Cornell University researchers in New York revealed that they had produced what is believed to be the world's first genetically altered human embryo--an ironic twist considering all the criticism the US has heaped on South Korea over the past several years for going "too far" with its genetic research programs. The Cornell team, led by Nikica Zaninovic, used a virus to add a green fluorescent protein gene, to a human embryo left over from an in vitro fertilization procedure. The research was presented at a meeting of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine last year, but details have emerged only after new controversy has emerged over the ethics and science of genetically modifying humans.

Zaninovic has pointed out that in order to be sure that the new gene had been inserted and the embryo had been genetically modified, scientists would ideally want to keep growing the embryo and carry out further tests. However, the Cornell team did not get permission to keep the embryo alive. The GM embryos created could theoretically have become the world's first genetically altered man or woman, but it was destroyed after five days.

Vowing to make New York City the center of the scientific universe -- as it is for commerce, art and expensive dining -- a panel of university presidents, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein of New York, the actor Alan Alda, the Columbia physicist Brian Greene and a Muppet announced plans on Wednesday for a World Science Festival to be held here at the end of May.

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From May 28 through June 1, festival organizers say, the canyons of the city will be alive with the sound of science. Biologists will discuss the perils and promises of humans' knowing their own genetic codes. Quantum physicists will debate the nature of reality. Neuroscientists will ponder the mysteries of creativity. The Abyssinian Baptist Church Sanctuary Choir will serenade scientists to demonstrate the effects of music on the brain.

The festival, the first of what is expected to be an annual event, is the brainchild of Dr. Greene, and his companion, Tracy Day, a former Emmy Award-winning television producer. They said they were concerned that the public was missing out on the excitement and relevance of science.

"The general public by and large doesn't connect with science in a significant way," Dr. Greene said, adding, "Science is inspirational, it's exciting, it can influence lives."

This will not be "fun" science, he said, "this is the real thing."

I love how they're not going to water this down.

And how they had a muppet.

The first, much-anticipated benefits of personalized medicine are being lost or diluted for many Americans who are too afraid that genetic information may be used against them to take advantage of its growing availability.

In some cases, doctors say, patients who could make more informed health care decisions if they learned whether they had inherited an elevated risk of diseases like breast and colon cancer refuse to do so because of the potentially dire economic consequences.

Others enter a kind of genetic underground, spending hundreds or thousands of dollars of their own money for DNA tests that an insurer would otherwise cover, so as to avoid scrutiny. Those who do find out they are likely or certain to develop a particular genetic condition often beg doctors not to mention it in their records.

Contrary to our previous beliefs, identical twins are not genetically identical. This surprising finding may be of great significance for research on hereditary diseases and for the development of new diagnostic methods. How can it be that one identical twin might develop Parkinson's disease, for instance, but not the other? Until now, the reasons have been sought in environmental factors. The current study complicates the picture.

Nature Magazine's announced that it's going to share all its human genome papers under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-ShareAlike licenses. The genomes themselves are not copyrightable and go into a public database, but the papers -- which are a vital part of the science -- may now be freely copied by any non-commercial publisher.

In the continuing drive to make papers as accessible as possible, NPG is now introducing a 'creative commons' licence for the reuse of such genome papers. The licence (see http://www.nature.com/authors/editorial_policies/license.html) allows non-commercial publishers, however they might be defined, to reuse the pdf and html versions of the paper. In particular, users are free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the contribution, provided this is for non-commercial purposes, subject to the same or similar licence conditions and due attribution.