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Volume 11, No. 2, Fall 01 | Return to Table of Contents
News Briefs
Honors and Awards
Two scientists with ties to the Marine Biological Laboratory received the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Eric Kandel of Columbia University and Paul Greengard of The Rockefeller University shared the award with Arvid Carlsson for their “discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system.” Kandel was an investigator, Corporation Member, and faculty member in the Neurobiology course in 1981 and 1985. Greengard was a student in the Embryology course in 1950 and a faculty member in the Neurobiology course in 1985.
MBL Corporation Member Edwin Taylor was elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences on May 1, 2001. Taylor is a Research Professor in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at Northwestern University. Membership in the academy is one of the highest honors afforded a U.S. scientist, and recognizes Taylor’s seminal contributions to the field of cell motility that were carried out during his tenure at the University of Chicago. Widely acknowledged as the “father of cytoskeletal research,” his pioneering investigations using biochemical approaches revealed the structure of cytoskeletal systems in cells. In addition, his elegant biophysical studies elucidated the mechanism by which molecular motors convert chemical energy into mechanical force. This is important for understanding everything from how materials are moved about within the cell to how muscles contract. In 1999 Taylor moved his research program to Northwestern’s Cell and Molecular Biology department in order to be closer to a group of scientists with expertise in cytoskeletal research. Taylor is a recipient of the E.B. Wilson Medal, the highest honor awarded by the American Society for Cell Biology. He is also a member of the Royal Society of London and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
MBL Corporation Member Clara Franzini-Armstrong of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine was recently elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. Founded in 1660, the Royal Society is one of the most prestigious science academies in the world. It recognizes scientific excellence by awarding prizes and electing to its membership the most distinguished scientists in the United Kingdom and the world.
The Biological Bulletin Now Available Online
The Marine Biological Laboratory is pleased to announce that the Biological Bulletin, a peer-reviewed general biology journal that has been published by the MBL since 1900, is now being published online by HighWire Press of Stanford University. Both print and electronic versions of the journal are now available to subscribers and MBL Corporation members.
The electronic version is available free of charge to the general public until January 31, 2002 at: http://www.biolbull.org. Subsequently, subscribers to the Biological Bulletin will receive both the print and electronic versions of the journal.
The site is still a work in progress. During the coming months, the editors plan to add classic papers, back issues, and abstracts from previously published papers to the site. The Biological Bulletin is edited by Michael J. Greenberg of the University of Florida’s Whitney Laboratory.
Embryology Course Has New Directors
Joel Rothman from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Richard Harland from the University of California, Berkeley, will serve as co-directors of the Embryology Course beginning in the Summer of 2002. Joel and Richard have served as faculty in the course in recent years. They follow in the footsteps of Scott Fraser and Marianne Bronner-Fraser, both of Caltech, who completed their tenure as Embryology course directors this summer.
MBL’s 2001 Science Journalism Program
The MBL’s Science Journalism Fellowships Program, which offers print and broadcast journalists and editors an opportunity to “step into the shoes of the people they cover” by awarding them fellowships to study basic biomedical and environmental science at the Woods Hole laboratory, just completed its sixteenth season. During their summer residencies at the MBL, Fellows learn what science is like from the inside out as students and researchers in MBL summer courses and laboratories. This summer, one Fellow traveled to the North Slope of Alaska’s Brooks Range to work for two weeks with ecologists from the MBL’s Ecosystems Center.
All Fellows arrived in early June to participate in one of two hands-on mini laboratory courses—each designed specifically for the non-scientist. One course explored techniques used in biomedical research—sequencing DNA, cloning, and PCR, for example—and the other featured research techniques currently in use by ecosystems ecologists both in the field and in the laboratory.
The 2001 recipients of MBL Science Writing Fellowships in biomedical science were: Dorian Devins, Executive Director, Science Matters; Diedtra Henderson, freelance science writer; Mari Jensen, Staff Writer, Tucson Citizen; David Kestenbaum, Science Correspondent, National Public Radio; Subhadra Menon, freelance science writer (India); Melissa Mertl, BioMedNet European correspondent and freelance; Steve Mirsky, Scientific American; Kerstin Osterberg, Senior Science Correspondent, Ny Teknik (Sweden); Antonio Regalado, Staff Reporter, The Wall Street Journal; Christine Soares, freelance; Volker Steger, freelance photographer (Germany); and Lori Valigra, freelance.
The recipients of 2001 MBL Science Writing Fellowships in environmental science were: Christopher Anderson, Environmental Reporter, San Antonio Express-News; Hannah Bonner, freelance illustrator; Kevin Fitzgerald, freelance; Aries Keck, freelance; Christina Reed, Associate Editor, Geotimes; and Andromeda Romano-Lax, freelance.
MBL summer researcher and Northwestern University Professor Robert D. Goldman, and Knight Science Journalism Program Director and former Science Writing Fellow, Boyce Rensberger, direct the MBL’s Science Writing Fellowships Program. The Biomedical Hands-On Laboratory course is co-directed by Dr. Robert Palazzo, University of Kansas, and Dr. Kerry Bloom, University of North Carolina. The Environment Hands-On Laboratory course is co-directed by Drs. Kenneth Foreman and Christopher Neill, both of the Marine Biological Laboratory’s Ecosystems Center. |
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