In these interviews, scientists talk to ScienceWatch.com and
offer behind-the-scenes insights into their research: reflections on
what led them to their chosen field, the motivation driving their work
in a given direction, and the challenges encountered along on the way.
These authors also offer their views on why their work has wielded
particular influence in the scientific community, as indicated by
Clarivate
citation data, and on how research in their respective fields has
progressed over time and will likely unfold in the future.
Featured interviews for May 2009 are listed below. To
view featured interviews from past months/years, visit the
Featured Interviews Main Menu.
Excerpt from the
interview: "...our study
clearly showed that the maintenance
DNA methyltransferase MET1 is
responsible for silencing of the
paternal allele of FIS2
during the vegetative life cycle,
male gametogenesis, and development
of the endosperm, the
extra-embryonic tissues where
imprinting takes place in plants.
Thus, in this study..."
View Image
Extracted from the
Essential
Science
IndicatorsSM
database of Clarivate,
ScienceWatch.com presents
a listing of the top 20 countries
in Space Science. Rankings are
listed by citations per
paper—among nations that
collected 10,000 or more citations
during the period (January 1999
through February 28, 2009)—to
reveal weighted impact.
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "Evaluations
fluctuate, but we know that we have
recently published some influential
articles so the rise was not a
surprise. In particular, articles
by Frey and Luechinger (2003) and
Faria (2005) on terrorism and
Sambanis (2002) on civil war have
been highly influential."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "...for over a
decade, scientists worldwide have
sought the means to produce such
columnar defects in HTS materials
without the expense and complexity
of ionizing radiation. In this
paper, we demonstrated that long,
parallel, columnar defects similar
to those mentioned above can be
obtained using a simple process
without..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "Our paper is the
first to introduce manifold
learning techniques to the face
recognition field. We were
exploring the geometrical and
topological structures through a
graph model. We found a set of
basis functions, called
Laplacianfaces, which are linear
approximations to the
eigenfunctions of the
Laplace-Beltrami operator..."
View Article
Des Higgins discusses his
Current
Classics
(
Apr. 2009) paper in Biology
& Biochemistry entitled: "The
CLUSTAL_X windows interface:
flexible strategies for multiple
sequence alignment aided by quality
analysis tools," NUCL ACID
RES 25[24]: 4876-82, Dec.
1997. Read a
Fast
Breaking Paper commentary from
Des Higgins. Podcast added May
2009.
Listen:
MP3 ¦
WMA
Excerpt from the
interview: "This paper
represents the final outcome of the
UNESCO/IUGS-sponsored IGCP-project
440 "Rodinia Assembly and
Break-up." It summarizes 17 years
of concerted global efforts in
testing the validity of the
supercontinent Rodinia. It provides
a self-consistent geodynamic model
for the assembly,
configuration..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "Chemist Benjamin
List of the Max Planck Institute
discusses his research on
asymmetric organic synthesis, a
means of producing chiral
molecules—that is, a
specifically desired molecular
arrangement, as opposed to its
mirror-image opposite. List’s
research, as reported in a highly
cited 2000 paper, used the
organic..."
View Article
"Dr. Florencio
López-de-Silanes Molina is a
Professor of Finance and Scientific
Director of the MSc in Corporate
Finance at the EDHEC-Paris School
of Economics in France. Here he
discusses his Citation Classic
paper: “Law and
Finance,” as published in the
Journal of Political
Economy, 106[6]:1113-55, in
December, 1998."
Podcast. Listen:
MP3|WMA
Excerpt from the
interview: "...we have better
understanding of the disease
epidemiology. The more we improve
surveillance methods in countries,
the more data we collect, the more
countries themselves improve and
report on TB, the better we get in
terms of estimating the global
burden. So now we’re more
confident about the quality of what
we’re saying..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "My work in the
team was to provide all the
deforestation analysis based on
satellite analysis that went into
the model, which ultimately
demonstrated that deforestation
was, in fact, not a factor in the
disappearance of frogs in
Monteverde. That led, in turn, to
the whole theory of climate change
and how changes in
micro-temperature..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "...one of the
biggest challenges is the
implementation of shared
decision-making and decision
support in routine practice,
appropriate to the particular
decision. This requires research to
understand the factors that
influence this implementation and
it also requires research into
shared decision-making in day to
day practice..."
View Article
A survey of bioterrorism research
since 1999 reveals that the U.S.
Army leads all other institutions
in total citations, while The
Institute for Genomic Research is
tops by the measure of citations
per paper. Highly cited papers
include biochemical and genomic
studies of anthrax, smallpox,
tularemia, and other agents. Other
papers examine methods for
detecting pathogens by various
technologies and discuss general
issues of preparedness and
emergency management.
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "Getting the FDA
reviews on the newer drugs was
relatively easy. But the challenge
was for the older drugs, like
Prozac, Zoloft, and Wellbutrin. All
these had been approved prior to
1997, so those reviews are not
posted on the FDA website. How did
I get those reviews? I filed a
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
request in 2005, but..."
View Article
The Zoological Society of San Diego
was recently named a
Rising Star in the field of
Plant & Animal Science in
Essential Science
IndicatorsSM
from
Clarivate. The Zoo's
current record in this field
includes 228 papers cited a total
of 1,545 times between January 1,
1999 and February 28, 2009. In this
first of a two-part series,
ScienceWatch.com's
Jennifer Minnick takes a virtual
tour of the Zoo and its various
research projects and conservation
efforts.
View Article
(Additional
interviews/commentaries may be
added during May 2009.)