Notebook

Harassment Hotline ACS Trains Chemistry Teachers Healthy Communication Webs of Desire Pediatric AIDS Internships Hard Cash For Software Viral-Resistant Vintage The widely publicized sex-discrimination case of Margaret Jensvold v. Donna Shalala--in which Jensvold, a former National Institutes of Health investigator, alleges discrimination, harassment, and retaliation against her by various officials of NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services--went to trial on February 28 in the Federal District Court in Baltimore and was expected to last about five weeks. Jensvold and her supporters have organized a "court watch," hoping to pack the courtroom with supporters, members of the press, and the public. A taped telephone message, updated regularly, is operating 24 hours a day at (202) 483-3641, as well, giving information on the trial's status. According to a statement jointly distributed by the Federation of Organizations for Professional Women; the Institute for Research on Women's Health (which Jensvold heads); and Self-Help for Equal Rights (SHER), an informal employment-rights group at NIH, the action is intended not only to support Jensvold but also to "send a very powerful message to NIH and HHS officials that people are watching, and that they care about the crucial issues raised by this trial." Jensvold came to the National Institute of Mental Health in 1987 to study premenstrual syndrome. There, she says, she was denied important professional opportunities made available to male fellows, harassed, and later retaliated against when she complained. The American Chemical Society (ACS) has been awarded a $2.75 million grant from the National Science Foundation to launch Operation Chemistry, a training program for elementary and middle-school chemistry teachers. According to ACS, 36 four- person teams--consisting of a college faculty member, a high school chemistry teacher, an elementary or middle-school science specialist, and a member of the local chemical industry who has been involved in pre-high school science education--will start working with fourth- through eighth- grade teachers in their home districts beginning in the fall, providing these teachers with a minimum of 72 hours of training in the 1994-95 academic year. For information, contact ACS at (202) 872-6179. Tufts University School of Medicine and Emerson College, both in Boston, have joined forces to establish a new graduate degree in health communication. According to the schools, the new program is designed to "meet the increasing demand for professionals skilled in maximizing the power and impact of the media on individual and community health; planning, developing, and managing health policy and delivery; and designing campaigns to effectively disseminate health information." The program will offer courses including marketing and political communication, media, policy, public relations, advertising, global and community health, negotiation, leadership, and professional communication and ethics. For more information, contact the Office of Graduate Admission, Emerson College, 100 Beacon St., Boston, Mass. 02116, (617) 578-8601; or Tufts University School of Medicine, Health Communication Program, 136 Harrison Ave., Boston, Mass. 02111, (617) 636-0935. Biology professor Fred Singer and his students at Radford University in Virginia are discovering that vibrations in spiderwebs are a good indicator of their creators' mating activities. In a collaborative effort with the university's Natural Computing Laboratory, Singer and the students have built a device that attaches an ultrasensitive galvanometric needle to the web, which then registers the changes in vibrational frequencies as the spiders begin to mate. An FM decoder and videotape complete the assemblage, which is designed to allow the researchers to study the spiders in a mating environment that is as close to a natural environment as possible. Singer will be using the device to look at aspects of mating behavior in funnel web spiders, including the dance signatures of males and the selection of mates by females. The Pediatric AIDS Foundation's Student Intern Awards program provides training and on-the-job work experience to high school, college, graduate, and medical school students to encourage them to enter clinical and research programs related to pediatric AIDS. Program participants intern with sponsoring clinicians or researchers whom the Santa Monica, Calif.-based foundation recognizes for their contributions to pediatric AIDS. Sponsors must apply for the one-year, renewable $2,000 award. Applications must be received by April 5, with awards to be made May 5. For information, contact Trish Devine at the foundation: (310) 395-9051. Last month the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced its creation of the Software of the Year award to recognize the creators of software or software technology used by NASA. The award, which will include a monetary prize of up to $100,000, will be presented to the winning software author or authors in late November at the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center's annual Software Engineering Workshop in Greenbelt, Md. Entries will be judged by a NASA Software Award Review Panel. According to a NASA statement, submissions--due June 1--should include copies of the software, sample applications and data, and documentation that demonstrates the software's impact and degree of innovation. Call Paul Curto, a researcher with NASA's Inventions and Contributions Board, at (202) 358-2279 for full award criteria and information on where to send entries. LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, a New York-based luxury products group, and its subsidiary, Mo t & Chandon, a French champagne house, recently announced the first genetic transformation of chardonnay, the well-known grapevine cultivar, to make it resistant to one of its major diseases- -grapevine fanleaf virus (GFLV). Researchers at the Institute for Plant Molecular Biology in Strasbourg, France, and the National Institute for Agronomy Research in Colmar, France, obtained the GFLV-resistant grape by isolating and cloning the gene that codes for the capsid protein of GFLV. According to LVMH, this is particularly significant, since the only existing chemical treatment for GFLV is being banned in some countries because of its negative impact on the environment.

Notebook

The Scientist Staff

Mar 20, 1994

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