The cover of this week’s Nature featured a striking image that showed individual mouse neurons each in a different color. This achievement, from Harvard neuroscientists, allows researchers to better visualize the connections between neurons and to trace long neural circuits.

Scientists before were only able to engineer neurons to produce fluorescent proteins that generated one or two different colors. (from Nature News />http://www.nature.com/news/2007/071031/full/news.2007.209.html)

Drum roll, please. The results of an annual survey of scientists conducted by The Scientist this year have revealed that MGH is the best place to work in academia in the US. Institutions were ranked based on job satisfaction, infrastructure, policies and other factors. The results are in the November issue the magazine, which can be accessed if you have a subscription. If you don’t, the Globe gave a short summary of the results. Beth Israel Deaconess came in 10th and the Dana-Farber came in 34th.

The magazine is now running its survey for the best places to work for postdocs. You can do the survey here.

Rudolph Jaenisch, a leading stem cell researcher at the Whitehead Institute, took a trip to Iran earlier this year to attend a conference on reproductive biology and he describes his experience in this article he wrote for Nature Reports Stem Cells. He talks about how stem cells scientists in Iran are well funded and are able to work in a favorable political environment (more favorable than some parts of the US!), but suffer under trade roadblocks and embargoes. Labs lack some basic lab equipment because they can’t import them from the US and so have to send samples off to collaborators for analysis. He encourages scientists in the west to be less fearful about traveling to Iran and working with Iranian scientists. He writes: Unfounded apprehensions about the risks of travelling to Iran effectively add a scientific embargo to the political one. Some readers have posted comments to his article here.