December 1997

The recipients of the 1997 Nobel Prizes in science, who will receive their awards on December 10, have traveled the vigorous intellectual journey of science. 

Telemedicine, or the use of telecommunications and information technology to deliver clinical health-care services, has become a fixture in some rural hospitals in the United States. Much of this presence is due to heavy government subsidies and grants, which leaves health officials unsure if telemedicine is cost-effective in these clinical settings. Other barriers-legal, financial, and technological-have limited its widespread use, and some critics charge that telemedicine is an unwise investm

A virus unidentified until 1989 now threatens to outstrip HIV as a killer by threefold unless interventions emerge. Around the world, an epidemic is quietly building that has the potential to dwarf AIDS in the number of people affected. The culprit, hepatitis C virus (HCV), is not as consistently lethal as HIV but nevertheless can kill. Development of a broadly useful vaccine seems unlikely, and the only therapeutic agents currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are recomb

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

I just received from another teacher a copy of your article regarding evolution (R. Moss, The Scientist, Oct. 13, 1997, page 7). Like author Robert Moss, I teach evolution in a religious-based college, but unlike him, I do discuss the evolution of species and man. I have never been cautioned about this topic and have actually been encouraged to present all the scientific evidence for evolution. Why have I been successful? I think it is because I get the definitions straight. I divide evolution

Thanks for a good, concise article on evolution (R. Moss, "The Problem With Evolution: Where Have We Gone Wrong?", The Scientist, Oct. 13, 1997, page 7). Moss is absolutely right-the problem is not the religious nuts, but the timidity and lack of interest of most science teachers, especially in high school. I'm a physician in Mississippi, and I've debated some creationists. I always say that we don't know how life got started but that we have overwhelming evidence that it changes just as Moss s

Paul Smaglik's article entitled "Folic Acid Deficiency's Role Expands Beyond Birth Defects" (The Scientist, Oct. 13, 1997, page 10) cites several recent epidemiology studies that link folate deficiency with increased plasma levels of homocysteine and heart disease without reviewing the older scientific literature. Such a review would have provided an answer or insight to the question posed in the article as to how a folate deficiency or homocysteinemia is related to heart disease or stroke. Mor

I was very impressed with the focus and quality of the research safety article on the front page of The Scientist, Oct. 27, 1997 (R. Lewis, "Researchers' Deaths Inspire Actions To Improve Safety"). It went beyond the usual coverage of chemical hazards to address the larger picture of research risks, their prudent assessment, and responsible management. All researchers need to recognize these "common sense" activities as essential components to their work: anticipation, recognition, evaluation,

Edited by: Stephen P. Hoffert T. Fernandes-Alnemri, A. Takahashi, R. Armstrong, J. Krebs, L. Fritz, K.J. Tomaselli, L. Wang, Z. Yu, C.M. Croce, G. Salveson, W.C. Earnshaw, G. Litwack, E.S. Alnemri, "Mch3, a novel human apoptotic cysteine protease highly related to CPP32," Cancer Research, 55:6045-52, 1995. (Cited in more than 140 publications through November 1997) Comments by Emad S. Alnemri, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Kimmel Cancer Center, Thomas Jefferson University, Philade

Edited by: Stephen P. Hoffert B.J. Doranz, J. Rucker, Y. Yi, R.J. Smyth, M. Samson, S.C. Peiper, M. Parmentier, R.G. Collman, R.W. Doms, "A dual-tropic primary HIV-1 isolate that uses fusin and the beta-chemokine receptors CKR-5, CKR-3, and CKR-2b as fusion cofactors," Cell, 85:1149-58, 1996. (Cited in more than 230 publications through November 1997) Comments by Benjamin J. Doranz, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania While the cell surface protein recep

from Stratagene Signal transduction seems like such a simple concept: transmitting messages within and between cells. But when you consider the hundreds of genes that are involved in signal transduction-receptors, kinases, phosphatases, to mention but a few-achieving an understanding seems like an onerous task. To make matters worse, what these signaling molecules do in a test tube, more often than not, is not what they do in a living cell. Stratagene's novel reporting systems for signal transd

CARDIAC T® Rapid Assay Of the more than 5 million people in the United States reporting to hospital emergency departments with chest pain each year, up to two-thirds are admitted for further evaluation. Of the patients subsequently discharged, 4 to 5% suffer myocardial infarction or sudden death within 72 hours of discharge (T.H. Lee et al., American Journal of Cardiology, 60:219-24, 1987). Past studies have shown that cardiac troponin T (cTnT) is a sensitive and specific marker for minor m