January 1998

The Kyoto Accord to reduce "greenhouse" gas emissions faces a hazy future in the United States. A host of unresolved political and scientific issues swirls around the tentative plan to curb global warming-including the degree to which greenhouse gases actually affect the environment. Kyoto sets the stage for science, politics, and public opinion to interact on the largest possible scale, and, some would say, at the highest possible stakes. Science's pivotal role is to take on a formidable chall

Computer consultants warn that the cost of adjusting programs will skyrocket if researchers wait until after their systems crash Jan. 1, 2000, is coming. While self-proclaimed prophets are out pounding pulpits to warn against impending cosmic doom, computer programmers, engineers, and information specialists are wringing their hands over a far more mundane issue-how computers will handle the switch from the year 1999 to the year 2000. Many fear that some instruments and applications won't hand

GRIM OUTLOOK: Postdocs need to realize that the odds of getting tenure-track academic jobs are poor, says CSPT's Catherine Gaddy. The once-predictable world of scientific postdoctoral research appears to be entering a period of transformation. Increasingly left in an employment limbo by shrinking tenure-track faculty positions at universities, science postdocs around the United States are beginning to organize and clamor for change. But for many, a nonacademic career seems unavoidable. "The c

Meta-analysis, which uses systematic methods to search, combine, and evaluate research literature, has been praised for making the review article more scientific and objective. But studies showing that journals are much more likely to publish the results of positive over negative clinical trials have led some to question the validity and objectivity of meta-analyses. Many in the medical community are concerned that this publication bias may skew the results of meta-analyses, which increasingly

Wherever did Paul Smaglik get the idea that the boost in the National Institutes of Health's Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) budget to $20 million was "unexpected" (P. Smaglik, "Office of Alternative Medicine Gets Unexpected Boost," The Scientist, Nov. 10, 1997, page 7)? In my opinion it was coldly calculated. No one, not even Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), would have expected Congress to give OAM institute status and a budget of $200 million. But by demanding just that and forcing the Congress

I found Ricki Lewis's article in the Nov. 10, 1997, issue of The Scientist ("Instructors Reconsider Dissection's Role in Biology Classes," page 13) of great interest. Having attained a baccalaureate in biology in the 1970s and graduate degrees in biomedical sciences during the '80s and '90s, and taught college-level biology courses (all of which required extensive use of laboratory animal models), I have been an interested observer of the transformation that has occurred in the philosophy of th

Edited by: Paul Smaglik Z. Liu, H. Hsu, D.V. Goeddel, M. Karin, "Dissection of TNF receptor 1 effector functions: JNK activation is not linked to apoptosis, while NF-[kappa]B activation prevents cell death," Cell, 87:565-76, 1996. (Cited more than 70 times through November 1997) Comments by Michael Karin, Department of Pharmacology, Program in Biomedical Sciences, School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego SIGNAL DISSECTION: Michael Karin and colleagues picked apart the steps in

Edited by: Paul Smaglik DEATH DUEL: One TNF receptor 1 pathway activates apoptosis, another triggers gene expression-roles in seeming opposition, says David Goeddel. H. Hsu, H Shu, M. Pan, D.V. Goeddel, "TRADD-TRAF2 and TRADD-FADD interactions define two distinct TNF receptor 1 signal transduction pathways," Cell, 84:299-308, 1996. (Cited in more than 130 publications through November 1997) Comments by David V. Goeddel, Tularik Inc., San Francisco Two of the most important activities of the

Date: January 5, 1998 Chart 1, Chart 2 n the beginning there was Taq. Actually, there were others before Taq. There were precursory polymerases, such as that from E. coli, that lost their enzymatic activities at elevated temperatures. This shortfall made thermal cycling a time-consuming chore, with the necessity of adding new polymerase after each cycle. Then came the thermostable polymerases such as Taq DNA polymerase, which was isolated from the thermophilic, aerobic bacterium Thermus aquat

Date: January 5, 1998 Chart 1, Chart 2, Chart 3 With the prospect of huge profits from pharmaceuticals, serum-free tissue culture has been catapulted from a cottage industry to high technology Think of serum-free media and an image comes to mind of a scientist sitting in front of a stack of tissue culture plates, painstakingly adding a little of this or a little of that to each plate in search of just the right combination. The motivation behind this activity varies-some scientists want to