May 1992

Pugwash For The Pros Keeping Current - Sort Of Olympic Trials Peak Conditions Young scientists and other professionals who as students were active in Student Pugwash USA now have a means to stay involved with the Pugwash movement after they graduate. The Student Pugwash office has announced the birth of Professional Pugwash, a new arm of the movement that explores the relationship of science to society (The Scientist, April 2, 1990, page 7). While Student Pugwash is itself a spin-off o

Several days ago I received in the mail, among other things, my copy of the March 16, 1992, issue of The Scientist.Also in the mail was a copy of a sales catalog from a Maryland-based supplier of science-related products. What linked these two mailings was their front pages. A lead article in The Scientist noted that Native Americans are making slow, but forward, progress in joining the ranks of doctoral-level scientists. The article makes a strong point for role models for Native American stud

I was delighted to read the article on evolution in the March 30, 1992, issue of The Scientist ("Evolution: It's Not Just A Single Theory, It's A Lot Of Theories," page 15). Since 1980 I have been saying what was said in the headline of the article (Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 23:551-72, 1980; The American Biology Teacher, 48[6]:344-7, 1986). There are also systems of theories in ecology, in molecular biology, and in all parts of biology. But would you learn this from reading the te

The editors and readers of the journal Molecular Carcinogenesis could argue that the shift to mechanistic toxicology proposed in Marcia Clemmitt's recent article in The Scientist (Feb. 17, 1992, page 1) has already occurred. For the past five years, Molecular Carcinogenesis has been reporting the growth of, and changes in, all fields of carcinogenesis, including toxicology. The need for a journal that emphasized the causative mechanisms of cancer at the molecular level became apparent in 1987

I was troubled by Ricki Lewis's recent article on textbook selection (The Scientist, March 30, 1992, page 20), in which she describes the somewhat arbitrary and even whimsical approach that scientist-instructors often take in choosing textbooks for the courses they teach. I was troubled not because I take issue with what Lewis wrote--but because the practices she described are all too familiar. Indeed, as a professor and, for eight years, chairman of a medical school biochemistry department,

The study of aging has had a long reputation of quackery and wild speculative theories. Francis Bacon took note of this problem in 1645 in his Historia Vitae et Mortis: "With regard to the length and shortness of life in animals, the information to be had is small, observation careless, and tradition fabulous." But by applying the tools of molecular biology to the question of the causes of aging and death, researchers have lately been pulling the field into mainstream respectability and potenti

D. Hockenbery, G. Nunez, Curt Milliman, R.D. Schreiber, S.J. Korsmeyer, "Bcl-2 is an inner mitochondrial membrane protein that blocks programmed cell death," Nature, 348:334-36, 1990. David Hockenbery (Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis): "Bcl-2 is the oncogene located at the breakpoint of the chromosomal translocation t(14;18) found in follicular lymphomas. This paper demonstrated two unique features of the Bcl-2 oncogene. The first is its cel

G.J. LaRosa, J.P. Davide, K. Weinhold, J.A. Waterbury, et al., "Conserved sequence and structural elements in the HIV-1 principal neutralizing determinant," Science, 249:932-35, 1990. Gregory LaRosa (Repligen Corp., Cambridge, Mass.): "The third variable region--known as the V3 loop--of the HIV-1 envelope protein has been the most attractive target for an HIV-1 vaccine preparation because antibodies capable of neutralizing the viral infectivity, either from infected patients' serum or from an

E.J. Ziegler, C.J. Fisher, C.L. Sprung, R.C. Straube, et al., "Treatment of gram-negative bacteremia and septic shock with HA-1A human monoclonal antibody against endotoxin," New England Journal of Medicine, 324:429-36, 1991. Charles J. Fisher (Center for Critical Care Research, University Hospitals of Cleveland): "Sepsis syndrome is a complex clinical problem resulting from overwhelming infection leading to septic shock and death. The incidence of sepsis syndrome increased 139 percent in the

When the Exxon Valdez ran aground in March 1989, spilling millions of gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound, it precipitated one of the largest bioremediation projects ever undertaken. A team of scientists from Exxon Corp., the Environmental Protection Agency, and the state of Alaska infused the contaminated beaches with nutrients to speed the growth of native oil-eating microbes, accelerating their metabolism of oil. Exxon and EPA cleaned miles of beaches, and they generated