Research

I have a lot of bad habits, including doing entirely too much research on minor purchases ($50 and below) and not enough on major ones --- you know, the kind that come with front and back yards that you hope to live in for years to come. But that's why I'm sharing this offer of a free BuildFax report , which assembles public information about permits that have been issued into one document for users. You can get one of these reports for your home for free through July 31, after which the price returns to $39.99.

The article "Fighting to be Made in the USA" (May 20) is another wakeup call for policymakers who want to create jobs for Marylanders. On the one hand, state and local government leaders work to create jobs, on the other, good-paying jobs in manufacturing get exported as we allow our manufacturing base to erode. The future of Maryland manufacturing is in developing next generation manufacturing with customer-focused innovation. Such innovation is directly tied to research and development.

As October Breast Cancer Awareness Month approaches, a new study has been gaining big attention today. Researchers doing what The New York Times calls the "first comprehensive genetic analysis of breast cancer" have named four genetically distinct types of breast cancer. While the new treatments expected to come from the research are years off, the study published Sunday in the journal Nature is considered a breakthrough, the newspaper reported. "This is the road map for how we might cure breast cancer in the future,"  Dr. Matthew Ellis of Washington University, a researcher for the study, told The New York Times.

A U.S. District Court judge yesterday denied a request for a temporary injunction sought by Young Hee Ko, a Korean-born scientist whose contract was not renewed as an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In denying the request because she couldn't prove irreparable harm or damage, the court said, "The courts are reluctant, and properly so, to substitute their judgment for the judgment of professional academics." Ko, who has alleged that her academic career and search for a cancer cure have been unfairly cut short, filed suit last year accusing Hopkins and four of its employees of racial and gender discrimination.

CLEVELAND -- U.S. spending on research and development is slowing as a result of a corporate profits pinch coinciding with the end of the Cold War.Research and development spending will rise less than 1 percent next year in real terms, according to the annual forecast by Battelle Memorial Institute, a research organization based in Columbus, Ohio.Even that would be an improvement from this year, when R&D spending appears likely to decline slightly after adjusting for inflation. However, it's considerably below the 3.3 percent average annual increase of the past decade.

WASHINGTON -- One of the less-remarked inanities in government is the bountiful budget still assigned to military research, though the United States holds an unassailable lead in technology for war and no other country is a serious competitor.In this troubled and uncertain world, there's no argument against the case for the best in armaments. But when the United States possesses unchallenged superiority in advanced weaponry, why are we still financing military research at levels little below the height of the Cold War?

Washington. -- Medical research is booming these days, pouring out discoveries in genetics, drugs, and other fields that hold great promise for preventing and healing disease.But the financial underpinnings of this enterprise are increasingly shaky, and provide good reason to wonder about the long-term health of the health sciences.The scientific community, and in particular its medical wing, excels at sending out financial distress calls, regardless of the weather. The reason is plain enough:Each advance in science reveals new paths to explore.

THE incidence of breast and lung cancer is rising for women. Heart disease causes 28 percent of deaths among women.And at least one of seven women has bouts of depression during her lifetime.That much we know.What we don't know -- except in the case of lung cancer -- is if women are somehow more predisposed to certain diseases. (Doctors are relatively certain that there is more lung cancer among women today because more women are smoking than were a generation ago.)Fortunately, the big gap in our knowledge about what affects women's health may close soon.

The recent series by reporter David Folkenflik showed that higher education can't be improved simply by forcing professors to spend more time on instruction and less on research. These twin components of a professor's job are equally useful to the student body, the good name and the bottom line of most public and private universities.Still, the frustration of students who complain they're taught more often by young doctoral candidates than by tenured professors is understandable. Maryland legislators, tuned into the steady buzz of displeasure across the state and peeved themselves at the seeming reluctance of University of Maryland officials to address the topic, have withheld $21.5 million from the UM system.

A prominent AIDS researcher is being investigated for allegedly overstating the results of tests on an AIDS vaccine made by a Connecticut biotechnology company and now being tested at the University of Maryland.The researcher, Lt. Col. Robert Redfield of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, was accused by colleagues of overstating the vaccine's effectiveness at an international conference in Amsterdam in July, according to an article in the Nov. 6 issue of the journal Science.Dr. Redfield could not be reached for comment yesterday.