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Virologist Jim Murphy dies at 85

by TALLEY HENNING BROWN The scion of a long line of scientists, James Slater Murphy’s life was infused with the spirit of scientific inquiry from his earliest days. The fervor for and dedication to pure research that he evinced in his later life were a hallmark of his association with Rockefeller...

Lewis Thomas Prize awarded to Richard Dawkins

by TALLEY HENNING BROWN The committee that nominates and selects recipients of the Lewis Thomas Prize does not have an easy job; few people eloquently straddle the fields of science and literature. But there was little debate over Richard Dawkins, British ethologist and popular science writer, wh...

Milestones

Awarded: Sung Hee Ahn-Upton, a Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award from the Basic Sciences Division of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The award honors the late Harold M. Weintraub, who identified genes responsible for cell differentiation. C. David Allis, a Gairdner Foundation Int...

Left-right wiring determined by neural communication in the embryonic worm

Most animals appear symmetrical at first glance, but we’re full of internal lopsidedness. From the hand used to pick up a pencil or throw a baseball, to where language is generated in the brain, to the orientation of our internal organs, humans are a glut of asymmetries. Worms aren’t so differen...

Single circadian clock regulates flies' response to light and temperature

Animals have biological clocks with a cycle of about 24 hours — these circadian rhythms allow them to align their physiology and behavior to the earth’s rotation. Now new research from Rockefeller University shows that the same molecular clock responsible for helping flies sync themselves with p...

De Lange, Nussenzweig elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an independent policy research center that undertakes studies of complex and emerging problems, announced this week that two Rockefeller University faculty members have been elected to its membership. Titia de Lange, head of Rockefeller’s Laboratory of C...

Libchaber and Young elected to National Academy of Sciences

Albert J. Libchaber, head of Rockefeller University’s Laboratory of Experimental Condensed Matter Physics, and Michael W. Young, head of the Laboratory of Genetics, were elected to the National Academy of Sciences during its 144th annual meeting in Washington, D.C. this morning. The Rockefeller s...

Richard Dawkins accepts 2006 Lewis Thomas Prize

The 2006 Rockefeller University Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science has been awarded to British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science writer Richard Dawkins. Rockefeller’s president, Paul Nurse, presented the award to Dawkins yesterday at a ceremony in Caspary Auditorium...

Mice on Prozac help scientists find better depression treatments

Depressed mice, like depressed humans, often appear listless and antisocial — the result of aberrant levels of brain chemicals such as serotonin. The most commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs, Prozac and other drugs of its class, act to normalize levels of serotonin. But by comparing mice tha...

Jeffrey Ravetch to receive William B. Coley Award

The 2007 William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor Immunology has been awarded to Jeffrey V. Ravetch, head of Rockefeller University’s Leonard Wagner Laboratory of Molecular Genetics and Immunology. The Cancer Research Institute, which administers the prize, chose Ravet...