Subject: Introducing Science Roundup, the new electronic newsletter from AAAS

From: <[email-masked]> AAAS Member Services
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 17:23:08 -0500

Dear AAAS Member,

We are proud to introduce to you the premier edition of Science Roundup, a new quarterly e-mail newsletter, sponsored by Informax.  Every three months, we'll review some of the more interesting and groundbreaking news, research, and opinion that has appeared during the quarter in the pages of Science -- with hyperlinks to take you directly to the relevant parts of the journal's electronic sister publication, Science Online. 

InforMax Inc, a leading developer of bioinformatics software for accelerated drug discovery, has release of a new enterprise bio-informatics software architecture for integrated genomic analysis called High-Throughput Research (HTR). See details at the end of this edition.

------
Some Science Highlights:  First Quarter 2000

In the first three months of 2000, Science and Science Online took readers from the center of the Milky Way to the realm of individual genes, and explored issues ranging from the ethics of stem cell use to climate change to the process of scientific discovery itself.  Here are some of the quarter's highlights.

Drosophila:  Finishing the Job
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/287/5461/2181

The virtually complete decoding of the genome of Drosophila melanogaster, the lowly fruit fly, stands as a landmark of modern biology -- as much for the revolutionary whole-genome "shotgun" technique used in the project, as for the rich harvest of new data about what may be the most studied model system in all of genetics.  The first of Science's two genome special issues for 2000, published 3/24/2000, focused on that achievement.  Reviews documented the history, significance, and potential applications of Drosophila genome research, and articles detailed the actual structure of the fly's genome (including a color-coded, fold-out chart relating the fly genome to genes from mammals, C. elegans, and S. cerevisiae).

Stem Cells:  The Promise and the Challenge
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/287/5457/1417

The emerging therapeutic potential of stem cells -- immature cells with the ability differentiate into various kinds of body tissue -- was cited as Science's Breakthrough of the Year at the end of 1999.  But with that potential has come a bewildering array of ethical, financial, and practical challenges for society at large.  A special issue (2/25/2000) explored those challenges in a series of news, opinion, and review articles on what stem cells can (and, perhaps, can't) do, how the biotech industry is making big business out of stem cell research, and whether there's a place for federal funding in this controversial area of R&D.  Less than a month later (3/17/2000; http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/287/5460/2032), Science was again at the forefront of publishing stem cell research, with a pathbreaking paper by Tropepe et al. about retinal stem cells that may signal their potential in vision therapies of the future.

Walking the Pathways of Discovery
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/287/5451/229

Breakthroughs such as stem cell research shape our views of  scientific history.  Yet, as any working scientist knows, the breakthroughs are merely way stations on an endless road of scientific discovery -- each breakthrough built on the achievements of countless previous workers and marking a new trailhead for future investigators.  For the fulcrum year 2000, Science is celebrating this endless process through its monthly "Pathways of Discovery" series.  Essays for the first quarter included a tone-setting exploration, by Stephen Jay Gould, of the long-standing "false dichotomy" between scientific rationalism and humanism (1/14/2000; http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/287/5451/253), and more focused studies of the history and future of planetary science (2/11/2000; http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/287/5455/997) and of genome research (3/10/2000; http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/287/5459/1777).

At the Frontiers of Drug Discovery
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/287/5460/1951

New drug therapies, of course, constitute one major real-world application that will flow from progress in areas such as genomics.  The 3/17/2000 special issue of Science examined drug discovery from both the scientific and the industrial perspective, explored new drug strategies for cancer research, looked at ways in which genome research might be harnessed in developing new antibiotics, and discussed the "drug gap" between rich and poor nations.

Exploring the Milky Way
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/287/5450/61

The peaceful sight of a star-sprinkled sky belies the turbulent past, present, and future of our Galaxy.  In its first special issue of 2000 (1/7/2000), Science looked at the state of the art in Milky Way studies -- reviewing efforts to glimpse the supermassive black hole at the galactic center, insights on the Galaxy's birth and evolution that have been gleaned from studies of its large-scale structure, and the Milky Way's expected end, three billion years hence, in a cataclysmic collision with its nearest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy.

Understanding Climate Change

Getting a grip on the climate signal of the past -- and present -- was a theme that ran through the pages of Science this quarter.  A research article by Lear et al. in the 1/14/2000 issue, and an accompanying perspective by G. S. Dwyer (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/287/5451/246), looked at how new high-resolution studies of microscopic calcite-shelled sea creatures, benthic foraminifera, have refined our understanding of the global temperature record for the past 50 million years.  A Perspective by G. J. Kukla (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/287/5455/987) in the 2/11/2000 issue reviewed efforts to understand climate trends since the close of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago.  And two studies in the 2/18/2000 issue, described in a Perspective by D. E. Parker (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/287/5456/1216), made significant progress in resolving a paradox of the contemporary climate record:  why surface temperature readings document a global warming of 0.3°-0.4° C over the past 20 years -- while satellite-based measurements of the lower troposphere show virtually no warming at all.

Signals to Keep Cells on Track
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol287/issue5455/twis.shtml#287/5455/929c

Perhaps the most tangible manifestation of life is motion -- right down to the realm of the living cell itself.  But what are the chemical signals that guide motile cells in the right direction?  Five research reports and an overview Perspective in the 2/11/2000 issue of Science highlighted new work in the study of chemotaxis, and in particular of the central role played by one kinase family, PI3Ks, in governing the moving cell's response to external chemical signals.  Two of the reports supplemented their treatment of this inherently dynamic subject with 14 video clips available only on Science Online.

Science's STKE:  Signal Transduction, Writ Large
http://www.stke.org/

The chemotaxis studies in the 2/11/2000 issue constituted only a small part of Science's coverage of cellular signal transduction -- the study of the chemical pathways by which information is carried through, within, and outside of the plasma membrane.  Science's Signal Transduction Knowledge Environment is a unique Web resource that includes news, original reviews and commentary, and a variety of other features including a dynamic graphical "Connections Map" of the wingless (Wnt) signaling pathway (http://www.stke.org/cgi/cm/CMP_5533).  New content posted during the first quarter included a Perspective by Simpson and Dean on signals that govern the development of flowers (http://www.stke.org/cgi/content/full/OC_sigtrans;2000/18/pe1) and a Review by Wrana on the downstream Smad pathway (http://www.stke.org/cgi/content/full/OC_sigtrans;2000/23/re1).

Martian Vistas

New insights on martian history continue to issue from the data sent earthward by Mars Global Surveyor (MGS).  In the 3/3/2000 issue, Bandfield et al. (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/287/5458/1626) used MGS spectrometer data to map the large-scale distribution of different volcanic rock types across the martian surface and to show, surprisingly, that the composition of the planet's northern hemisphere differs from that in the south.  D. W. Mittlefehlt explored the implications of that work in the same week's issue, in a Perspective article -- enhanced on Science Online (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/287/5458/1601) with a rich collection of Web links on planetary science generally and on martian history and exploration in particular.  And analysis of topographic and gravity data from MGS allowed Zuber et al., in the 3/10/2000 issue (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/287/5459/1788), to infer the presence of large, buried channels in the northern lowlands of the Red Planet and the possibility of a mantle plume below the northern hemisphere early in Mars's evolution.

The New Breed of Scientist-Advocates
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/287/5456/1188

The cliché of scientists as absent-minded and apolitical has always been something of an oversimplification.  Nowhere, however, is the separation between science and policy as porous as in the environmental arena.  A News Focus (2/18/2000) examined the controversy that has emerged as environmental scientists have taken increasingly visible stands on the policy implications of their science.

Quantum Computing
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/287/5452/441

Building on earlier theoretical work, Ahn et al., in the 1/21/2000 issue, took a practical step toward the goal of "quantum computing":  they managed to store information as a particular quantum phase and retrieve information about changes in the system with a single operation.  In the same issue, P. Knight discussed the implications of that work for quantum information processing in a Perspective article (enhanced on Science Online with links to Web resources on quantum mechanics and computing).

Archeology in the Holy Land
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/287/5450/28

A long and intricate political, social, and religious history makes the Holy Land a magnet for archaeologists -- and those same complexities raise immense difficulties in the practical archaeological work of planning and executing an excavation.  A News Focus in the 1/7/2000 issue examined the challenges facing archaeologists attempting to work in a region permeated by biblical injunctions and age-old land disputes.

Broadening the dEbate
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/eletters?lookup=by_date&days=7

One of Science's online-only features, dEbates -- an on-line discussion forum of selected opinion articles -- was expanded starting in February 2000 to cover all of the material in Science's Compass.  Did you find a recent Editorial, Policy Forum, Perspective, Review, or Letter particularly intriguing -- or objectionable?  Submit an on-line response, and join the dEbate!

Tech.Sight-ing Developments

A monthly feature of Science's Compass, Tech.Sight, provides glimpses of the challenges and opportunities presented by technological developments in various scientific disciplines -- as well as no-nonsense reviews of software and other electronic resources for day-to-day scientific work.  In the first Tech.Sight columns of 2000, readers learned about bead-based fiber-optic arrays, used for collection and analysis of genetic data (1/21/2000; http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/287/5452/451), the central role that bioinformatics will play in the practice of 21st century biology (2/18/2000; http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/287/5456/1221), and the integration of combinatorial synthesis and bioassays, as part of a special issue on drug design and discovery (3/17/2000; http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/287/5460/1947).

Eye on the Web

Science's weekly NetWatch feature points your browser to Websites ranging from the useful to the quirky to the just plain cool.  In the first three months of the year, readers found out about scores of such sites, including the National Biotechnology Information Facility (http://www.nbif.org/), a site hosted at New Mexico State that boasts some 7,000 biotech links; a set of stunning satellite images from NASA (http://www.nasa.gov/newsinfo/srtm_images.html); a primer on the physics of snowflakes at Caltech's Snow Crystals site (http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/); and an extraordinary atlas of three-dimensional MRI images of the human embryo (embryo.soad.umich.edu/index.html).

------
Further information from Informax:
HTR accelerates drug discovery target optimization through: 
o Genomics Integration: providing a broad set of genomics data and analytical tools with the ability to integrate the results of many analyses into an overall conclusion on target viability.
o Research Automation: creating "virtual biologists" who can mine data on a 24/7 basis and present pre-screened results.
o Results Filtering: presenting only the most meaningful results. 
o Collaboration: providing scientists a group environment within which to access, manage, and visualize genomics data.
o Extensibility: providing a robust framework for quick integration of new tools and data types into the HTR process.
o Distributed Processing: enabling the processing of massive amounts of disparate data with dedicated tool & database servers.

To complete the delivery of an HTR environment, InforMax will introduce a series of products this year under the enterprise product family GenoMax. These new products will include Gene Expression, EST Clustering, Genome Viewing, 3D-Structure Prediction, SNP Analysis and Protein-Protein Interaction Analysis GenoMax modules. For more information about GenoMax & HTR, visit http://www.informaxinc.com or email [email-masked].

---
You are currently subscribed to scienceroundup as: [email-masked]
To unsubscribe send a blank email to [email-masked]