For students at the University of California, Los Angeles's College of Letters and Science (CLS), learning has taken on a new dimension this quarter-a cyberdimension. Each one of the roughly 1,000 courses that the college offered during the quarter had its own home page on the World Wide Web. But the concept of Web-based courses, made mandatory at CLS as of September 25, has drawn plenty of controversy. It has also spurred the growth of a cottage industry-the preparation of course home pages-th

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'

The medical use of electricity dates back at least to the ancient Greeks, who used shocks from electric fish to treat gout. Modern medical researchers are more cautious about applying electrical energy to patients' bodies. Nevertheless, one electrically based technology, called iontophoresis, is growing in popularity, particularly among anesthesiologists and physical therapists. Increasing interest in the technique, which uses electric current to deliver drugs through the skin, has given rise t

REVERSING A TREND: A textbook by Ken Miller of Brown takes an unconventional macro-micro approach. In one controversial pedagogical technique, the conventional order of instruction is reversed. Biologists who teach their subject to first-year college students face a troubling dilemma. Over the past 20 years, the amount of subject matter that they must cover has expanded severalfold. During the same time, by most accounts, incoming students' scientific background and ability to understand theo

Young academic scientists who want to do their bit for the cause of science by presenting its concepts to nonscientific audiences face a serious dilemma. If they turn out to be effective popularizers, they might find that their peers regard them as shallow scientists. Senior members of the scientific establishment are trying to persuade their juniors that they can popularize without jeopardizing their careers. But those efforts are only slowly bearing fruit. Doubts remain whether one can truly

EQUITY EQUALS SUCCESS: Universities can help start-up ventures by reducing demands for cash, explains licensing officer Mike Martin. A recently issued report has provided new evidence that federal support of basic research in universities earns significant paybacks in the form of jobs created and taxes paid by companies created to exploit research findings. Many institutions have been convinced that they could successfully stimulate start-up companies without losing their academic purity and c

Sidebar : Two Efforts To Tackle Medical Marijuana Issues A MEDICINAL HERB? NIH may soon be looking into the therapeutic effects of marijuana as consensus grows among scientists that such studies are worth doing. Few areas of science policy are as politicized as the debate over the therapeutic benefits of marijuana. The federal government historically has been reluctant to acknowledge that the drug has medicinal value. Initiatives passed last November in Arizona and California legalizing mariju

The National Institutes of Health's "Workshop on the Medical Utility of Marijuana," held February 19 and 20, served as a forum for researchers to present data on the therapeutic uses of the drug to an eight-member panel of scientists. The panel's recommendations may help determine future funding of studies to assess marijuana's possible healing powers. Panel members, who represent a broad spectrum of medical researchers, are: William T. Beaver, a professor of pharmacology and anesthesia at Geo

Employment Crunch Author: Peter Gwynne Sidebar: How to Reach the Institutions One of the unpublicized victims of the heated congressional debate over the federal budget for fiscal 1996 is the discipline of history of science. In an environment of general uncertainty, one sure thing is that the field will lose significant funding. As a result, new Ph.D.'s as well as postdocs and junior faculty face intense and growing competition for academic posts. One year ago, for example, Harvard Universit

Foundation Author: Peter Gwynne Just over three years ago, Hungarian-born financier George Soros established the International Science Foundation (ISF) with a grant of $100 million to support basic science and scientists in the countries that used to constitute the Soviet Union. Now, pointing out that he always regarded the effort as a stop-gap measure designed to lead to more permanent support from other donors, Soros is significantly reducing ISF's scope. Soros, who made his billions throug

Government Just Says No Author: Peter Gwynne Can smoking marijuana help to alleviate the loss of appetite and weight that accompany AIDS? Much as they would like to know, people with AIDS and their physicians seem unlikely to get a definitive answer to that question any time in the near future. FIELD OF DREAMS: The University of Mississippi grows marijuana for NIDA, for use in reserach that meets the institute's criteria. For more than three years, a physician proposing to undertake a pilot

Location Author: PETER GWYNNE Having survived a spring and summer of discontent, two manifestations of science humor have emerged in a new location. Their efforts to laugh at-and with-science, scientists, and everything associated with them proceed unabated, to the general relief of some Nobel laureates and others who like their science spiced with satire. STAR-STUDDED SPINOFF: AIR board member Karen Hopkin's "Studmuffins of Science" calendar features researcher models like Brian Scottolini o