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Even in the best of times, 95% of Jan Hendrik Schon's experiments fizzled out. It's the other 5% that made him one of nanotechnology's brightest stars and the envy of [...]

Gravitational lensing, now taken as an important astrophysical consequence of the general theory of relativity, was found even before this theory was formulated but was discarded as a speculative idea without any chance of empirical confirmation. Reconstruction of some of Einstein's research notes dating back to 1912 reveals that he explored the possibility of gravitational lensing 3 years before completing his general theory of relativity. On the basis of preliminary insights into this theory, Einstein had already derived the basic features of the lensing effect. When he finally published the very same results 24 years later, it was only in response to prodding by an amateur scientist., Sixty years ago, Einstein published a short note in Science entitled 'Lens-Like Action of a Star by the Deviation of Light in the Gravitational Field' (1). The note is often [...]

For more than a year, a study claiming to show that transgenic potatoes may make rats sick was at the center of a furious debate, even though its findings had [...]

Flat panel displays used in laptops and personal organizers are increasing both in resolution and in size, but, for applications requiring larger areas, such as newspapers, these expensive technologies are [...]

In an exhibition hall at the 2005 World Exposition in Aichi, Japan, a gigantic newspaper covering more than 5 square meters delivers the news to passersby in crisp black and [...]

Recent discoveries at Bell Laboratories--the research arm of Lucent Technologies in Murray Hill, New Jersey--said to be of Nobel quality suddenly became mired in questions last week. Outside researchers presented [...]

The heat from the controversy alone is nearly enough to trigger a nuclear reaction. This week in Science (p. 1868), scientists led by nuclear engineer Rusi Taleyarkhan of Oak Ridge [...]

Atlanta - Twenty two years ago, Alfred Steinschneider made a splash in the medical community with a landmark paper detailing multiple cases of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in a [...]

Veteran physicists know that if you ask a simple question, nature by no means guarantees a simple answer. But even the most case-hardened researchers may be taken aback by the [...]

Arturo Casadevall, an expert on infections that prey on people with weakened immune systems, says he has worked with a 'wonderful compound' made at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). [...]

Amsterdam--LAST SPRING, HENK BUCK AND Jaap Groudsmit were the darlings of the Dutch media. buck, an organic chemist at Eindhoven Technical University, and Goudsmit, a retrovirologist at the University of [...]

New questions about scientific validity are dogging South Korean cloning researcher Woo-Suk Hwang and his colleagues. On 4 December, Hwang notified Science editors that a figure in online material that [...]

May 2003 was an up-and-down month for Daniel Klessig. On 7 May, he resigned as president of the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) for Plant Research in Ithaca, New York, for [...]

The furor continues over a legally embattled study of cancer risk among former IBM workers. Last week, 13 authors withdrew nine articles from a special issue of a journal on [...]

Last year scientists at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine created a stir with a report in Science suggesting that people who use the party drug ecstasy may damage their [...]

The Big Problem of Brittle Books ALONG the corridor of chemical plants east of Houston, where the production of petrochemicals and plastics is the norm, the Library of Congress is [...]

Cincinnati -- For a modest set of test-tube experiments, a study published in Science last summer made quite a splash. It was part of a rush of work looking into [...]

The nascent "open-access" publishing movement got a qualified, but high-profile, endorsement this week. After a 7-month investigation, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee of Great Britain, concluded that "the current system of scientific publishing is not providing the access needed for the progress of science," says committee chair Ian Gibson. In a 114-page report, the committee recommends that papers produced by publicly funded research be put in repositories at universities and research institutions, where they would be open to all, free of charge, soon after publication. It also says that online journals that have authors pay the cost of publication and that allow free access to all "could be viable," and it calls for a major study of the idea.

Integrity of Research Papers Questioned IN the spring of 1983, Walter W. Stewartand Ned Feder 'set aside' their usual laboratory work at the National Institutes of Health to embark on [...]

Harvard Researchers Retract Data in Immunology Paper Last spring, researchers from Harvard's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute reported the discovery of a potentially exciting new molecule that appeared to amplify the vital [...]

Presents a list of papers and research reports authored by Chinese scientists most cited as references for other papers and research. Author; Institution; Journal where published; Topic.

Reports that the number of multiauthor research papers in the fields of life sciences has increased according to the study by the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information. Number of life science papers submitted in 1994; Nature of life science researches; Results of clinical trials; Emphasis on the recognition of people who contributed to the study; Comparison with other areas of studies.

Presents the results of a study into the `uncitedness rate' of scientific papers in the five years after publication among various scientific disciplines. Statistical rates of uncitedness; Uncitedness rate in engineering; Variation among subdisciplines; Uncitedness rate in social sciences.

Presents a chart of the top ten research topics for scientific papers in 1997. Dominant theme of apoptosis; Most cited researcher being Ronald M. Evans.

Lists the top four most cited research papers for 1994 according to the Institute for Scientific Information. Most cited scientist; Originating publications; Publication of rankings in ScienceWatch magazine.

In the News of the Week article 'Just how bad is dioxin?' (16 June, p. 1941) about the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) reassessment of the risks of dioxin, Jocelyn Kaiser [...]

Discusses the loss of female talent in the physical sciences and with it the debate about the desirability of stronger measures to increase the number of women scientists. Provides the results of surveys, interviews, and meetings dealing with the issues of job discrimination, sexual harassment, and general social treatment. (KR)

The article informs that immediately, the journal "Science's" editors recognized a submission of potentially explosive importance. A group in South Korea was describing 11 embryonic stem cell lines created from the DNA of ailing patients. Little did the journal's editors, or the nine outside researchers who would examine the paper with varying degrees of scrutiny, realize just how explosive the paper would be. The journal has also not instituted certain policies, such as requesting that authors detail their contributions to a paper or performing independent analyses of images, that some believe might deter fraud. The latter will change in January, when certain images in papers near acceptance will be enlarged and scrutinized by the journal staffers, a plan in place prior to the Hwang debacle. In fact, a number of the images purporting to be of distinct stem cells garnered from patient cells were neither distinct nor from patients. The cells had been extracted from fertilized embryos, the SNU committee alleged, and, in the published version now being analyzed, supposedly different colonies were duplicated or overlapping members of the same one.

Albert Einstein postulated the equivalence of energy and mass, developed the theory of special relativity, explained the photoelectric effect, and described Brownian motion in five papers, all published in 1905, 100 years ago. With these papers, Einstein provided the framework for understanding modern astrophysical phenomena. Conversely, astrophysical observations provide one of the most effective means for testing Einstein's theories. Here, I review astrophysical advances precipitated by Einstein's insights, including gravitational redshifts, gravitational lensing, gravitational waves, the Lense-Thirring effect, and modern cosmology. A complete understanding of cosmology, from the earliest moments to the ultimate fate of the universe, will require developments in physics beyond Einstein, to a unified theory of gravity and quantum physics., Einstein's 1905 theories form the basis for much of modern physics and astrophysics. In 1905, Einstein postulated the equivalence of mass and energy (1), which led Sir Arthur Eddington to [...]

We have used 19.9 million papers over 5 decades and 2.1 million patents to demonstrate that teams increasingly dominate solo authors in the production of knowledge. Research is increasingly done in teams across nearly art fields. Teams typically produce more frequently cited research than individuals do, and this advantage has been increasing over time. Teams now also produce the exceptionally high-impact research, even where that distinction was once the domain of solo authors. These results are detailed for sciences and engineering, social sciences, arts and humanities, and patents, suggesting that the process of knowledge creation has fundamentally changed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the discovery of two peaks at the Organization for Heavy-Ion Research laboratory in Germany, between 1983 and 1987. Number of experimental papers that were published on the phenomenon; View that the phenomenon was non-existent before 1983; Response of the discovers to claims of scientists from the decade of the 1990s; Detailed examination of the discovery, and experimentation into the phenomenon.

Basic and clinical researchers are finding ways to overcome the challenges to storing, analyzing, and sharing large collections of data. Techniques for capturing images of the human brain in action fill the pages of neuroscience journals with colorful pictures. It has prompted some neuroscientists to begin to store, organize, and share their brain-image data in easily accessible archives. Free access to this raw imaging data will enable researchers to use existing data to address several research questions. These databases can also serve as supplements to published papers. Imaging experiments generate three-dimensional representations of activity throughout the brain, but authors usually publish just a few cross-sectional brain views of the areas most relevant to their work. Access to the complete set of images generated by an experiment would allow those interested to select the views they wish to see and even change parameters that affect how the data are displayed.

Describes international trends in stem cell research. Papers highlighting the personality-switching abilities of stem cells in mice; Versatility and compatibility with adult bone marrow cells; Exploration of the potential uses of stem cells obtained from a variety of sources. INSET: Stem Cell Scorecard..

The article reflects on the misuse of the impact factor in determining the quality of research papers published in science journals. It discusses the criticisms about the use of this factor as a measure of the quality of individual research papers and explains the importance of the impact factor to the scientific community.

The article reports on the scientific misconduct shown by Rusi Taleyarkhan, the bubble fusion pioneer at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. After two previous investigations, a third panel has cited Taleyarkhan for two cases of misconduct. He has first appeared to be controversial after he and his colleagues have reported that they have generated nuclear fusion with a simple tabletop setup in 2002. In a separate issue in early 2005, he has asked Adam Butt, a master's degree candidate in his laboratory to proofread the paper and check some of its numbers. The panel has insisted that his name is added as an author of the paper, which is submitted and accepted by the Nuclear Engineering and Design (NED).

The article reports that a University of Pittsburgh (UP) panel has declared stem cell researcher Gerald Schatten innocent of research misconduct in the South Korean stem cell debacle. But his failure to more closely oversee research with his name on it does make him guilty of "research misbehavior." In December 2005, after the discovery of misdeeds by South Korean cloning researcher Woo Suk Hwang, UP medical school dean Arthur Levine set up a panel of six senior researchers to investigate the role of Schatten, who was presented as senior author on a paper purporting to show that disease-specific cell lines had been derived using stem cells from cloned human embryos. The university panel said there is no evidence that Schatten falsified anything or that he was aware of any misconduct. The panel also takes a swipe at Schatten's role as a co-author on the paper, published in journal "Nature" in August 2005, reporting on the first cloning of a dog. The panel recommends no specific disciplinary action, calling on the university to take action commensurate with research misbehavior.

The article focuses on the authenticity of papers released by teams led by Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea. Hwang and his co-authors published a flurry of papers in at least nine journals within the past 2 years. "Molecules and Cells," a Korean journal that published several papers last year on human embryonic stem cells and cloning by the MizMedi co-authors, told Science it would formally retract three papers on 28 February. Associate Editor Ahn Kwangseog said photographs used in those papers also appeared in papers submitted to Science, Stem Cells, Reproduction, and Biology of Reproduction. The journal Stem Cells has expressed concern about a technical paper from MizMedi researchers on the cultivation of human embryonic stem cells, citing apparent duplications of images within the paper as well as use of an image that also appeared in the 2004 Science paper. Editor-in-Chief Curt Civin of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, says the authors have acknowledged mistakes. The journal is awaiting results of investigations under way in Korea to determine whether the paper is still valid.

The article presents information according to which last year, a huge scuffle broke out over a National Institutes of Health (NIH) plan to ask grantees to submit their accepted papers to a free archive. Open-access advocates hailed the move, whereas journals said they would be bankrupted. But 2 months after the policy went into effect, most researchers seem to be ignoring it. As of July 2, NIH's PubMed Central had received only about 300 papers, a mere 3% of the 11,000 expected if all NIH grantees complied. Timothy Hays of NIH's extramural research office says the figure is not surprising because many grantees are waiting for their institutions to tell them how to respond to the new policy and for guidance from journals.

A new technique that uses three-dimensional holograms to analyze handwriting samples may expose writing characteristics that forgers can not fake. Traditionally, forensic handwriting experts try to spot forgeries by analyzing the pen strokes used to create a signature. For example, when strokes made with a ballpoint pen cross each other, the second stroke clearly cuts across the first if it's made with equal pressure. Tests of various combinations of pen and paper types in 126 different signatures revealed that the holographic image indicated the proper stroke order in almost 90% of cases, the researchers report.

Comments on research programs and the publication of research papers by the National Astronomical Observatories of China's Academy of Science. Policies on the publishing of research papers; Publishing incentives for staff; Selection criteria for the Knowledge Innovation Program.

Comments on the research paper of Julius Ranninger, et al, entitled `Experimental and theoretical constraints of bipolaronic superconductivity in high-Tc materials: An impossibility' The debate started over the paper, which discusses superconductivity; Response of Sasha Alexandra to the paper published by Ranninger, which disputes the validity of the findings.

Presents a chart of the top 10 authors of high-impact papers in biomedicine from 1990- 1996. Name; Affiliation; Number of high impact papers; Citations; Cites per paper.

Reports on the results of an international comparison of researcher productivity contained in Japan's 1996 White Paper on Science and Technology showing that British researchers are the most productive in the world. Ranking of countries by the number of academic papers per full-time researcher; Comment by Jean Johnson, analyst at Japan's National Science Foundation.

The article proposes research principles for developing food value chains (FVCs), which the authors define as processes that comprise all the activities required to bring agricultural products to consumers, including crop production, processing, storage, marketing, distribution, and consumption. This paper is focused upon implementing these processes in developing countries and provides recommendations for doing so, including identifying opportunities available in domestic markets, paying attention to post-harvest losses, and promoting on-farm natural resources conversation.

The article introduces research papers presented in the issue. Fontana et al. report their research on the potential benefits to life span associated with dietary restriction or changes to nutrient-sensing pathways. Nakagawa et al. report research on apoptosis in mammalian cells and protease effects on the ribonuclease Dicer. Their findings on caspace activation are based on studies of Caenorhabditis elegans. Lee et al. are noted for their research on the Virgo cluster and globular star clusters that exist outside galaxies.

The article presents an opinion on the research paper "Genome-Wide Mapping of in Vivo Protein-DNA System Interactions," by D. S. Johnson, A. Mortazavi, R. M. Myers, and B. Wold published in the "Science" periodical's June 8, 2007 issue. A DNA sequencing advancement is a crucial component of a methodology to identify transcription factor binding sites at whole-genome levels.

The article presents an opinion on the research paper "Marine Radiocarbon Evidence for the Mechanism of Deglacial Atmospheric CO2 Rise" by T. M. Marchitto et al 1456 published in the "Science" periodical's June 8, 2007 issue. Sediment core findings provide insights into changes in the ocean's circulation during the last deglaciation between 19,000 and 11,000 years ago.

The article presents an opinion on the research paper "Global Prevalence of Double Benioff Zones", by M. R. Brudzinski et al published in the "Science" periodical's June 8, 2007 issue. Benioff zones refer to the deep layers of seismic activity in the Earth's subduction zones. The research extends scientific understanding of the geophysical and geochemical processes in earthquakes.