To ring out 2004, The Scientist revisited several of the year's best read stories.

Uneasy quiet on the protest front

In the month or so since Oxford University won an injunction against animal rights activists, the level of protest activity at the university has been pretty subdued. As of today (December 20), the university hadn't "had any issues," said a university spokeswoman. "Protest levels have been relatively low," although there's a bigger one planned for the end of January. That's a far cry from the situation back in June, when protesters succeeded in halting construction of a planned animal research lab at the university by harassing the main contractor, Walter Lilly, until it withdrew from the job.

The subsequent injunction was seen by British scientists as a victory in an ongoing battle with extremist elements in the animal rights movement. It forbids certain named individuals and groups who were involved in the harassment from coming too close to the lab site or to the offices or homes of people involved in the project. It does allow controlled weekly protests at a site nearby, and in the past few weeks these have been attended by handful of die-hards, maybe five or six people with placards, the spokeswoman said.

However, the tepid protesting is less a result of the exclusion zone than the fact that construction of the animal lab has yet to restart. "It was like that before the injunction because the building work hasn't been going on," the spokeswoman said. "I can't really say we've noticed a big difference."

So the real test of the injunction's value may come when building starts again. Negotiations for a contract with a new builder are underway now, and are unsurprisingly being conducted in utmost secrecy. "We've been told not to talk about the negotiation process," the spokeswoman says. "But we still hope to get the building finished on schedule by the end of 2005."

Meanwhile, in early December, a whole village in England followed Oxford's lead and applied for an injunction against violence and intimidation by animal rights activists. The community around Newchurch guinea pig farm, near Burton-upon-Tent, sought the imposition of a protest-free zone after a campaign of intimidation that reportedly included the theft of an elderly woman's corpse and an arson attack. By Stephen Pincock

Biotech bomber awaits trial

Brad Karger, the former lab technician who police say exploded a pipe bomb in a suburban Boston biotech company in August, remains in jail awaiting trial. The explosion blew out windows and caused extensive damage to Amaranth Bio, a company that had recently moved into the same building as Vicom, the biotech company he had once worked for as a temporary employee.

In February 2003, police arrested Karger for trying to burn down Vicom's labs by leaving the valves to three gas burners wide open and lighting another burner in an adjacent room. However, the building never caught fire.

Newspaper accounts claimed that Karger was insulted by the terms of a full-time job offer Vicom had made him, so he tried to burn down its labs for revenge. Earlier this month, Watertown Police Department detective Michael Lawn told The Scientist "that sounds about right." However, Lawn refused to say what motive Karger might have had for exploding the pipe bomb.

A grand jury indicted Karger, who faces four separate sentences of up to 10 or 20 years each in state prison, plus separate fines up to $1000 or $25,000 each, on November 18. On November 24, a state court arraigned him and denied him bail. His next court date is scheduled for today (December 20).

Police say they have credit card receipts showing that Karger bought a metal pipe and two end caps at a hardware store and explosive chemicals over the Internet. However, his lawyer, Robert Galibois, has denied those claims.

Karger still faces trial in the February 2003 incident, for which he's due back in court January 14. Lawn said that case has dragged on because "it's been tied up" on several motions Karger has filed, including requests to suppress evidence. By John Dudley Miller