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When Ironies Make Perfect Sense

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Science - By Anne Sasso - Feb. 27 (Special Report) - Traveling to California to find yourself is a '60s cliché. But for Gina Wingood, a professor at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta, Georgia, the trip to Berkeley, California, where she attended graduate school, set the course for the rest of her life. She found her life's work: designing AIDS-intervention programs for African-American women. She tapped into a hidden vein of solidarity with her black sisters that transcended her white-immersion upbringing and economic status. And she met the man who would become her closest scientific collaborator and her husband.

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The Bigger Questions - Science Careers

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Science - By Susan Gaidos - Feb. 27 (Special Report) - Prather says that as one of two minority female faculty members in her department, she is sought out by students from underrepresented groups. She frequently participates in programs aimed at reaching these students. Indeed, the opportunity to reach out to women and minority students--and teach them--was among the factors that drew her back to academia. "I really felt like, if it was just about research, I could do that at other places. But teaching students, and reaching out to women and minority students, is important to me, because I know that there is this pipeline problem for women and minorities, particularly in science and engineering."

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All in the Stroma: Cancer's Cosa Nostra

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Science - By Jean Marx - Apr. 05 (News Report) - Cancer biologists have recently been coming to grips with the fact that tumor cells get a lot of help from the cells around them. Such collusion is not the source of disease: More than 30 years of research have shown that mutations in a cell's own DNA initiate the changes that put it on its destructive path. But "people are realizing that the tumor environment is a coconspirator," says Zena Werb of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). "There's been a clear shift in interest."

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Building a Better Tumor Killer

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 02:48:54 -0700

Science - By Jocelyn Kaiser - Aug. 31 (News Report) - In a first for gene therapy, researchers have successfully treated cancer patients by genetically modifying their immune cells to attack tumors. Although the treatment worked in only two of 17 patients, the researchers say this proof of concept, reported online today in Science, should pave the way for more gene-therapy cancer cures. Steven Rosenberg's group at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, Maryland, has been working on ways to rev up immune cells to vanquish cancer for 2 decades. A few years ago, the researchers removed tumor-attacking immune cells called T cells from melanoma patients, grew more in the lab, and reinjected them into the patients. The influx of additional tumor-attacking cells pushed the cancer to regress in about half the patients (Science, 25 October 2002, p. 850). But only about half of melanoma victims have these tumor-fighting T cells, and the cells are very scarce in other kinds of cancer.

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Gay or Straight? The Nose Knows

Tue, 09 May 2006 00:31:14 -0700

Science - By Laura Blackburn - May. 09 (Special Report) - When it comes to responding to pheromonelike chemical signals, lesbian women are much more like heterosexual men than their straight counterparts, according to a new study. The findings could lead to new insights into the neural basis of sexual preference and behavior, say the researchers. Pheromones are the ultimate aphrodisiacs. Many animals use the sex-specific scents to sniff out their partner of choice. The pheromones of female moths, for example, can attract a mate from several kilometers away. Whether the substances also play a role in human mating is less clear. Potential candidates include AND, a progesterone-derived molecule found in men's sweat, and EST, which is related to estrogen and found in pregnant women's urine. But neither has yet met the strict criteria that would define it as a pheromone.

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The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 16:20:37 -0800

Science - By Naomi Oreskes - Feb. 05 (Special Report) - [Some] suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case... Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy... Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect.

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