A far-reaching career

An interview with Stephen A. Felt, DVM, MPH, DACLAM, DACVPM, Attending Veterinarian, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Medicine, Associate Director, Veterinary Service Center, Director, Laboratory Animal Medicine Residency Program, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.     

Imagination and Creativity in Childhood

A reflexological study of child development was first attempted by Academician V. M. Bekhterev in a series of studies published in Vestnik psikhologiya from 1908 onward. (1) An independent reflexology department was established at the Petrograd Pedological Institute in 1922. Here, under the direction of Bekhterev and Department Head N. Shchelovanov and their colleagues (Director M. P. Denisova, N. L. Figurin, Director A. M. Lukina, Director V. N. Dobrokhotova, Director Z. F. Khlestova), a systematic investigation was carried out that involved continuous observation and recording of all the responses of children to external and internal stimuli, as well as the reflexological experiment and other methods. An extremely large amount of factual data was accumulated (over 4,000 pages of daily reports and protocols of experiments involving infants up to the age of six months who were under the care of the Infant Department of the Institute). The present report is a summary of analyses of only a part of these factual data.     

真菌地衣系统学开放研究实验室 学术委员会第三次会议纪要

真菌地衣系统学开放研究实验室第一届学术委员会第三次会议于1988年10月13-15日在北京举行.出席这次会议的有国内学术委员和国外学术委员、美国康乃尔大学柯夫教授;生物局、政策局、科学报的有关同志;以及本室各课题组组长。本室在京全体研究人员、技术人员列席听取了大会的学术报告和工作报告。会议由学术委员会魏江春主任和郑儒永副主任主持。微生物所宋大康所长致欢迎词.在会议期间,本届学术委员会委员、著名真菌学家、美国康乃尔大学柯夫教授作了题为《今日盘菌系统学:概述子囊菌亚门中单囊壁类群的一些未解决的问题》的学术报告并对今后工作提出了许多宝贵建议。在与会同志的共同努力下,完成了会议预定的三项议程。     

Modernizing Natural History: Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology in Transition

Throughout the twentieth century calls to modernize natural history motivated a range of responses. It was unclear how research in natural history museums would participate in the significant technological and conceptual changes that were occurring in the life sciences. By the 1960s, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, was among the few university-based natural history museums that were able to maintain their specimen collections and support active research. The MVZ therefore provides a window to the modernization of natural history. This paper concentrates on the directorial transitions that occurred at the MVZ between 1965 and 1971. During this period, the MVZ had four directors: Alden H. Miller (Director 1940–1965), an ornithologist; Aldo Starker Leopold (Acting Director 1965–1966), a conservationist and wildlife biologist; Oliver P. Pearson (Director 1966–1971), a physiologist and mammalogist; and David B. Wake (Director 1971–1998), a morphologist, developmental biologist, and herpetologist. The paper explores how a diversity of overlapping modernization strategies, including hiring new faculty, building infrastructure to study live animals, establishing new kinds of collections, and building modern laboratories combined to maintain collections at the MVZ’s core. The paper examines the tensions between the different modernization strategies to inform an analysis of how and why some changes were institutionalized while others were short-lived. By exploring the modernization of collections-based research, this paper emphasizes the importance of collections in the transformation of the life sciences.     

FILM REVIEW

Film reviewed in this article:
ANGLING LOOKS AHEAD. Producer: Gordon Begg. Director: Michael Heckford.     

Ian Humphery-Smith on current challenges in proteomics

Ian Humphery-Smith is Professor of Pharmaceutical Proteomics at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and until recently was a Managing Director and Chief Scientific Officer of Glaucus Proteomics. After a PhD in Parasitology at the University of Queensland, he studied virology and bacteriology in France as a post-doc, before returning to Australia as Course-Coordinator in Medical Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Sydney. During this time, Humphery-Smith took up the posts of Executive Director of Australia's second largest DNA sequencing facility and Director of the Center for Proteomic Research and Gene-Product Mapping, which later became the world's first center to focus on studying the proteome. Humphery-Smith has devoted ten years of research to analyzing proteins in health and disease, and it was his work that originally coined the term ‘proteomics’. He was the first to publish the most complete analysis of an entire proteome in 2000, that of the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium. He currently serves as a council member of the Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) and has been a prime mover in efforts to have the Human Proteome Project become a formally-ratified international initiative to follow-on from the Human Genome Project.     

AUDIOVISUAL REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
Trobriand Cricket: An Ingenious Response to Colonialism. 1973. Director and anthropological consultant, Jerry W. Leach.     

Annual changes of nitrogen and phosphorus in two aquatic macrophytes (Nymphaea Tuberosa and Ceratophyllum Demersum)

The nitrogen and phosphorus content of Nymphaea tuberosa and Ceratophyllum demersum, in Lake Onalaska, Wisconsin, was studied for a year. On a yearly basis, N. tuberosa exhibited nitrogen and phosphorus differences among seasons and among plant parts. Variation among plant parts was also evident in C. demersum. However, within individual plant structures, no seasonal differences were observed.Funds were provided by the River Studies Center, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, Thomas O. Claflin, Director.Funds were provided by the River Studies Center, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, Thomas O. Claflin, Director.     

Remembrances from the days when William Campbell Steere was Director of The New York Botanical Garden

Dorothy O. Steere, widow of William C. Steere, remembers people and events during the period 1958–1972, when her husband was Director of The New York Botanical Garden.     

ROBERT TEMPLE: an eye for data. Interview

Robert Temple has spent more than thirty years of his career at the Food and Drug Administration-and he still likes it! After medical school, internship, and residency, Temple pursued endocrinology research at the NIH before deciding, in the early 70s, to apply his interests in science to consumer advocacy at the FDA. The FDA was undergoing enormous changes at that time, and Temple enjoyed the challenges associated with improving drug development and patient safety. Always relying on a critical evaluation of data, he is comfortable discussing mechanisms of drug action, experimental design, and regulatory policies, as well as the social implications of direct-to-consumer advertising of drugs. Currently, Temple is Director of one of the six Offices of Drug Evaluation and also serves as the Associate Director for Medical Policy.     

A truly global career

An interview with Kathryn Bayne, MS, PhD, DVM, DACLAM, CAAB, Global Director, Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC) International, Frederick, MD.     

OLAW and APHIS: Common Areas of Noncompliance

The Director of the Compliance Oversight Division, Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare, NIH, and the Deputy Administrator of USDA/APHIS Animal Care discuss areas of noncompliance with PHS Policy and the AWA.     

NIH initiative to balance sex of animals in preclinical studies: generative questions to guide policy,implementation, and metrics

In May of 2014, the NIH Director together with the Director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health announced plans to take a multi-dimensional approach to address the over reliance on male cells and animals in preclinical research. The NIH is engaging the scientific community in the development of policies to improve the sex balance in research. The present, past, and future presidents of the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences, in order to encourage thoughtful discussion among scientists, pose a series of questions to generate ideas in three areas: 1. research strategies, 2. educational strategies, and 3. strategies to monitor effectiveness of policies to improve the sex balance in research. By promoting discussion within the scientific community, a consensus will evolve that will move science forward in a productive and effective manner.     

Cardiac Ischemia. Part II—Reperfusion and Treatment

An edited summary of an Interdepartmental Conference arranged by the Department of Medicine of the UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles. The Director of Conferences is William M. Pardridge, MD, Professor of Medicine.     

New Advances in Bone Research

An edited summary of an Interdepartmental Conference arranged by the Department of Medicine, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles. William M. Pardridge, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, is Director of Conferences.     

New head in Heidelberg. [interview by Graham Tebb

This spring, Iain Mattaj will become the new Director General of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). Graham Tebb talks with him about his research career, his plans for his own future and that of the EMBL.     

Desarrollo de los estudios micológicos en la Argentina en el último decenio

(Director del Centro de Micología de la Facultad de Ciencias Médicas de Buenos Aires. Profesor de Micología en la Universidad Nacional de la Plata)     

The case for communication

Why should busy lab animal professionals become embroiled in the increasingly bitter debate about animal use? The Executive Director of NJABR makes the case for communicating about animal research and provides strategies for countering the animal activists' media war against animal research.     

The Hookers and the development of the Royal Botanic Gardens,Kew*

Following the recommendations of an investigating committee headed by John Lindley, responsibility for the maintenance of the neglected royal estates at Kew was assumed by the State in 1840. Sir William Jackson Hooker, who had long coveted the post, was appointed the first Director. Under his able supervision, the Royal Botanic Gardens rapidly expanded and were imaginatively landscaped, new greenhouses, including the famous Palm House, were erected, and three museums of economic botany were opened. Hooker's own extensive collections formed the nucleus of the Herbarium and Library which made Kew an important centre of taxonomic research. Joseph Dalton Hooker who succeeded his father as Director, although continuing to improve and develop the Gardens, concentrated his efforts on essentially scientific activities particularly in the fields of systematics and phytogeography. To a great extent the international reputation enjoyed by the Gardens today is due to the vision, determination and energy of the two Hookers.     

Primatology: the beginning

The journal Primates was founded by Kinji Imanishi (1902–1992) in 1957: It is the oldest and longest-running international primatology journal in the world. In this series of dialogues between Tetsuro Matsuzawa, Editor-in-Chief of Primates and the General Director of the Japan Monkey Centre (JMC) and Juichi Yamagiwa, former Editor-in-Chief of Primates and the Museum Director of the JMC, we look back at the achievements of our spiritual ancestors in primate research and talk about the back story of Imanishi and his fellow primatologists: founding the JMC as a research institute focused on primates and launching this journal. What was their motivation? What challenges did they face? What is their continued influence on the field right up to the present? What will be the legacy of our influence on the discipline?