Issue | April 1999 | April 1999 | The Scientist Magazine®

News

Managers on a Mission: Med schools begin to quantify research, teaching, and patient care

Graphic: Leza Berardone The hallowed halls of medical academia may shudder at the thought of their denizens' life's work in research, teaching, and clinical care being reduced to numbers. But several administrators at the 125 medical schools in the United States feel they can implement a management system that measures outcomes in research, teaching effort, and clinical-work revenue/cost--and still preserve academic excellence. In fact, the system could bring, they say, some sorely needed acco

Funding Gap? Academic health center leaders report managed care squeeze

The federal government should give more money to medical schools and teaching hospitals, two recent reports recommend. But managers of academic health centers shouldn't expect such a windfall, says one administrator. "I would not risk the viability of my own institution by waiting for federal funds," comments Ralph Snyderman, chancellor for health, executive dean, and president and CEO, Duke University Health Systems Inc., at Duke University Medical Center. Snyderman agrees with two recent rep

Harnessing the Vitiligo Effect. The onset of one disease may play a role in treating another.

A mouse in which vitiligo has been induced as part of a recent NCI study. When the subjects of experimental melanoma vaccine studies lose pigment in their skin after receiving treatment, few of them seem to mind. They overlook the cosmetically undesirable side effect because it's an excellent prognostic sign. For about 20 years, cancer research immunologists have known that some patients with melanoma develop vitiligo, an autoimmune disease--or, as some investigators contend, a complex of dis

Oral Treatment of MS Just Around the Corner?

It may not be much longer before an oral medication for multiple sclerosis (MS) hits the market. Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, have reported1 successfully treating animals with an oral preparation of glatiramer acetate, also known as Copolymer 1 (Cop1). Moreover, a Phase I trial in humans conducted last summer in France showed that it is safe and well tolerated, according to multiple sources familiar with the unpublished results. Multiple sclerosis--which

Biological Sciences, Psychology Doctorate Awards Maintain Pace

Volume 13, #9The Scientist April 26, 1999 Biological Sciences, Psychology Doctorate Awards Maintain Pace Date: April 26, 1999 This table is presented in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) for optimal viewing:

Cancer Research Meeting Focuses on Range of Issues

Saying they were not asking for a lot of money compared to what is being spent in just a few days in the war in Kosovo, officials of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) called on Congress this month to double the National Cancer Institute's budget to $5 billion for fiscal year 2000 and increase it 20 percent per year for the succeeding four years. Such a boost would increase the federal government's annual investment in cancer research to $10 billion in five years. The plea cam

NAS Honors 17 For Contributions To Science

John D. Roberts Arthur J. Hundhausen John Clarke R. John Collier Arnold O. Beckman C. Grant Willson The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) will present awards today to 17 scientists whose work defined, refined, or advanced a field. The awards will be presented during the NAS's 136th annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Scientists elected to NAS in 1998 also will be inducted at the meeting. The NAS's highest honor, the Public Welfare Medal, goes to Arnold O. Beckman, founder of both Beckma

Letter

Perspective on Hepatitis C

As a hepatitis C virus (HCV) sufferer and a former health care worker, I would like to offer your readers some information from the perspective of a patient with HCV for more than 20 years. HIV has drawn all the attention, while 4-5 million people suffer from HCV. Why no help from the media? Once the liver is destroyed, our immune systems get compromised. The full effects of this virus are yet to be seen in our society. Methadone clinic patients are testing positive at an alarming rate for this

A Note of Encouragement

I thought that the following might be of interest to your readers, especially the younger scientists. I recently had a conversation with a graduate student who was very unhappy because his first paper had just been rejected by a journal. This was not the first time that I had heard this lament. I tried to reassure him that reviewers can err and that he should resubmit it to another journal. I told him about one of my papers, which was turned down by the Journal of Biological Chemistry because

Commentary

Would Harvey, Sulston, and Darwin Get Funded Today?

At a recent meeting of a National Institutes of Health study section, a colleague dismissed a proposal as "descriptive." In study-sectionese, this is essentially the kiss of death. Several aspects about this attitude trouble me. The first is the proposition that the word descriptive is synonymous with bad. Perhaps I am being a hopeless 19th century romantic, but it appears to me that some of the most important contributions in the history of biomedical sciences have come from what would now be

Opinion

One-Step, Two-Step Regulation of Therapeutic Genes

In February The Scientist ran a timely article by Eugene Russo discussing the new and exciting advances in the regulation and targeting of genes for gene therapy procedures.1 The elegant studies from research groups led by James Wilson, Michael Gilman, and Bert O'Malley showed that it is possible to deliver a putative therapeutic gene to specific tissues, in a dormant state, and turn the gene on and off at will by orally administering a second drug. The second drug orchestrates the formation of

Research

Ataxia Discoveries Open Window to Neurodegeneration

For the most part, modern medicine is no match for neurodegenerative diseases. But with advances in the study of genetics, the ability of scientists to get a molecular "handle" on such mysterious malfunctions promises to change all that. And perhaps the most useful such handle yet found is the phenomenon called trinucleotide repeat expansion. This occurs when any three of the four nucleotide subunits in DNA material begin to excessively repeat their adjacent appearance in a molecule. For examp

Hot Paper

Cancer Genetics

Edited by: Paul Smaglik and Eugene Russo R. Scully, J.J. Chen, A. Plug, Y.H. Xiao, D. Weaver, J. Feunteun, T. Ashley, D.M. Livingston, "Association of BRCA1 with Rad51 in mitotic and meiotic cells," Cell, 88:265-75, Jan. 24, 1997. (Cited in more than 235 papers since publication) Comments by David M. Livingston, Emil Frei professor of genetics and medicine, Harvard Medical School, and chairman of the executive committee for research, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute David M. Livingston The tumo

Ataxia

Edited by: Paul Smaglik and Eugene Russo O. Zhuchenko, J. Bailey, P. Bonnen, T. Ashizawa, D.W. Stockton, C. Amos, W.B. Dobyns, S.H. Subramony, H.Y. Zoghbi, C.C. Lee, "Autosomal dominant cerebellar ataxia (SCA6) associated with small polyglutamine expansions in the alpha(1A)-voltage-dependent calcium channel," Nature Genetics, 14:62-9, January 1997. (Cited in more than 210 papers since publication) Comments by Cheng Chi Lee, assistant professor, molecular and human genetics, Baylor College of M

Profession

Abstract Accepted: Now What? A Primer on Slide Preparation

if (n == null) The Scientist - Abstract Accepted: Now What? A Primer on Slide Preparation The Scientist 13[9]:16, Apr. 26, 1999 Profession Abstract Accepted: Now What? A Primer on Slide Preparation By Allan L. Louderback So, the committee accepted your abstract, and you are going to present your data to your peers at an international, national, or regional meeting. Now what do you do? Panic is the first thought. Now that you have told all your friends abo

Technology

Short-Fragment Savvy. NucleoScan 2000 DNA Fragment Analyzer brings flexibility to real-time digital gel imaging

Nucleoscan 2000 DNA Fragment Analyzer In the past few years, gel electrophoresis of DNA fragments has become an important complement to hybridization and amplification sequencing tools. As variations on PCR, RFLP, mutation sequencing, and sequence and structure analysis emerge, the need for flexible gel electrophoresis systems increases. Until recently, most real-time gel imaging systems have been optimized either for ultrahigh sensitivity and noise suppression or for large-fragment sequencing

Credit Where Credit Is Due. Research Information Systems' Reference Manager 9.0 for citation management

Research Information Systems' Reference Manager 9.0 If you're the odd sort of character who doesn't make a point of memorizing citations, then here's the crutch for you. Research Information Systems has developed Reference Manager 9.0. This bibliographic software allows researchers to search up to 255 Internet libraries simultaneously for journal articles, abstracts, dissertations, patents, and videos. No matter how careful you have been in collecting index cards, there always seems to be a m

How Do Your Molecules Size Up?

Protein Solutions' DynaPro molecular sizing instruments The scattering of sunlight by a combination of air molecules, dust particles, and water droplets creates some beautiful phenomena readily recognizable as white clouds, blue skies, and red sunsets. That scattered sunlight carries information that is detected by the eye and interpreted by the brain. In a similar fashion, laser light scattered by molecules in solution also carries valuable information. When properly detected and analyzed, f

Technology Profile

Special Delivery: New and exotic products for specialized pipetting

Table of Specialty Pipettors Table of Specialty Pipette Tips Specialty pipette tips are like the high-performance tires on a formula-one race car. While most people would imagine that fuel injectors, turbochargers, or transmissions are the fundamental elements of an advanced racing machine, few people consider the importance of tires, when in fact, according to authorities on racing, the whole purpose behind the design of an automobile is to create an environment where the tires contact the p

Computational Gold: Data mining and bioinformatics software for the next millennium

Table of Bioinformatics Systems (Enhanced version) The entire process of discovery and invention is a marriage of inquiry, experimentation, and observation, and the product of learning and extending upon the findings of previous investigations. Many of the major scientific and technological discoveries of the 20th century were in part a product of knowledgeable, intuitive researchers who utilized innovative problem-solving approaches and protocols and had the experimental means and comprehens

Notebook

MAD LEMURS A study of lemurs infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), clarifies the pathogenesis of the abnormal proteinase-resistant protein (PrP) or "prion" protein now thought to cause encephalopathic diseases. Also, more zoo animals could have the disease than previously thought (N. Bons et al., "Natural and experimental oral infection of nonhuman primates by bovine spongiform encephalopathy agents," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 96:4046-51, March 30, 1999)