Author Archives: Adrienne Burke

About Adrienne Burke

Adrienne Burke is a freelance journalist and editor who has been reporting on science, health, technology, and innovation since 1993. She was founding editor of Genome Technology magazine, editorial director of GenomeWeb, executive editor of The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine, and is a contributing writer at Forbes/Techonomy.

How to overhaul peer review and scientific publishing

Many are quick to criticize the peer review process, but are there any viable alternatives?

By Adrienne Burke
24 January 2012

Anyone who doubts the inefficiencies and flaws of the current peer-review system would do well to read a review article published in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience (Dec 2011) and evaluated for F1000 by Gary Aston-Jones and David Moorman. Continue reading →

Posted in Biology, Journals, Literature, Medicine, Neuroscience, Science | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Is there any good time to get a sunburn?

Our circadian clock's capacity for DNA damage repair may vary at different times of day.

By Adrienne Burke
16 January 2012

Consider this before you jet off to a sunny island for midwinter holiday. Continue reading →

Posted in Cell Biology, Dermatology, Oncology, Physiology, Structural Biology | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Next-generation sequencing reveals clues to a parasite’s drug resistance

Leishmaniasis genome provides information with which to study the evolution of drug resistance.

By Adrienne Burke
5 January 2012

Leishmaniases are a complex of diseases caused by parasites that are transmitted by sandflies to an estimated 12 million people in 88 countries annually. Continue reading →

Posted in Infectious diseases, Microbiology, Pharmacology & Drug Discovery, Physiology | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The awakening

A simple bedside technology supports findings that up to 20% of vegetative state patients have been misdiagnosed.

By Adrienne Burke
20 December 2011

Adrian Owen’s pioneering research into the consciousness of physically unresponsive patients has captured widespread media attention in recent years, including from Jerome Groopman, who described Owen’s work in a 2007 New Yorker article. Continue reading →

Posted in Anesthesiology & Pain Management, Critical care & emergency medicine, Neurological disorders | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off

You’re putting it on: pain perception

A new study investigates how the observer’s perception of a patient’s character influences their assessment of the patient’s pain.

By Adrienne Burke
8 December 2011

Pain is a tricky thing to evaluate. Continue reading →

Posted in Anesthesiology & Pain Management, Medicine | Tagged , , | Comments Off

Celebration of a breakthrough tool for understanding RNA

A paper detailing an exciting technical advance, an RNA sequence-fluorophore complex called “Spinach”, garners 14 evaluations, making it one of the all-time highest rated papers on F1000.

By Adrienne Burke
5 December 2011

It has been three years since F1000 Faculty Member Roger Tsien shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Osamu Shimomura and Martin Chalfie for their discovery and development of green fluorescent protein (GFP). Continue reading →

Posted in Cell Biology, Chemical Biology, Developmental Biology, Genomics & Genetics, Immunology, Microbiology, Plant Biology, Structural Biology | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

Highest ranked paper in Neuroscience

An article on the first 3D structure of a sodium channel is currently the most-evaluated paper in F1000's Neuroscience Faculty this year.

By Adrienne Burke
17 November 2011

In honor of SfN 2011 and the 31,000 brains who attended, here’s a revisit of the year’s top F1000-ranked (so far) article in the Neuroscience Faculty, "The crystal structure of a voltage-gated sodium channel". Continue reading →

Posted in Cell Biology, Neuroscience, Pharmacology & Drug Discovery, Rankings, Structural Biology | Tagged , | Comments Off