Recent Nobel Prize Research Articles

Focus: Issues in Developmental Biology Education

Welcome to this special focus section of CBE—Life Sciences Education. A large portion of this issue deals with aspects of teaching and learning in a particular subdiscipline of the life sciences: developmental biology. The field of developmental biology has progressed rapidly over the past two decades. The modern synthesis of molecular and genetic approaches in model organisms, comparative and evolutionary insights from genomics, use of increasingly sophisticated microscopy techniques, and application of this knowledge to human biology have thrust developmental biology to the forefront of not only science journals but also the public consciousness. A stream of recent Nobel prizes in Physiology or Medicine awarded for work in developmental biology attests to its importance as a central aspect of modern life science. Issues such as therapeutic and reproductive cloning and stem cell biology grab headlines. Clearly, thinking well about how to communicate the fundamental features of developmental biology to the students of today and tomorrow is important. This issue of CBE-LSE contributes to what we hope will be an increasing focus on developmental biology education in the twenty-first century. Given the ascendancy of developmental biology in the current era, several key questions arise: To what extent is developmental biology a field separate from cell biology? Is it, as one of my colleagues likes to say, simply “cell biology over time,” or is it a truly separate way of knowing, with its own educational challenges that are genuinely unique to the subject? Are there special visual and conceptual challenges in teaching developmental biology that distinguish it from other subdisciplines in biology? Given the inherent ethical ramifications of developmental biology applied to humans, to what extent should ethics be incorporated into majors science courses in developmental biology? The Points of View feature in this issue by Gilbert et al. addresses some of these issues. Given the public importance of developmental biology, another issue facing developmental biology instructors is that of increasing scientific literacy in this area. The interview with Morris Maduro by Hoopes and the articles by Gehring and Eastman and by Madhuri and Broussard deal with this issue. Anyone who has peered through a microscope at developing embryos cannot help but be struck by how arresting they are visually. The WWW feature by Stark, the article on teaching Caenorhabditis elegans lineage analysis by Lu et al., and the essay on using photomicrographs by Watson and Lom examine resources and methodologies for teaching this visual aspect of developmental biology. Finally, plant development is often left out of developmental biology discussions. The article by Spiro and Knisely provides one practical example of how to teach plant development. Other features, articles, and essays in previous issues of CBE-LSE have also dealt with the teaching and learning of developmental biology, including the following: WWW Features by Robert Blystone and Dennis Liu Deformed amphibian research at Hartwick College [CBE-LSE 2(2003): 14–15; http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/content/full/2/1/14#SEC1] C. elegans movies [CBE-LSE 2(2003): 14–15; http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/content/full/2/1/14#SEC2] Potent cells [CBE-LSE 6(2007): 90–94; http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/content/full/6/2/90] Video Views and Reviews by Christopher Watters Mitosis and early development [CBE-LSE 1(2002): 111–114; http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/content/full/1/4/111#SEC3] Angiogenesis (the development of blood vessels) [CBE-LSE 2(2003): 9–13; http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/content/full/2/1/9#SEC4] Cytokinesis: a phenomenon overlooked too often [CBE-LSE 4(2005): 10–18; http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/content/full/4/1/10#SEC1] Gastrulation [CBE-LSE 4(2005): 273–278; http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/content/full/4/4/273] Neurulation and the fashioning of the vertebrate central nervous system [CBE-LSE 5(2006): 99–103; http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/content/full/5/2/99] Book Reviews Fink, R. D. A shelf of stem cells [CBE-LSE 3(2004): 20–21; http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/content/full/3/1/20] Vasquez, J. From genes to embryo and beyond [CBE-LSE 6(2007): 27–28; http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/content/full/6/1/27] Articles and Essays Fink, R. Cloning, stem cells, and the current national debate: incorporating ethics into a large introductory biology course [CBE-LSE 1(2002): 132–144; http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/content/full/1/4/132] Gilat Brill, G., and Yarden, A. Learning biology through research papers: a stimulus for question-asking by high-school students [CBE-LSE 2(2003): 266–274; http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/content/full/2/4/266] Knight, J. K., and Wood, W. B. Teaching more by lecturing less [CBE-LSE 4(2005): 298–310; http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/content/full/4/4/298] Lu, F.-M. et al. WormClassroom.org: an inquiry-rich educational web portal for research resources of Caenorhabditis elegans [CBE-LSE 6(2007): 98–108; http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/content/full/6/2/98] Salli, U. et al. Stem cell biology should be taught in high schools [CBE-LSE 6(2007): 283–284; http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/content/full/6/4/283] We hope you enjoy this focus on issues in developmental biology education, and we welcome your suggestions regarding other potential special topics for future issues of CBE-LSE.

The Canadian Society of Biochemistry, Molecular & Cellular Biology (CSBMCB) celebrates its 50th birthday in 2007

The origins of the CSBMCB may be found in the Canadian Biochemical Society that was founded in 1957 by the local Biochemistry groups in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto that formed the new society from members that had met under the auspices of the Canadian Physiological Society, the Canadian Institute of Chemistry, or the Royal Society of Canada. The inaugural meeting of the Canadian Biochemical Society was at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario on 10 June 1988. The first president of the CBS was Professor A. M. Wynne of the University of Toronto. Of course biochemistry, as with all science, has evolved rapidly and in 1992 the society’s name was changed to the Canadian Society of Biochemistry, Molecular & Cellular Biology to reflect more accurately the interests of its members. Canada is the second largest country but with a small population of 32.7 million and CSBMCB decided to concentrate its resources on hosting one high quality meeting per year and to alternate these meetings between the rest of Canada usually at Banff, a resort town in the Canadian Rocky Mountains and in the East in Ontario or Quebec. These are excellent focused meetings and attract an international audience. In fact, in recent years we have seen a surge in our foreign membership and we always welcome new members. The 2007 CSBMCB 50th Conference will be held from 5 – 9 July 2007 in Montreal on ‘Systems and Chemical Biology’. These dates coincide with the Montreal Jazz Festival (http:// www.montrealjazzfest.com/) a major event in North America and we look forward to welcoming old and new friends to a meeting with an outstanding programme (http://www. csbmcb.ca/e_index.html). There is a distinguished history of biochemistry in Canada. At McGill University in Montreal, biochemistry had been introduced into the medical curriculum by Robert Ruttan in 1887, and the first departments of Biochemistry in Canada were those at McGill University and the University of Toronto which were founded in 1907; at about the same time as biochemistry departments elsewhere (1, 2). From the pioneering studies on insulin by Banting, Best and Macleod in Toronto and the development of the method for the extraction of active insulin from pancreas by Collip in the Department of Biochemistry, McGill University, Montreal, to another more recent Nobel Prize for site-directed mutagenesis to the late Mike Smith, Canadian Biochemistry has played a prominent international role. Although funding for science in Canada has lagged behind that of many other nations and despite the small size of the biochemistry community there has always been a considerable international impact of Canadian biochemistry. This has in the past unfortunately resulted in a loss of some leading Canadian biochemists to Europe and the USA, but the Canadian lifestyle and the quality of undergraduate and graduate education in Canada has also attracted outstanding scientists to Canada. This reversal of our ‘brain-drain’ has been helped in the past few years by the determination of successive governments to invest in research. This has resulted in the birth of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research that funds operating grants and training awards; the Canada Foundation for Innovation that funds equipment and also the many new research buildings that are being constructed across the country and the Canada Research Chairs Program that has reinvigorated the research in our universities. The future is bright for research and biochemistry in Canada.

Nuclear self esteem

Being technically multifaceted and complex for understanding by the general public, the capability of some nuclear applications, especially nuclear power, and their potential in helping with some of the most important global issues, seem to be underrated by the public. A few elements that are responsible for this 'higher complexity lengthier pipeline' from demonstrated performance to public perception are discussed in this work. Comments are made on the sustained good results of the last two decades and on several indications of increased recognition that are becoming apparent, especially the recent double Nobel Prize to the IAEA and to the Agency Director General. This paper also addresses some recent facts and issues of this nuclear trajectory and reflects on the possible outcomes of our improved collective self-esteem.

J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading (review)

Reviewed by: J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading Mark Libin Derek Attridge. J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. 225 pp. $25.50 paper. It is often difficult for the literary critic to disentangle the "non-Western" (or "postcolonial" or "world") writer from his or her immediate historical/geographical/political contexts, especially in the case of South African writing, which seems explicitly and singularly focused on describing the horrors perpetuated in the apartheid era. This is precisely the historicizing impulse that Derek Attridge struggles against in his study of Coetzee's fiction. Of course, Attridge is not so glib as to dismiss the significance of Coetzee's historical moment out of hand; rather, he seeks to enlarge and enrich our understanding of Coetzee's oeuvre beyond the limited postcolonial binary of the colonized's struggle against the empire. Attridge contends that Coetzee's aesthetics—an aesthetics that shares the "formal singularity" of European late modernism—is informed by a more complicated concern in his "ethico-political realm" with otherness (6). Attridge argues throughout this study, which takes into account Coetzee's fiction, memoirs, interviews, and articles, as well as the author's recent Nobel Prize acceptance speech, that Coetzee is engaged in "the working out of a complex and freighted responsibility to and for the other, a responsibility denied for so long in South Africa's history" (31). Now, of course, this sort of declaration of "responsibility" towards "otherness" is not new to Coetzee criticism. From David Attwell's 1993 J.M. Coetzee: South Africa and the Politics of Writing and Rosemary Jolly's 1996 Colonization, Violence, and Narration in White South African Writing through countless articles by literary critics including Benita Parry, Michael Marais, and Gayatri Spivak, the critical focus on Coetzee's fiction has been on his narrative strategy for representing the other. The difference with Attridge's study, though, is in his broadened definition of [End Page 333] otherness. Attridge argues that the simple black/white dichotomy relied on by his critical predecessors limits the range of interpretive possibility and greatly reduces the import of Coetzee's project. Indeed, Attridge suggests that in reading Coetzee nothing should be taken for granted, not even the definition of "literature." Attridge, then, begins his own interpretive readings at what he terms the moment of the "event" of reading, and this yields extremely complex and evocative readings particularly in his attention to structure and style. Attridge resists the pull towards the strictly thematic reading of Coetzee's fiction that a national-political methodology tends to produce. Instead, his strategy is to focus on one aspect of a novel—for example, the narrator's voice in Waiting for the Barbarians and Life & Times of Michael K, the meaning of the word "trust" in Age of Iron, the use of the phrase "the times" in Disgrace—and draw out precise and evocative readings not simply showing how Coetzee's fiction works but how literature works within Coetzee's fiction. An example of this sort of close reading occurs in Attridge's analysis of Life & Times of Michael K, a discussion that attempts to distinguish itself from the narrowly allegorical readings to which this novel is so susceptible. To bypass the thematics of the novel—the copious declarations on the subject of life and living that Michael K offers throughout the novel that seem unavoidably to dominate critical discussion—Attridge shifts his focus to the style of indirect narration that Coetzee uses to represent K, to the way in which the author focalizes through this simple man while employing a language to which the character could not have access. At one point, Attridge offers us insight into Michael K and J.M. Coetzee through a reflection on the rhetorical questions K often asks himself: K's thoughts are often in the forms of questions like this; they reflect his somewhat bemused attitude to the events that befall him, the natural consequence of his naïve outlook.… Meditative questions are a particularly effective way of drawing the reader into a character's experience—they invite us to share a moment of uncertainty or curiosity without arriving...

MR imaging: its development and the recent Nobel Prize.

HomeRadiologyVol. 231, No. 3 PreviousNext EditorialsMR Imaging: Its Development and the Recent Nobel PrizeStephen J. RiedererStephen J. RiedererAuthor Affiliations1From the MR Laboratory, Mayo Clinic, 200 First Street SW, Rochester, MN 55905. Received January 19, 2004; accepted January 21. Address correspondence to the author (e-mail: [email protected]).Stephen J. RiedererPublished Online:Jun 1 2004https://doi.org/10.1148/radiol.2313040114MoreSectionsFull textPDF ToolsImage ViewerAdd to favoritesCiteTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked In References 1 Lauterbur PC. Image formation by induced local interactions: examples employing nuclear magnetic resonance. Nature 1973; 242:190-191. Crossref, Google Scholar2 USA MRI market Mountain View, Calif: Frost and Sullivan Market Research, 2002. Google Scholar3 Mansfield P, Grannell PK. NMR “diffraction” in solids? J Phys C Solid State Phys 1973; 6:L422. Crossref, Google Scholar4 Mansfield P. Multi-planar image formation using NMR spin echoes. J Phys C 1977; 10:L55. Crossref, Google Scholar5 Haase A, Frahm J, Matthaei D, Hanicke W, Merboldt KD. FLASH imaging: rapid NMR imaging using low flip-angle pulses. J Magn Reson 1986; 67:258-266. Google Scholar6 Masaryk TJ, Modic MT, Ross JS, et al. Intracranial circulation: preliminary clinical results with three-dimensional (volume) MR angiography. Radiology 1989; 171:793-799. Link, Google Scholar7 Parker DL, Yuan C, Blatter DD. MR angiography by multiple thin slab 3D acquisition. Magn Reson Med 1991; 17:434-451. Crossref, Medline, Google Scholar8 Prince MR, Yucel EK, Kaufman JA, Harrison DC, Geller SC. Dynamic gadolinium-enhanced 3D abdominal MR arteriography. J Magn Reson Imaging 1993; 3:877-881. Crossref, Medline, Google Scholar9 Hennig J, Nauerth A, Friedburg H. RARE imaging: a fast imaging method for clinical MR. Magn Reson Med 1986; 3:823-833. Crossref, Medline, Google Scholar10 Mulkern RV, Wong STS, Winalski C, Jolesz FA. Contrast manipulation and artifact assessment of 2D and 3D RARE sequences. Magn Reson Imaging 1990; 8:557-566. Crossref, Medline, Google Scholar11 Hayes CE, Edelstein WA, Schenck JR, Mueller OM, Eash M. An efficient, highly homogeneous radiofrequency coil for whole-body NMR imaging at 1.5T. J Magn Reson 1985; 63:622-628. Google Scholar12 Roemer PB, Edelstein WA, Hayes CE, Souza SP, Mueller OM. The NMR phased array. Magn Reson Med 1990; 16:192-225. Crossref, Medline, Google Scholar13 Roemer PB, Edelstein WA. Self-shielded gradient coils (abstr) In: Book of abstracts: Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 1986. Berkeley, Calif: Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 1986; 1067. Google Scholar14 Le Bihan D, Breton E, Lallemand D, Grenier P, Cabanis E, Laval-Jeantet M. MR imaging of intravoxel incoherent motions: application to diffusion and perfusion in neurologic disorders. Radiology 1986; 161:401-407. 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Dynamic magnetic resonance imaging of human brain activity during primary sensory stimulation. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 1992; 89:5675-5679. Crossref, Medline, Google Scholar21 Ogawa S, Tank D, Menon R, et al. Intrinsic signal changes accompanying sensory stimulation: functional brain mapping using MRI. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 1992; 89:5951-5955. Crossref, Medline, Google Scholar22 Ogawa S, Lee TM, Kay AR, Tank DW. Brain magnetic resonance imaging with contrast dependent on blood oxygenation. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 1990; 87:9868-9872. Crossref, Medline, Google Scholar23 Johnson GA, Benveniste H, Black RD, Hedlund LW, Maronpot RR, Smith BR. Histology by magnetic-resonance microscopy. Magn Reson Q 1993; 9:1-30. Medline, Google Scholar24 Paulus MJ, Sari-Sarraff H, Gleason SS, et al. A new x-ray computed tomography system for laboratory mouse imaging. IEEE Trans Nucl Sci 1999; 46:558-564. Crossref, Google Scholar25 Kruger RA, Mistretta CA, Houk TL, et al. Computerized fluoroscopy in real time for noninvasive visualization of the cardiovascular system: preliminary studies. Radiology 1979; 130:49-57. Link, Google ScholarArticle HistoryPublished in print: June 2004 FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited ByMedicine, Vol. 93, No. 28Skeletal Radiology, Vol. 40, No. 9Medicine - Programa de Formaci?n M?dica Continuada Acreditado, Vol. 9, No. 92Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Vol. 24, No. 4Applied Magnetic Resonance, Vol. 29, No. 1Pacing and Clinical Electrophysiology, Vol. 28, No. 10Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Vol. 22, No. 10Recommended Articles RSNA Education Exhibits RSNA Case Collection Vol. 231, No. 3 Metrics Altmetric Score PDF download

The (more or less) same light but from different lamps: The post-pluralist understanding of religion from a Japanese perspective

Among a number of Japanese novelists, Endo Shusaku (1923-1996) is perhaps the best-known outside Japan, even surpassing the recent Nobelprize laureate Oe Kenzaburo. Beginning with his early novel Silence (1966), and continuing through his last monumental work Deep River (1993), many of Endo's oeuvres have been translated into English, perhaps because they deal with the issues of Christianity set in distinctively Japanese contexts. Baptized into the Roman Catholic Church at the age of 11, Endo started his lifelong pursuit of ways to acculturate Christianity into Japanese soil throughout his literary career. His oft-quoted hope was to remake the Western-made, "ill-fitting" Christianity into a suit that the Japanese can wear more comfortably.1 Not surprisingly, Endo found John Hick's proposal of religious pluralism very appealing. The recent publication of his composition notes reveals that Endo was profoundly impressed by Hick when he began writing his last novel Deep River. When he encountered the Japanese translation of Hick's Problems of Religious Pluralism (1985) in the corner of a neighborhood bookstore, he could not take it as a mere coincidence and wrote in his diary that "it was as if my subconscious quest had drawn the book to me."2 The novel, whose title refers to the Ganges River in India, revolves around the spiritual journey of a Japanese Catholic monk who studied in France but was expelled from his religious order, allegedly because of his heretical sympathy toward other religions. Later on, while serving the low-caste people in India, the monk confesses, echoing the title of Hick's book God Has Many Names (1980), that "I think the real dialogue takes place when you believe that God has many faces, and that he exists in all religions."3

Debt vs. Equity and Asymmetric Information: A Review

Recent Nobel Prizes to Akerlof, Spence, and Stiglitz motivate this review of basic concepts and empirical evidence on information asymmetry and the choice of debt vs. equity. We first review the literature that holds investment fixed. Then we review capital structure issues related to the adverse investment selection problem of Myers–Majluf. Finally, we discuss the timing hypothesis of capital structure. Empirical studies do not consistently support one theory of capital structure under information asymmetry over the others. Thus, the review suggests that additional theoretical contributions are needed to help understand and explain findings in the empirical literature.

Debt vs. Equity and Asymmetric Information: A Review

Recent Nobel Prizes to Akerlof, Spence, and Stiglitz motivate this review of basic concepts and empirical evidence on information asymmetry and the choice of debt vs. equity. We first review the literature that holds investment fixed. Then we review capital structure issues related to the adverse investment selection problem of Myers-Majluf. Finally, we discuss the timing hypothesis of capital structure. Empirical studies do not consistently support one theory of capital structure under information asymmetry over the others. Thus, the review suggests that additional theoretical contributions are needed to help understand and explain findings in the empirical literature.

The Project of a Personalistic Economics

One cannot really speak of a school of personalistic economists. Moreover, there is a wide gulf between the economic philosophy of the personalists and the mathematical context of economic science. Since the thirties, philosophers such as Alexandre Marc, Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier and many others have been searching, on the basis of a personalistic view of man, for a `third way' between individualistic capitalism and statist socialism, but there was seldom interest from the side of the scientific economists. Fortunately, there are some notable exceptions. Francois Perroux, Kenneth Boulding, Ernst Schumacher, Serge Christophe Kolm, and Amartya Sen are economists who, in various ways, have attempted to bridge the gulf between the personalistic view of man and economic rationality. By carrying out an immanent critique of some of the standard economic assumptions, they opened a path for a normative economics that was clearly distinct from a purely positive economics as well as from Pareto's welfare economics. One can affix various labels to these attempts: humanistic economics (Mark A. Lutz), socio-economics (Amitai Etzioni), moral economics (Sen and others). In what follows, I shall interpret these attempts as initiatives in the direction of a personalistic economics. I would also situate the current research in `economics and ethics', which is becoming part of the mainstream of economic thought, and which has received official recognition with the recent Nobel prize award to Sen, within this tendency towards a more personalistic economics. Attention to moral feelings, human rights, altruistic motives, justice and solidarity, non-profit organizations, etc., contribute to situating the economic problem in a field where economics, politics and ethics no longer function as three distinct domains but where their interaction is central.

BSE and prions: uncertainties about the agent.

A group of brain diseases, including BSE (or mad cow disease) and Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease of humans, are transmitted by prions. In his Perspective, Cheseboro outlines the evidence that prions are composed only of protein (an idea advanced by recent Nobel Prize winner Stanley Prusiner) and the evidence against that hypothesis. He cautions against complacency regarding the obstacles remaining in the field, since, he believes, the central core of the problem remains unresolved.

Game theory and strategic auditing: part I ‐ introduction

Introduces auditors to the power of game theory modelling, a mathematical strategic decision‐making technique that has been popularized by the recent Nobel Prize winner John Nash. The model is demonstrated using both entertaining examples for conceptual understanding and auditing scenarios for practical applications. A collusion model has been developed to illustrate the capability of the game theory model of handling human interactions.

The MIT Dictionary of Modern Economics.

The MIT Dictionary of Modern Economics is an up-to-date, authoritative reference designed primarily for students of business and other social sciences and ideal for anyone who wants a brief explanation of an economic concept or institution.In this fourth edition one entry in ten has been revised and one entry in twenty is new. Whereas the third edition increased the coverage of American institutions, this edition breaks new ground by including entries considered important from an Eastern European perspective. It also supplies comparative statistics on major economic variables for selected countries, describes the origins of widely used acronyms, and includes bibliographic references at the end of featured entries.The dictionary answers in a clear and concise way the enduring questions, which economists have considered for two centuries or more, as well as the issues of the moment, such as economic change in Europe, the problems of pollution, or the prospects for greater freedom of trade. With close to 2,800 entries it is comprehensive in its coverage of theory, national and international institutions, schools of thought, and important economists, including recent Nobel Prize winners.The dictionary was compiled initially by an experienced team of economists at Aberdeen University in the United Kingdom, and new authors have been recruited to provide international expertise, reflecting changes in the structure of the international economy. David W. Pearce, general editor, is Professor of Political Economy at University College, London.This fourth edition was prepared by John Cairns, Robert Elliott, Ian McAvinchey, and Robert Shaw, all of the Economics Department, University of Aberdeen.

Synthetic Vascular Graft Trials Start; Endothelialization Seen as Possible

ALTHOUGH THE recent Nobel prizes in medicine attest to the possibility, it still remains tough to fool Mother Nature. Artificial hearts, kidneys, and joints can't compare with the tissues they replace. But some vascular surgeons are trying a new disguise for that simplest of artificial organs, the synthetic vascular graft, in hopes of deceiving the lady to the patient's advantage. Of the approximately 180 000 vascular grafts placed in the extremities each year, one quarter fail, especially the small-caliber, low-flow conduits. Most of these grafts thrombose. Native blood vessels normally do not clot because of their antithrombotic endothelial cell lining. To decrease the thrombogenicity of a vascular graft, then, it would seem logical to cover it with endothelial cells. In humans, this does not happen spontaneously; endothelial cells only grow a short distance into the anastomotic ends of a prosthetic vessel. Lining vascular grafts with endothelial cells became more than

Synthetic vascular graft trials start; endothelialization seen as possible

ALTHOUGH THE recent Nobel prizes in medicine attest to the possibility, it still remains tough to fool Mother Nature. Artificial hearts, kidneys, and joints can't compare with the tissues they replace. But some vascular surgeons are trying a new disguise for that simplest of artificial organs, the synthetic vascular graft, in hopes of deceiving the lady to the patient's advantage. Of the approximately 180 000 vascular grafts placed in the extremities each year, one quarter fail, especially the small-caliber, low-flow conduits. Most of these grafts thrombose. Native blood vessels normally do not clot because of their antithrombotic endothelial cell lining. To decrease the thrombogenicity of a vascular graft, then, it would seem logical to cover it with endothelial cells. In humans, this does not happen spontaneously; endothelial cells only grow a short distance into the anastomotic ends of a prosthetic vessel. Lining vascular grafts with endothelial cells became more than

ChemInform Abstract: MOLECULAR DYNAMICS OF CHEMICAL REACTIONS IN SOLUTION

Impressive progress has been made in the last twenty five years in understanding the detailed nature of chemical processes involving a few atoms at a time, as honored in the recent Nobel Prize to Herschbach, Lee and Polanyi. Unfortunately, most processes of interest to most chemists involve the simultaneous interaction of many atoms. Examples include all of liquid solution chemistry (and thus most of inorganic and organic chemistry) and chemistry involving large molecules (and thus most of polymer chemistry and biochemistry). A realistic assessment of many atom chemistry in general and liquid solution chemistry in particular is that we know very little as yet about the microscopic details of such processes. Given the clear importance of solution chemistry, it is surprising that so little is known about liquid state solution reactions from the fundamental viewpoint of how they take place as seen from the microscopic perspective of molecular dynamics, in other words of the atomic motions by which they happen.