The Research Team Meeting: Functional, And Often Fun Author: Ricki Lewis, p. 19, 20 A key part of the scientific method not often mentioned in textbooks is the group meeting. At these gatherings, researchers at all levels working in the same lab share their results, ideas, and experiences. Group meetings are a vital training ground, at which young investigators learn the art of public speaking, which is so much a part of science. For a young graduate student, criticism coming from familiar fa

Through History Mutants forged the field of genetics, starting with Gregor Mendel's short or tall, yellow or green, round or wrinkled pea plants. Since Mendel's work in the 19th century, geneticists have used white-eyed flies to demonstrate sex linkage and bread mold spore variants to study the recombination of traits that occurs during sexual reproduction. Christiane Nusslein-Volhard and Edward Lewis, two of this year's Lasker award winners, are being recognized for pioneering work in developm

Author: RICKI LEWIS, p.23 It is expected to take some 15 years to determine the sequence of the 3 billion base pairs that make up the human genome--roughly 550,000 base pairs per day. An analytical task of this magnitude would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, but today's rapidly advancing computer technology has made the international effort to sequence the human genome possible. C.B.S. Scientific Co. Inc. P.O. Box 856 Del Mar, Calif. 92014 Phone: (619) 755-4959 Fax: (619) 755-

Two years ago, the 60-carbon, soccer ball-shaped buckminsterfullerene was just a curiosity for Larry Lewis, a staff chemist at the General Electric Co. Corporate Research & Development center in Schenectady, N.Y. At the time, his interest in the recently identified molecule was restricted to "what if" questions inspired by perusing numerous journal articles about it. He couldn't do any lab work with it, though, Lewis says, because "there wasn't enough of the stuff to do chemistry with." But al

One need only read the labels on skin-care products--"not animal tested" and "cruelty free"--to realize that the animal rights movement has hit consumers in the heart, and manufacturers are responding to their concerns. While the rights and wrongs of animal research are still being fiercely debated, few scientists would deny the importance of finding substitutes for animals wherever possible. Not only is it desirable to minimize suffering of animals, but also massive amounts of paperwork and th

Microbiological Research Author: RICKI LEWIS AND HOLLY AHERN, p.24 Microbiology has evolved from ancient art to savvy science. Yesterday's painstaking tasks of culturing and identifying microorganisms have been joined by rapid detection strategies and intricate genetic manipulations. Microbiologists may still streak specimens on agar plates and wait overnight for bacterial colonies to grow, as was done two centuries ago, but today they may also use spectrophotometers or chromatographs. Gas

From Alabama to Wyoming, educators are worrying that not enough is being done to make the study of science more interesting for elementary and high school students in the United States. Indeed, those concerned about the scientist shortage that is expected to hit the U.S. in the mid-1990s believe that boosting science education is the key to getting more young people interested in taking up a science career. A wide variety of community and national organizations have risen to this challenge, com

Since the earliest days of the biotechnology endeavor, scientists have sought a practical way of co-opting the complex biological machinery that regulates DNA. From the moment they identified the intriguing enzymes that choreograph the dance of DNA replication, biotechnologists began developing ways to commander them; the swivelases and gyrases, forms of unwinding proteins that untwist the molecule; the nucleases, which snip it; the strands; the ligases, which tie these strands together; and ev

In 1663, English physicist Robert Hooke viewed cork under a microscope and observed that "these pores, or cells, were not very deep, but consisted of a great many little boxes." Although Hooke's discovery, which involved only the outer boundaries of cells, is considered the beginning of cell biology, it was nearly 200 years before two Germans, botanist Matthias Jakob Schleiden and physiologist Theodor Schwann, focused attention on the microcosm of life in the cell. Hooke, Schleiden, Schwann, a

Are they students? No, but they're not quite "real" scientists, either. They're sure in demand--just look at all the ads for them in the classifieds of scientific journals and trade publications. Yet the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health don't really know how many of them there are. And many human resources pros don't even know who they are in their own companies. These mystery lab workers are postdoctoral research associates, or "postdocs," who cling to an ill-

Distressed at the prevalence of science illiteracy among young people in the United States, some scientists are bringing their skills to where they can perhaps help the most - the classroom. All over the country, individual scientist-parents are leading grade-schoolers on walks in the woods or fossil digs, chemists are conducting "road shows" in junior high school auditoriums, and high school groups are touring national labs. As more and more scientists bring their work to the young, the media

Nontechnical professionals who frequently read scientists' reports offer the following suggestions for researchers needing to get their messages across clearly: Know Your Audience The purpose of a paper should determine its style and organization. Nancy Thornton, who teaches writing effectiveness to word-weary scientists at some 20 institutions in upstate New York, suggests that researchers ponder their report's destination before sitting down to write. "Is it a progress report for a manager