Scientists

So now it's confirmed that South Korean stem cell king Hwang Woo Suk had been lying all along - not just about the illicit manner in which the women's eggs used in his experiments were obtained, but about his major claim to have successfully created clonal human embryos in the first place. He lied to the news media, the public, his government and patients hoping for cures. I heard Mr. Hwang speak just over a year ago at a forum at the United Nations. He was lauded by the scientists present as the Galileo of stem cell research.

Washington. -- Why are so many scientists gloomy? Because they have finally realized that the go-go days of research finance are over and today's hard times are bound to persist and may get worse.For many who are already established in the scientific professions, the situation is difficult. For most beginners, it's disastrous as successive waves of newly graduated Ph. D.s compete for jobs in a shrinking, overpopulated market.Scientists are not alone in feeling the economic aftershocks of the end of the Cold War, corporate down-sizing, and the new era of governmental frugality.

FREDERICK -- Behind sea-green cinder block walls and stainless steel doors, protected by space suits and sterilizing chemical showers, scientists here are searching for weapons to fight one of Earth's most dangerous predators.This is Fort Detrick's U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, one of only five laboratories in the world equipped for the study of such super-lethal, untreatable diseases as Marburg, Lassa and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever.But recent books, a movie and a deadly epidemic in Africa have focused an international spotlight on USAMRIID's work on one murderous microbe in particular: the Ebola virus.

Climate change presents us with a difficult dilemma because there is so much even scientists still do not know, including what is "normal" and how much of the changes observed are caused by human activity. The scientific community has yet to reach consensus on these issues. But while scientists debate the nature of climate change and our role in it, citizens face another dilemma. We are already suffering from heat waves, power outages, and derecho-related storm damage. We should not need scientists to confirm a global problem to recognize the smaller-scale one of our own. Climate change may be a global problem, but real and significant steps can be taken to address it at the local level.

Scientists have uncovered what may be the largest underground tomb ever found in Egypt's fabled Valley of the Kings -- a mausoleum in which may lie buried 50 sons of Ramses II, the red-haired pharaoh of Exodus who ruled Egypt at the zenith of its power more than 3,000 years ago."We were the first people inside parts of the tomb in 3,000 years," said Dr. Kent R. Weeks, an Egyptologist at the American University in Cairo who made the find public yesterday.Archaeologists excavating the tomb so far have identified 67 chambers -- about five times more than is common in other tombs in the valley where so many of ancient Egypt's rulers were buried.

Upset at what he sees as an unseemly rush to dismantle environmental regulations, Maryland Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest broke ranks with fellow Republicans last week over the fairness of a congressional hearing on the Endangered Species Act planned in his district.Mr. Gilchrest, a former teacher whose 1st District straddles the Chesapeake Bay, threatened to resign from the House Resources Committee task force that is reviewing the controversial federal law.He was angered because the chairman of the task force -- Rep. Richard W. Pombo, a California rancher -- refused to let him invite several scientists to testify about the need for preserving rare plants and animals.

Scientists working on the phenomena of pain have begun to explore the possibility of placing more emphasis on suppressing pain before it reaches the receptors in the brain by blocking the path of the nerve impulses. A key reason scientists are so eager to stop pain signals before they reach the brain is that they understand so little of what happens inside the brain.Dr. Kenneth L. Casey, professor of neurology and physiology at the University of Michigan, has been trying to use a PET Scan imaging technique to try to paint a picture of pain inside the human brain.

An article in yesterday's Sun should have said that scientists at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Hospital expected to find in a study performed there that poverty and other social factors were to blame for the higher incidence of kidney failure among blacks with diabetes. In their study, they were surprised to find, however, that an inherited predisposition is probably responsible for the higher rates.The Sun regrets the error.Scientists searching for clues to why diabetic blacks suffer disproportionately from potentially fatal kidney failure have suggested that a genetic factor rather than poverty or poor health care is chiefly to blame.

WASHINGTON -- On Columbus Day, federal scientists plan to launch the world's most ambitious attempt to search for signs of intelligent alien life. But in the intervening six weeks, scientists have said, the project could be hobbled by a pending federal budget cut.The $100 million, 10-year NASA plan to search for extraterrestrial intelligence has been a frequent target for budget attack. As project manager Michael Klein said yesterday, "It has a high giggle factor."But NASA is serious about the project to search for radio signals from other worlds, saying that the technology is already proving to be useful to a variety of other fields, that it has great value in exciting schoolchildren's interest in science, and that it stands a chance of answering one of the most profound questions humans have asked.

A hormone that is indistinguishable from a plant extract used to make poison darts in South America and Africa appears to play a key role in the development of high blood pressure, a team of scientists said yesterday.Researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the Upjohn Co. said the discovery could lead to a diagnostic test for hypertension -- a condition that affects an estimated 60 million Americans -- as well as drugs capable of blocking the hormone's activity.During eight years of investigation, the scientists detected the hormone not only in human blood but also in every mammal they studied -- including dogs, cats, rats, sheep, pigs and cows.