Notebook

Back to Basics In AIDS A New Twist Energetic Activity That's Edutainment Fullerene Bonanza On The Fly Chilling Results Although last month's 10th International Conference on AIDS in Yokohama, Japan, yielded little in the way of good news concerning progress to date in efforts to combat the pandemic, some researchers were able to leave the meeting with the hope that future gatherings will be less gloomy. William E. Paul, head of the National Institutes of Health's Office of AIDS Research, announced a measure to encourage innovative approaches to basic AIDS research with federal funds gained by cutting current financial support of unpromising clinical trials of AIDS-related vaccines and drugs. The move was welcomed by, among others, Bernard N. Fields, chairman of the department of microbiology and molecular genetics at Harvard Medical School in Boston, who recently called for just such a realignment of funding priorities (Nature, 369:95-6, May 12, 1994). Fields says that the research reassessment represents a realistic acknowledgment of the difficulties impeding current investigations into HIV pathology, adding that researchers should not be discouraged by their lack of progress so far. "It's really an expectations issue," he says. "If you view the problem as simple, then you're going to be disappointed when you havenUt solved it. If, on the other hand, you define it in all its glory and complexity, then you can say realistically, `Where do we need to go next on the path to solving this?' It's just that the time frame for a problem with this many unknowns was a little too optimistic." The unusual muscle arrangement of a Papua New Guinea lizardUs tail may revolutionize robotic design, say researchers. Kevin C. Zippel, a senior biology major at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., studied the biomechanics of the Solomon Islands skink's tail for his senior honors thesis in comparative anatomy. He says the way the muscles are arranged is rare in the animal world and undocumented in animal tails, describing the muscles as looking "like stacks of snow-cones." In nature, the skinkUs grasping tail winds around branches like a corkscrew, allowing one part of the tail to be rigid while other parts are flexible. It can also twist and turn in every direction. The natural design of the skink's tail could be applied to retooling robotic appendages--which are currently able to move only back and forth, up and down, and sometimes rotate--say Zippel and his adviser, John E.A. Bertram, a professor of anatomy at Cornell. Using a powerful supercomputer, two scientists are working on cracking the code of one of nature's most basic processes--photosynthesis. Chi Ho Mak, a chemist at the University of Southern California, and physicist Reinhold Egger of the University of Freiburg, Germany, used the computer to model the energy-conversion process--molecule by molecule--of bacterial chlorophyll. Their model relies on quantum mechanics to explain the flow of electrons that is responsible for converting solar energy to biochemical energy in plants and other photosynthetic organisms. Because the molecular structure of chlorophyll is so complex, applying quantum theory to explain the mechanism of photosynthesis is difficult, with calculations taking up to one month to run, say the researchers. Mak and Egger say that their work will provide insights into making solar cells with conversion efficiencies approaching that found in bacteria--almost 95 percent. Science education and high-tech game playing merge in a new multimedia form dubbed "edutainment" by its creators. Hyper- Quest Inc. in Sarasota, Fla., will release its CD-ROM "Astronomica: The Quest for the Edge of the Universe" in October. The electronic adventure disk, targeting school- aged children, combines game features with a dramatic exploration of the universe, portrayed in full-color, three- dimensional, animated graphics. "It involves Sarah, our heroine, looking for her professor father, who has shut down the Astronomica supercomputer, which contains all the secrets of the universe," says Joanie Stewart, a Hyper-Quest spokeswoman. Indeed, the fate of the universe may depend on Sarah's finding her father--and to help her, players must solve puzzles and answer trivia questions aided by mentors like Galileo and Einstein. Music and sound effects combine with simulated holograms and other sophisticated imagery as players visit planetary surfaces and black holes. Central to the educational aspects of the CD-ROM is an up-to-date astronomy encyclopedia provided on the disk into which players can take side trips at any time for accurate information about the planets, stars, nebulae, and other intergalactic entities they may run across in the course of their adventure. For information, call Hyper-Quest at (813) 365-9800. Fax: (813) 365-8324. Scientists at the University of California, San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography have discovered the largest and most widespread collection of natural fullerenes on Earth in a massive crater in Sudbury, Ontario. The crater was formed 2 billion years ago when an asteroid slammed into Earth, which coincides with scientistsU beliefs that natural fullerenes--soccerball-shaped molecules of carbon--are created as a result of high-energy events, such as lightning strikes and in the fiery interior of stars. The Scripps researchers believe that the fullerenes were either formed from the impact of the asteroid or came from the asteroid itself, in which case their discovery would mark the first detection of fullerenes on Earth derived from an extraterrestrial form of carbon. Analysis of samples from the 37-mile-long-by-19-mile-wide crater revealed the presence of fullerenes in the range of between 1 and 10 parts per million, amounts that rival the highest production levels of man-made fullerenes, according to the scientists. The investigators speculate the reason the molecules lasted such a long time--fullerenes are known to degrade quickly at fairly low temperatures when exposed to oxygenQis that they were embedded in ore deposits at the site. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Medical School have found two new receptors on the fruit fly cell membrane that they say have implications for human health. The receptors are docking sites--of sorts--that growth factor proteins must enter or attach to before they can perform their cellular function. Molecular biologist F. Michael Hoffman and colleagues found that the fly receptors also attach to human growth factor proteins. The function of this group of proteins--called the transforming growth factor-b family--is essentially the same across species; they instruct undefined cells in a developing embryo to become organized. In fruit flies, the result is eyes, wings, and legs; in humans, it is bone, tissue, and organs. Applying knowledge learned from the simpler fruit fly system, Hoffman and colleagues are looking into how the proteins can stimulate bone repair of severe fractures and affect progressive tooth decay in humans. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) physicists have cooled cesium atoms to the coldest temperature ever recorded for matter. Using lasers to trap the atoms in an optical lattice, scientists chilled the cesium to 700 nanokelvins, or 700 billionths of a degree above absolute zero. This temperature--zero on the Kelvin scale and -273! on the Celsius scale--is the point at which atomic thermal motion theoretically ceases. Since the 1970s, researchers have been pushing the temperature record lower and lower in an effort to improve a variety of applications, including atomic time-keeping and lithographic processes used in the semiconductor industry. NIST scientists achieved this record from a technique borrowed from colleagues at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris.

Notebook

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