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John A. Pople Sharing the 1998 Nobel Prize in chemistry are a physicist and a developer of computational codes that made the physicist's concepts more easily applicable to the study of large molecular systems. Walter Kohn, 75, of the University of California at Santa Barbara, and John A. Pople, 72, of Northwestern University, have made pioneering contributions in developing quantum chemistry methods that can be used for theoretical studies of the properties of molecules and the chemical proces

This year's winners of the Nobel Prize for physics collectively discovered and described a phenomenon that appears to defy common sense. Fewer notions could be so intuitively valid as the following: smaller things are generated by breaking bigger things apart. The world of physics usually bears this out: An atom, for example, divides into electrons, protons, and neutrons; a proton splits into quarks. But in 1982, Daniel Tsui, a professor of physics at Princeton University, and Horst Stormer, a

Stockholm may be the home of the genuine Nobel Prizes, but Cambridge, Mass., has its own answer to the creme de la creme of the scientific world. Every fall since 1991, the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony has blown a figurative raspberry at those members of the profession who take themselves too seriously. Produced by Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), a publication occasionally described as the MAD magazine of science, the event marks achievements that, in the words of Marc Abrahams --editor of AIR

IMPROVEMENT ON THE WAY: NAWHO President Mary Chung says that better education within the Asian American community will incease participation of Asian American women in clinical trials. Asian Americans comprise approximately 4 percent of the U.S. population, and they now account for 4 percent of the women enrolled in U.S. National Institutes of Health-sponsored clinical trials. This satisfies the spirit of the NIH Guidelines on the Inclusion of Women and Minorities as Subjects in Clinical Resea

SERENDIPITY: Carol Yoon, a freelance writer in Bellingham, Wash., was convinced she would hate science journalism until she landed a fellowship that placed her at the Portland Oregonian for a summer. Carol Yoon, a freelance writer in Bellingham, Wash., was convinced she would hate science journalism until she landed a fellowship that placed her at the Portland Oregonian for a summer. "I did it on a lark," she says. Discovering that she enjoyed writing about science, Yoon remarks, was "a t

Although this year's research and development budget may be the biggest ever, it may also be the hardest to decipher. About half of the FY1999 spending bills reside in a 40-pound, 4,000-page document that has sent legislative staffers and departmental budget staff members scrambling to make sense of the hundreds of what some call earmarks and others call pork. Normally, the federal budget coalesces from 13 separate bills. But this year, election-year political wrangling between President Bill

Courtesy of Shands HealthCare Marketing and Public Affairs SIMULATED PATIENT Facilities at the University of Florida's new $60 million brain institute include a computer-driven patient simulator. One of the simulator's inventors, Michael Good (center), UF associate professor of anesthesiology, directs a team of nurses and paramedics in an emergency room drill using the simulator. BRAIN TRUST A new $60-million facility makes the University of Florida in Gainesville a national nerve center for

Introductory general biology courses and textbooks cover a vast amount of material. They tend to stress the similarities of life at the molecular and cellular levels, with Homo sapiens considered but one of many species. For students wishing to learn specifically about the female body, or about differences between the sexes, these courses aren't usually appropriate. ANALOGY: Like women's absence in past medical tests and clinical trials, many problems have not been addressed in biology, anat

How proteins fold is a central mystery of the life process that for decades has eluded explanation. But biologists are getting help on the problem nowadays from physicists, who bring quantitative theorems and new technologies to the task of showing how one-dimensional amino acid sequences determine the three-dimensional shapes of proteins. Such knowledge could guide structure-based design of drugs to treat a range of diseases now thought to be caused by misshapen proteins. "We're just beginnin

Mice everywhere are breathing a collective sigh of relief. Soon, far fewer small laboratory animals will be routinely sacrificed to allow researchers to observe the after-effects of gene mutations or other experimental manipulations. Instead, investigators will be able to track the implications of those changes in living specimens in exquisite detail and for extended periods of time, thus painting a fuller, more accurate picture of what's going on and why. At least, that's the likely scenario i

The lobbyist credited his client. The client credited his lobbyist. Both praised scientists and legislators on the brink of an historic vote that would put the National Institutes of Health on the path to doubling its budget in five years. Congress, as of press time for The Scientist, was poised to pass a $500 billion legislative package that includes a $2 billion increase for the National Institutes of Health. The agency received $13.648 billion for 1998. Prior to the vote on the "omnibus" spe

BIOREMEDIATION TO THE PIGPEN It was a stinky summer at the EnviroPork hog facility near Larimore, N.D., with penalties pending for violating state odor regulations, and neighbors complaining loudly about the foul fragrance. Making matters worse, the manure lagoon associated with the facility threatened groundwater supplies. Happily, researchers from the University of North Dakota Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC) had a low-tech solution: barley straw. Using a cannon, they shot a