October 1997

'GREAT SHOCK': The June 1997 death of Karen Wetterhahn from an accident that had occurred months earlier stunned the scientific community. Like any profession, life science research has dangers, but fortunately, deaths are rare. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) reported only six fatalities in biological and life sciences, and 17 fatalities in all natural sciences, for 1994, the most recent year for which data are available. So when Dartmouth College chemist Karen Wetter

The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation honored three medical researchers at an awards luncheon on September 26 in New York. According to a foundation official, the 1997 award winners represent the distinct approaches and scientific perspectives that must combine in the fight against disease. Victor A. McKusick, a professor of genetics at Johns Hopkins University, was given the Special Achievement in Medical Science Award; Mark S. Ptashne, the Ludwig Professor of Molecular Biology at the Mem

Since January of this year, graduate students at Virginia Tech have faced an experience unlike any encountered by their peers in other universities. They must submit their master's degree theses or doctoral dissertations in formats capable of being posted on the World Wide Web. "What we're doing is putting theses and dissertations in our library in an electronic format so that they can be found in a search," explains John Eaton, associate vice provost for graduate studies at Virginia Tech. "We'

Efforts are under way to develop a vaccine against one of the world's deadliest illnesses, cervical cancer. Along with a number of university research laboratories, at least a half-dozen biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies are beginning clinical trials or are in preclinical development of such drugs. Efficacy in humans remains to be firmly established, but if the vaccines progress to later-phase trials, challenging jobs for immunologists, microbiologists, and biochemists will multiply. "

The advice recently given to aspiring authors (T.W. Durso, "Editors' Advice To Rejected Authors: Just Try, Try Again," The Scientist, Sept. 15, 1997, page 13) fosters an imperfect status quo. It fails to address those really troublesome problems that are particularly the bane of any newcomer to a field. Intentionally or not, Durso's article puts the onus subtly but firmly on authors to meet publishers' criteria, as though there are well-defined standards that may be met reliably by careful comp

Thank you very much for your article in the Sept. 1, 1997, issue of The Scientist concerning summer undergraduate research participation (SURP) programs [E. Russo, page 1]. Over the course of the past seven years, we have hosted more than 200 students on our campus as part of our own SURP program. We find that a very high percentage of these young men and women proceed on to graduate or professional schools, many at our own institution (nearly 20 percent on average). We shamelessly admit that w

Edited by: Stephen P. Hoffert M.R. Knowles, K.W. Hohneker, Z. Zhou, J.C. Olson, T.L. Noah, P. Hu, M.W. Leigh, J.F. Engelhardt, L.J. Edwards, K.R. Jones, M. Grossman, J.M. Wilson, L.G. Johnson, R.C. Boucher, "A controlled study of adenoviral-vector-mediated gene transfer in the nasal epithelium of patients with cystic fibrosis," New England Journal of Medicine, 333:823-31, 1995. (Cited in more than 100 papers through September 1997) Comments by Richard C. Boucher, University of North Carolina Cy

Edited by: Stephen P. Hoffert S.A. Kliewer, J.M. Lenhard, T.M. Willson, I. Patel, D.C. Morris, J.M. Lehmann, "A prostaglandin J2 metabolite binds peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma and promotes adipocyte differentiation," Cell, 83:813-9, 1995. (Cited in more than 100 papers through September 1997) Comments by Jüergen M. Lehmann, Glaxo Wellcome Inc. Research and Development, Research Triangle Park, N.C. More than 15 million people in the United States suffer from non-insulin d