they are going to patent it. I wonder what the gene is and why no one has rushed to get exclusive rights?  comment []10:54:58 PM    

Edge Interview with Steven Pinker.

This is a month old, but I haven't seen it linked to elsewhere. Edge carries an interesting interview with MIT research psychologist Steven Pinker, following the release of his book the blank slate, on the taboos many people have against investigating human nature from a biological perspective. Here are some quotes relating to authority and the neglect of real human needs that rang particularly true to me:

The 20th century saw the rise of a movement that has been called "authoritarian high modernism," which was contemporaneous with the ascendance of the blank slate. City planners believed that people's taste for green space, for ornament, for people-watching, for cozy places for intimate social gatherings, were just social constructions. They were archaic historical artifacts that were getting in the way of the orderly design of cities, and should be ignored by planners designing optimal cities according to so-called scientific principles. [...] Ornamentation, human scale, green space, gardens, and comfortable social meeting places were written out of the cities because the planners had a theory of human nature that omitted human esthetic and social needs.

Another example is the arts. In the 20th century, modernism and post-modernism took over, and their practitioners disdained beauty as bourgeois, saccharine, and lightweight. Art was deliberately made incomprehensible or ugly or shocking[~]again, on the assumption that people's tastes for attractive faces, landscapes, colors, and so on were reversible social constructions. This also led to an exaggeration of the dynamic of social status that has always been part of the arts. The elite arts used to be aligned with the economic and political aristocracy. They involved displays of sumptuosity and the flaunting of rare and precious skills that only the idle rich could cultivate. But now that any now that any schmo can afford a Mozart CD or can go to a free museum, artists had to figure out new ways to differentiate themselves from the rabble. And so art became baffling and uninterpretable without acquaintance with arcane theory.

By their own admission, the humanities programs in universities, and institutions that promote new works of elite art, are in crisis. People are staying away in droves. I don't think it takes an Einstein to figure out why. By denying people's sense of visual beauty in painting and sculpture, melody in music, meter and rhyme in poetry, plot and narrative and character in fiction, the elite arts wrote off the vast majority of their audience[~]the people who approach art in part for pleasure and edification rather than social one-upmanship. Today there are movements in the arts to reintroduce beauty and narrative and melody and other basic human pleasures. And they are considered radical extremists!

[Seb's Open Research]

I just got the book and am interested in reading it, since I think I might disagree with portions of it. The way we feel about a lot of things is very much dependent on the society. The interaction of our genes with the environment is so complex that generalizations can be difficult. We can't even figure out what the best diet is for us. How can we figure out the basic propeties of humanity that are gentically driven.  comment []10:52:49 PM    

U.S. consumers challenge spread of biotech food. Environmental News Network Oct 4 2002 8:48PM ET [Moreover - moreover...]

The problems with most GM food is that it does nothing for the consumer, since they are not the customer these companies are interested in.Their customers are the farmers. Things might be a little cheaper but not outrageously so. Companies like Monsanto are creating herbicide-resistant GM foods to sell more herbicide. The farmers hope to cut costs but the GM foods still need spraying, particularly as insects gain herbicide resistance also. This sort of GM food is going to always be a problem. Better approaches range from overexpressing a natural protein that affects caterpillars or making the food heathier. The problem with this approach Oregon is taking is that it tars ALL GM foods with the same label. There are, and will be, very good GM foods that are beneficial to the average person, not just the companies. But will it have a better tag on it or will everything be labeled GM?  comment []10:30:43 PM    

Students Refuse to Dissect Animals

comment []10:16:19 PM