New or Seldom Used Terms

This page is a collection of terminology that is new, seldom used, or of current interest in the life sciences, medicine, information technology, and other technical disciplines. It is maintained by Dr. Feistner, a scientist, professional English <> German translator, and sole proprietor of ALSC. At the same time, this page also reflects, in part, Dr. Feistner's scientific interests.

New entries will be made as the workload and other commitments allow. Although links are validated each time a new entry is made, it is impossible to guarantee that they will work in the future because Internet files are frequently moved (in which case you might want to try the server's search function) or deleted. However, enough context is always given that this page should remain useful even without external links. Happy browsing!

If you have any questions or comments, including broken links, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Copyright 2000-2002 Gottfried Feistner - Please do not plagiarize.

B. Hao et al.: A New UAG-Encoded Residue in the Structure of a Methanogen Methyltransferase Science 296: 1462 - 1466 (2002)
"Genes encoding methanogenic methylamine methyltransferases all contain an in-frame amber (UAG) codon that is read through during translation. We have identified the UAG-encoded residue in a 1.55 angstrom resolution structure of the Methanosarcina barkeri monomethylamine methyltransferase (MtmB). This structure reveals a homohexamer comprised of individual subunits with a TIM barrel fold. The electron density for the UAG-encoded residue is distinct from any of the 21 natural amino acids. Instead it appears consistent with a lysine in amide-linkage to (4R,5R)-4-substituted-pyrroline-5-carboxylate. We suggest that this amino acid be named L-pyrrolysine."

The Dictionary of Cell and Molecular Biology:
"One of the three termination codons. Its sequence is UAG. See also ochre codon, opal codon."

Where does the name come from? The following acount was found on the web site of the Biology Learning Center at the University of Arizona:
"The work of the ribosome ends when it reaches one of the three stop codons that are used: UAG, UAA or UGA. The stop codons were originally identified by mutations in bacteriophage T4. The first one identified was UAG and was called the amber codon.
I like to maintain the history of the amber codon. Here's the story. In Benzer's lab at Caltech the search was on for a mutation that would allow a certain kind of phage mutant to grow. Seymour said that whoever identified the mutation, he would name it after him (in some versions of the story, it would be named after the discoverer's mother). The graduate student who isolated the mutation was a young man named Harris Bernstein. The name "Bernstein" in German means "amber". And so the UAG codon, known as a nonsense codon (later known as a stop codon), was named the amber codon. Later, the other two stop codons were called ochre (UAA) and opal (UGA) (sometimes called, "umber") to maintain the color metaphor."

Julie Clayton: Dengue strains vaccine development. 10th International Congress on Infectious Diseases, March 13, 2002
"Chow's team are now placing their bets for the best vaccine candidate on a more conserved protein of the virus, the protease known as NS3, which normally splices the virus's initial polyprotein chain. They are now testing this as a construct in a DNA vaccine, together with a second target, NS1, for its ability to protect mice against viral challenge.
His concern is that the tetravalent vaccines currently in clinical trials will be inadequate. 'A vaccine that works against certain strains may not be useful against new strains that may emerge in the future. From the molecular work they are emerging very quickly,' he said. In addition, the team has conducted an epidemiological study on healthy student volunteers attending the National University of Singapore.
They found that as many as 40% of the group have antibodies to dengue viruses, suggesting some past exposure to the virus. The students were unaware of ever having been infected. But in only half of these cases were the antibodies detected by ELISA tests able to neutralize serotype 2 virus.
This means that even after natural exposure, many people are still vulnerable to a second infection. Furthermore, those with non-neutralizing antibodies face the risk of even worse disease, through a phenomenon known as antibody enhancement in which antibodies bind to the virus, and enhance its uptake into monocytes through Fc receptors.
'We need a tetravalent vaccine, given early in life. But the bad news is that there is not going to be a vaccine anytime soon,' concluded Chow."

Seth Schiesel and Simon Romero: WorldCom: Out of Obscurity to Under Inquiry. The New York Times, March 13, 2002
"With the S.E.C. adopting its usual no-comment stance and WorldCom executives saying they have nothing to hide, it was left for analysts yesterday to infer the reasons for the inquiry. People who have had experience with S.E.C. practice said yesterday that despite the sweep of the S.E.C.'s request, the specificity indicated that it was relatively certain of what it expected to find.
'They're looking into some very precise areas,' said John P. Gavin, president of SEC Insight, a company that specializes in retrieving documents from the S.E.C. 'They seem to know just what they're after.'
Carr Conway, a former S.E.C. enforcement official, agreed. 'They are not kitchen-sinking this,' said Mr. Conway, who is now senior forensic accountant at the Dickerson Financial Investigation Group in Denver."

Emily Nussbaum: Inside the Love Lab. Lingua Franca, Volume 10, No. 2 - March 2000
"A bald man with a handlebar mustache slumps in his chair, looking a bit like a pinned butterfly. Across from him, his wife--her chest encased by a plastic tube that measures the depth of her breathing--ticks off a list of complaints: He's willing to act goofy but won't behave like a real dad; he's irresponsible; he lacks follow-through. Visibly uncomfortable and upset, Handlebar wriggles, breathes in, blinks, darts his eyes around.
'Take a look at this,' says Dr. Sybil CarŽrre, the coordinator of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of Washington, pointing to the video monitor. 'She's kitchen-sinking - throwing in every complaint at once.'"

The Application Essay Tutorial gives the following advice:
"[Kitchen sinking] is a common practice. Applicants hope to "hit" on a secret trigger topic that the admissions people are looking for - those special buzz words that will throw open the gates of Stanford.
There is no such thing as a trigger topic, and by throwing in everything but the kitchen sink, you dilute the force of your essay. Rather than a well focused discourse that addresses two or possibly three important themes, the kitchen sinker produces a rambling laundry list of unrelated issues that make no lasting impression on the reader."

The following example was found at the web site of Barr Laboratories:
"To the extent that any statements made in this website contain information that is not historical, these statements are essentially forward-looking. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that cannot be predicted or quantified and, consequently, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include: the timing and outcome of legal proceedings; the difficulty of predicting the timing of U.S. Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") approvals; the difficulty in predicting the timing and outcome of FDA decisions on patent challenges; market and customer acceptance and demand for new pharmaceutical products; ability to market proprietary products; the impact of competitive products and pricing; timing and success of product development and launch; availability of raw materials; the regulatory environment; fluctuations in operating results; and, other risks detailed from time-to-time in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements can be identified by their use of words such as "expects," "plans," "will," "believes," "estimates," "intends," "may" and other words of similar meaning. Should known or unknown risks or uncertainties materialize, or should our assumptions prove inaccurate, actual results could vary materially from those anticipated. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements."

Another Safe Harbor Statement by Worthington Industries explains:
"The company wishes to take advantage of the Safe Harbor provisions included in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 ("the Act") ..."

While investorwords.com explains the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PSLRA) as follows:
"Passed in 1995, this legislation made significant changes to securities fraud litigation, introduced proportionate liability, and created new responsibilities for auditors to detect and report illegal activities."

The text of the Law itself can be found at lectlaw.com. The following is only an excerpt:
SAFE HARBOR- '(1) IN GENERAL- Except as provided in subsection (b), in any private action arising under this title that is based on an untrue statement of a material fact or omission of a material fact necessary to make the statement not misleading, a person referred to in subsection (a) shall not be liable with respect to any forward-looking statement, whether written or oral, if and to the extent that--
'(A) the forward-looking statement is--
'(i) identified as a forward-looking statement, and is accompanied by meaningful cautionary statements identifying important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statement; or
'(ii) immaterial; or
'(B) the plaintiff fails to prove that the forward-looking statement--
'(i) if made by a natural person, was made with actual knowledge by that person that the statement was false or misleading; or
'(ii) if made by a business entity; was--
'(I) made by or with the approval of an executive officer of that entity, and
'(II) made or approved by such officer with actual knowledge by that officer that the statement was false or misleading."

Paul Molyneaux: The Fish-Eye View. The New York Times, March 10, 2002
"For most of his career, McLeod searched for scallops with little more information about the sea floor than his ancestors had gleaned through the use of lead lines. 'We found them almost by feel,' he said. 'And we tore up a lot of places we didn't have to. But those days are over.'
Multibeam data sets developed by Canada's Seabed Resource Mapping Program gave McLeod an almost photographic image of the bottom, with resolution to one meter. A computer in McLeod's wheelhouse displayed a multicolored topographical chart that was created through the fusion of multibeam sonar, backscatter imagery and high-speed computer programs...
... in the United States, the development of multibeam charts has been a patchwork effort conducted by different agencies with different objectives.
Page Valentine, of the United States Geological Survey, oversaw the multibeam mapping of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary off northeastern Massachusetts. 'It's a proven technology with obvious benefits for fishermen and management,' he said. Valentine would like to see a multibeam mapping program for the entire continental shelf of the United States. 'There just hasn't been enough call in the right circles,' he said.
Commercial fishermen from the United States also see the value of the charts, but lack the resources to equip a vessel and pay for the mapping. 'It costs a million dollars to outfit a vessel, and Pittman told us this would cost around $1,000 a square mile,' said Jim Kendall of the New Bedford Seafood Coalition. 'We're not like the Canadians. There's no cohesive group that's going to pay for it.'"

Neal Gabler: The Face of Botox Economics. Los Angeles Times, March 10, 2002
"Despite the ridicule he has endured, what Skilling and his fellow Enron conspirators are articulating is a new and, it turns out, widely practiced economic theory--one that has less to do with finance than with a larger cultural phenomenon. Call their theory Botox economics, after the faddish treatment for wrinkles, because, like that treatment, it is predicated on the idea that the only thing that really matters in America is how something looks. In Botox therapy, muscle tissue is injected with a form of botulinum toxin that paralyzes the surrounding tissues, weakening facial muscles and thus temporarily eradicating wrinkles. The only hitch is that one may also lose a degree of facial control--the little crinkle of the eye, the turn of the lip, the furrow of the brow--that enables us to express emotion. Personality is sacrificed for appearance.
In the same way, Botox economics eradicates some of the nastier financial wrinkles by presenting a neat set of books, but the appearance comes at the expense of substance.
In arriving at their theory, what Skilling, his predecessor Kenneth L. Lay, Chief Financial Officer Andrew S. Fastow and the rest of the Enron gang discovered--and they certainly weren't the first--is that business is no different from anything else in modern American life. Perception is everything. The Enron boys had only to look around them to see a nation obsessed with image--in the clothes one wore, the car one drove, the neighborhood one lived in, the schools one's children attended, the books one read, and, yes, the Botox one injected into one's face. Everyone was performing for everyone else. Or, in historian Daniel Boorstin's words, Americans had learned to live within their illusions. Enron simply adapted this cultural phenomenon to business. The trick wasn't making a sound company, which was a difficult thing to do and which depended on too many variables. The trick was making a company that seemed to be sound, which was much easier and much more American."

Constance Holden: Primate Parthenotes Yield Stem Cells Science 295: 779-780 (2002)
"A reproductive quirk of some reptiles, insects, and other species may help stem cell researchers sidestep ethical debates over the use of human embryos. Researchers at Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in Worcester, Massachusetts, report ... that they have isolated the first stem cell lines from primate parthenotes, embryos grown from unfertilized eggs that, in mammals, are not capable of developing into viable fetuses.
To create the parthenotes, the scientists treated 28 macaque ova with chemicals that prevent eggs from ejecting half their chromosomes--as they do when fertilized--and instead spur the eggs to begin dividing. Four of the 28 developed into blastocysts; the team was able to establish a stable stem cell line from the inner cell mass of one of them. From these stem cells, the researchers developed a considerable variety of cells, including dopamine-producing neurons and spontaneously beating cells resembling heart cells...
Wolf says parthenogenesis would actually be simpler than therapeutic cloning for producing genetically compatible material for a patient--at least one with oocytes. 'Of course, with this approach,' he adds, 'you could not produce your own stem cells unless you could also provide your own eggs. Sorry, guys.' "

Xueyan Zhang, Yingxi Zhu, and Steve Granick: Hydrophobicity at a Janus interface. Science 295: 663-666 (2002)
"Water confined between adjoining hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces (a Janus interface) is found to form stable films of nanometer thickness whose responses to shear deformations are extraordinarily noisy."

Adrian Cho [ed]: Making a stink. Science 295: 619 (2002)
"President George W. Bush talks of smoking terrorists out of their hiding places, but it may be possible to stink out the bad guys, too. The U.S. military is backing research into substances so foul they could be used in a stink bomb...
Stinky substances, which the military calls malodorants, could be used to disperse crowds without causing the injuries sometimes associated with tear gas and other irritants, says Capt. Joe Kloppel of the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate at the Pentagon. But Kloppel says the technology isn't yet ripe enough to become a part of the Pentagon's arsenal."

Maureen A, Rouhi: exploring the chemical senses. Chemical & Engineering News 80: 24 - 29 (2002)
"In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Wall Street Journal reporter Stefan Fatsis wanted to know what was causing the "persistent and weird" odor in New York City. To find out, he turned to the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.
The center is the world's first research institute devoted to the multidisciplinary study of the chemical senses. Work there includes probing human pheromones, inquiring about food cravings, sniffing out body odors, understanding chemically induced sensations beyond taste and smell, and controlling environmental malodors. The center attracts the interest of companies in the food, fragrance, beverage, tobacco, chemical, pharmaceutical, and personal care industries."

Ken Garber: Taking Garbage In, Tossing Cancer Out? Science 295: 612-613 (2002)
"The proteasome [not to be confused with the proteome] is the cell's garbage shredder, a barrel-shaped enzyme that sucks in damaged or short-lived proteins and dismembers them for eventual disposal or recycling. It's absolutely essential for survival. So when ProScript, a tiny, privately held company leasing a basement office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, discovered a drug in 1995 that could treat cancer by blocking the proteasome, the idea met with almost universal skepticism: The treatment seemed likely to kill patients along with their tumors. The company persevered, however, getting encouraging results in animals and eventually persuading the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to fund clinical trials of its drug, PS-341....
Already, it's clear that PS-341 is not the ideal proteasome inhibitor, because the drug indiscriminately raises levels for hundreds of proteins without regard to their anticancer effect. Millennium is now trying to develop inhibitors upstream of the proteasome, by tagging proteins for survival even before they're sent to the proteasome for destruction. If a drug could inhibit specific enzymes that attach ubiquitin to individual proteins (ubiquitin chains mark proteins for destruction in the proteasome), it could, in theory block degradation of only those proteins thought to have a direct anticancer effect--for example, tumor suppressor gene products.
So proteasome inhibition, in all its guises, has arrived as an anticancer strategy, although no one, including Millennium, is quite sure how best to apply it. 'They have a golden nugget, but they're going to have to figure out how to make it into a golden ring,' says Berenson. Only time will tell if PS-341 ultimately proves useful in the clinic, but the drug has already shown that playing with garbage has its rewards."

Lockergnome's Weekly Windows Digest (from Chris Pirillo), January 26, 2002:
"There is no one true definition of a blog - which is short for Web log. To blog is to post your deepest thoughts, experiences, pictures, feelings, and opinions to a Web page using software which will handle everything for you but the actual composition. It's a public diary. You write, it publishes. It? Yes, a blogging tool. The beauty of the blogging community is that they're constantly in touch with one another, linking to each other's most interesting entries. Blogs put people in touch with people who have similar interests. You quickly become an essential part of your online community, exchanging ideas on your respective sites with the click of a button. So, what makes this different from the "old" way of doing things? For one, it's infinitely easier. There's no HTML code to learn. With some tools, there's no installation required. I've mentioned Blogger.com as a starting point many times before. Jump in - the water's fine!"

At Blogger.com we find the following definitions:

What is a weblog/blog?
"A blog is a web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically -- like a what's new page or a journal. The content and purposes of blogs varies greatly -- from links and commentary about other web sites, to news about a company/person/idea, to diaries, photos, poetry, mini-essays, project updates, even fiction.
blog posts are like instant messages to the web.
Many blogs are personal, "what's on my mind" type musings. Others are collaborative efforts based on a specific topic or area of mutual interest. Some blogs are for play. Some are for work. Some are both."

What is Blogger?
Blogger is a free, web-based tool that helps you publish to the web instantly -- whenever the urge strikes. Blogger is the leading tool in the rapidly growing area of web publishing known as weblogs, or "blogs," as we like to say.

Bert Vogelstein: When a Clone Is Not a Clone HMS Beagle, January 18, 2002
"The clear distinction between therapeutic cloning and human cloning is again becoming lost in reactions to reports that scientists are breaking new ground in the effort to obtain stem cells from cloned human embryos. Without an understanding of the differences between the two, policy makers and the public risk curtailing research that may lead to effective treatments and even cures for debilitating diseases. Therapeutic cloning is an unfortunate term that describes a method for creating stem cells to produce tissues that are less likely to be rejected by the immune system of a transplant recipient. Creating stem cells to treat humans is not the same as creating a human being...
The term therapeutic cloning is a misnomer, and one that scientists don't like to use, because it implies the creation of a human clone. Instead, using a process known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, scientists place the cell nucleus of the potential transplant recipient into an egg that has had its nucleus removed. Then, in a culture dish, they try to coax the remade cell into dividing like a fertilized egg to produce stem cells, which could be harvested and grown into organs or tissues that are almost genetically identical to the transplant recipient. In theory, the body should not reject tissue derived from stem cells that are a genetic match. These techniques are far too risky and rudimentary to use for anything but potential medical therapies."

"A Webinar is a live or replayed interactive multimedia presentation conducted from a Web site. The term combines Web with seminar. A Webinar typically uses some combination of:

• The presenter speaking (usually with streaming audio)
• The presenter also presented visually (streaming video)
• A panel of presenters
• A chat session that shows typed-in questions and answers as a live Webinar progresses or the entire session when it is played from an archive
• A slide presentation that can be viewed simultaneously
• For a small group, a whiteboard that allows the presenter and auditors to draw pictures
• For a small group, PC cameras and microphone that allow some of the auditors to talk to the presenter
• Conference telephone connections to the presenter"

Found at searchWebManagement.com, a TechTarget site for Web Management professionals.

"At Ascent we know that it takes more than clinical research and modern technology to improve children's medicine. it takes the right attitude - pediatude and we know it is this key ingredient that can truly make a difference in children's medicine."

"Anadya Pharmaceuticals Inc. ... employs proprietary technologies in microbial genomics (GATE^TM), affinity-based compound screening against targets of both known and unknown function (ATLAS^TM), world-class high-output medicinal chemistry, and cheminformatics including proprietary software (PROTOS^TM) to develop a portfolio of novel anti-infective products. The company also intends to become a sector leader in the emerging field of Riboproteomics^TM, the study of RNA-protein interactions and the development of novel therapeutic compounds that target these interactions. RNA has been validated as a target for the treatment of infectious diseases with approved drugs such as neomycin and tobramycin."

"Riboproteomics Opportunity
"Riboproteomics^TM is the systematic characterization and annotation of RNA-protein interactions that affect RNA metabolism, including RNA transport, splicing, translation and decay. There is untapped opportunity in Riboproteomics^TM to accelerate the discovery and development of novel drugs because RNA-protein interactions have been largely overlooked as viable drug targets. RNA targets present new opportunities for discovery and development of novel drugs with high selectivity and specificity, and opportunities to address many different diseases. Small molecule modulation of RNA metabolism essentially permits the pharmacological control of expression and function of protein drug targets. Because Riboproteomics^TM addresses disease processes at an earlier step in gene expression, this approach offers new intervention strategies."

Have you noticed a recent remarkable increase in terms ending in "omic"? You are not the only one -- in fact, the Cambridge Healthtech Institute has compiled a long Glossary of -omes & -omics terms.

In the preamble to this glossary the authors also point out that omic studies often are discouraged in favor of single molecule studies as Fishing Expeditions (with reference to a Science article of the same title by John N. Weinstein), whereas in reality both scientific approaches [the hypothesis-driven, focused as well as the road map studies] are valid and needed. I couldn't agree more.

Robert F. Service: Searching for recipes for protein chips. Science 294, 2080-2082 (2001).
"... using a protein, antibody or otherwise, to capture another protein has its drawbacks. This approach makes it tricky to detect where target proteins bind on a chip: Both the capture molecules and the targets are proteins, so a simple protein-staining technique would light up each spot. That forces many companies to use more complex assays, such as creating fluorescent compounds that have to bind to target proteins to light up. SomaLogic's Gold says a better solution is changing the probe molecules laid down on the grid to aptamers, short stretches of nucleotides that can twist, fold, and bind to target molecules much like proteins do. A key advantage, Gold says, is that once an aptamer binds to a protein, researchers can forge a tight covalent bond by hitting it with ultraviolet light, allowing them to wash excess protein off the chip surface and scan for the tight binders that remain."

Guidant Cardiovascular Medical Products:

"There are different technologies, and then there are difference technologies. Technologies that make a difference in how, or if, someone lives."

Isaac Ginsburg: The Disregard Syndrome: A Menace to Honest Science? The Scientist 15[24]:51, Dec. 10, 2001

"It might have been expected that a careful literature search--in Index Medicus, Medline, Biological Abstracts, or in the electronic journals--would guarantee that a lack of regard for already published data would not occur and that authors would also consider with respect all viewpoints expressed. But it transpires that mainly because of the information overload of scientific publications, expert referees nominated by journal editorial boards are unable to cover the vast literature to prevent duplications of already published data. This might well provide a haven for redundant scientific information.
Can we identify the main roots and motivations behind the unethical and self-defeating disregard syndrome, discussed in 1991 by Eugene Garfield, founder of The Scientist?1 [Columbia University sociologist Robert K Merton also called it citation amnesia.] Can we prescribe a prophylactic or an antidote and means for its application? Also, can one guarantee that reliance solely on computer database abstracts, without the reading of the full texts of articles and a thorough scrutiny of the lists of references cited by authors, might not lead to acceptance for publication of previously performed research, not to mention a waste of precious public funding and journal space. There is a growing concern that the disregard syndrome has already contributed to the disappearance of whole lines of research from the awareness of investigators."

Paula Park: Dealing in Relationships. The Scientist 15[24]:43, Dec. 10, 2001

"Joseph Schlessinger would hardly fit most people's definition of the unworldly scientist. Originally a physicist, Schlessinger has conducted groundbreaking work in identifying and characterizing molecules in the signaling pathways of receptor tyrosine kinases. Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2000, Schlessinger, William H. Prusoff professor and chairman of pharmacology at Yale University, has achieved the acclaim some scientists yearn for. Yet in 1991, when he set out to build a company based on scientific discoveries made by himself and his associates, the negotiations with financiers left him flummoxed. 'I acted like any other scientist who was naïve on the business side,' he relates."

Webster's: Old Slang; to confuse, perplex.

Beckey Worley: 'Badtrans' Worm Continues Spread - Password-stealing Worm Worse Threat Than Nimda. TechTV, November 30, 2001

"If you've been hit with Badtrans, SARC has removal instructions posted.
Users should protect themselves from Badtrans because it has a pretty nasty payload and could steal sensitive data.
The executable file Badtrans installs consists of a key logger that can record account numbers and passwords. Keystroke loggers record every detail of a computing session -- literally every key that is typed.
For example, a logger could record a user's online banking account number and password. In the case of Badtrans, the program then emails the logged data back to the virus writer or attacker at a myriad of anonymous email accounts."

Hal Cohen: Speeding up the Evolutionary Process - Biotech firm uses patented method to accelerate development. The Scientist 15[23]:12, Nov. 26, 2001

"From TV dinners to computers, improving speed and efficiency are deemed the true hallmarks of progress. The same tenet holds true in science: Why wait thousands of years for nature to do its work when it can be done in a few months? This is the concept behind the new biotech firm Morphotek. Using a patented technology platform called morphogenics, the company has given evolution's normal crawling pace a rocket-powered backpack.
Philadelphia-based Morphotek creates genetically altered host organisms using morphogenics, a technology that alters the genome of a wide range of host cells including microbes, plants, and mammals. The resulting evolution is accelerated and the gene pool is then skimmed for the offspring that exhibit viable traits, say company officials...
When bacterial DNA is damaged from mutagens such as ultraviolet light, the DNA will switch from its normal replication system to the S.O.S. system. Several proteins transiently increase the mutation rate by greatly increasing the number of errors made in copying DNA sequences. 'The S.O.S. system induces many more genetic changes in progeny in the hope that a greater genetic variability will help the organism adapt to its environment,' says Pigliucci...
'We've essentially circumvented the need for the screening of thousands of genomes to understand their function,' says Nicoladies. 'Instead of figuring out what genes are important to the trait desired, we have the phenotype and sort out what the genes are.'

spectroscopyNOW Spectral Lines 7, 2001

"British and Czech scientists have demonstrated that flowing-afterglow mass spectrometry (FA-MS) can be used to check a patient's body water levels.
Water imbalance is not just about being thirsty, for patients with severe dehydration there can be serious problems...
The system is based on dosing patients with non-radioactive heavy water - water in which the hydrogen atoms have been substituted for deuterium - and uses flowing afterglow mass spectrometry (FAMS) to measure respired levels of heavy water. The whole procedure takes less than two hours to give an accurate figure and could be used on a daily basis to monitor a patient."

Varmai Seto et al.: Development of generic liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry methods using experimental design. J. Am. Soc. Mass Spectrometry, November 19, 2001
"Standard approaches to development of liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) methods, either ion-pairing or reversed-phase liquid chromatography, have been through trial and error or intentional variation of experimental factors. These approaches to method optimization fail to take into account interactions between experimental factors and therefore the results may not be optimal for the combination of experimental factors. Another approach to optimization is through the use of chemometrics. Chemometric approaches can be more efficient than trial and error or intentional variation because chemometrics make use of multivariate designs; experimental factors are varied simultaneously at the various levels. Therefore chemometrics can take into account interactions between factors. The goal of this study was to develop a generic ion-pair LC-MS method for the analysis of acidic compounds using a chemometric approach called design of experiments (DOE)."

The exact definition of Chemometrics has been a matter of debate for some time, however, the chair of the InCINC'94, the first International Chemometrics InterNet Conference, offered the following definition:

Chemometrics is the science of relating measurements made on a chemical system or process to the state of the system via application of mathematical or statistical methods.

Those who want to know more are referred to the Chemometrics Tutorials page.

Steven Brown (Univ. Delaware): Soft Modeling in Latent Variables. Chemometrics Primer, July 12, 2001
"Many of the methods employed in chemometrics are based on the concept of soft modeling, a linear modeling method that originated in the field of multivariate statistical analysis but which has become synonymous with the term chemometrics. The focus of the soft modeling method on the properties of the signal rather than on the noise help to distinguish chemometrics from statistics, where the emphasis is usually on the structure and properties of the error term. Chemists often confuse the two fields, but remembering the difference in focus makes distinguishing them relatively simple."

First the following clarification, which was was found at Chowhound.com:
"Everyone has one in his or her life: the brother-in-law with a collection of 800 takeout menus, the coworker who's always late from lunch because she HAD to trek to one end of town for the best soup and to the other for the best sandwich. Chowhounds know where the good stuff is, and they never settle for less than optimal deliciousness, whether dining in splanky splendor or grabbing a quick slice of pizza. They are the one in ten who live to eat.
We're not talking about foodies. Foodies eat where they're told; they eagerly follow trends and rarely go where Zagat hasn't gone before. Chowhounds, on the other hand, blaze trails, combing gleefully through neighborhoods for hidden culinary treasure. They despise hype, and while they appreciate refined ambiance and service, they can't be fooled by mere flash."

Shawn Hubler and Melinda Fulmer: A Monument to the Good Life in Napa. Los Angeles Times, November 17, 2001
"Copia: The American Center for Food, Wine & the Arts will be the nation's first major museum devoted exclusively to sustenance, in all its variations. What that means isn't exactly clear.
Not everyone here gets it yet, and its backers have been accused of elitism. Scholars, foodies and others are hailing its opening as a benchmark in America's appreciation of the art of living well. 'It's, uh, unique,' Mayor Ed Henderson said with a laugh, fresh from a preview of the corrugated-metal-and-glass center, which looks like a cross between an agricultural lab and a swank warehouse. 'Is it pretty? I don't know. It's different. I sound like a mayor, don't I? Tell you what--come see for yourself' ".

Janis Weeks: Metamorphosis - How steroid hormones transform caterpillar neurons BioMedNet News, November 15, 2001

"According to brand-new work from the lab, the hormone caused the APR neurons to self-destruct by digesting itself from within - a poorly understood mechanism known as autophagy. Unlike the more familiar type of cell suicide, apoptosis, cells undergoing autophagy exhibit a strange clumping of their mitochondria. 'We have no clue what that means,' she said. But studying these neurons as they self-destruct should yield important clues about autophagy in all sorts of cells."

Suppressive Chemistry from the Earth and the Sea. The Alchemist, November 15, 2001

"These compounds, often described as second-generation immunosuppressants (steroidal and DNA synthesis suppressors being the first), work by binding to intracellular proteins known collectively as immunophillins. Cyclosporin A and FK506 bind to different immunophillins but the end result is the same: the resulting complexes bind to and inhibit calcineurin, the enzyme at the start of the chain reaction that leads to the production of T lymphocytes, the front-line immune weapons."

Web site for German wine

"As far as ampelography (the description of vines) is concerned, Traminer and Gewürztraminer are one and the same variety. The distinct differences in maturity and bouquet are obviously based on slight variations whithin one variety."

Nick Atkinson: Out on a Limb, or a New Branch of Signalling Theory? HMS Beagle, November 9, 2001

"Could it be that one of nature's most dazzling displays is just a "keep out" sign to insects? According to Hamilton and Brown's recent analysis [1] of published data, the autumnal change in leaf color of temperate deciduous trees is a handicap signal to their insect pests, revealing the commitment of the trees to defense. This is the first costly handicap signal to be proposed in plants [2]. In animals, handicap signals are often behavioral: stotting in Thompson's gazelles being the most commonly cited example. The scope for handicap signals in plants is perhaps more limited, at least to our current view, but the area of plant-herbivore interactions is one in which they could evolve...
Autumn will never be the same again."

Pamela Weintraub: Autoimmunity in a New Vein? - Pathobiotek. HMS Beagle, November 9, 2001

"Lindner was, to put it mildly, intrigued. 'The general dogma in medicine up until very recently,' he explains, 'is that the bloodstream in normal people is sterile. It was not supposed to have bacteria floating around in it, but there they were...'
One result of culture advancements has been the finding that the organism is present, in low number, in all or nearly all people. 'We can grow them from everyone,' he states. The Lindner team has also learned that the organisms consist of three or four closely related species of Methylobacteria, a class usually found living in the environment. 'So far we haven't found a particular species or strain to correlate with whether or not the patient has symptoms,' Lindner adds, 'though we continue to look. And although we have been looking fairly hard, we have yet to find any mechanism that would explain why certain patients have symptoms while others do not. We are now working on quantitative PCR to see whether we can confirm our original, crude associations in a more precise way...'
The company is also trying to understand the mechanism of the cell-wall pump that can respond to antibiotics by making some patients especially ill. 'We don't know what the pumps are moving in and out of the bacteria,' says Lindner, 'but we've found that some solvents influence their behavior, flipping them back and forth.' What's more, he notes, 'certain patterns of diet may do the same.' The group has learned, for instance, that niacin tends to turn up the pumps, stimulating growth of the bacteria. Other nutrients may do the reverse.
Finally, Pathobiotek is working hard to identify antibiotic sensitivity levels in autoimmune patients, a prerequisite for delivering therapeutic treatment at all. Already, the team has discovered that one antibiotic, clarithromycin, is likely to stimulate bacterial growth in most patients."

Katie Hafner: A Paternity Dispute Divides Net Pioneers. The New York Times, November 8, 2001

"Few inventions are immune from claims and counterclaims of precedence. Thomas Edison was embroiled in a number of patent disputes. It took years for the Wright brothers to secure their rightful claim to aircraft-powered flight.
Now a dispute is churning around credit for a modern scientific breakthrough: packet switching, the technology that breaks all data that travels over the Internet into discrete bundles that are then sent along various paths around the network and reassembled at their destination."

Adam Bostanci: Super Antibodies Arrest Anthrax Toxin Science Now, May 31, 2002
"When diagnosed in time, anthrax can be cured by giving large doses of antibiotics. But when treatment is started too late, patients often die: not from Bacillus anthracis bacteria itself, but from their toxin, which wreaks havoc even after the bugs have been killed. Now, researchers have come up with a second line of defense by creating potent antibodies that stop the toxin in its tracks...
Whereas unprotected rats died 1.5 hours after they had been given 10 times the lethal dose of anthrax toxin, rats injected with the antibody fragments survived for 5 hours--enough time, the researchers say, for the kidneys to filter the antibody-bound toxin out of the bloodstream. Georgiou now plans to engineer the protective antibody fragment into human antibodies. Those could be tested for efficacy in human patients if bioterrorists strike again, he says."

James Glanz: Particles Are Tiny, but Damage Can Be Great. The New York Times, October 30, 2001
"Until anthrax spores started spreading through the mail, few people gave much thought to the minuscule particles that drift almost invisibly in the atmosphere, infiltrate buildings and plunge deep into lungs. Not so for environmental scientists, who have spent decades studying the physics and physiology of particles very much like those in the most dangerous forms of biological weaponry.
From the coal dust that causes black lung disease to the bacteria-laden droplets that spread Legionnaires' disease to second- hand cigarette smoke and plain old air pollution, particles from about 0.05 microns to 10 or 20 microns in size have long been at the focus of those scientists' attention. A micron is a millionth of a meter, or an inch divided into 25,400 parts.
Those tiny particles crop up in environmental science and germ weaponry for virtually identical reasons. Once released, particles of that size can stay aloft almost indefinitely and seep into poorly sealed buildings, greatly increasing the chances of the particles' being inhaled by people.
What is more, the peculiar microscopic physics shared by all those particles makes it certain that some of them, within a highly specific range of sizes, will be able to slip past protective nose hairs, avoid sticky bronchial walls and be deposited in the deepest reaches of the lungs, where great damage can be done.
'A particle is a particle,' said Dr. Joe Mauderly, a toxicologist at the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque, where he is director of the National Environmental Respiratory Center...",br> Once the particle does land, its exact composition Ñ whether it is harmless, chemically toxic or biologically infectious Ñ comes very much into play. Of course, much is known about that process too, especially through studies of Legionnaires', tuberculosis and other bacterial diseases that are transmitted through the air on particles that are, not coincidentally, a few microns in size.
The existence of all this knowledge, freely available in unclassified literature, is double-edged, the scientists say. It may sap germ warfare of some of its mysteriousness, but it also shows how widely available much of the information needed to design the weaponry is.


David Wade: CAMELs Against Anthrax. ChemWeb Preprints, November 7, 2001
"CAMELs are a group of novel synthetic antibiotic peptides that may be effective substitutes for ciprofloxacin in the treatment of anthrax infections."


Jeff Carpenter: Rapid Anthrax Test -- It is now possible to identify anthrax in just 30 minutes, scientists announced today. abcNews.com, November 5, 2001
"The test involves a process known as polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, which has the ability to amplify tiny amounts of DNA. In this case, suspicious substances or human samples can be tested for the presence of anthrax DNA.
Other PCR tests require days to determine if the amplified DNA is in fact anthrax. The new test involves an early detection method that identifies anthrax DNA in as little as 30 minutes.
While this particular technology has been around for years, this is the first time PCR is being applied for the rapid identification of infectious diseases, such as anthrax, strep throat and herpes."


Portable Endospore Detection System for Rapid Anthrax Detection
"The EDS2000 tests for the presence of dipicolinic acid (DPA), which is extracted from the endspores when they're added to a reagent in a disposable test vial. DPA is unique to bacterial endospores and makes up as much as 10% of the endospore's dry weight. 'While the EDS2000 test is not specific to anthrax, the test is a very useful screening tool for substances that are suspected to be concentrated forms of the anthrax spore,' said Ocean Optics president Mike Morris. 'When high concentrations of these endospores are detected in a suspicious place, it's a serious indication of foul play...'
Analysis begins by swabbing the potentially infected surface. The swab is swirled in a disposable plastic cuvette containing the special reagents. The cuvette is placed into the system's cuvette holder and exposed to UV light provided by a pulsed xenon lamp. The software compares the fluorescent pattern of a standard with the sample and displays the spectra of the sample and the results -- positive, possible or negative -- within seconds of the analysis."


Eytan Elhanany et al.: Detection of specific Bacillus anthracis spore biomarkers by MALDI-TOFMS. (PDF file) Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry 15: 2110-2116 (2001)
"These markers, corresponding to a molecular weight of 2528.3, 2792.4, 3077.4, and 3590.7 Da, have not been observed in extracts of the three closely related Bacillus species - B. cereus, B. thuringiensis, and B. mycoides. These unique B. anthracis biomarkers, which were isotopically resolved and reproducibly detected in the highly accurate MALDI-TOFMS reflectron mode, may be useful as a basis for rapid and specific identification of B. anthracis strains."


Stephan R. Ritter: Ousting anthrax - Combined chemical, irradiation methods likely will be used to decontaminate mail and buildings. Chemical & Engineering News 79 (48), 24 - 26 (November 26, 2001)
"In addition to gases, there are a handful of commercially available inexpensive liquid decontamination products that can neutralize chemical agents and/or kill most microbes within a few minutes of exposure. One of the best known of these is a foam invented at Sandia National Laboratories by chemists Mark D. Tucker and Maher E. Tadros.
The nontoxic, noncorrosive Sandia foam, developed in the late 1990s, is a combination of a surfactant and water-soluble polymers that supports proprietary nucleophilic reagents and mild oxidizing reagents, such as hydrogen peroxide. It already has been proven to be very effective against anthrax spores. The researchers believe the foam's surfactant damages the spores' protective protein membrane, specifically breaking phosphate and sulfide bonds, which allows the oxidizing agent to attack DNA inside the spores."

Stu Borman: Anthrax toxin deciphered -Structure, mechanism of third toxin component determined. Chemical & Engineering News 80 (4), 13 (January 28, 2002)
"Three proteins from the bacterium Bacillus anthracis, known collectively as anthrax toxin, are responsible for the microorganism's toxic and potentially lethal effects. Two--protective antigen and lethal factor--had been structurally analyzed previously. Now, after a three-year effort, scientists have determined the crystal structure and mechanism of action of the catalytic portion of the third component, edema factor."

Below are some references found at Medscape's Anthrax site:

Morton N. Swartz: Recognition and Managment of Anthrax (PDF file). New England Journal of Medicine, November 29, 2001 (electronic version November 6, 2001)

Cutaneous Anthrax Infection (PDF file with image). New England Journal of Medicine, November 29, 2001 (electronic version November 6, 2001)

What Should I do if I Receive an Anthrax Threat by Mail?
Advise from the US Postal Service
Advice from the CDC

Wendy Orent: Today's Germ War, Yesterday's Weapons - Research suggests that smallpox could be easily genetically altered--in which case vaccinations might not protect us. Los Angeles Times, October 28, 2001

"Unlike Soviet bioweaponeers, who were trying to build more lethal agents, the Australian scientists stumbled on their results. Working on a high-tech method of mouse fertility control, they inserted a gene that produced a mammalian hormone, interleukin-4 (IL-4), into mousepox, a disease of mice that's related to smallpox. The engineered mousepox killed most of the mice injected with it, including those mice that, through vaccination or heredity, were supposed to be immune.
'Monster mousepox,' as pox virologist Mark L. Buller of Saint Louis University calls it, kills not by changing the virus itself, but rather by subverting the mouse's immune system. This experiment raises the specter of diabolical new biological weapons. Humanity evolved alongside certain diseases, smallpox among them, in an arms race between germs and our species. Over millennia, human populations developed resistance to particular diseases. But what if those evolved defenses--and vaccine-induced immunity, as well--could be shut down by a gene incorporated into the pathogen itself?"

Barnaby J. Feder and Andrew C. Revkin: Killing Anthrax - Post Offices to Install Devices to Destroy Deadly Organisms. The New York Times, October 25, 2001

"The Postal Service said last night that it would buy devices that would use powerful beams of high-energy electrons to kill anthrax or other deadly organisms in sacks of mail collected and delivered to mail-processing centers.
The technology, often known as ion beam sterilization, is already used in the food and medical-device industries. The machines will initially be installed at a small number of unidentified sites where the Postal Service believes there are clear threats of encountering tainted mail, said Sue Brennan, a spokeswoman...
In addition to ion beams, equipment used to irradiate food, sterilizing gases and X-rays can all do the job, according to product sterilization consultants. In fact, such systems are likely to be effective not just against anthrax but also a wide range of bacteria and viruses that might be used as weapons...
Except for the gas-based units from companies like Andersen Products and Vacudyne, a unit of Altair, most of the competing systems work on similar principles. High-energy gamma rays, electron beams or X- rays penetrate the mail and rapidly strip electrons from molecules inside the bacteria, a process known as ionization. Once DNA and other crucial molecules in the bacteria have been ionized, the organisms cannot survive long enough to cause deadly infections.
The far slower gas-based systems, most of which use ethylene oxide, take a day or more to sanitize mail. The highly reactive gas breaks down the DNA of spores, bacteria and viruses, but it must seep into the mail to reach them. Such technology is the cheapest option and has been widely used for decades -- the Smithsonian Institution uses it to disinfect exhibits -- but the gas is toxic and flammable, according to James Gibson, a consultant in Odessa, Fla."

Barnaby J. Feder: Intel Develops a New Way to Produce Silicon Chips. The New York Times, October 8, 2001

"Today's processors are mounted on packaging that consists of three layers. In a standard silicon processor like Intel's Pentium chip, droplets of solder carry electrical current from the chip to the package. The grid of droplets, called bumps, connects to a network of tiny copper wires in the top layer of the package; the wires are routed to copper links that drop vertically through a plastic middle layer, or core...
The invention Intel is announcing does away with the top layer of the package and the bumps of solder by connecting copper wiring directly from the core of the package to the processor.
The new structure, which Intel calls BBUL, for bumpless buildup layer, is thinner and lighter because the silicon chip is embedded in the packaging where the top connecting layer used to sit. Intel said the new design could operate at higher frequencies, use less power and move signals around the silicon chip more efficiently."

Paul Meller: EU sets rules for online marketing of financial services. InfoWorld.com, September 27, 2001

"Ministers of the 15 EU member states agreed to ban inertia selling, which involves sending unsolicited financial products or services to a consumer and charging them for these before the consumer has agreed to buy them. The ministers also agreed to introduce an opt-in rule that would prohibit companies from using unsolicited e-mail to sell their wares. At present an opt-out rule applies, which allows companies to assume that a consumer wants to receive its direct marketing literature unless they specify otherwise."

Martin Holcik: Deadly Revenge - Uptake of Oncogenes from Apoptotic Bodies.
HMS Beagle, September 14, 2001

"The role of apoptosis in a multicellular organism is to remove unwanted, damaged and potentially harmful cells. So why don't we acquire bad mutations and genes from all those dying cells in our bodies? Fortunately for us, cells have evolved potent safeguard mechanisms, such as the protection of the genome by p53, that prevents normal cells from undergoing unwanted transformation. The acquisition of mutations in genes involved in the control of genome integrity would therefore make cells more vulnerable to the effects of foreign DNA. Compromised genome integrity is frequently associated with cancer cells. Horizontal gene transfer could therefore be one mechanism that contributes significantly to the further accumulation of genes necessary for malignant transformation and tumorigenesis."

Sharon Levy: Elephant Seals.
HMS Beagle, September 14, 2001

"For Castellini, the breathing pattern of elephant seals snoozing ashore is a window into their adaptation as divers. It's difficult to study the physiology of seals diving in the wild. But northern elephant seals come ashore for a few weeks each year, on islands off the coast of California and Mexico, to breed and molt. As they sleep on the beach, they alternate periods when they cease breathing - apnea - with periods when they breathe rapidly to replenish their oxygen supply - eupnea. Their bodies cope during sleep apnea in much the same way they do during long dives."

Webster's: pieces of pork or veal that are skewered and breaded, and cooked by braising or baking.

First seen in the menu of the web site of the Softwarepatent-Arbeitsgruppe (Not really American English, I know, but nevertheless interesting).

"Political Economy of the Patent System: the Mechanisms of Patent Inflation
During the last 200 years, the patent system has continually expanded. This expansion is not so much the result of conscious economic policy but rather to self-propagating mechanisms similar to monetary inflation or to the arms race. This article analyses the mechanisms of patent inflation, traces their evolution and points to possible paths of escape."

Jane Perlez, David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker: From Many Voices, One Battle Strategy. The New York Times, September 23, 2001

"Mr. Cheney, secretary of defense in the first Bush administration, has presented the president with military, diplomatic and political choices, and from the inside he is viewed as the steady hand. Secretary Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the gulf war, was a strong cautionary voice then and has been an advocate of prudence again now. Mr. Rumsfeld was arguing even before Sept. 11 that the military needed to be reconfigured for asymmetrical threats Ñ which is exactly what crashed into his building."

Celestine Bohlen: Thinkers Face the Limits of a Just War. The New York Times, September 22, 2001

"Still, each new war brings another moral quandary and another round of debate. This time, as several scholars have noted, the issue lies in the asymmetrical balance of forces. On one side is a modern superpower with a full arsenal of high-tech weapons restrained by popular moral revulsion at the prospect of inflicting unintended damage on innocent bystanders. On the other is a shadowy network of conspirators who may lack modern weapons but have no qualms about killing thousands of victims."

From a briefing by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, as recorded by The New York Times: The New York Times, September 20, 2001

"...I've said before and I'll say it again: What we're engaged in is something that is very very different from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Kosovo, Bosnia, the kinds of things that people think of when they use the word war or campaign or conflict.
We really almost are going to have to fashion a new vocabulary and different constructs for thinking about what it is we're doing. It is very different than embarking on a campaign against a specific country within a specific time frame for a specific purpose...
I would just add that the problem that we've talked about from the day that I've arrived of asymmetrical threats of terrorism and ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, cyberattacks and weapons of mass destruction are something that are front and center to us because of the problem of proliferation and the problem that with the end of the cold war there was a relaxation of tension and almost anything that people want they can get their hands on if they're determined and if they have the money."

Barnaby J. Feder: Exploring Technology to Protect Passengers With Fingerprint or Retina Scans. The New York Times, September 19, 2001

"Governments and airlines seeking to reduce the threat of airplane hijackings by terrorists have a wide range of security technologies to choose from.
Much of the spotlight will be on biometrics systems, which identify travelers by fingerprints, the patterns in their retinas, their voices or other individual characteristics. Privacy concerns have slowed the development of such technology, but investors apparently expect that to change: the stocks of the few publicly traded biometrics companies soared Monday while most of the stock market declined."

Ephraim Schwartz: Parasitic grid wireless movement may threaten telecom profits. InfoWorld.com, August 24, 2001

"The major goal is to build up the 802.11b infrastructure inside the city. If you have a home that is connected to the Internet, for example, I use your connection and you can use mine,' said Matt Westervelt, one of the originators of what he likes to call a symbiotic grid rather than a parasitic grid.
Westervelt talks about a network of volunteers deploying, at their own expense, a wireless access point on the outside of their home, or at worst at a window, with the access point connected to the volunteer's PC.
The access point, as the name implies, gives users within range of any one of these access points who have a wireless LAN card in their mobile device a connection to any other device or node on the same LAN.
Once a more or less complete grid of access points are put up around a city, grid participants could connect into the LAN to access numerous services, including a free alternative to fee-based cellular networks. Voice services over 802.11b are typically referred to as VoIP (voice over IP).
Other services envisioned include information distribution for city services, free e-mail for all citizens, and, for a budget-strapped city government, inexpensive access to Internet terminals in public places such as libraries.
'Presumably these free metro wireless access could help to erase the digital divide,' said Scott Kennedy, one of nine candidates for mayor for the city of Seattle and owner of the BitStar Cafe in the city."

Jennifer S. Lee: Postdoc Trail - Long and Filled With Pitfalls. The New York Times, August 21, 2001

"...As the annual number of doctorates awarded in science nationwide has greatly outpaced the growth in the number of faculty jobs over the last 20 years, scientists like Dr. Dugan are finding that their postdoctoral years are stretching out for a discouragingly long time.
What used to be two or three years of career development often becomes five or more years in one post after another. Many of the postdocs are almost 40 before they start their first permanent positions and begin saving for retirement...
Postdocs often fall through the institutional cracks at universities, largely because of the debate of who should take responsibility for them -- whether it is the universities, the individual laboratories or the organizations paying for the research, like the National Institutes of Health.
Last November, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine issued a report that said it was in the long-term interests of American science for postdocs to get better treatment."

Steve Lohr: I.B.M. Making a Commitment to Next Phase of the Internet. The New York Times, August 2, 2001

"I.B.M. is announcing today a new initiative to support and exploit a technology known as grid computing, which the company and much of the computer research community say is the next evolutionary step in the development of the Internet.
The grid vision is that everyone at a desktop machine or hand-held computer could eventually have the power of a supercomputer at his or her fingertips, by amassing the processing power and information resources attached to networks. Although the idea has been around for some time, the types of computer hardware and software to achieve it are only now coming within reach."

Tom Sullivan: Compaq partners with Platform Computing to back global grids. InfoWorld, November 7, 2001

"Grid computing got a big boost on Wednesday when Platform Computing made the open-source Globus toolkit commercially available and pulled together through partnerships another grid solution that Compaq will sell.
The vision of grid computing is that computer systems the world over, from desktops to the heartiest of supercomputers, will be connected in a manner much like power grids. With that type of structure in place, users and systems then can plug into the grid to access software, services, and unused computing cycles.
Industry experts are coining the phrase Great Global Grid as a future generation of the World Wide Web, only far more powerful. But thus far, grids have largely been relegated to the academic and scientific communities."

Brenda Sandburg: Battling the Patent Trolls. The Recorder @ Law.com, July 31, 2001

"Peter Detkin's spin sounds surprisingly like something out of the Brothers Grimm.
In the sleepy village of Santa Clara, Calif., there lived a very wealthy but very frightened giant named Intel. Intel was plagued by a fearsome band of evil trolls -- patent trolls, to be exact -- who wanted a glittering pot of gold in exchange for doing absolutely nothing. And they were very powerful because they said they owned the patent on some of the magic Intel used to become rich.
The true story behind the fairy tale, at least Detkin's version of it, unfolds like a case study on a patent system run amok. The assistant general counsel at semiconductor titan Intel Corp., Detkin spends much of his time these days fighting off claims of patent infringement by companies that have never made a semiconductor device. In 1999 alone, the claims topped $15 billion, Detkin said, and he hurls the epithet "patent trolls" at the companies that want Intel to pay up. He even keeps a couple of troll dolls on his desk in the gray warren of buildings at Intel's Santa Clara headquarters just as a reminder of his company's legal enemies.
'We were sued for libel for the use of the term patent extortionists so I came up with patent trolls,' Detkin said. 'A patent troll is somebody who tries to make a lot of money off a patent that they are not practicing and have no intention of practicing and in most cases never practiced.'"

The above story was reported by Hartmut Pilch on the Patents mailing list, who had this to say:

"TechSearch, a company that has sued Greg for patent infringement, is now biting Intel using software patents. The Intel patent department is calling them patent trolls. A nice word, which should be reserved for those people at Intel and in other big companies, who have been letting their patent lawyers run loose and lobby for unlimited patentability. Now they are getting the punishment they deserve, from people who are probably not trolls but just clever and unscrupulous businessmen."

Rick Weiss: The Repercussions of Taking Genetic Control. Los Angeles Times, July 30, 2001

"As of now, there are no outside authorities--governmental or otherwise--stepping into decisions on whether, when or how to use PGD (preimplantation genetic diagnosis) technology. Nor are there likely to be any soon.
'Do you really want to start assessing people's motives for having kids?' says Jeff Kahn, an ethicist at the University of Minnesota, summing up the consensus in the field. 'Good luck. We just don't do that, and we shouldn't. Try to tell me if having a kid to do work on a farm is a better reason than having one to save the life of a 6-year-old.'
Kahn's comments reflect an emerging view that there's nothing inherently unethical about human beings taking control of their genome--what matters is how they use that control. And ethicists and scientists have no trouble identifying reasons to be concerned about embryo screening. The most obvious reason is the idea of the designer baby, with its echoes of the eugenics movement of early 20th century America and its later adoption by the Nazis."

Kenneth Chang: Clever Wiring Harnesses Tiny Switches. The New York Times, July 17, 2001

"Two years ago, scientists at Hewlett- Packard and U.C.L.A. announced that they had created a custom-designed, carbon-based molecule called rotaxane that could act as a switch. A ring-shape structure slides up or down along the rest of the molecule, changing its electrical resistance. The switch mechanism consisted of rotaxane molecules between two crossed wires.
The rotaxane switches developed by Hewlett-Packard could not be reset, but the following year, the U.C.L.A. scientists developed a different molecule, with two interlocking rings; groups of those molecules could be switched back and forth between the on and off positions.
Because of the thickness of the wires used in its experiments to date, the switches Hewlett-Packard has used so far actually consist of millions of molecules each. Research published last month by scientists at Rice University and Penn State indicate that the switches can be scaled down to a single molecule."

Steve Bunk: Change of Expression. For proteomics predictions, mRNA transcripts won't do. The Scientist 15[14]:17, Jul. 9, 2001

"...Aebersold and colleagues developed a new technique to identify and quantify proteins in mixtures. It relies on reagents called isotope coded affinity tags (ICAT) that can be synthesized in either isotopically heavy or light forms. Aebersold explains that the 2D gel approach is limited by the total amount of protein that can be loaded onto the gel before its resolution breaks down. This means lower-abundance proteins, such as those involved in various regulatory activities, cannot be analyzed if very complex mixtures are being separated. The ICAT-based process virtually eliminates this problem."

Barnaby J. Feder: Pursuing a New Line in Optical Research. The New York Times, July 7, 2001

"...For all its marvels, the current generation of fiber is expensive to operate because it requires powerful amplifiers and signal repeaters to keep the light moving through its solid core. Hollow fiber, if it can be perfected, could enable light to be pumped virtually unimpeded down tiny corridors of air stretching thousands of miles.
Operators of systems with hollow fibers would not only do away with many of the supporting components of today's networks, they figure that they could cram more lightwaves into the fibers at higher energy levels before dispersion causes the lightwaves to interfere with one another.
That is the theory, anyway...
OmniGuide has a high-powered board of advisers, including John D. Joannopoulos, an M.I.T. physicist who is an expert on photonic crystals, as the materials used in hollow-core fibers are known. Also on board is James A. Harrington, a Rutgers University optics expert whose research programs have groomed many young photonics engineers for Corning and its rivals."

Roc’o Sanchez-Fernandez and Philip A. Rea: Do Plants Have More Genes Than Humans?. HMS Beagle, July 6, 2001

"No one knows why the number of open-reading-frames (ORFs) in the Arabidopsis genome (25,500) [4] is only slightly less than that estimated for the human genome (31,500) [2,3] - specifically, how humans can get by with so few genes - but we can answer Messing's opening question 'Do plants have more genes than humans?' in the affirmative in at least some cases. The ATP-binding cassette (ABC) proteins are a case in point, many of which are modularly constructed membrane proteins containing idiotypic nucleotide-binding folds (NBFs). By compiling the first complete inventory of the ABC protein superfamily from Arabidopsis [5] - the first complete inventory of ABC proteins from any multicellular organism - we have determined that the genome of this plant encodes 129 ABC proteins, which fall into 13 subfamilies (figure 1). This gene count far outstrips those for the human genome and for any other animal genome sequenced to date. The human genome is estimated to encode a mere 51 ABC proteins; those of Caenorhabditis elegans (19,000 ORFs) and Drosophila melanogaster (13,600 ORFs) only 58 and 55, respectively."

Found in Yahoo's Financial Glossary

"A measure of the goodness of fit of the relationship between the dependent and independent variables in a regression analysis; for instance, the percentage of variation in the return of an asset explained by the market portfolio return. Also known as R-square.

R square (R2)
Square of the correlation coefficient. The proportion of the variability in one series that can be explained by the variability of one or more other series a regression model. A measure of the quality of fit. 100% R-square means perfect predictability.

Correlation coefficient
A standardized statistical measure of the dependence of two random variables, defined as the covariance divided by the standard deviations of two variables."

Rick Perera: Hackers delay censorship-busting software. InfoWorld, June 28, 2001

"A groups of hackers has delayed introducing its planned Web software that is meant to allow users to evade government censorship of the Internet. The delayed project, code-named 'Peekabooty,' was originally scheduled for launch next month at the hackers' convention Def Con, the group Cult of the Dead Cow (CDC) said in an e-mail message to journalists...
CDC said it will demonstrate the current version of Peekabooty at Def Con, which takes place on July 13 to 15 in Las Vegas, for 'selected journalists and opinion leaders, mostly to avoid any charges of vaporware.' "

So what is vaporware?

The Jargon Dictionary dryly states:
Products announced far in advance of any release (which may or may not actually take place).
See also brochureware:
Planned but non-existent product like vaporware, but with the added implication that marketing is actively selling and promoting it (they've printed brochures). Brochureware is often deployed as a strategic weapon; the idea is to con customers into not committing to an existing product of the competition's. It is a safe bet that when a brochureware product finally becomes real, it will be more expensive than and inferior to the alternatives that had been available for years.

And here a real-life example:

Scott Rosenberg: Microsoft's .Net: Visionary or vaporware? Salon.com, June 30, 2000

"Microsoft's leaders themselves had trouble defining the '.Net vision' at the rollout event last week. There was a lot of talk about 'the cloud' -- a network engineer's term meaning 'the whole mess of stuff that's out there somewhere on the Net' -- and the cloudiness seemed to seep into the language every time someone tried to explain .Net to the crowd. Here, for instance, is Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer attempting to clarify:

Joris Evers: Windows XP to get fewer Microsoft Smart Tags outside United States. InfoWorld, June 21, 2001

"The Smart Tags feature in Office XP, launched in late May, is designed to scan users' documents and add -- among other things -- links to relevant information on the Web. Windows XP and the upcoming version of Web browser Internet Explorer (IE) also will support the feature, which in the case of IE will result in Smart Tags appearing on Web pages.
The feature is controversial; critics have said Microsoft could bundle a bunch of Smart Tags with its software to promote its online properties. Local Microsoft subsidiaries, however, are responsible for Smart Tags in their own areas, and many U.S.-specific tags were removed from Office XP."

Rick Perera: Microsoft caves to criticism, drops Smart Tags. InfoWorld, June 28, 2001

"Microsoft has decided to drop the controversial Smart Tags feature from its forthcoming Windows XP release. The feature will not appear in the final version of the operating system, scheduled for release Oct. 25, or in the new Web browser Internet Explorer 6.0, the company said Thursday...
Smart Tags already operate in Office XP, launched in late May, providing, for example, links from company stock symbols to relevant information on Microsoft's MSN MoneyCentral site.
'We still very much believe in the possibilities and the techniques that Smart Tags will bring to users of Office and Windows at a later stage,' Schaap said. 'Having said that, we feel that looking at the user experience, there needs to be a balance in what the user actually uses and experiences to the needs and the demands by the content providers ... and we feel that we did not adequately get that balance between those two groups.' "

Webster: ontology: the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being, reality, or ultimate substance.

Michael A. Hiltzik: Birth of a Thinking Machine. Los Angeles Times, June 21, 2001

"Most of Lenat's programmers are trained not in computer engineering but in fields related to logic and human thought: The staff includes about 20 philosophers and smaller teams of experts in subjects ranging from theology to physics.
Among them is Charles Klein, 33, a University of Virginia-trained metaphysician who joined Cycorp in 1999 after finding its want-ad for ontological engineers in a meager professional quarterly called Jobs for Philosophers.
In a room he shares with a large monitor displaying Cyc's characteristic rows of logical queries and responses, Klein spends hours inculcating the system with such abstract concepts as "belief"--a difficult notion for a computer program to grasp, possibly because it has more to do with point of view than with anything true or false about the real world.
'People who do this enjoy the process of decoding thought,' he says of his daily routine of typing assertions into Cyc's database and replying to the computer's minute requests for clarifications. It is the kind of work that only a specialist could love. 'Take the phrase: I like to go shopping,' Klein says. 'Connecting each word to a concept is fascinating to any philosopher who's interested in the structure of thought and inference.' "

Marla Dickerson: A Nutty but Natural Power Source. Los Angeles Times, June 16, 2001

"The concept of using plant oils for a fuel source might seem a little nutty. But when Rudolph Diesel unveiled his now-famous engine at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris, he ran the contraption on peanut oil.
Then, as now, the world was powered by oil and gas. Thus, Diesel watched the technology that bore his name become synonymous with dirty fossil fuel. But he never gave up the dream that plants, not petroleum, would someday gain widespread acceptance with the motoring public. 'The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today,' Diesel said in a 1912 speech. 'But such oils may become in the course of time as important as petroleum and the coal tar.'
Nearly nine decades later, Shaq Diesel is better known than biodiesel in the United States, where petroleum-based products maintain a huge cost advantage. The average price for a gallon of diesel fuel in Southern California is about $1.63, while a gallon of biodiesel can cost upward of $3 a gallon.
High taxes on petroleum products have narrowed the gap substantially in Europe, where automotive biodiesel technology is flourishing. But interest began growing in the U.S. in the early 1990s, when Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 1992."

AP Science Writer: Lab Study Finds Vitamin C Dangers. Los Angeles Times, June 15, 2001

"In the study, Blair and his colleagues analyzed the effects of vitamin C on lipid hydroperoxide, a compound produced in the body from fat in the diet. Lipid hydroperoxide can be converted in the cell into agents, called genotoxins, that can damage DNA. Blair said his group found that vitamin C was highly efficient in converting lipid hydroperoxide into the gene-damaging toxins."

You can read more about this in Science 292, 2083-2086 (2001)

Ricki Lewis and Barry A. Palevitz: Genome Economy. The Scientist 15[12]:21, Jun. 11, 2001

"The Human Genome Project's discovery that the human body runs on an instruction manual of a mere 35,000 or so genes--compared to the worm's 19,000, the fruit fly's 13,000, and the tiny mustard relative Arabidopsis thaliana's 25,000--placed humanity on an even playing field with these other, supposedly simpler, organisms. It was a humbling experience, but humility quickly gave way to awe with the realization that the human genome might encode 100,000 to 200,000 proteins. Scientists base this number on the analysis of DNA sequences--called expressed sequence tags, or ESTs--that are reverse-transcribed from mRNAs. The question is, where is the information for all those extra proteins?"

Karen Young Kreeger: Scientific, Ethical Questions Temper Pharmacogenetics. The Scientist 15[12]:32, Jun. 11, 2001

"The field of pharmacogenetics, the study of inherited differences that influence a person's response to drugs, rivals bioinformatics in claims about how it will revolutionize pharmaceutical research. To be sure, pharmacogenetics and its allied discipline, pharmacogenomics (the use of tools such as microarrays and proteomics to study drug response) has opened a wealth of research questions and job opportunities. But scientists are still working to untangle the ethical and research complications that delay the development of new medications....
Nevertheless, the complexity of drug development relates to the difficult study of responses to treatment, which involves differences in effectiveness, resistance, side effects, and drug metabolism. Single genes do not determine most of the effects of medications and not all responses have inherited roots. What's more, amassing databases of human genetic profiles creates enormous ethical and privacy problems. The genetic revolution in pharmaceuticals may be on the horizon, but science remains in the murky predawn. 'It has a lot of potential, but so did nuclear energy,' says Mellors. 'It's a great area, but to think we'll be able to tell a person's individual response to an aspirin tablet or a new drug in the next few years, forget it. [The advances] will be incremental.' "

The Pharmacogenetics Research Network defines pharmacogenetics as follows:
"Pharmacogenetics is the study of how genes affect the way people respond to medicines, including antidepressants, chemotherapy treatments, asthma drugs, and many others. The ultimate goal of pharmacogenetics research is to help doctors tailor doses of medicines to a person's unique genetic make-up. This will make medicines safer and more effective for everyone." Or in short: "One Size Doesn't Fit All."

Carbon Sinks' Usefulness Limited, Scientists Say. UN Wire, May 24, 2001

"The potential use of forests as carbon "sinks" to offset carbon dioxide emissions is seriously limited, according to two US studies published today in Nature. International climate talks in November in The Hague broke down in part because of a disagreement between advocates of carbon sinks -- including the United States, the world's leading carbon dioxide emitter -- and sink opponents (Alex Kirby, BBC Online, 23 May)."

Anne Eisenberg: What's Next: Batteries Push Paper Into Electronics Age. The New York Times, May 24, 2001

" 'This is a conventional zinc-manganese dioxide battery, with the usual anode and cathode,' said Baruch Levanon, chief executive of Power Paper, the private company that developed the battery. 'The difference is in the formula for the electrolytes,' Mr. Levanon said. 'We call it our Coca-Cola formula because the chemistry of the ink we used to print the electrolytes is a secret.'
Usually the moist paste of electrolytes must be encased in metal. Here, though, the electrolytes, like the anode, cathode and conductors, are printed in layers directly on the paper or plastic surface. The cell, which is about as thick as the paper in a milk carton, produces 1.5 volts and has a shelf life of two and a half years, Mr. Levanon said. It is not rechargeable and is designed to be used with disposable products with modest current requirements for powering things like an L.C.D. or a small microprocessor. Because the battery is so flat, its capacity is proportional not to its volume, as would be the case, for instance, in D-size batteries, but to its area. To produce as much energy as an AA alkaline battery, for instance, the paper battery would need to cover about a square foot...
The paper battery, or ones similar to it, may one day be used in the nascent field sometimes called paper electronics, helping to produce electronic books or newspapers on thin, flexible pages that can be thumbed through nearly as easily as printed pages."

Chris Gaither: Intel Hones Larger Wafer for a Cheaper Chip. The New York Times, May 14, 2001

"In a few weeks, a 26,000-pound machine will begin shooting ions into silicon wafers like lightning bolts, one process in hundreds that silicon must undergo during its transformation into a computer chip.
The immense machine, called an implanter, will be a small piece of the Intel Corporation's newest semiconductor factory here, scheduled to begin mass production early next year."

Richard A. Bond: Is Paradoxical Pharmacology a Strategy Worth Pursuing? BioMedNet, May 14, 2001

"Although -adrenoceptors are desensitized in patients with CHF, these receptors still respond to agonist infusions with an increase in contractility. Therefore, the paradox remains as to why impeding a contractile system results in an increase in contractility. Although various theories exist on why -blockers are useful in CHF, on the surface these effects appear to be paradoxical.
Other isolated instances exist where paradoxical pharmacology has become accepted. For example, stimulants such as methylphenidate and amphetamines are used to treat hyperactivity in children, and skin irritants such as retinoic acid and benzoyl peroxide are used to treat acne, which is an inflammatory skin condition."

Dave Wilson: Free Stuff on Web Gives Way to Profit Motive. Los Angeles Times, May 13, 2001

"When Web browsing software such as Mosaic opened the Internet to the masses, the rush was on. Investment money inundated Web site operators who could provide numbers -- any numbers -- suggesting that consumers were aware of the site.
The idea was that, in the future, when everybody was on the Internet, such mind share would pay off handsomely and anyone who tried to set up a competing Web site later in the same product category would be doomed to failure.
Jack Marshall, a co-founder of Photoloft.com, one of the first sites allowing users to share their snapshots on the Web, said the obsession with being first to market and building mind share reached such absurd proportions that many companies paid for the privilege of providing products or services."

Paul Krugman: Unrefined truth about gasoline. Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/The New York Times, May 11 & 9, 2001

"In the wake of the energy crisis in the 1970's, ordinary people in the United States began conserving energy Ñ not as a "sign of personal virtue," as Mr. Cheney sneeringly puts it, but because they wanted to save money. Cars, in particular, became much more fuel-efficient. Meanwhile the oil industry was subject to refinery creep, the tendency of refining capacity to grow through incremental improvements even when no new refineries are built. The result was excess capacity and squeezed margins, right up to the late 1990's.
What finally brought us up against capacity constraints was a surge in demand that was partly due to the economic boom of the later Clinton years, but mainly due to the renewed enthusiasm of Americans for huge, gas-guzzling vehicles Ñ an enthusiasm, er, fueled by cheap gas."

Aaron Zitner: Sniffing at Empty Nose Idea. Los Angeles Times, May 10, 2001 "...At professional conferences, one group of physicians has been trying to build a case that removal of too much turbinate tissue can cause an illness the doctors call empty nose syndrome, which they say has appeared only in recent years. Other specialists doubt that the syndrome exists. They say that turbinates have been removed for 100 years with few problems and that the pain patients report must come from some other cause."

Click to see full graphic.

"One day in the summer of 1994, Kern was showing X-rays of these patients to a visiting Swedish surgeon, Monica Stenquist. "I put up the X-rays, and they show there's nothing in the nose," Kern recalled.
"And Monica said, 'Oh, that looks like an empty nose.' "
Empty nose syndrome had been given its name.
Eventually, Kern--with Dr. Eric J. Moore and other colleagues--conducted a look-back study of all 242 patients they had seen from 1982 to 1999 with a diagnosis of atrophic rhinitis. The study found that in 85 of the patients, the deterioration of nose function had been caused by normal aging, inflammatory disease or by infection. For the other 157 patients, however, the cause was not any of those things. Every one of the 157 patients had undergone surgery in which turbinates were pared back or removed.
Kern reasoned that the surgery had caused a new and discrete ailment: empty nose syndrome."

Jeff Madrick: Economic Scene: Each Generation Has Its Own New Economy. The New York Times, May 10, 2001

"What was the genesis of the idea? Research I recently completed at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard shows that the press, business economists and economics authors have been using the term new economy since the 1970's to describe many different and often unrelated things. Sometimes it was about computer technology. But it has also been used to describe a service economy, globalization, the two-worker family, stagnating wages, the rise of small companies, deindustrialization and corporate restructuring...
It was the rising stock market, not economic analysis, that pressed the new economy indelibly into the nation's consciousness. High-tech stocks soared in 1999, and references to the new economy in the business press tripled, to more than 3,000...
Now, the economy is slowing, dot-coms are failing, venture capital has dried up, fortunes are lost, as is a goodly portion of retirement savings, and doubters are rising from the woodwork. Is a more clear-headed age upon us?
It is not likely. We economics writers cannot seem to get out of the way. The Wall Street Journal recently wondered, for example, whether there would be a "New Economy growth recession."

Bill Gates seems to think differently:

Bob Trott: Gates touts 'information economy' over New Economy. InfoWorld.com, May 23, 2001

"Chairman Bill Gates on Wednesday gave a roomful of fellow business leaders a short economics lesson at Microsoft's CEO Summit, saying intellectual property -- an issue close to Microsoft's heart -- is the linchpin of the information economy.'
Gates told the 160 CEOs, including eBay's Meg Whitman, Compaq's Michael Cappellas, and Disney's Michael Eisner, at the two-day conference that the recent economic downturn had separated the wheat -- the information economy - from the chaff -- the New Economy."

See also: Susan Stellin: New Economy: Privacy Concerns for Google Archive.

Elizabeth Shogren: 'Clean' Electricity: Coal Emerging From Black Cloud. Los Angeles Times, May 9, 2001

"Experts say the nation's generating capacity needs to grow 45% by 2020. Coal-fired plants already produce half of the nation's electricity. Although coal's share is expected to decline over time, its advocates say other energy sources will never be plentiful enough to eliminate coal from the mix entirely.
But environmentalists predict the country will pay a significant price--in the form of more smog, acid rain and global warming--if it rushes to embrace a fuel that will always be dirtier than just about any alternative energy source.
To some extent, both sides are right...
An hour's drive southeast of Tampa, Polk Power Station is one of only two working examples in the U.S. of electricity produced by a process called combined-cycle integrated gasification. It is the most advanced technology to emerge from the Energy Department's 16-year-old "clean coal" program. Instead of burning raw coal like most power plants, the Polk plant pressure-cooks it, creating a gas that fires the turbines of Polk's big electrical generator."

See also a related article by the American Chemical Society: Jeff Johnson: Clean Coal Back on Front Burner. Chemical & Engineering News 79 (19), 37 - 40 (May 7, 2001)

While most government-supported energy R&D programs fared poorly in the Bush Administration budget proposal announced last month, one old standby, thought to be long gone, got a jolt of new life...

In explaining the Administration's decision, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham stressed that coal supplies half of the nation's electricity and that the U.S. has 250 years' worth of coal buried beneath its soil...

When announcing the coal R&D funding increase, Abraham also noted a nearly identical cut in government support for research of renewable sources of energy--wind, solar, and geothermal--and a $40 million decline in government R&D funding for alternative motor vehicles...

Kripowicz, echoing the views of many coal supporters interviewed by C&EN, says the recent near-tripling of the price of natural gas is fueling coal's resurgence.
His hope is that more utilities will make an announcement like TVA, the nation's largest public power producer, did a while back, saying it is strongly considering building an integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) power plant. This is a coal gasification technology that Kripowicz's program has developed and demonstrated at several sites, including a 250-MW unit operating near Tampa, Fla...

... Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) has introduced legislation to allow governors to temporarily suspend installation of NOx controls for new power plants if the plants are needed to ensure electricity generation reliability.
If the legislators or Cheney's task force limit the new source review requirements of the Clean Air Act, they will also remove one of the clearest motivations pushing utilities to install technologies developed by the DOE Clean Coal Technology Program.
The net effect could be billions of taxpayer and industry dollars spent to develop technologies that aren't required in the U.S., while coal retains its reputation as the dirtiest fuel.

Elizabeth Shogren: 'Clean' Electricity: Coal Emerging From Black Cloud. Los Angeles Times, May 9, 2001

"Polk's gasification equipment combines a mixture of coal and water with pure oxygen and heats it to 2,500 degrees under high pressure to produce a methane-like fuel called synthesis gas, or syngas.
Texaco, the leading producer of gasification equipment, has been gradually improving the technology. The company's gasifiers can produce syngas from a variety of solid fuels, including petroleum coke, a byproduct of oil refining.
Suddenly, utility companies and independent power producers are clamoring to buy its gasifiers. "We've had many, many inquiries," said James S. Falsetti, a Texaco senior vice president. "We've got so many, it's hard for us to keep up."
Several factors have improved the economics of gasification. The cost of building gasifiers has dropped. Natural gas prices spiked last year; they are still high and subject to big fluctuations. Government pollution regulations make the technology more affordable in some parts of the country than traditional coal plants.
"We're economic now," declared James C. Houck, head of Texaco's power and gasification operations.
The biggest black cloud on the horizon had been the possibility that the federal government would cap emissions of carbon dioxide. But it appears that prospect has been virtually ruled out for as long as Bush is president."

Duke Helfand: The Riddle of 'Noninstructional Instruction'. Los Angeles Times, May 9, 2001

"The bell rings at Dorsey High School and students spill out of their classrooms. A girl sips a Coke at her locker. Two sweethearts embrace. Others mingle on the grassy quad.
A little relaxation between classes, right?
Wrong.
These students are technically in class, thanks to a bureaucratic edict that treats "passing periods" as an instructional activity in California's schools. In the oxymoronic jargon of education, these several minutes between classes are called noninstructional instructional time.
A few minutes here or there might not seem like much to moan about. But schools are paid for those minutes--they are part of the minimum time students must be enrolled for campuses to get state funding. And more important, those minutes add up to a month or more of class time over the course of a school year."

Ron Dagani: Sticking things to carbon nanotubes. Chemical & Engineering News 79 (19), 15 (May 7, 2001)

"Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), for all their remarkable and promising properties, will never totally fulfill their potential until an efficient way is found to manipulate and organize them into ordered arrays. One strategy that scientists have begun to explore is to attach organic molecules-- "handles"--to these tubular nanostructures in a noncovalent way, which preserves the nanotubes' "pi"-networks--and thus their electronic characteristics.
Preliminary success in using this strategy has now been reported independently by two research teams..."

That's good because Heath, Stoddart, and their coworkers plan to graft molecular switches onto the polymer and then assemble the wrapped nanotubes, which serve as nanowires, into crossbar lattices in which switches are located between individual crossed nanowires. It's all part of their effort to build a nanoscale computer (C&EN, Oct. 16, 2000, page 27).

Kenneth Chang: I.B.M. Creates a Tiny Circuit Out of Carbon. The New York Times, August 27, 2001

"In another step toward post-silicon computers, I.B.M. scientists have built a computer circuit out of a single strand of carbon.
The I.B.M. circuit performs only a single, simple operation -- flipping a "true" to "false" and vice versa -- but it marks the first time that a device made of carbon strands known as nanotubes has been able to carry out any sort of logic. It is also the first logic circuit made of a single molecule.
At least another year or two of research is needed before I.B.M. can even evaluate whether a practical computer chip can be manufactured from nanotubes, said Dr. Phaedon Avouris, manager of nanoscale science at IBM Research and the lead scientist on the project."

David Legarth: The incredible shrinking transistor. InfoWorld.com, November 9, 2001

"The nanotransistor is not made of silicon, but from an organic (carbon-based) semiconductor material known as thiol. The principal problem with creating such a tiny transistor -- that of fabricating electrodes that are separated by only a few molecules and attaching electrical contacts to the tiny devices -- was overcome by enabling the transistor to effectively build itself from a liquid solution...
Using two nanotransistors, the Bell Labs scientists built a voltage inverter, a standard electronic circuit module commonly used in computer chips that converts 0 to 1 or vice versa. With further development, it may be possible to create microprocessors and memory chips using nanotransistors, squeezing thousands of times as many transistors onto each chip than is possible today, Bell Labs said in the statement...
The other main approach ... has been developed by IBM Corp., which is using carbonnanotubes, a tube-shaped molecule of carbon atoms that is 100,000 times thinner than a human hair, as the basis of computer circuits."

Webster's: deserved punishment, retribution.

Matt Richtel: Layoffs Are Becoming a Spring Break for the Dot-Com Generation. The New York Times, May 5, 2001

"The Bay Area and California economies are still surprisingly strong. In March, the first month that the number of jobs fell nationwide, California added 57,000 jobs, 2,000 of them in Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley. Though the county's unemployment rate rose slightly, to 2.2 percent, it remains at nearly full employment.
'It looks more and more like it was a bubble, but we don't know that for sure,' Mr. Challenger said, adding that a lot of people of the older generation are saying that younger people 'are going to get their comeuppance, but who knows?'."

Laura M. Holson: Enron's deregulation demise. The Daily Bulletin, December 1, 2001

"The rapid downfall of Enron is likely to hasten the end of California's freewheeling experiment in energy deregulation, industry executives and government officials said on Thursday.
But in this state, where the state treasury was drained and the biggest utility was left bankrupt by the deregulation plan, various people saw a kind of rough justice in Enron's getting its comeuppance..."

Andy Newman: Face-Recognition Systems Offer New Tools, but Mixed Results. The New York Times, May 3, 2001

"About 100 casinos across the country now use cameras hooked up to facial recognition systems to search their floors for known cheats, purse-snatchers and coin-cup swipers, according to the International Biometric Group, a consulting firm in New York. (Face recognition is one of several types of biometric systems, which use physical measurements to identify people.)."

AP: New way to conserve water. CNNFN, May 1, 2001

"The Bamboo Farm and Coastal Gardens, a 46-acre research station operated by the University of Georgia's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, is demonstrating the principles of xeriscaping, a seven-step gardening movement that seeks to conserve water by using only as much as plants actually require.
Xeriscaping, pronounced "zair-uh-scaping," is derived from the Greek word for dry, xero. The movement started in the West, where gardeners and landscapers realized that growing grass in the desert was an expensive, futile battle, and turned to new methods to make gardens and lawns beautiful without large amounts of water."

Gina Kolata: Veiled Messages of Terrorists May Lurk in Cyberspace. The New York Times, October 30, 2001

"The investigation of the terrorist attacks on the United States is drawing new attention to a stealthy method of sending messages through the Internet. The method, called steganography, can hide messages in digital photographs or in music files but leave no outward trace that the files were altered.
Intelligence officials have not revealed many details about whether, or how often, terrorists are using steganography. But a former French defense ministry official said that it was used by recently apprehended terrorists who were planning to blow up the United States embassy in Paris.
The terrorists were instructed that all their communications were to be made through pictures posted on the Internet, the defense official said...
The idea of steganography is to take advantage of the fact that digital files, like photographs or music files, can be slightly altered and still look the same to the human eye or sound the same to the human ear.
The only way to spot such an alteration is with computer programs that can notice statistical deviations from the expected patterns of data in the image or music. Those who are starting to look for such deviations say that their programs are as yet imperfect but that, nonetheless, some are finding widespread use of steganography on the Internet. For national security reasons some of these experts do not want to reveal exactly what they find, and where...
Steganography, Greek for "hidden writing," is one of the most ancient ways of passing secret messages, but until very recently few computer scientists paid it much attention -- it seemed more a relic of ancient times, sort of a Paul Revere -- type "one if by land two if by sea" way of sending information...
Bruce Schneier, a founder of Counterpane, an Internet security company, likened steganography to what is known as a dead drop -- a message, money or papers left in a hiding place to be picked up by someone."

John Markoff: Record Panel Threatens Researcher With Lawsuit. The New York Times, April 24, 2001

"The dispute casts a spotlight on an otherwise little-noticed field known as steganography, or the science of hiding information in plain sight. Techniques from the field are being used to create digital watermarks in the industry's effort to protect digital music against copyright violations."

Thomas H. Maugh II: Fat May Be the Answer for Many Illnesses. Los Angeles Times, April 10, 2001
"Fat, the great American obsession, may provide a new source of replacement cells for a variety of medical treatments and eliminate the need for the controversial use of embryonic stem cells.
A team of researchers from UCLA and the University of Pittsburgh has isolated stem cells--primitive cells with the potential to become virtually any type of tissue--from fat collected by liposuction and converted them into bone, cartilage and muscle.
The researchers believe the cells could have many applications, from damaged knees to brain implants for Parkinson's disease and strokes."

Maggie Fox: U.S. Company Says It Cloned Human Embryo. Los Angeles Times, November 25, 2001
"A U.S. company said today it had cloned a human embryo in a breakthrough aimed not at creating a human being but at mining the embryo for stem cells used to treat diseases.
It is the first time anyone has reported successfully cloning a human embryo, and biotechnology company Advanced Cell Technology Inc. (ACT), based in Worcester, Massachusetts, said it hopes the experiment will lead to tailored treatments for diseases ranging from Parkinson's to juvenile diabetes...
The company also reported a second breakthrough in its paper, published in the online journal E-biomed: Journal of Regenerative Medicine. Researchers took a human egg cell and got it to progress to the embryo stage without any kind of fertilization, either by sperm or outside genetic material.
The process is known as parthenogenesis, and occurs in insects and microbes but not naturally in higher animals."

Shari Roan: High Fever, Meet High-Tech Thermometer. Los Angeles Times, April 9, 2001

"Remember Mom placing her cool hand on your hot forehead to check for a fever?
Now there's a high-tech version of that loving, motherly gesture: a new type of thermometer that may allow doctors, hospital workers--and moms and dads--to more easily get an accurate temperature reading. A study published last month in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine found that the temporal artery thermometer detected fevers more often than the popular tympanic thermometer, which is placed in the ear. The method may even prove to be better than taking a rectal temperature, which has been considered the most practical method of getting an accurate reading.
The temporal artery thermometer uses an infrared sensor to detect and measure heat. Roughly the size of a cellular phone, the device is swept over the forehead and detects temperature at numerous points. It then calculates the readings to produce the peak temperature."

Webster's: urgent or persistent in asking or demanding; insistent; refusing to be denied; annoyingly urgent or persistent.

Alex Pham: 'Final Fantasy' comes alive with digital animation. Los Angeles Times, April 6, 2001 "Nevertheless, "Final Fantasy" is the closest Hollywood has come so far to having fully digital actors--so-called synthespians--that will unhesitatingly do the director's bidding." The image on the right consists of three graphics; you may have to reload this page in order to see it.

Alex Pham: 'Final Fantasy' comes alive with digital animation. Los Angeles Times, May 9, 2001

"Aki Ross is the very model of a modern movie heroine: brunet, lithe, headstrong and confident enough to lead a team of commandos on a mission to rescue the planet Earth. No doubt the producers of her new film are counting on these qualities to make the audience forget that despite her astonishing resemblance to a living, breathing person, everything about her, from her form-fitting spacesuit to the twinkle in her eyes, was created inside a computer.
Whether her creators have fully succeeded in making Ross a convincing digital simulation of a real human being will not be known until the film, "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within," opens nationwide in mid-July. But as the most ambitious attempt yet--and one of the costliest--to create a photorealistic world and its denizens via computer animation, "Final Fantasy" is likely to reanimate a 20-year debate over the role of synthespians, or real-looking but artificial human actors.
"We're giving people something they've never seen before," said Andy Jones, the lead animator for Square Pictures, the producers of the film. "We have the ability to make our actors do what we want, but still make it look believable. We're able to create an entirely new world with no limitations. We can put characters in more dangerous situations, make them superhuman...."

Not until 1993 and the release of "Jurassic Park" did major studios recognize that computer-generated life forms could be integral, even indispensable, characters in their films. By then computer animators had already turned from creating such digital wildlife as dinosaurs to working on humans. In 1988 the digital filmmakers Diana Walczak and Jeff Kleiser turned out a short featuring Nestor Sextone, a digital character purportedly running for the presidency of the Synthetic Actors Guild. Sextone's platform was an attack on such faux-digital characters as Max Headroom, who was portrayed in a television series by the real-life actor Matt Frewer in elaborate makeup.
"The idea of the Synthetic Actors Guild was only half a joke," said Kleiser, who coined the term synthespian in 1989. "The question for 10 years has always been, when will we have a completely photorealistic synthespian? I believe there will be more and more convincing performances by synthespians."
Some would argue that has already happened...

In fact, synthespians are chiefly used today as background extras (digital figures populated the passenger list of "Titanic" and the Coliseum stands of "Gladiator") and for stunts too dangerous or difficult even for experienced stuntmen. A digital Spider-Man will be scaling digital buildings in the upcoming film based on the comic book hero, Sarnoff said, although once earthbound he will be played by Tobey Maguire.

Rick Lyman: Movie Stars Fear Inroads by Upstart Digital Actors. Los Angeles Times, May 9, 2001

Celia M. Henry: Probing proteomes. Chemical & Engineering News 79 (14), 47 - 49 (April 2, 2001)

"Richard D. Smith of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory said capillary liquid chromatography allows the best peptide level coverage. Smith couples the chromatography to Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry, which is extremely sensitive and is able to resolve more peptides than other mass spectrometric methods. He said at least 1 million peptides could be detected in a single run and many can actually be distinguished simply on the basis of mass measurements.
Smith uses accurate mass tags (AMTs) to identify proteins on the basis of a single peptide. These AMTs are peptides with a unique mass among all the peptides predicted by the genome. As the mass measurement accuracy increases, so does the number of peptides that qualify as AMTs [Anal. Chem., 72, 3349 (2000)]. In Smith's work, liquid chromatographic separation times are also used to extend the approach and significantly increase the number of peptide AMTs.
Without validation of AMTs using tandem MS, Smith said, there is a risk of a high level of misidentification. After the AMTs have been validated, they remove the need to use routine tandem MS. The gain in throughput is approximately equal to the average number of peptides per mass spectrum (up to 100).

Michael Freemantle: Ionic liquids in a renewable ferment. Chemical & Engineering News 79 (14), 57 (April 2, 2001)

"Butanol is used industrially in the production of resins, coatings, plasticizers, and a variety of other products. It is used as a solvent in the food and flavors industry. 'Biobutanol is also a potential biofuel,' Fadeev says. 'However, the economics of the fermentation are not that great, and advances in the fermentation and separation stages are required before the process becomes economically feasible.'
Distillation to recover butanol from fermentation broth is not economical, Fadeev and Meagher point out. The most promising technology for recovering butanol has been pervaporation, a combination of two processes: permeation and evaporation."

A. Maureen Rhoui: Only facts will end lignin war. Chemical & Engineering News 79 (14), 52 - 56 (April 2, 2001)

"The third key element of the new model is replication of the primary lignin chain by template polymerization. This implies that lignins must have a regular repeating structure. However, no order or periodicity of units has been found in lignins. In fact, Ralph maintains that it is 'astronomically improbable' to find chemically ordered regions in lignin and that 'the search for regularity is futile'.
The work of Sarkanen is key in developing this aspect of the new model. Using methods to prepare synthetic lignins, he has shown that in the presence of a template -- a soluble, high-molecular-weight so-called kraft lignin sample -- coniferyl alcohol forms high-molecular-weight products without going through low-molecular-weight intermediates. In the absence of the template, mostly low-molecular-weight products form. Lewis and Sarkanen consider these results as key evidence for template polymerization in lignification."

Webster's is of no help here, but only offers: 1. one that hooks, 2. a large drink of whiskey, 3. a prostitute, 4. a small dutch fishing ship with two masts, 5. an Irish or English fishing smack with one mast, 6. any clumsy, old ship.

The following excerpt from an E-golf lesson is more helpful:
"Ben Hogan, in his early days, was a wicked hooker of the golf ball. He would hit those nasty snap-hooks that would start low and left and end up lower and "lefter." He said these shots were "the terror of the field mice" because of how the ball would scurry so fast along the ground."

Want to learn more about golf? Go to the E-lessons archive.

The following definition was found at Everything2, which also explained what a hooker is in Rugby:
Golf: "A golfer who continually hits his shots from right to left (if he's right handed). The cure for this is to move the grip to a "weaker" position; with the right hand more "underneath" the club.
A hooker is closer to a good golf swing than is a slicer."
Rugby: "The hooker is the middle guy in the front row of the scrum in Rugby union. S/He is supported by two props and is so called because it is the hooker who has to hook the ball in the scrum."

Karen Kaplan: A Tale of Two Strategies. Los Angeles Times, April 2, 2001

"Unlike its cousin e-commerce, which focuses on transactions between a company and its customers, e-business is all about applying technology to streamline the internal functions of a business, such as accounting, payroll, inventory and purchasing."

Isn't a signature "a person's name written by himself" (Webster's)? If so, how can a signature be typed? This apparent oxymoron is nevertheless quite common these days. An explanation was found in One Dimensional Color Scales:
"Many letters include a typed signature block followed by a handwritten signature. The primary reason for this is that many people's handwriting is illegible. However, it is a serious error in judgment to only include the typed signature. Make sure you include your written signature underneath the typed signature block."

Obviously, the meaning of "signature" in the above paragraph is that of an "an identifying characteristic or mark" (Webster's), which in the age of electronic mail may soon become the predominant meaning of "signature" anyway*. Not too long ago, one would have referred to this as Typed Name/Signature/Date; see, for example, the SAMPLE TITLE PAGE (YOUNG INVESTIGATOR'S GRANT)
People get lazy though and one finds plenty of examples where typed signature doesn't just mean typed name, but refers to typed name/written signature or more often to written signature over typed name.

*See also: John Schwartz: Compressed Data: Microsoft to Put Digital ID Into Its Products. The New York Times, May 7, 2001

The following pictures of double ended and double arming bolts were found at Brooks Manufacturing

Double ended bolt	Double armed bolt

More helpful pictures of less commonly encountered bolts were found at Aaron's Cap Screws

Cap Screw	Carriage	Elevator	Frame	Plow	Serrated Flange Screw	Step	Tap

together with the following explanations:
Cap Screws come in hex head, slotted flat head, high round socket head and low round socket head. Lake Erie Grade 5 and Grade 8, coarse or fine thread, zinc plated.
Carriage Bolts are round head with square neck, but are available with round head and no neck. Galvanized, Grade 5, low carbon and stainless steel.
An Elevator Bolt is like a carriage bolt except it has a flat head.
Frame Bolts have a hex head and a flange at the head.
Plow Bolts are similar to carriage bolts except they have a flat head and countersunk.
Serrated Flange Screws (Whiz-Lock equivalent) is similar to a cap screw except it has a serrated flange washer permanently attached under its hex head and is generally full thread.
A Step Bolt fastener is similar to a plow bolt fastener except it has a large round head that looks like a truss head because of its size.
A Tap Bolt fastener is like a cap screw except it is generally hex head and full thread.
Structural Bolts are heavy hex and must comply with ASTM A325 Type 1 specifications.

And then there are split bolt connectors, transformer connectors with and without stud, and PTH terminal plates, pictures of a which were found at Bowthorpenz

Split bolt	Transformer connector with stud	Transformer connector without stud	PTH terminal plate

To be determined

Apparently, the headrest creeper is just a variation of the garage creeper or mechanic's creeper, for which the following explanation was found at Design News Online:
"The classic mechanic's creeper consists of a welded tubular frame, a plywood platform with casters and, perhaps, a padded headrest."

The following picture of an adjustable headrest creeper was found at Torinjacks:

A hot stick is one of several tools that a line man needs in his daily work. The following ones were found at Fibre Craft Engineers.

Rescue stick	Hot line stick	Discharging hot line telescopic stick

The XXXX describes it as a "curved inlet section on an impeller."
And the Compressed Air Glossary has this to say:
"A small axial flow vane that attaches to the impeller of a centrifugal pump to increase the N.P.S.H. available."

logisticusfocus.com:
"A mechanical device, consisting of a lever-operated toggle and lock, generally used to tighten a cargo securing system. Winches are sometimes used as load binders."

Minerals Management Service Glossary (U.S. Department of the Interior):
"A chain or rope used to tie down loads of equipment, or the "boomer" used to tighten the chains."

OSHA Glossary of Logging Terms:
"Binder: a hinged lever assembly for connecting the ends of a wrapper to tighten the wrapper around the load of logs or materials."

The following examples were found at H-Lift Industries Co., LTD.:

Lever type load binder	Ratchet type load binder

Pictures of the following wrenches were found in the Tool Dictionary of the Realtor.com Marketplace:

From left to right:

Internal Pipe Wrench
Comments: Insert the wrench into a nipple and turn the wrench with an adjustable wrench. The sharp spurs on the cams of the internal pipe wrench dig into the inner walls of the fitting, forcing it to turn.
Other Names: Nipple extractor
Purpose: Removing and tightening close nipples and other iron-pipe fittings where a conventional pipe wrench would damage the threads.

Basin Wrench
Comments: Often this is the only way to work behind a sink. Some basin wrenches have adjustable-length handles to reach greater distances. Plumbing supply houses occasionally rent these by the day. You'll need a larger basin wrench for drain fittings.
Purpose: Reaching into tight places to tighten or loosen the mounting nuts and supply tubes for faucets and drains.

Sink Strainer Wrench
Comments: This has to be one of the weirder-looking tools in a plumber's kit. (Is it a religious icon? Folk art?) When you need it, you need it, however. Chances are, one of the four ends of this wrench will engage the sink or tub drain basket and let you unscrew it. Buy or rent only if you really need it. (Of course, it might be fun to keep one around to stump your friends.)
Substitution: You can usually tighten a new strainer with the tips of needle-nose pliers inserted in the drain basket.
Purpose: To install and remove sink strainers.

Strap Wrench
Comments: The cloth or plastic strap preserves the finish on decorative plumbing. Because of its low profile, it's also good for turning pipes against a wall.
Purpose: Turning chrome, polished brass or other decorative pipe without marring.

Meter Wrench
Comments: This wrench is often the only practical way to turn the rectangular tab on the valve at an in-ground water meter. Many older homes don't have any other way to shut off the water supply.
Other Names: Meter Key
Purpose: Shutting off water at the meter.

Spud Wrench
Comments: An adjustable version handles more nut sizes, but is a bit more cumbersome to use.
Purpose: Turning large nuts on drains, traps and toilets.

The Supers Club of New York seems to agree with this definition of a spud wrench:
"Spud Wrench - Purpose: Turning large nuts on drains, traps and toilets."

However, the term spud wrench apparently can also refer to a "pipe wrench with smooth jaws"; found at Harris Cyclery:
"For shop use, a 12 or 15-inch makes a good universal headset wrench, but if that is your purpose, you would do better to buy an adjustable "spud" wrench. This is also known as a "monkey" wrench, and has its jaws at a 90-degree angle to the handle, unlike the Crescent-type wrench that has its jaws at about 30 degrees to the handle. A large "spud" wrench, which strongly resembles a pipe wrench with smooth jaws, will act as a universal headset wrench, and is also very good for straightening bent derailleurs and chainwheels."

There furthermore seems to be a drift pin that goes by the name spud wrench; found in the Metal Building Glossary:
Driftpin
A tapered pin used to align holes in steel members to be connected. Also called "Spud Wrench".

Found at Compliance Sealing International: "Spiral Wound Gaskets are one of the most commonly used metal gaskets. They are extremely versatile and offer an excellent seal in a wide variety of applications. The spiral wound is manufactured by wrapping alternating layers of thin metal and a soft gasket filler material such as flexible graphite or PTFE. The chevron-shaped profile of the gasket provides resilience and a "spring like" characteristic that enhances the performance of the gasket."

"The Take-up bearing's turned up tabs allow the bearing to slide in a slot in a side sheet."

Found at Triangle Manufacturing Co.

The following description of a displacer switch was found at Promag:

"The DLS series Displacer Level Switches operate on the well known force balance principle. The displacer is suspended by a spring and weighs a given amount when not covered by a liquid. When the Liquid Level Rises and eventually cover the displacer, the displacer becomes lighter and the spring relaxes. This causes a small upwards movement of the rod assembly that suspends the displacer cable and displacer. This movement which is a small percentage of the actual distance in liquid level change is sufficient to operate the magnetically operated switch. The process liquid is totally isolated from the electrical switch assembly. Since the displacer does not actually float, the switch is well suited for standard switching applications as well as difficult applications such as foaming liquids, liquids with floating solids, or liquids with surface agitation."

"Have you ever worried about being bitten by a snake while hiking, hunting, working at a job site or just clearing brush in the back yard?"

Well, then you need snake chaps, which I found at New Technologies 2000

Lever type load binder	Ratchet type load binder

Chain saw chaps	Mode of action of Prolar

Judy Pasternak: Coal-Bed Methane Puts Basic Needs of Water, Energy at Odds. Los Angeles Times, March 27, 2001

"Carl Weston noticed sugar foaming on homemade lemonade; he lit a match, held it close and watched the flame flare high. The water bubbled in Mentor Goehring's well; the pines and cottonwoods died near his log cabin. At Ron and Mac Burkett's ranch, an artesian well dried up after generations of gushing 1,000 gallons every minute.
They all think they know why. This slice of southwest Colorado and northern New Mexico is the hub of an emerging industry that harvests natural gas from waterlogged underground coal beds. Energy companies pump the ground water out, reducing the pressure that trapped methane vapors in the coal. Then rigs extract the liberated gas...
But moving all that water may exact a price. As coal-bed development spreads, complaints have surfaced in at least four states of apparent side effects: Methane jets spurting above the ground. Fire smoldering below. Salty coal-bed water dumped in rivers. Toxic hydrogen sulfide leaking into streams...
At stake are two basic but competing needs: abundant energy and fresh water."

George Johnson: Computing, One Atom at a Time. The New York Times, March 27, 2001

"The device itself is unremarkable. N.M.R. machines are used in chemistry labs across the world to map the architecture of molecules by sensing how their atoms dance to the beat of electromagnetic waves. Hospitals and clinics use the same technology, called magnetic resonance imaging, or M.R.I., to scan the tissues of the human body.
The machine at Los Alamos has been enlisted on a recent morning for a grander purpose: to carry out an experiment in quantum computing. By using radio waves to manipulate atoms like so many quantum abacus beads, the Los Alamos scientists will coax a molecule called crotonic acid into executing a simple computer program."

David Gaffen: Will the 'Wealth Effect' Be Reversed?. The Street.com, March 26, 2001

"People argue over the wealth effect, but there are both a real impact and a psychological impact the stock market has on the average American's pocket. About half of all Americans now hold stock in some fashion; the increase in equity holdings among the general population means that more people factor in the stock market when they make spending decisions.
Now the economy could be faced with the reverse wealth effect -- the vast destruction of wealth that was created increases the potential for falling consumer spending in coming months."

Andrew Pollack: Two Biotech Companies Settle Gene-Chip Case. The New York Times, March 26, 2001

"Gene chips, also called DNA chips or microarrays, are pieces of glass or other material containing thousands of genes or gene fragments. The chips are widely used to test which genes are active in a particular cell. For instance, determining which genes are turned on in tumor cells but not in healthy cells could provide valuable clues to how cancer arises."

Webster: 1. anything that can move or act of itself; 2. an apparatus that automatically performs certain actions by responding to preset controls or encoded instructions; 3. an electronic machine, control device, etc. equipped with a computer and designed to operate automatically in response to instructions previously fed into the computer; 4. a person or animal acting in an automatic or mechanical way.

Michel Marriott: Robots Can Learn Much From High-Tech Playthings. The New York Times, March 22, 2001

"Tiger Electronics, a division of Hasbro, showed off no less than two dozen interactive robotic toys that it plans to unleash next holiday season. They include a free-ranging turtle and other automatons for the fish bowl, as well as a gleaming, robotic baby that coos while responding to touch, sight and sound. There were plenty of robotic toys from other manufacturers, too: more dogs than you can throw a stick at, joined by cats, birds, mice, bugs, dinosaurs and even potted plants."

Brian Livingston: New Web page shows who's tracking you. InfoWorld.com, March 22, 2001

"An Internet security firm has posted a new study ranking Web sites that make the most frequent use of "Web beacons." These hidden little routines, also called Web bugs, let sites know where you've already been on the Web."

John Schwartz: Web Bugs Are Tracking Use of Internet. The New York Times, August 14, 2001

"The web bug technology, which is also known by such terms as clear gifs and web beacons, now appears on 18 percent of personal pages, compared with less than 4 percent of pages over all and 16 percent of home pages for major companies. In a similar survey that Cyveillance conducted in 1998, fewer than 0.5 percent of personal Web pages contained web bugs."

Is ALSC using web bugs? Answer on ALSC's site map page.

"Units of kinematic viscosity given by readings on Saybolt viscometers. The Saybolt Universal viscometer is used for liquids having viscosities below 1000 centistokes (or 10 stokes, see entry for stokes below). The Saybolt Furol viscometer is used for more viscous road and fuel oils ("furol" is an acronym for fuel and road oils). In both cases the reading is the time, in seconds, for 60 milliliters of a sample to flow through the device. The Furol viscosity readings are roughly 1/10 the Universal readings. For liquids whose viscosity exceeds 50 centistokes at 37.8 °C (100 °F) one SSU is approximately 0.2158 centistokes or 0.2158 mm2/s. For very viscous liquids (viscosity exceeding 500 centistokes) at 50 °C (122 °F), one SSF is approximately 2.120 centistokes or 2.120 mm2/s. Exact equations were published in 1996 by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM practice D2161). The Saybolt seconds are considered obsolete, but they have been used traditionally in the petroleum industry and are common in technical articles."

This explanation was found in the Dictionary of Units of Measurement
Further details in ASTM D2161

"Colors range from light yellow to red defined by the chromaticities of glass standards numbered from 1 for the lightest to 18 for the darkest. Used for chemicals and oils including resins, varnishes, lacquers, drying oils fatty acids, lecithin, sunflower oil, and linseed oil."

This explanation was found in One Dimensional Color Scales
Further details in ASTM Test Method D1544-98 Standard Test Method for Color of Transparent Liquids (Gardner Color Scale)

"The Flash Point and Fire Point of a thermal fluid are determined through laboratory testing of new fluid. The most common test method is the ASTM D-92 Cleveland Open Cup (C.O.C.). The cup holds a certain amount of fluid that permits a vapor space to exist directly above the liquid. During the test, a small flame is passed slowly over the fluid as the temperature of the fluid increases. The lowest temperature at which the vapor ignites is called the Flash Point. The temperature at which sufficient vapor is generated to support a continuous flame is the Fire Point."

This explanation was found in Thermal Fluid System Safety Issues, published by MultiTherm Corporation.

A term used in connection with the regulation of hazardous substances:
"CERCLA: quantity of substance designated under CERCLA as hazardous, and the release of which must be reported to the National Response Center. RQs can be found in Section 311 of the CAA
DOT: quantity specified for a substance in the appendix to the Hazardous Materials Table.
SARA: quantity specified in Title III, Section 304, which requires specific reporting."

This explanation was found in the Labsafety Glossary of the Division of Environmental and Industrial Programs, College of Continuing Studies, University of Alabama.

Lisa Guernsey: Welcome to the World Wide Web. Passport, Please? The New York Times, March 15, 2001

"Suddenly, the seemingly borderless Internet is ramming up against real borders. The imposition of jurisdictional laws could mean that online publishers decide either to keep some material off the Internet entirely, for fear of criminal and civil charges filed in different countries or even different states, or to install online gates and checkpoints around their sites, giving access to only certain viewers.
The legal battles are being fostered by new technology that appears to make those online checkpoints possible. In the past year, software programs have been released that are supposed to figure out where people are at the instant they gain access to a Web site. By conducting real-time analyses of Internet traffic, a technique sometimes called geolocation, these software programs can try to determine the country, the state and, in limited cases, even the city from which a person is surfing the Net.
Based on that extrapolated location and with the use of programs like keyword filters, the software can then block Web pages from being seen, essentially putting a tall fence around part of the Web.
'We are now seeing geographical zoning online that mirrors geographical zoning offline,' said Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who specializes in online issues. 'The view of the Internet as borderless is dying very quickly.'"

Josh Meyer: Border Arrest Stirs Fear of Terrorist Cells in U.S. Los Angeles Times, March 11, 2001

"An Algerian man arrested crossing the Canadian border 15 months ago with a carload of explosives was part of a terrorist sleeper cell activated by Islamic militant Osama bin Laden, U.S. intelligence officials believe...
Richard A. Clarke, White House counter-terrorism advisor in the Clinton and current Bush administrations, said such groups are scattered in as many as 50 countries, including the U.S.
'One day they're recruiting and raising money for the jihad [holy war], and the next day that same cell can become the group that works with the attackers' sent in by Bin Laden, Clarke said in one of several interviews over the last few months. "

Reuters: Canada May Allow Jammers to Silence Cellphones. The New York Times, March 10, 2001

"The piercing ring of a mobile phone is enough to send many restaurant and movie patrons into a rage, but Canada's mobile phone industry is dead against the government forcing etiquette on the country's eight million users by legalizing signal jamming technology.
Industry Canada is planning to launch three months of public consultations into the use of the technology, which could be used to block cellular phone signals in restaurants, theaters, libraries or other locations.
'We're going to gather the widest public views possible on the use of cellphone silencers,' said Industry Canada advisor David Warnes."

Dave Wilson: New Origami Trick: Turn Paper Into a Functional Phone. Los Angeles Times, March 8, 2001

" I recently held a working prototype of the new phone--about the size of a credit card--and listened to the ringing at the other end, marveling at the quality of the audio transmitted through the combination earpiece and microphone. And when my call was done, I unwrapped one of the phones like a roll of toilet tissue to examine its unusual innards.
This amazing piece of technology, which I tested while huddled against the elements at a train station in New Jersey, is made largely of paper. As a result, it's incredibly cheap. You'll be able to buy one for maybe 10 bucks, and it will come with 60 minutes of air time. When that time runs out, you can throw it away, or just punch a button to add another 60 minutes of time.
Basically, this is a calling card with a telephone built in."

Jim Heid: Non-PC Users Less Vulnerable to Virus Attacks. Los Angeles Times, March 5, 2001

"So, were you victimized by the so-called Kournikova virus a couple of weeks ago? Of course you weren't--Macs are immune to this latest piece of malware. Not that you'd know this from media reports, most of which simply described Kournikova as an "e-mail virus," implying that it can affect any computer platform and e-mail program--not just Windows PCs running Microsoft's Outlook...
But could it happen here? Yes. The Mac provides its own autopilot facility called AppleScript, and it's supported by Microsoft's Entourage and Outlook Express e-mail programs. Some AppleScript-based malware appeared a few years ago, but no one has created an AppleScript virus that exploits the automation capabilities of Mac e-mail programs. At least not yet."

Jane Allen: Link Between Infections and Heart Disease Bolstered. Los Angeles Times, March 5, 2001

"Another cardiac researcher, Dr. Joseph Brent Muhlestein of the University of Utah and LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City, said the findings, while "statistically significant," were "far from definitive."
However, he said that they support the potential role of pathogen burden, meaning the repeated assault on the body by infection, in worsening heart disease."

John Markoff: Computing Pioneer Challenges the Clock. The New York Times, March 5, 2001

"Its approach, which uses a technique known as asynchronous logic, differs from conventional computer circuit design in that the switching on and off of digital circuits is controlled individually by specific pieces of data rather than by a tyrannical clock that forces all of the millions of the circuits on a chip to march in unison."

Ed Scannell: IBM's Gerstner touts middleware for e-business. InfoWorld.com, February 26, 2001

"Playing to his company's software strengths, IBM Chairman Lou Gerstner Monday pronounced Phase I of the e-business era to be over, and that Phase II will see the rise in strategic importance of "integration and infrastructure" centering around robust middleware....
'In the past, the operating systems is where things came together. But now there is no hope that any proprietary OS can tie these systems together, but middleware can. We want customers to buy any application they need or want and integrate them,' Gerstner said."

Ed Scannell: Paul Horn directs IBM research into autonomic computing development. InfoWorld.com, March 19, 2001

"The body's autonomic nervous system does things like change your heart rate and breathing, which allows humans to physically adapt to any number of situations. This is very much the way you need to think about the middleware as it will serve the Internet."

Karen Alexander: Irvine Firm Has a Hot Concept: Fine Dining a la Snack Machine. Los Angeles Times, February 26, 2001

"The automats by KRh Thermal Systems Inc. look like oversized soda machines. But they offer such items as crispy chicken strips, French fries and turkey pastrami on whole wheat. Unlike most other food vending machines, the foods don't come out cold but sizzling hot--in about 90 seconds.
Some 500 of these Hot Choice Diners, as they're called, already are in office buildings, factories, airports and rest stops. United Artists Theater bought 27 of them. Hundreds more are headed for prisons, hospitals and schools."

Denise Gellene: L.A. Has Potential to Be a Leader on Biotech Industry Cutting Edge. Los Angeles Times, February 26, 2001

"Bioinformatics uses complex mathematical formulas and computers to analyze vast amounts of biological data. The technology enables scientists to study specific genes and their relation to disease. Using these tools, researchers also are beginning to read genetic instructions for the tens of thousands of human proteins that also can cause illness.
Beyond that, scientists are using bioinformatics to learn the genetic makeup of plants, animals and bacteria."

Melinda Fulmer: 'Mad Cow' Risk in U.S. Tiny but Real, Experts Say. Los Angeles Times, February 20, 2001

"Although 12,000 so-called downer cattle, or cattle that could not walk on their own when they were brought in for slaughter, were destroyed in the U.S. this decade and their brains tested for BSE, some industry observers believe that is not enough to guarantee that U.S. herds are free of the disease. There is no test that can detect the disease in live animals."

Reuters: Hewlett - Packard Launches Web - Building Software. The New York Times, February 13, 2001

"'There is no question this is a very strategic opportunity for Hewlett-Packard, both for their general computing platform, but also one that really gives them a great stage to play out their historical strength in solutioneering', customizing services for big users, he said."

John Holusha: Plans for a Server Farm Take Developer Upstates. The New York Times, September 6, 2000

"Now, one of New York City's larger landlords, Max Capital Management, which owns eight million square feet of office space, is proposing another type of technology installation. It plans to build a data center, sometimes called a server farm, in Newburgh, N.Y., about an hour's drive north of the city in the heart of the Hudson Valley."

Simon Romero: Wireless Cooly Received in U.S. The New York Times, January 29, 2001

"Reed E. Hundt, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said that the dominance of the wired-phone industry in this country slowed the early growth of the nation's cellular industry.
"The wireline industry put its thumbs on the scales of decision at several key stages," Mr. Hundt said. He cited the pressure by large local and long-distance companies in the 1980's to limit the growth of wireless carriers by seeking to ensure that cell-phone subscribers pay for the cost of incoming calls. This practice continues today, but is not common outside the United States."

On 1-22-01 Alta Vista reported 400 hits for Senior Moment, among them a reference to the American Dialect Society, a commentary on the workings of this society by Kirsten Scharnberg, and the following joke from the Neurology Department of the Medical College of Georgia:

According to the American Society of Neuroradiology's Definitions of terms pertaining to contracts and credentials Outcome Research is "medical research that asks what difference a drug, procedure or other intervention really makes in a patient's health.
And in the journal Drug Benefit Trends the article Outcomes Research: When Can the Results Be Communicated? gives the following more elaborate explanation:
"Outcomes research, which includes pharmacoeconomics and studies of health-related quality of life, provides patients, physicians, providers, and payers with information about the value of pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and medical procedures. It is particularly useful at the time a new product is introduced -- when physicians, providers, patients, and payers have questions about efficacy, safety, and cost-effectiveness. When a new product is introduced, most of the available data have been collected by the developer (pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or medical device manufacturer). In addition, over the life cycle of a product, clinical and economic data about the product are gathered under the developer's sponsorship. Developers are regulated by the FDA, and the dissemination of outcomes research information by these companies must comply with applicable FDA rules."
In the Trans-Century Glossary of Managed Care related Terms one finds the following related terms:
Outcome Measures
Assessments which gauge the effect or results of treatment for a particular disease or condition. Outcome measures include the patient's perception of restoration of functional status, as well as measures of mortality, morbidity, cost, quality of life, patient satisfaction, and others.
Outcomes Management
A term coined by Paul Elwood in a seminal article in 1988. Definitions vary, but it generally involves collection and analysis of results of medical processes and performances according to agreed-on specifications and the use of that information to optimize health care provisions through the collaborative efforts of patients, payers, and providers.

"A patent pool is an agreement between two or more patent owners to license one or more of their patents to one another or third parties. A patent pool allows interested parties to gather all the necessary tools to practice a certain technology in one place, e.g, "one-stop shopping," rather than obtaining licenses from each patent owner individually."

DuPont Forward-Looking Statements: "All statements that address expectations or projections about the future, including statements about the company's strategy for growth, product development, market position, expected expenditures and financial results are forward-looking statements. Some of the forward-looking statements may be identified by words like "expects," "anticipates," "plans," "intends," "projects," "indicates," and similar expressions. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions."

Seen in Emily Sachs: Mother seeks money for son's cancer treatment; Daily Bulletin, Saturday, January 13, 2001.

According to A PAEDIATRIC HANDBOOK FOR STUDENTS, RMS is a malignancy that arises "from smooth muscle or skeletal tumour, with wide variation in location and presentation. The primary tumour may be from head and neck region (proptosis, mass lesion), genito-urinary region (urinary obstruction, haematuria), extremity (mass lesion). Age distribution varies from infant to adolescent. Diagnosis is by biopsy and imaging for extent. Treatment is multi-modality: surgical resection, chemotherapy with or without radiotherapy. Overall long term disease free survival is about 60%".

A more scientific treatise can be found in Atlas of Genetics and Cytogenetics in Oncology and Haematology: RMS are mesenchymal tumours belonging to the group of small round-cell tumors, displaying various degrees of striated muscular differentiation.

Nutrition Professionals Engage in Functional Food Dialogue: "foods that provide a health benefit beyond the basic nutrients they contain".

This phrase is neither rare nor new, but a definition is hard to come by; thus examples of how it is being used:

"Charlton Heston and NRA turn Constitution on its ear."
"Handspring Inc. will turn the Palm world on its ear."
"Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle: In 1907 while at a physics meeting in Copenhagen Werner Heisenberg, one of the foremost physicists of the time, presented the Uncertainty Principle which states that one cannot know both the momentum and the position of a body in motion with any precision. This set quantum mechanics on its ear. Einstein finally accepted this principle many years later."
"The word is out! In an unspeakable attempt to turn the English language on its ear, Carmen Sandiego has invented the Babble-On Machine, a diabolical device that transforms language into utter nonsense."
"On February 24, 1997 scientists at the Roslin Institute in Scotland announced they had successfully cloned a sheep. Given the name Dolly she set the scientific community on its ear, clearly demonstrating that what many had said was impossible was not."
"Not since Monopoly has any one game turned the game playing world on its ear as this one has."

'Economy Class Syndrome' Cited in 25 Deaths; Los Angeles Times, December 29, 2000.
"TOKYO -- Japan's first survey of economy class syndrome found Thursday that 25 passengers have died of the condition at Tokyo's Narita airport in the last eight years, a figure likely to put pressure on airlines to tackle the issue.
According to the study by a clinic at Narita airport, 100 to 150 passengers arriving in Tokyo on long-distance flights are treated each year for the problem, believed to be caused by immobility and cramped seating on long flights."

Simon Romero: The Unplugged Internet Generates 'Wapathy' The New York Times, December 18, 2000.
"W.A.P. -- for wireless application protocol -- was a technology meant to popularize the wireless Internet by providing users of mobile phones with material from the Web. The problem has been that the technology generally provides only a dab of the whole wide world of the Web and presents it very slowly in just a few lines of text on a small cell-phone screen. So you can fiddle at length with the numbers on your cell phone, and then get, eventually, a few sports scores. Or a weather report. A stock quote, perhaps. But that's about it. Hence, wapathy."

George A. Chidi Jr.: Corporate WAP users abandon data. InfoWorld.com, May 24, 2001.
"It seems corporate users of WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) phones use these data-transferring, Web-browsing devices just like an ordinary mobile phone -- for talking.
Market-research and consulting company Meta Group conducted 15 informal surveys of between 50 and 100 users of WAP-enabled phones and discovered that 80 percent to 90 percent of corporate users surveyed quit using the data capabilities and use the phones for voice communications only."

Evan Hansen, CNET NEWS.COM: Hollywood Dealt Setback in DVD Code Case. The New York Times, December 15, 2000.
"Although California state law specifically allows reverse engineering, the plaintiffs have argued that anyone who takes possession of their CSS anti-copying software must promise not to reverse-engineer the product. That agreement is demanded in the form of a so-called click-wrap license, which must be accepted before the software can be downloaded."

"Vertex is pursuing a drug discovery strategy that initially sorts molecular targets according to their respective gene family. With this approach, we are applying highly specific biophysical and chemical information gained on one protein target towards structurally similar targets in the same family.

We coined the term chemogenomics to describe this discovery approach. At the limit, chemogenomics is the discovery and description of all possible drug compounds (all of the chemical possibilities) directed at all possible drug targets (the 100,000 or more proteins coded by the human genome). This strategy involves first generating multiple classes of potential drug compounds that bind to one protein target in a gene family, and then using structural information to make compounds specific for a different protein target in the same family."

Chemical Genomics / Chemogenomics Conference
Cambridge Heathtech Institute, Boston, Massachusetts
November 16, 2001

"Chemical Genetics describes the use of small synthetic molecules, which elicit a phenotypic change by direct protein interaction, to identify key genes involved in the specific biological pathway of interest. In many cases existing drugs are used as the chemical probes whose overall effect is well established but whose mode of action is not well understood. Chemical genetic experiments, therefore, present an opportunity to clarify the specific mode of action of well-known therapeutics. The current wealth of gene sequence information available, in conjunction with recent advances in array-based technologies, has facilitated a chemical genomic approach. High-throughput screening with small, highly specific, synthetic molecules, against multiple protein targets, results in measurable phenotypic changes and presents an opportunity to do gene functional analysis and create new therapeutic leads at the same time. Chemogenomic drug discovery is an emerging new field in which small molecule leads, identified for one member of a gene family, are used to elucidate the function and biological role of another member of that family whose function is not known, as well as to identify potential drug leads. Both Chemical Genomics and Chemogenomics represent newer approaches to target identification and drug development with the potential for dramatically accelerating the process. Anyone interested in such prospects should attend this conference."

Katherine Goncharoff - Drug discovery accelerator du jour: chemical genomics. The Deal, October 2, 2001.
"Bye bye, bioinformatics. Adieu, proteomics. Hello, chemical genomics!
That's the message from a growing number of biotechnology venture capitalists who are quietly shifting their investment emphasis to so-called chemical genomics in the everlasting search for a quicker, more efficient drug discovery process.
Evidence of the emerging sector's popularity includes the fundings of several startups which specialize in it -- including two last week -- are the recent acquisition of a chemical genomics company, and an investors conference that will focus on it for the first time.
The drug screening process, also known as chemogenomics, is a new approach to drug discovery, proponents argue, with the potential to remove bottlenecks and speed up drug identification. Chemical genomics lets researchers screen more protein targets against numerous potential drugs.
In principle, it narrows the focus of their search more quickly and efficiently, in theory shaving years and dollars off the drug discovery process."

And here is an example on how it works:

Ulrike S. Eggert et al.: Genetic Basis for Activity Differences Between Vancomycin and Glycolipid Derivatives of Vancomycin. Science, Vol. 294, Issue 5541, 361-364, October 12, 2001.
"Small molecules that affect specific protein functions can be valuable tools for dissecting complex cellular processes. Peptidoglycan synthesis and degradation is a process in bacteria that involves multiple enzymes under strict temporal and spatial regulation. We used a set of small molecules that inhibit the transglycosylation step of peptidoglycan synthesis to discover genes that help to regulate this process. We identified a gene responsible for the susceptibility of Escherichia coli cells to killing by glycolipid derivatives of vancomycin, thus establishing a genetic basis for activity differences between these compounds and vancomycin."

"As it became more and more clear that the entire human genome was going to be sequenced, it simultaneously began to dawn upon many researchers that it was not, in fact, the holy grail of disease prediction, disease diagnosis or drug development.
The holy grail, it appears, is still much further off, though many say it may lie just around the next corner in the study of protein dynamics within specific tissues and/or cells. This type of study has been termed proteomics."

Ron Dagani: PITTCON spotlight is on proteomics. Chemical & Engineering News 79 (14), 43 - 46 (April 2, 2001)
"The sequencing of the human genome--undeniably a major milestone in scientific research--has set the stage for the next wave: the massive effort to understand the human proteome, the universe of proteins that are encoded by gene sequences. An understanding of the structure and function of these proteins and their interactions with other molecules is the key to developing better ways to diagnose and treat diseases.
The proteomics effort, which had been building slowly for several years, "exploded" during the past year, according to one observer. It was not surprising then that at last month's 52nd annual Pittsburgh Conference & Exposition on Analytical Chemistry & Applied Spectroscopy -- widely known as Pittcon -- proteomics was the buzzword du jour."

Celia M. Henry: Probing proteomes. Chemical & Engineering News 79 (14), 47 - 49 (April 2, 2001)
"Peter Roepstorff, a professor in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Southern Denmark, reminded the Pittcon audience that proteomics and protein chemistry are not synonymous. He defined proteomics as the analysis of complex protein mixtures with the possibility for quantitation. Proteomics requires high-throughput and large-scale analysis. A major limitation for proteomics currently is the need for a large dynamic range because the proteins can be present at vastly different concentrations."

Junmin Peng and Steven P.Gygi: Proteomics: the move to mixtures (A Tutorial). J. Mass Spectrom. 36:1083-1091 (2001)
"Proteomics can be defined as the systematic analysis of proteins for their identity, quantity, and function... When liquid chromatography is combined with tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) and applied to the direct analysis of mixtures, many of the limitations of two-dimensional gel electrophoresis for proteome analysis can be overcome. This tutorial addresses current approaches to identify and characterize large numbers of proteins and measure dynamic changes in protein expression directly from complex protein mixtures (total cell lysates)."

Stu Borman: Any new proteomics techniques out there? Genome project head says many technologies for a human proteome project are not yet ready. Chemical & Engineering News 79 (48), 31-33 (November 26, 2001)
"'Proteomics is many different things,' says Leroy Hood of the Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle, who in the 1980s led a California Institute of Technology team that invented the automated gene sequencer. 'It's being able to identify complex mixtures of proteins; it's being able to quantitate their behavior in interesting biological systems; it's looking at their modifications and how that changes their biological activity; it's looking at their interactions, their compartmentalization, their turnover times--all of these kinds of things...'
'What we have to do in proteomics is attack each of these fundamental problems in a deep way with high-throughput technologies,' Hood adds. 'I would argue that the first two technologies that are really important to get well in hand obviously are those that deal with identification and quantitation.'
...the Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) has been established to 'consolidate national and regional proteome organizations into a worldwide organization,' 'encourage the spread of proteomics technologies,' and 'assist in the coordination of public proteome initiatives,' according to its mission statement."

Robert F. Service: A Proteomics Upstart Tries to Outrun the Competition. Science 294, 2079-2080 (2001)
"'Proteomics is something you either do in a big way or putter around in a corner,' says Keith Rose. He should know. Last year, along with fellow proteomics pioneers Denis Hochstrasser, Amos Bairoch, Ron Appel, and Robin Offord, Rose launched GeneProt, the biggest proteomics test-bed to date in this young field. Armed with 51 mass spectrometers--protein sequencing machines that can cost over $150,000 each--and a massive supercomputer, the company is already a proteomics powerhouse...
GeneProt plans to keep its lead, says Rose, by producing a better product faster. He claims that GeneProt can analyze several hundred thousand proteins a year. That's on par with numbers by competitors such as OGS. But when GeneProt's new U.S. facility comes on line next year, its output will double, the company claims. At the Geneva site alone, this stream of proteins is expected to generate a torrent of some 40 terabytes, or 40 trillion bytes, of data per year. To handle that flood, the company has teamed up with Compaq to create one of the largest civilian supercomputers in the world, comprising 1400 separate processors capable of carrying out 2 trillion operations per second."

""Harpin is a protein, discovered in 1992, which is involved in accentuating a plant's ability to defend itself against pathogens, plant fungi and the like. The key selling point is that it does not genetically modify the plants DNA, but it helps the plant protect itself, thereby abrogating the need for pesticides, etc." It is the flagship product of Eden Bioscience, which raised over $87 million in an initial public offering in September 2000; see also "A Biotechnology Sprout in Arid Market Ground."and "A plant 'vaccine' fertilizes hopes at Eden Bioscience."

California Manufacturing Technology Center Success Stories: "Cellular Techniques Make TA Manufacturing 20% More Efficient." The shop floor is divided into self-contained work "cells" that produce complete products or sub-assemblies. Cell teams produce only products for which orders have been placed. Individual team members assume more responsibility and perform multiple tasks. Cellular manufacturing requires fewer layers of supervision than traditional manufacturing as well as less floor space because no intermediate products are overproduced and accumulate.

"A standard options package allows an employee to buy a set number of shares at a particular price--the "exercise" or "strike" price--over a specific "vesting" period, usually four years. If the exercise price is, say, $15, and the stock is at $30, the employee earns an immediate 100% profit by exercising available options. But if the market price now is below the exercise price, the options are worthless. The market price could rebound, of course, but psychologically an "underwater" option can be a severe blow to worker morale." Los Angeles Times, Oct. 30, 2000; Debora Vrana: Workers Share in Angst About Plunging Stock.

A combination of float and balloon, the first, a white dog, standing 24,5 feet high, will be used in Macy's Day parade 2000 (Thanksgiving); falloon is also a signature brand name for a child's clothing line. Daily Bulletin Mo Nov. 20, 2000.

The movement "Slow Food was born 14 years ago, when the "barbarians" breached the gates of Rome - McDonald's opened its first restaurant in Italy" (near the Spanish Steps). Clearly "slow food" means the opposite of fast food or mass-produced food, especially regional food such as low-cholesterol Piedmontese beef and raw milk cheese. The movement cherishes the "life in the slow lane, where the food is a whole lot better." ... "The groups symbol is the snail, a creature both slow and edible. It has grown ....into an international movement with more than 60,000 members in dozens of countries." Daily Bulletin Mo Nov. 20, 2000.

neurit(e) = axon. If something is neuritogenic, it stimulates the outgrowth of axons.

Examples:
neuritogenic protein
neuritogenic properties
novel bioactive compounds with neuritogenic activity

Axon outgrowth, synaptic plasticity, and neuronal survival

Derogatory term for genetically modified foods. In October 2000 over 1,000 hits in Alta Vista.
Examples: 
Who's Afraid of Frankenfood? Time154 (22): 1 (1999) .
Anne Simon Moffat: Can Genetically Modified Crops Go 'Greener'? Science290: 253-254 (2000)

Triggered by a question from Sylvia I. Sapp on the GLD list in connection with a torquer in a medical translation.

Webster: vice: a device, usually fastened to a work bench, consisting of two jaws opened and closed by a screw, lever, etc. (Spannfutter, Schraubstock) - A pin vise would then be a vice for small objects, such as wire.

Examples: How to use a pin vise.
Images: 4-Way Double-End Pin Vise; Nickeled Pin Vise

Ernst gives "Handkloben" or "Feilkloben" for "pin vice"; however that does not seem to fit the bill for the examples of handheld tools given above, since a "Feilkloben" is a much bigger tool; compare with Feilkloben TURNUS.

For a small and especially a handheld vice, the term "Spannzange" would perhaps be appropriate; compare, e. g., Dremel Spannzangen and the use of "Spannzangen" in dentistry (braces).

Copyright 2000 - 2001 Gottfried Feistner. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.