Articles by Jean Mccann

Surgeons may have rethink the way they operate on children with crossed eyes, or strabismus. This is thanks to the discovery by Joseph Demer, Jules Stein Eye Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles of the orbital pulley system. Using MRI and cadaver dissection, Demer found that each extraocular muscle consists of a global layer contiguous with the tendon and that inserts into the eyeball, along with a similar-sized orbital layer forming the extraocular muscle's pulley, which con

A unique MD-PhD program designed to produce physicians who can use engineering know-how to solve medical problems enrolled its first student at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in Cleveland this fall. The program is expected to eventually accept 70 to 80 students a year who will have training to become physician/ engineers. About 10 students a year are initially expected to be admitted to the program, which will take seven years to complete, according to university officials. Patrick Crago

Quark Biotech Inc. has moved its company headquarters and some research activities--lock, stock and barrel--onto the Cleveland Clinic campus, and the two are pursuing a multiyear collaboration. While industry and academia have collaborated for years, companies usually locate their headquarters off campus. This stance may be changing. Company headquarters on campuses "is not very usual, but it's becoming more and more common," says Andrei Gudkov, the newly named head of the department of molecula

Mosquitoes infected with the West Nile virus fly through American air; green crabs and other foreign crustaceans feed on indigenous sea life in San Francisco Bay; the Formosan termite is feasting on historic New Orleans; and the next boat or plane arriving in the United States from anywhere could be hauling who-knows-what in its ballast waters or cargo hold. Collectively called invasive species, these uninvited animals, insects, flora, and pathogens continue to exacerbate eradication efforts of

The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) will run a new national network of genetics researchers who work with microarrays, financed with a $409,000 five-year grant from the National Science Foundation. Seventeen institutions will be involved in this network that coordinates research on the use of microarray technology for gene expression. Paul Allison, professor of biostatistics in the School of Public Health at UAB, and project leader, says the network is designed to bring together resear

For the first time ever, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) wants to support M.D.s who aim to bridge basic science and clinical research. HHMI has opened a national competition to recruit up to 10 investigators who hold M.D.s or M.D.s plus Ph.D.s for patient-oriented research. Nomination invitations were sent to 119 institutions, including medical schools, research institutes, schools of public health, and selected independent hospitals. A committee of distinguished scientists will choos

Steven Austad Life expectancy has increased remarkably in this century, but just how much farther can it go? One scientist bets that by 2150, someone--a woman, no doubt, (about 80 percent of centenarians now are women)--will live to the ripe old age of 150 with cognition intact. Another scientist bets that 130 will be the upper limit. To seal the bet, S. Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health and Steven Austad of the University of Idaho department o

Courtesy of Gabrielle LeBlanc, NINDSPurkinje cells in the mouse cerebellum expressing the calbindin gene Researchers maintain and constantly add to numerous gene databases as science progresses in its effort to map the human body. The recent announcement of a major new database initiative, however, may, as one researcher noted, "change the culture of neuroscience." Thanks to financial support from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, explained Gabrielle LeBlanc of NINDS d

Feeling Faint? Drink Water While politicians fight over how to reduce the cost of drugs, there's one "medicine" that costs almost nothing and is as close as the nearest faucet: water. At the annual meeting of the American Heart Association, held recently in New Orleans, a group of investigators at Vanderbilt University and at Humboldt University in Berlin presented findings that drinking tap water before standing from a sitting or prone position prevents orthostatic hypotension, or fainting, in

In the beginning, there were no posters. Now, many scientific meetings have thousands of them. At the 50th meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) in Philadelphia, Oct. 4-7, scientists signed up for 2,147 posters, compared to 287 slide presentations. Douglas Marchuk, associate professor in the department of genetics at Duke University, and this year's head of the ASHG program committee, describes the poster evolution this way: "In l977 and l978 they were all slide sessions. In

Shake the family tree of a patient with a movement disorder, and more and more genes are apt to tumble out. Parkinson's disease and many less well-known movement disorders are now considered to be more familial than scientists had previously thought. "When it comes to Parkinson's disease, the important role of genetics as a decisive factor in the appearance and evolution of the disease is gaining more and more ground," says Eduard Tolosa, chairman of the department of neurology at the University

Scrambler, Fidget, Stargazer, and other mouse strains that mimic human neurological diseases, may have to move over. They are about to get plenty of company in their home in Bar Harbor, Maine. The Jackson Laboratory is planning to use its largest grant ever--$16.3 million from the National Institutes of Health--to develop and support more strains of mimicking mice. With a new building under construction, Jackson is expected to increase by 16 percent the number of mice it can maintain. At present