October 2000

Bill Marx, Harpo Marx's son, makes a "Harpo" face for Justin Ybarra, a patient at the Mattel UCLA Children's Hospital during the Rx Laughter advisory board tour in April. It Came from Hollywood If the scientific community at large was hesitating, the idea that laughter could help heal began emerging on other fronts. Rx Laughter actually came straight from Hollywood, the brainstorm of Sherry Dunay Hilber, a former ABC and CBS network programming executive who oversaw such hit sitcoms as Home Im

Times are difficult for researchers using human subjects. Over the past few years the federal Office for the Prevention of Research Risk has temporarily lifted the authority of a number of prestigious institutions to do such research. They included, according to the Office of Human Research Protection, OPRR's successor agency, Duke University Medical Center, Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Rush Presbyterian St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago, and the

Excerpts from Rita Colwell's interview with The Scientist.This interview was not published in the print edition. Q. Is biocomplexity your own idea? A. The biocomplexity initiative was begun at NSF after I arrived, building on programs already instituted, such as Life in Extreme Environments. The fundamental and underlying principle is that we must move from strictly reductionist research to research that synthesizes information and work toward a holistic approach to understanding and wisely m

Photo: Susan L. EggertSo much rain fell on North Carolina during the 1999 hurricanes that the water that normally stays in the sound for about a year flushed out to sea in only two months. Has Pamlico Sound become another 'Dead Zone,' a twin of the infamous dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico?1 According to researchers tracking water quality in the sound over the past year, the answer is a resounding "No." One year ago, three hurricanes--Dennis, Floyd, then Irene--slammed into the North Caro

At a Sept. 11 meeting of the Royal Society of London, convened to discuss the origin of HIV/AIDS, researchers aired scientific data showing that the hypothesis that HIV/AIDS originated from an experimental oral polio vaccine had no scientific merit. The hypothesis was popularized by journalist Edward Hooper in his 1999 book, The River,1 and supported by the late evolutionary biologist William Hamilton. It states that a type of oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) called CHAT, produced by Hilary Koprows

Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in collaboration with international researchers, recently announced one of the first studies using the completed sequence of a human chromosome to localize, identify, and explain the function of a disease-causing gene. According to John A. Martignetti, of the departments of human genetics and pediatrics, Mount Sinai Medical School, and one of the project's researchers, working with a 112-plus member Italian family with the inherited bleeding disorder known as May-

Photo: Marco Langlois. University of Montreal This female beluga whale was found dead floating in the St. Lawrence near Tadoussac, Quebec. The head of her calf was visible at the external genital opening when the whale was submitted for postmortem. The St. Lawrence River is so polluted, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation warns people who fish the river off New York's shores not to eat any American eel, channel catfish, carp, Chinook salmon, lake trout over 25 inches in

HIV Hitches a Ride The statistics are grim: More than 34 million people worldwide affected with HIV/AIDS, and 800,000- 900,000 cases in the United States with a steady rate of 40,000 new HIV infections each year. Fueled by such statistics, HIV research continues with scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) recently discovering a mechanism providing insight into the pathogenesis of the virus in which HIV may hitch a ride from select cells to target cells.

Microplate Readers Microplate Readers (continued) Laboratory nights are interrupted every so often by the noise of a microplate reader finishing up one plate, then another, and another. But everybody--researchers and students alike--is sound asleep at home, thanks to the newest bunch of microplate reading and juggling machines. The microplate reader was created from the tube spectrophotometer designs of the 1970s to save precious antibody samples. At first clumsy and inaccurate, absorbance mic

Gene Delivery Systems Stratagene's AdEasy adenoviral vector system One of the most promising approaches to treating genetic diseases, infectious diseases, and cancer is gene therapy, in which genes are transferred directly to an organism. These transferred genes may replace defective genes or target cancerous tissue for selective inhibition of gene activity. Gene therapy has the potential to treat the cause of disease at the genetic level. In ex vivo gene therapy, cells with defective genes ar

Shirley M. Tilghman At a meeting right after Labor Day, Princeton University's molecular biology department surveyed the plans of its recently graduated seniors, and professor Shirley M. Tilghman wasn't happy with the results. Thirty-one out of 72 students awarded bachelor's degrees last June were going to medical school, eight planned to do community-service work--and only three were heading directly for Ph.D. or M.D.-Ph.D. programs. Recalling the meeting, Tilghman notes that the cohort of do

DOE to Increase Women Scientists in Workforce Fueled by a booming economy, unemployment record lows have caused concern about the nation's future workforce in foundational areas such as science, engineering, and technology. The federal government is among concerned employers. Department of Energy secretary Bill Richardson says, "The Department of Energy, like the rest of America, has a soaring demand for a technically skilled workforce." DOE points out that in the next two decades, the workfor