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How Can Vaccines Against Influenza and Other Viral Diseases Be Made More Effe...
A large fraction of the world's most widespread and problematic pathogens, such as the influenza virus, seem to persist in nature by evading host immune responses by inducing... -
Input subsidies to improve smallholder maize productivity in Malawi: toward a...
Emerging from the worst harvest in a decade, the Government of Malawi implemented one of the most ambitious and successful assaults on hunger in the history of the African... -
Genomics Research and Malaria Control: Great Expectations
The protozoan parasite Plasmodium falciparum causes falciparum malaria, a fatal parasitic disease in humans, and is transmitted by Anopheles mosquito vectors (predominantly the... -
The prehistory of biology preprints:A forgotten experiment from the 1960s
In 1961, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) began to circulate biological preprints in a for- gotten experiment called the Information Exchange Groups (IEGs). This system... -
The Shifting Boundaries of Sustainability Science: Are We Doomed Yet?
Global consumption rates of vital resources suggest that we have surpassed the capacity of the Earth to sustain current levels, much less future trajectories of growth in human... -
Genes, cells, and biobanks: Yes, there’s still a consent problem
From a research perspective, the interest in biobanking continues to intensify. Governments and industry have invested heavily in biobanks, as exemplified by initiatives like... -
Over a century of cancer research: Inconvenient truths and promising leads
Despite over a century of intensive efforts, the great gains promised by the War on Cancer nearly 50 years ago have not materialized. Since 1999, we have analyzed the lack of... -
Science star over Asia.
Recent news of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research in Seoul has made headlines around the world. In 2004, Korea took the world by surprise when W. S. Hwang and his team... -
Fertilizing Nature: A Tragedy of Excess in the Commons
Why has nitrogen fertilizer use declined in some countries while increasing in others, despite significant environmental harm? Proper crop management strategies offer... -
A New Trade Framework for Global Healthcare R&D
The AIDS crisis has brought to public notice what has always been generally true—that the existing business model for drug development leads to high prices and unequal access.... -
Protecting Migration Corridors: Challenges and Optimism for Mongolian Saiga
Animal migration surely ranks as one of nature's most visible and widespread phenomena. Every minute of every day, somewhere, some place, animals are on the move. The migrants... -
The Hong Kong Principles for assessing researchers
For knowledge to benefit research and society, it must be trustworthy. Trustworthy research is robust, rigorous, and transparent at all stages of design, execution, and... -
Funding the way to open access.
The Wellcome Trust supports open access publishing via the author pays model and through the deposition of peer reviewed papers into PubMed Central. The costs of disseminating... -
Improving big citizen science data: Moving beyond haphazard sampling
Citizen science is mainstream: millions of people contribute data to a growing array of citizen science projects annually, forming massive datasets that will drive research for... -
Doing science in uncertain times.
A scientist living in Russia is often asked two questions: “Why haven't you left?” and “Is it still possible to work there?” The best response to the first question is, “Why... -
Neuroscience Networks
The completion of the human genome project has ushered in a new era in which biology has become an information science. In this new era, sharing of information is quickly... -
Science on the rise in developing countries.
Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, recently called attention to the clear inequalities in science between developing and developed countries and to the... -
Every fifth published metagenome is not available to science
Have you ever sought to use metagenomic DNA sequences reported in scientific publications? Were you successful? Here, we reveal that metagenomes from no fewer than 20% of the... -
Money for Nothing? A Call for Empirical Evaluation of Biodiversity Conservati...
For far too long, conservation scientists and practitioners have depended on intuition and anecdote to guide the design of conservation investments. If we want to ensure that... -
Babies, Bottles, and Bisphenol A: The Story of a Scientist-Mother
My 11-month-old daughter loves her baby bottles and sippy cups (first-person narrative is from the viewpoint of Rebecca Roberts). But as I sit and watch her drink from them, I...
