January 1997

A MATTER OF PERCEPTION: While T.A. union officials at UC-Berkeley say that 30 percent of T.A.-classes in the natural sciences were shut down, an associate dean calls the union's figures, "wildly exaggerated." Teaching assistants (T.A.'s) boycotted their classes and set up picket lines at three campuses of the University of California (UC) for a week in November in an unsuccessful bid to pressure the administration to engage in collective bargaining with their unions. While estimates of the st

BIDDING ADIEU: David Kessler, who headed FDA for more than six years, says he is pleased with his record. When David Kessler, the commissioner of the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA), announced his resignation in late November, many people were surprised. The controversial FDA head was in the middle of waging war against the United States tobacco industry when he decided to step down after more than six years in the job. His supporters, including public health advocates, contend tha

Amid mixed reputation, the organization, known as SHER, focuses on ending discrimination and providing support. Twenty-five years ago, a group of women at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., began meeting every Wednesday at noon to work together to combat sex discrimination at NIH. Today, a group of women meets every Wednesday at noon to work together to combat sex discrimination at NIH. Little more than the faces have changed, according to members of the organization, known as

Sidebar: For Further Information - Alternative Medicine With consumer interest in "natural" remedies on the rise, some academic and corporate researchers have begun to look for new drugs among ancient remedies. Several such efforts focus on the rich, detailed pharmacopoeia of Chinese herbal medicine, which has been painstakingly recorded and passed on for generations. In contemporary China-as in much of the world-herbal concoctions remain the predominant form of medication. In the hands of West

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION - Alternative Medicine Date: January 6, 1997 Internet Resources: Alternative Medicine Home Page: http://www.pitt.edu/~cbw/altm.html AYSL Corp.: http://www.ayslcorp.com Paracelsian Inc.: http://www.paracelsian.com Pfizer Inc.: http://www.pfizer.com NIH Office: Office of Alternative Medicine OAM Information Center 9000 Rockville Pike, Room 5B-38 Bethesda, Md. 20892 (301) 402-2466 Fax: (301) 402-4741

By Eric Albert Email: ealbert@world.std.com ACROSS 1 Middle membrane covering the brain and spinal cord 9 Innermost ear ossicle 10 Bursa, for example 11 Granting org. 12 Portion of an interrupted gene represented in the RNA product 13 Abnormal respireatory sound 14 Person with Y chromosome 16 More than 50% of the dry weight of most cells 17 Element discovered in 1751 20 Sort of sample 22 Gum 25 Certain immunoglobulins 27 Neurotransmitter 28 Phloem + periderm 31 Start codon 32 Initial object? 3

Edited by: Karen Young Kreeger T. Blunt, N.J. Finnie, G.E. Taccioli, G.C.M. Smith, J. Demengeot, T.M. Gottlieb, R. Mizuta, A.J. Varghese, F.W. Alt, P.A. Jeggo, S.P. Jackson, "Defective DNA-dependent protein kinase activity is linked to V(D)J recombination and DNA repair defects associated with the murine SCID mutation," Cell, 80:813-23, 1995. (Cited in almost 120 publications as of December 1996) Comments by Frederick W. Alt, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Children's Hospital, Boston, and Harv

Edited by Karen Young Kreeger J.A. Bennett, R. Dingledine, "Topology profile for a glutamate receptor: Three transmembrane domains and a channel-lining reentrant membrane loop," Neuron, 14:373-84, 1995. (Cited in more than 50 publications as of December 1996) Comments by Julie A. Bennett-Desmelik, Emory University INS AND OUTS: Julie Bennett-Desmelik of Emory studied the topology of glutamate receptor domains. A nerve cell's membrane contains the machinery that allows cell-to-cell communicat

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION - Retiring Scientists Date: January 6, 1997 American Association of University Professors: 1012 14th St., N.W. Suite 500 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 737-5900 http://www.igc.apc.org/aaup/ Fidelity Investments: 82 Devonshire St. Boston, Mass. 02109 (617) 570-7000 http://www.fidelity.com Scudder, Stevens & Clark: 345 Park Ave. New York, N.Y. 10154 (212) 326-6200 http://www.scudder.com Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equiti

Sidebar: For Further Information - Retiring Scientists Retirement, like many other facets of employment, has changed greatly over the last generation. Rare are the employees-researchers included-who spend 40 years at the same job and retire at age 65, living the remainder of their years off Social Security benefits and traditional company pensions. Instead, today's workers often switch jobs several times during the course of their careers, and when they retire, they are more likely to pay the

Sidebar: Selected Suppliers of Liquid-Handling Equipment Liquid-handling equipment has always been central to biomedical research. Pipettes and pumps must be accurate and resist contamination, yet work quickly and comfortably in repetitive procedures. While pipettes and pumps will remain key components of experimental protocols, new types of large-scale research will require more automation and miniaturization in liquid-handling capabilities. Both the Human Genome Project and combinatorial che

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