Howard A. Schneiderman--Planetary Patriot

SYNOPSIS. This symposium on arthropod development is dedicatedto the memory of Howard A. Schneiderman, who died on December5, 1990. Howard devoted much of his professional life to researchon arthropods and was the author of numerous publications onthe developmental biology of moths and flies. At Case-WesternReserve University and at the University of California-Irvinehe founded research institutes devoted to developmental biologyon arthropods as well as other organisms. Howard Schneidermanchampioned the use of insect growth regulators, which derivedfrom his research on the chemistry and physiology of juvenilehormone, as environmentally innocuous methods of controllinginsect pests of our food and fiber. In recent years he was aproponent of the use of molecular biology to alter the plantgenome so that insect-resistant crops might be grown and therebyreduce the use of insecticides. His global perspective was evidentin his understanding of how biotechnology could be applied toworld agriculture. Moreover, he quickly achieved prominencein promoting industry-university relations in his capacity asSenior Vice President for Research and Development at the MonsantoCompany. The cooperation among academic and industrial institutionsthat he fostered stands as a model for such relationships. HowardSchneiderman's influence on science and its applications, andon the universityindustry interface was profound and will befelt for many years to come.     

Atul Butte discusses the divide between bioinformatics and the clinic

Atul Butte is an Assistant in Endocrinology and Informatics and Attending Physician at Children's Hospital, Boston, USA (http://www.chip.org), and is an Instructor in Paediatrics at Harvard Medical School (http://www.harvard.edu). He received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Brown University in 1991, and worked in several stints as a software engineer at Apple Computer and Microsoft Corporation. He graduated from the Brown University School of Medicine in 1995, during which he worked as a research fellow at National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK; http://www.niddk.nih.gov) through the Howard Hughes/NIH Research Scholars Program. He completed his residency in Paediatrics and Fellowship in Paediatric Endocrinology in 2001, both at Children's Hospital. During his research under Isaac Kohane (at Children's Hospital) he developed a novel methodology for analyzing large data sets of RNA expression, called Relevance Networks. His recent awards include the 2003 Emory University School of Medicine, Pathology Residents’ Choice Award, 2002 American Association for Clinical Chemistry Outstanding Speaker Award, 2002 Endocrine Society Travel Award based on presentation merit, 2001 American Association for Cancer Research Scholar-In-Training Award and the 2001 Lawson Wilkins Paediatric Endocrine Society Clinical Scholar Award.     

Stuart Schreiber

Stuart Schreiber is an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Morris Loeb Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. His chemical biology research, which uses small molecules derived from diversity-oriented synthesis, observational screens and information science, has uncovered principles that underlie information transfer and storage in cells. Harvard's ICCB and its affiliated, NCI-sponsored Initiative for Chemical Genetics and the NIGMS-sponsored Center of Excellence in Chemical Methodologies and Library Development are facilitating his research.     

Professor Howard Mason and oxygen activation

Our understanding of the classification, function, mechanism, and structure of the enzymes which incorporate atoms of oxygen from atmospheric molecular oxygen during catalysis is based on the thoughtful and technically challenging experiments of two giants in the field of Biochemistry, Howard Mason and Osamu Hayaishi. This volume celebrates the 50th anniversary of the discovery and characterization of these "oxygenase" enzymes and provides a broad view of how far this area of research has advanced. Professor Hayaishi describes herein his perspective on the background and major discoveries which led to the development of this field. Regrettably Howard Mason passed away at age 88 in 2003. I am indeed fortunate to have been a Ph.D. student with Howard and to have the opportunity to briefly review his role in the development of this field for this special commemorative issue of BBRC.     

Common to both academia and industry: the challenge of discovery. An interview with Perry Molinoff

Perry Molinoff recognizes the distinctions between basic and applied science, between academic and industrial research, and between the preclinical and clinical realities of drug development. But he generally discusses these categories in fluid, practical terms, having throughout his career crossed the lines of distinction that have sometimes been rather heavily drawn among pharmacologists. As a third-year medical student at Harvard, he decided "to take a year off" to conduct laboratory research. After receiving his MD and pursuing further clinical and postdoctoral work, he enjoyed an academic career that included fourteen years as the A.N. Richards Professor and Chair of Pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He has just completed six years as Vice President of Neuroscience and Genitourinary Drug Discovery for Bristol-Myers Squibb and will soon return to teaching, in the Departments of Psychiatry and Pharmacology at Yale University. Referring to himself as either pharmacologist or neuroscientist, depending on context, he has made fundamental discoveries in receptor biology, has overseen the discovery and development of drugs and their subsequent clinical trials, and has mentored a host of pharmacologists and neuroscientists who themselves have established careers in industry and academia. The pursuit of discovery as its own reward emerges as a theme that has marked his professional life (and is perhaps reflected also in the images displayed in his office of the Himalayan mountains, photographed by Molinoff himself from the Everest base camp last year).     

Homer Wheelon, M.D., physiologist, artist, and poet: origins of the tailpieces in journals of the American Physiological Society

Since 1953, illustrations have been inserted as "tailpieces" at the ends of articles in The American Journal of Physiology and The Journal of Applied Physiology. The drawings were made by Homer Wheelon, a member of the American Physiological Society from 1919 until his death in 1960. Forty-five years after his death, Wheelon is unknown, but he contributed 32 publications to the medical literature and trained J. Earl Thomas, an important 20th century gastrointestinal physiologist. Wheelon was born into poverty in 1883 to itinerant Methodist preachers, circumstances that guided his education and career choices. Throughout his life, Wheelon exhibited a fondness and talent for art and photography and an unusual breadth of intellectual interests and knowledge. Wheelon received a bachelor's degree from the University of Washington, then studied at the University of Oregon, Northwestern University, and St. Louis University. Earning his M.D. from St. Louis University and assuming a faculty position there, Wheelon and his graduate student, Thomas, conducted widely recognized gastrointestinal research. Returning to Seattle in 1921, Wheelon became a highly respected physician and hospital administrator, but he also found time to indulge his interest in visual art and poetry. In 1933, inspired by observing a rabbit being used in a pregnancy test, Wheelon began to write and illustrate an epic, 322-page poem, Rabbit No. 202, illustrations from which became the journals' tailpieces. The present study traces Wheelon's personal life and scientific career in an attempt to understand this complex man and the origins of his unusual poem and its drawings.     

The life and work of Hiroya Kawanabe: the priest ecologist

Hiroya Kawanabe was born the son of a Buddhist priest and teacher of Japanese literature, who died when Kawanabe was very young. Kawanabe also studied Buddhism by himself, and passed the examination to be a priest of his sect while still in high school. He studied zoology and ecology at Kyoto University and earned his doctorate under the guidance of Denzaburo Miyadi, a well-known Japanese ecologist, in 1960. During his academic career at Kyoto University, Kawanabe advanced to hold the chair of Animal Ecology as Professor in the Department of Zoology. Kawanabe's doctoral research concerned the social behavior and population ecology of the ayu, Plecoglossus altivelis, an amphidromous fish that lives in streams as adults and grazes algae. His research lead to the discovery that social structure changed from territoriality to schooling as population density increased, and also varied with changes in food and habitat. During this work, he pioneered the use of underwater observation to study ecolo gy of freshwater fishes in streams. Kawanabe also observed ayu social structure from the northern to southern limits of their range, and advanced the theory that the more stable territoriality in the Lake Biwa population was a relic social structure to guarantee food supply during earlier glacial periods when productivity was lower. Additional work on stream fishes in central Japan and Okinawa Island led Kawanabe to propose that interactions among individuals affect interspecific relationships, and thereby, community structure. Discussions with Charles Elton, the famous British ecologist of Oxford University, strengthened Kawanabe's view that communities could be best understood as the whole of interrelationships among organisms. Kawanabe advanced these ideas during a joint study he led with a host of Japanese and Zairean scientists on the fishes of Lake Tanganyika, beginning in 1979. This work, as well as additional research on Lake Biwa in Japan, led to a deeper understanding of the complexity of biotic interactions (including competition, predation, mutualism, commensalism, and indirect effects) that promote the high species diversity in these ecosystems. In addition to basic research, Kawanabe was part of research teams organized during the 1960s by D. Miyadi to study the effects of public works projects on natural environments and biota in Lake Naka-umi and Lake Biwa. During the late 1980s he expanded his network to an international venue, both by organizing and hosting important international ecological meetings in Japan, such as the Fifth International Ecological Congress, and by increasing his international activities to promote global biodiversity. In 1991, Kawanabe founded the Center for Ecological Research at Kyoto University to study the interrelationships among organisms and their environments. Recently retired from the University, he became Director General of the new Lake Biwa Museum in 1996, and continues to promote conservation of biodiversity worldwide through an international network of scientists and organizations.     

“Do not lose the winning games” to the 100th anniversary of M.E. Lobashev

Mikhail E. Lobashev (1907–1971), Head of the Department of Genetics and Breeding with the Leningrad (now, St. Petersburg) State University from 1957 to 1971, had traveled a long way from a homeless to an Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation. Lobashev was among the discoverers of chemical mutagenesis in Drosophila; he pioneered in connecting the mutation process and the repair of genetic material and developed the concept of signal inheritance. Through the entire Great Patriotic War, he served with the field forces, and defended his doctoral dissertation on the physiological hypothesis of mutation process in 1946 on the return to the University. In 1948, Mikhail Efimovich was discharged from the University, where he was the Dean of the Biological Faculty, as a Morganist. On his return to the University in 1957, Lobashev devoted all his energies to the restoration of genetic education in this country, wrote the first domestic genetic textbook in the post-Lysenko period, organized the research at the Department of Genetics and Breeding, and created the scientific school, whose representatives are still successfully working in the field of genetics.     

Rolf Bernander (1956–2014): pioneer of the archaeal cell cycle

On 19 January 2014 Rolf (‘Roffe’) Bernander passed away unexpectedly. Rolf was a dedicated scientist; his research aimed at unravelling the cell biology of the archaeal domain of life, especially cell cycle‐related questions, but he also made important contributions in other areas of microbiology. Rolf had a professor position in the Molecular Evolution programme at Uppsala University, Sweden for about 8 years, and in January 2013 he became chair professor at the Department of Molecular Biosciences, The Wenner‐Gren Institute at Stockholm University in Sweden. Rolf was an exceptional colleague and will be deeply missed by his family and friends, and the colleagues and co‐workers that he leaves behind in the scientific community. He will be remembered for his endless enthusiasm for science, his analytical mind, and his quirky sense of humour.     

Proximity to seacoast: G. W. Field and the marine laboratory at Point Judith Pond,Rhode Island, 1896–1900

Conclusions By the time George Wilton Field concluded his work at the marine laboratory his initial scientific concerns had forced him directly into local politics. He pleaded with little success with the community of South Kingstown, and with no success with the town of Narragansett, to create and maintain a permanent breach:Is it not possible for the acute business sense and the broad philanthropy of the community to sweep aside petty, local, and personal jealousies which are now blocking practical progress for the establishment of a permanent breach at Point Judith Pond? It is truly criminal neglect which permits fifteen hundred acres of valuable water-farming area to lie practically idle and rapidly deteriorate with each passing year.... In the opinion of the writer the Point Judith Pond and those of similar type could be made the seat of oyster, clam, crab, herring, white perch, and striped bass fisheries.³⁰ In the summer of 1899 Field was invited to teach a summer course on echinoderms at the MBL in Woods Hole, and to conduct summer research in a laboratory of the U.S. Fish Commission, also located at Woods Hole. When the summer was over, he remained there. Whether he had intentions of returning to resume his position in Rhode Island is unclear. At this point all correspondence with the Agricultural Experiment Station ceases, and Field's last report is a brief statement in the annual report of the experiment station for 1900 wherein he laments the variety of experiments he has not been able to carry to conclusion, such as a study of the artificial fertilization of water analogous to the method of chemically fertilizing the land for crops.The correspondence reveals that the enthusiasm Field brought to Point Judith Pond in 1896 was gradually sapped by his own fragile health, by three years' exposure to the local politics surrounding the southern Rhode Island fishing industry, and by a college administration determined to remove the stench of his invertebrates. He sought a refuge in the sheltered world of pure research at the U.S. Fish Commission Laboratory, where he set out to investigate the Origin of Sex using, as his animal models, squid and toadfish.On November 14, 1899, the Board of Managers of the college ordered the director of the experiment station to dispose of the marine laboratory at Point Judith Pond.³¹ How long the laboratory at Buttonwood Point survived in the institutional memory of the University of Rhode Island is open to question. The current Graduate School of Oceanography, in the event, traces its history back to 1937, not 1896.Nevertheless, Field and his one-room marine station established a precedent of land-grant marine research that other state colleges would follow, including Rhode Island itself, which reestablished its marine station, this time permanently, at South Ferry in 1937. In his brief research career in Rhode Island, George Wilton Field had discovered the same coastal attributes that would lead later to the creation of one of the world's major marine research centers at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography.And, in a measure of triumph for his work, little more than a year after Field left for Woods Hole and his laboratory was dismantled, the town of South Kingstown voted the funds necessary to begin the construction of a permanent breachway.³² Whether Field's scientific reasoning and the conclusions of his marine research played any part in finally deciding the thirty-year-old debate in the affirmative will probably never be known. What is evident is that Field had no patience for those who could not see the results of his research as clearly as he could himself.     

Albert Howard and the mycorrhizal association

Albert Howard worked as an imperial agronomist for the British Government in India. Following his retirement in 1931, he returned to England and embarked on a passionate global campaign to reform agricultural practices. Central to Howard's project was the mycorrhizal association, a symbiotic relationship between plant roots and subterranean fungi, believed to play an important part in plant nutrition. I show that there are a number of close parallels between Howard's work in India and his portrayal of the mycorrhizal association, and argue that Howard used these fungi to naturalise his imperial project. Understood in this way, these mycorrhizal and imperial associations reveal ways that Howard was able to negotiate the boundaries between the local and global, England and India, science and agriculture, institute and village, and soil and plant. In contrast to Thomas Gieryn's work on hybridisation at the cultural boundaries between science and non-science, I concentrate on Howard's use of intermediaries to negotiate and articulate specific boundaries within his imperial project. Arguing that this approach reveals limitations in Gieryn's hybrid framework, I suggest that a focus on Howard's dependence on intermediaries draws attention to the discontinuities between entities, besides the dynamic ways that they might be coupled.     

纪念戴芳澜教授诞辰九十周年

戴芳澜教授(1893.5.4—1973.1.3)是我国真菌学的创始人,也是我国植物病理学的主要奠基人之一。他为祖国培养了大量人才。为纪念他的光辉业绩,值戴教授诞辰九十周年、逝世十周年之际,特发表他的一篇评论性论文;戴教授的主要著作目录;俞大绂、陈鸿逵、周家炽、裘维蕃、相望年等教授的怀念性文章和他一生中各时期的照片两版,以资纪念。     

Mycobacterial Glycophosphoinositides: the Work of Clinton E. Ballou

Biosynthesis of Mannophosphoinositides by Mycobacterium phlei. The Family of Dimannophosphoinositides(Brennan, P., and Ballou, C. E. (1967) J. Biol. Chem. 242, 3046–3056)Biosynthesis of Mannophosphoinositides by Mycobacterium phlei. Enzymatic Acylation of the Dimannophosphoinositides(Brennan, P., and Ballou, C. E. (1968) J. Biol. Chem. 243, 2975–2984)Clinton Edward Edgerton Ballou was born in King Hill, Idaho in 1923. After graduating from high school, he enrolled in a premed program at Boise Junior College, but his interests quickly turned to chemistry after he dissected a poorly embalmed cat in a comparative anatomy course. During his sophomore year, Ballou transferred to Oregon State College in Corvallis where he became involved in two research projects: the first during his sophomore year synthesizing new antimalarial drugs with Bert Christensen, and the second during his senior year studying the guinea pig “antistiffness factor” with Willem van Wagtendonk.Open in a separate windowClinton E. BallouThe military draft was in effect as Ballou entered his last year of college so he decided to join the U. S. Navy after graduating in 1944. He was discharged 2 years later and decided to apply for graduate study in biochemistry with Karl Paul Link at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As detailed in a previous Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) Classic (1), Link''s research centered on blood anticoagulants, and when Ballou arrived in his laboratory in 1946, the primary focus was the structure-function relationship of coumarin anticoagulants. Ballou was immediately intrigued when he learned of a failed attempt to synthesize the glucoside of dicumarol because the acetylated intermediate was degraded in the alkali conditions used for deacetylation. Because glycosides are acetals, which are typically acid-labile and alkali-stable, Ballou decided to study a variety of synthetic compounds to try to understand the structural basis for alkali sensitivity. This research formed the core of his doctoral dissertation, and his exposure to carbohydrate chemistry influenced the direction of his career.After earning his Ph.D. in 1950, Ballou did a year-long postdoctoral fellowship with E. L. Hirst in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh. There he studied the structure of maple sapwood starch. At the end of the year, Ballou returned to the U. S. to work with Hermann O. L. Fischer (the son of Nobel laureate Hermann Emil Fischer) at the University of California, Berkeley. Ballou explained his choice: “I was attracted to Fischer in part because of his research on phosphorylated sugars but also because during graduate school I had drawn heavily on the published works of his father, Emil Fischer. I guess the idea of being associated with the son of Emil Fischer just seemed ‘real cool’ to me” (2).The 1950s was a time of active research on biosynthetic pathways involving short chain phosphorylated sugars, and collaborating with Fischer and Donald MacDonald, Ballou undertook the syntheses of several such metabolic intermediates, including d-glyceric acid 2-phosphate, d-glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate, dihydroxyacetone phosphate, hydroxypyruvic acid 3-phosphate, and d-erythrose 4-phosphate. He also became interested in inositol chemistry as a result of studies on the cyclitols in sugar pine heartwood.In 1955, Ballou was appointed to the biochemistry faculty at Berkeley and went about setting up an independent research program. He decided to work on inositol-containing phospholipids and was able to synthesize and characterize d-myoinositol 1-phosphate. He also spent several years isolating and characterizing myoinositol polyphosphates from beef brain phosphoinositide. This culminated in his discovery of d-myoinositol l,4,5-trisphosphate or IP₃. More information on Ballou''s studies of these phosphoinositides can be found in his JBC Reflections (2).Ballou became eligible for sabbatical leave in 1961 and decided to spend a year at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France studying the glycophosphoinositides of mycobacteria with Edgar Lederer. There he collaborated with Erna Vilkas on experiments to establish the linkages of both the phosphatidyl and the mannosyl groups to the myoinositol ring (3). Upon his return to Berkeley, Ballou and Yuan Chuan Lee determined the structures of the family of mannosyl phosphoinositides in Mycobacterium smegmatis (4–6). Ballou and his postdoctoral fellow Patrick Brennan then began to look at the biosynthesis of the intact dimannophosphoinositides on Mycobacterium phlei, which is the subject of the two JBC Classics reprinted here.In the first Classic, Ballou and Brennan used subcellular fractions of M. phlei to catalyze the biosynthesis of several mannosyl derivatives of phosphatidylmyoinositol and reported that the major products are a family of three dimannophosphoinositides (A, B, and C) that differ in the number of fatty acyl groups they contain (four, three, and two, respectively). On the basis of their results, they proposed that guanosine diphosphate mannose acts as the sugar donor in the conversion of phosphatidylmyoinositol to phosphatidylmyoinositol dimannoside (dimannophosphoinositide C), which is then acylated in a two-step process to first yield dimannophosphoinositide B and then dimannophosphoinositide A.In the second JBC Classic, Ballou and Brennan provide further evidence for their proposed biosynthesis scheme by using an enzyme from M. phlei to specifically incorporate labeled fatty acids into the dimannophosphoinositides. They showed that label from [¹⁴C]palmityl-CoA is incorporated into dimannophosphoinositide C to yield dimannophosphoinositide B. After a short incubation period, this molecule is converted to dimannophosphoinositide A, but with longer incubation periods the product is deacylated to isomeric forms of dimannophosphoinositides B and C.Brennan continued to work on these glycophosphoinositides after completing his postdoctoral fellowship with Ballou and eventually showed that the lipoglycans (lipomannan (LM) and lipoarabinomannan (LAM)) were multiglycosylated extensions of Ballou''s phosphatidylinositol mannosides and are very important in the pathogenesis of tuberculosis and leprosy. More recent research has defined the biochemistry and genetics of synthesis of these molecules. Brennan is currently University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology at Colorado State University. He served on the editorial board of the Journal of Biological Chemistry for several years and was also named Colorado State University Researcher of the Year in 1992.In 1991, Ballou became Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, although he continued research and teaching for a few years. In recognition of his contributions to science, Ballou has received many awards and honors including election to the National Academy of Sciences (1975), the American Chemical Society''s Claude Hudson Award in Carbohydrate Chemistry (1981), the Welch Foundation Lectureship (1972), the University of Notre Dame Reilly Lectureship (1976), the Duke University Belfort Lectureship (1977), a National Science Foundation Senior Fellowship (1961), and a University of California Berkeley Citation (1992). Ballou also served as an editorial board member for the Journal of Biological Chemistry.     

Philip Cohen

Philip Cohen trained at University College London and, after postdoctoral research at the University of Washington, joined the University of Dundee Scotland, in 1971, where he has worked ever since. He is a Royal Society Research Professor and Director of the Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation Unit. His main contributions have been in the area of protein phosphorylation and its role in cell regulation and human disease. In 1998, he was knighted for his contributions to biochemistry and the development of Life Sciences at Dundee.     

Providing QoS in Bluetooth

Bluetooth polling, also referred to as Bluetooth MAC scheduling or intra-piconet scheduling, is the mechanism that schedules the traffic between the participants in a Bluetooth network. Hence, this mechanism is highly determining with respect to the delay packets experience in a Bluetooth network. In this paper, we present a polling mechanism that provides delay guarantees in an efficient manner, and we evaluate this polling mechanism by means of simulation. It is shown that this polling mechanism is able to provide delay guarantees while saving as much as possible resources, which can be used for transmission of best effort traffic or for retransmissions.Rachid Ait Yaiz (1974) received his BS in Electrical Engineering from the Technische Hogeschool Arnhem, the Netherlands, in 1996 and his MSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Twente, the Netherlands, in 1999. He received his Ph.D. in Telecommunications from the same university in 2004. Currently, he works for TNO Telecom. His research interests include mobile and wireless networks, and he is particularly interested in the area of quality of service over mobile and wireless networks.Geert Heijenk (1965) received his MSc in Computer Science from University of Twente, the Netherlands, in 1988. He worked as a research staff member at the same university and received his Ph.D. in Telecommunications in 1995. He has also held a part-time position as researcher at KPN research, the Netherlands, from 1989 until 1991. From 1995 until 2003, he was with Ericsson EuroLab Netherlands, first as a senior strategic engineer, and since 1999 as a research department manager. From 1998 until 2003 he was also a part-time senior researcher at the University of Twente. Currently, he is a full-time associate professor at the same university. His research interests include mobile and wireless networks, resource management, and quality of service.     

Q & A: Till Roenneberg

Till Roenneberg is Professor of Chronobiology at the University of Munich. He studies the circadian clock from its cellular/molecular mechanisms up to the consequences of shift work. He received his education in Munich and London, and worked in the 1980s with Woody Hastings at Harvard. Since then, he has built up the Centre for Chronobiology at the Munich Medical School. For many years, he has coordinated circadian research and education in Germany and in Europe. He is also involved in reforming the University curriculum, incorporating problem-based approaches. He has received international prizes for both his research and his teaching.     

I. P. Pavlov's teacher of physiology I. F. Tsion (1842-1912)]

In 1866, at the C. Ludwig's laboratory, E. F. Cyon discovered n. depressor, and after C. Bernard's presentation he was awarded with the Montion Prize of the Paris Academy of Sciences. In 1867, together with his brother M. Cyon, he discovered nn. accelerantes of heart, which increase the heart rate when being stimulated. From 1868 to 1874 he was a privatdocent an professor of physiology at Saint-Petersburg University, where under his guidance I.P. Pavlov mastered the brilliant technique of vivisection experiment and accomplished his first works on the physiology of circulation and digestion. From 1872 to 1874 E. F. Cyon was physiology professor at Saint-Petersburg Medical-Surgical Academy. He published "Course of Physiology" in 2 volumes, the official speech "Heart and Brain" and others, proposed an original theory of inhibition, improved the reflex theory. He published 197 works, including 151 in German and French. I. P. Pavlov paid a worthy tribute to his teacher and continued the main direction of his investigations.     

W. Montague Cobb (1904–1990): Physical Anthropologist, Anatomist, and Activist

William Montague Cobb's life and work reflect a profound integration of art, literature, social activism, and science. This article presents some of the highlights of his academic development and professional contributions. We have considered his early academic development within the contexts of the formative years of American physical anthropology, Howard University Medical School, and the social issues in American society that influenced Cobb. His approaches to teaching, anatomical and anthropological research, and medicine are unique, and yet are closely reasoned and creative reflections of the major currents of academe and the broader society with which he dealt. Imbued with a sense of social responsibility, Cobb's applied anthropology involved the accumulation of extensive data on the one hand, and the formation of organizations for social activism on the other. It was directed toward solving problems of health care and racism. His work thereby served to balance the widespread distortion and neglect of medical and racial problems facing A fro-America between 1930 and the present day. He was also a principal builder of black medical and scientific institutions, and he preserved the record of his coworkers' contributions through his many biographies. This work represents no more than a sketch of his rich and prolific career (during which he produced more than 1,100 publications); the emphasis of this biographical study has been to ascertain the circumstances and attitudes that helped mold the first Afro-American Ph.D. in physical anthropology.     

Contribution of late Professor T. C. Tung to the experimental embryology of Amphioxus

Professor T. C. Tung (Fig. 1) was a prominent experimental embryologist in China. He was born in Jin County, Zhejiang Province, China in 1902. After he obtained his Bachelor's degree from the Department of Biology, Fudan University, Shanghai in 1927, he was appointed as a teaching assistant in that department until he moved to Belgium in 1930. He studied as a graduate student in Professors A. Brachet and A. M. Dalcq's laboratory at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium and obtained his Doctor of Science degree there in 1934. During that period, he made two short working visits to the Institute of Marine Biology in France and took one training course at Cambridge University (UK). In 1934, he was invited to return to China as a Full Professor to teach at several Chinese universities, (Shandong University in Qingdao, Shandong Province; the National University in Nanjing; and Fudan University in Shanghai). He spent 1 year at Yale University (USA) between 1948 and 1949 as an invited scientist in a joint research project and finally returned to China in 1949. He was Chairman of the Department of Zoology, Shandong University in Qingdao (1949-1952), Vice-President of Shandong University (1952-1960), Director of the Marine Biological Institute, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Qingdao (1949-1958), Director of the Institute of Oceanology (CAS) in Qingdao (1959-1966), Director of the Institute of Zoology (CAS) in Beijing (1960-1962), member of CAS since 1955, Vice-Chairman of the Biological and Geographical Division of CAS (1955-1958), Chairman of the Biological Division of CAS (1959-1979) and Vice-President of CAS in Beijing (1978-1979). In spite of his administrative duties, he spent most of his life conducting bench work in his laboratories at the Institutes of Oceanology and Zoology, CAS, respectively, until he passed away in March 1979. Professor Tung's main research interest was with classic experimental studies on the determination of the egg axis and symmetry planes of fertilized eggs, early differentiation and organizing substances of egg cytoplasm, induction between embryonic cells and cytoplasm in embryogenesis, immunological studies on nuclear transplanted eggs, and cell fusion etc., in several types of animals. He conducted his experiments on a number of invertebrates (ascidians and Amphioxus) and vertebrates (fish and amphibians) by means of very skillful microsurgical operations and the nuclear transplantation method. Among these topics, his studies on the organization and developmental potency of Amphioxus eggs were unique. His important contribution to this research field involved not only establishing a practical method for collecting and using this rare animal for experimental purposes, but also clarifying controversy about the nature and early development of its eggs. He also provided conclusive evidence to determine its evolutionary position between invertebrates and vertebrates. The present article briefly reviews the main results obtained by Professor Tung and his colleagues on Amphioxus. Although their original articles were written both in Chinese and English, many international readers may not even know those original works because they were only published in scientific journals inside China from the 1950s. Comments and discussion on the experimental results of Amphioxus research by Tung's group and those from other earlier authors are also included.     

Life-time contributions of Joop Ringelberg to new approaches in aquatic ecology, father of modern aquatic ecology in the Netherlands

This dedication marks the retirement of Prof. Dr J. Ringelberg from the University of Amsterdam. In this article his contributions to the aquatic ecology in the Netherlands are reviewed. After his Ph.D. study on The positively phototactic reaction of Daphnia magna Straus, a contribution to the understanding of diurnal vertical migration (1964), Joop Ringelberg became associate professor at the Laboratory of Animal Physiology of the University of Amsterdam. He started at the university the research group of Experimental Hydrobiology. From 1965 to the 1980s he played a very important role in the development of experimental ecology and ecosystem research in the aquatic habitats in the Netherlands. During the last ten or twelve years of his scientific career (1985- to date) Dr Ringelberg returned to his old hobby horse the Diel Vertical Migration (DVM) of zooplankton, especially daphnids. Intensive field and laboratory studies during these later years, helped him and his students to get a deeper insight into DVM behaviour of the daphnids, in response to the rates of changes in light intensity in close conjunction with release of predator (fish) kairomones. In addition, Ringelberg initiated the use of micro-ecosystems and was leader of a team that has developed a flowcytometer, especially for quantitative and pigment analyses of phytoplankton. His other landmark achievements, national and international, included the chairmanship of the Dutch Hydrobiological Society and of the Aquatic Ecology division of BION (Biological Research in the Netherlands). He was a national representative of SIL (International Association of Theoretical and Applied Limnology) and during ten years a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Limnology at Plön, Germany. As a guest scientist he is still continuing his scientific pursuits at the Centre of Limnology, Nieuwersluis.