by Stem Cell Network | Jun 14, 2011
In the scientific world, 50 years can be an eternity. Consider the fruit fly or certain cells – organisms whose lifespan is counted in hours or days. Or, it can be the blink of an eye when compared to the progression of an ice flow, for instance. In the field of stem...
by Ben Paylor | Jun 8, 2011
Science and the way it is distributed are changing. One of the principle forces driving this change is the very media through which you read these words. The Internet. Not only can you find an answer to almost any simple question you post, now there are thousands of...
by Angela C. H. McDonald | May 31, 2011
A young brilliant mathematician seen by his colleagues as agitated, socially withdrawn, emotionally flat and paranoid is approached by a Department of Defense agent who requests his assistance with code breaking. Following acceptance of this job, the young professor...
by David Kent | May 19, 2011
In an article I wrote last month on Nature magazine’s “The Future of the PhD” series, I highlighted a thought from Steven Running (Forest Ecologist extraordinaire) who compared today’s PhD student to those going through the system with him in the 1970s:...
by Paul Krzyzanowski | May 17, 2011
Protecting inventions arising from publicly funded research is a polarizing issue for many scientists and the general public. One perspective views all the fruits of publicly-funded research as public domain, while another believes that same knowledge must be turned...
by Michelle Ly | May 11, 2011
Almost three years ago, Scientific American asked if we were entering an age of Science 2.0. Would science now be conducted in the open access realm –- freely publishing data, drafts and even whole papers? The economic cost of academic publishing has long been...
by Angela C. H. McDonald | May 5, 2011
Generating complex organ tissue from pluripotent stem cells is a major challenge in the field of regenerative medicine. Significant progress has been made in directing pluripotent stem cells to differentiate into specific cell types however; there have been few...
by Stem Cell Network | May 4, 2011
One of the largest and most controversial stem cell clinics in the western world has closed. The XCell-Center at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, based in Germany, ceased operations on April 21, due to what the Center claims is “a new development in German...
by Ubaka Ogbogu | May 2, 2011
A few months ago I wrote about a temporary injunction (ban) issued by United States federal district court judge Royce C. Lamberth on federal funding for research on human embryonic stem cell lines derived from supernumerary IVF embryos. Subsequently, at the request...
by Ubaka Ogbogu | Apr 27, 2011
While preparing a consulting report on ethical issues associated with priority setting (a.k.a. resource allocation, rationing) in the stem cell research context, I was surprised to find that there are no published Canadian studies of priority-setting matters...
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