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 September2008 are listed
below. To view featured interviews from past months/years, visit the
Featured
Interviews Main Menu.
Excerpt from the
interview: "BMC
Evolutionary Biology will
continue to publish high-quality
research in evolutionary biology,
and break down barriers between
different fields. Another key goal
for the journal is to make it
easier for researchers to share not
just their results, but also the
datasets that were analyzed to
produce those results..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "This paper is
highly cited because it solves the
outstanding quantum mechanical
problem of theoretically and
quantitatively understanding the
dielectric screening properties of
graphene. Graphene has
two-dimensional electrons and
holes. These electrons and holes
respond to an external electric
field by. ..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "Over the next few
years I want our department to
become a go-to department for
solving problems of parasitic
diseases and HIV/AIDS in developing
countries. This includes developing
new vaccines for parasitic diseases
and other infections. I think
co-infections are going to be huge.
I think we’re on the verge of
making..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "The paper is a
literature review of
energy-return-on-investment (EROI)
analyses for corn and cellulosic
ethanol. The paper has received
citation attention because it
succeeds in normalizing and
comparing multiple research teams'
results, and because it is
transparent and easy to read. At
the time it was written and
published..."
View Article
Rafael Irizarry is a
Professor in the Department of
Biostatistics in the Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Here he discusses his work on the
development of quantitative methods
and software for genomics and
epigenomics. He has been named a
Current
Classics scientist (Math.)
for
Apr. 2008. Also view a
commentary from a past
New Hot
Paper feature.
Listen:
mp3 ¦
wma
Ron Kessler,
Professor of Healthcare Policy
& Jim Hudson (pictured),
Professor of Psychiatry at
Harvard Medical School, discuss
binge eating disorder and the
link to obesity. This podcast
accompanies their New Hot Paper
commentary on the same topic
(May 2008). Podcast added Sept. 1,
2008.
Listen:
MP3|
WMA
After a long period of sluggish
growth, India's output of papers
has risen sharply since the year
2000, while the citation impact of
the nation's research has also been
trending upward, notably in such
fields as physics, materials, and
other specialty areas in the
physical sciences. Figures also
suggest that India-based authors
are collaborating at an increasing
rate with multinational
coauthors.
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "The development of
ordered mesoporous organosilicas
has been an equally exciting topic
because the self-assembly of
appropriate organosilanes and
surfactants or block copolymers
creates almost unlimited
possibilities in the synthesis of
novel organosilica mesostructures
of tailored porosity, surface and
framework..."
View Article
Excerpt from
the interview:
"...determined that ethanol from
cellulosic feedstocks might be
dramatically less greenhouse gas
(GHG) intensive than corn
ethanol, which even if refined
properly, offered at best a
slight reduction in GHG
emissions versus gasoline. We
noted that even this result
ignored possible GHG emissions
from so-called..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "The discovery that
beta-arrestins could serve as
signaling molecules in their own
right, in addition to their
classical desensitizing functions,
changed the paradigm for
understanding how G protein-coupled
receptors signal and are regulated.
The field has grown rapidly over
the past 10 years. This review
article..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "This review brings
together the key publications over
recent years since the cloning of
the gene in 1999 and synthesizes
the knowledge of heparanase biology
and pathology which has lead to the
current diverse array of inhibitors
of heparanase activity. Looking to
the future, more focus now needs to
be put o ..."
View Article
According to Essential Science
Indicators, among the 148
top-performing countries in all
fields, the People's Republic of
China ranked #12 for citations
(2,294,868), #5 for papers
(529,279), and #116 (4.34) for
citations per paper. This feature
includes rankings in all fields for
the People's Republic of
China.
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "What this paper
provides is a dataset of
thermodynamic properties of the
constituents (end-members) of the
minerals, fluids, and melt that are
needed in order to perform
calculations on the conditions of
formation of rocks. It is an
internally consistent dataset
because all of the available
information has been..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "Data described by
Richards et al. (2005)
were of particular value for the
Drosophila research
community. The comparison of
sequences between the two
Drosophila species
verified gene models and provided
clues about sequences used to turn
genes on and off ..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "This manuscript
describes a probabilistic Bayesian
method for the integration of
diverse genome-scale data into
confidence-weighted functional
relationship networks among
proteins, which can then be used to
predict protein function. We
demonstrated the principle of
probabilistic data integration for
functional genomics..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "The vaccine is not
a trivial expenditure of money when
you consider that it does not
eradicate risk or make Pap smears
irrelevant. On the other hand, if
we had a multivalent vaccine that
targeted, say, 8-10 virus types,
constituting maybe 90-95% of the
human papilloma viruses that cause
cervical cancer, then that would be
a good thing..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "The paper is a
review that attempts to synthesize
the impact of a wide range of
anthropogenic drivers on tropical
forests. Interest in this subject
is intense because tropical forests
support 60% of all species,
influence regional climates far
beyond the tropics, are a key
component of the global carbon
cycle..."
View Article
(Additional
interviews/commentaries will be
added during September 2008)