Notebook

Correspondence Precautions Science Imitates Science Fiction.. ...But Science Fiction Isn't Science A High-Minded Undertaking E-Male Ah, But What A Way To Go Two mail bomb incidents last month have put scientists on pins and needles at many schools across the country. Charles Epstein, a professor of pediatrics at the University of California at San Francisco, and David Gelernter, the director of Yale's undergraduate computer science program, were seriously injured in bomb blasts. At some schools, such as the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, officials have sent fliers to each science department urging them to be suspicious of unsolicited packages. According to George Paladino, vice chairman of Penn's chemistry department, his department alone receives between 500 and 1,000 pieces of mail a day. here in the City of Brotherly Love, on June 28, 200 workers in a research facility at Thomas Jefferson University were evacuated after a 15-gallon drum was sent to a lab without a label or return address. The package was later discovered to contain a harmless specimen that had started to leak and was resealed by Federal Express. The National Association of Biomedical Research has warned researchers that certain precautions should be taken in light of the bombings: unexpected mail large enough to contain a box of matches should be treated with caution; suspicious-looking package labels or protruding wires or tin foil should be questoned; a suspected package should not be touched or moved and the police should be called immediately. Like fast-food restaurants and lunchbox manufacturers, scientific institutions are trying to get in on the hoopla surrounding the movie Jurassic Park. Science museums throughout the United States, for example, have mounted exhibits based on the film. On display along with the fossils at New York City's American Museum of Natural History are props from the movie. The exhibit at Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences includes an interactive computer game; a simulated research compound; and displays explaining DNA analysis and chaos theory, both of which are prominent in the plot. Likewise, a paper in the June 10, 1993, issue of Nature--the day before the film opened in theaters across the U.S.--entitled "Amplification and sequencing of DNA from a 120-135-million-year-old weevil" (Raul J. Cano, et al., 363:536-8) has attracted considerable attention. The paper was submitted to Nature September 29 and was accepted for publication March 30. "I was a little [upset] that it didn't come out three months ago," says Cano, a professor of microbiology at California Polytechnic State University, "but now I'm glad, because [the publicity] might help with my funding efforts." Meanwhile, for the benefit of those who don't get it, Leroy Hood, William Gates III Professor of Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Washington, emphasizes that the film and the Michael Crichton book from which it is adapted are "absolutely fundamental scientific error." Writing in the summer 1993 issue of FACS NewsBackgrounder, a newsletter published by the Los Angeles-based Foundation for American Communications, Hood comments, "I worry that Jurassic Park may affect people the way another film, The China Syndrome, swayed public opinion against nuclear power." According to a FACS study published in the same issue, Hood's fear may be justified: Of 1,000 adult respondents, 58 percent of those familiar with the film said they believe it's likely that scientists will be able to re-create extinct animals. Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, believe they have discovered one source of the fabled "natural high." Weizmann department of neurobiology professor Zvi Vogel and colleagues have provided what they claim is the strongest evidence to date that a recently discovered brain chemical, anandamide, is the body's natural equivalent of marijuana. According to their study, anandamide acts on the same the same sites in the brain as tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in marijuana. These sites are known as cannaboid or marijuana receptors, present in huge amounts in many areas of the brain and involved in coordination of movement, control of emotional expression, and short-term memory. Understanding the functioning of anandamide may help in the design of drugs that can bind to the marijuana receptors and safely produce the beneficial effects of the plant, such as pain-killing and suppression of vomiting. In the electronic age, a new form of sexual harassment is emerging, one with farther-reaching implications in that it may deter women from fully participating in the realm of computers and information science. Women, especially on college campuses, are being harassed via computer networks in the form of obscenities, racial slurs, and personal attacks, say Cheris Kramarae, H. Jeanie Taylor, and Maureen Ebben, editors and contributors to Women, Information Technology, and Scholarship (University of Illinois Center for Advanced Study, 1993). Kramarae is a professor of speech communication, sociology, linguistics, and women' studies at Illinois; Taylor is associate director of the center; and Ebben is a doctoral candidate in speech communication. According to the authors, male users of the United States' 60,000-plus electronic bulletin boards are the greatest offenders. "Many of us have received unrequested body- parts `visuals'--for example, `breasts' composed of computer keyboard letters and punctuation marks," the authors write. In addition, the authors say: "Men monopolize the talk. Even open networks where the topics are women's issues are... overrun by men." While it a may be true that only love can break a heart, three University of North Carolina psychology department researchers are investigating the possibility that sex may break down an immune system. Research professor Jack D. Caldwell, research assistant professor George Mason, and associate professor Cort A. Pederson conducted experiments on laboratory animals to determine the effect of sexual activity on oxytocin receptors in the thymus, a gland in the neck important in immune system development. In two groups of sexually receptive females placed in a cage with sexually receptive males, the group removed from the cage before mating commenced were found to have significantly more oxytocin receptors in their thymuses than the group that mated. The researchers say the significance of their results is unclear, but possibly indicate that sexual activity leads to a loss of cytotoxic T-cells (which have receptors for oxytocin), making the body more susceptible to disease.

Notebook

The Scientist Staff

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