Washington, DC, USA. While running for governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell promised he would raise money by handing over the state-run liquor stores to private interests. Once elected, the pledge made its way into his state of the state address.

“As I travelled this great commonwealth over the last year, I didn’t run into anybody who thought selling Jack Daniels whiskey or Grey Goose vodka was a core function of government,” he told lawmakers on January 18th.

The basic idea had tr

San Diego, CA, USA. In a significant leap forward in the understanding the development of specific tissue types in mammals, an international team of scientists succeeded in mapping the entire network of DNA-binding transcription factors and their interactions. This global network, indicating which factors can combine to determine cell fate, appears in the journal Cell.

Transcription factors (TFs) are proteins that bind to specific DNA sequences in order to direct which genes should be tu

Washington, DC, USA. In Michigan, where many enterprises are struggling to survive, the renowned University of Michigan is in the midst of a construction boom and hiring spree.

Michigan State University, on the other hand, plans to lay off faculty and cut programs, blaming state funding that is lower than it was a decade ago.

Flagship universities in other states, including Colorado, Virginia, Vermont and Wisconsin, are also prospering, while their lesser-known counterparts suffer from

Washington, DC, USA. Indiana soon could join at least 11 other states and allow residents to bring their guns to work, as long as they are stored out of sight in their cars. But a shooting in Portage, Ind., last week — in which a state worker frustrated over a poor performance review retrieved a gun from his car and fired at coworkers — is causing opponents to ramp up their pressure on Governor Mitch Daniels to veto the bill.

“This is further evidence that guns and the workplace si

Stanford, CA, USA. Human blood is a trove of biological information, now accessible by a software algorithm that enables a common laboratory device to virtually separate a whole-blood sample into its different cell types.

This development has a near-term potential for adding a powerful tool to the toolset for biological investigations. The algorithm enables detection of medically important gene-activity changes that are specific to any one of the cell types present in the blood sample. T