ASCB Newsletter - June 1998

Do You Need a Postdoc, a Research Associate or Senior Colleague?
Look to the ASCB first to fill a vacancy by placing your recruitment advertisement in the monthly ASCB Newsletter.

• Low Rates: $7.50/line, 10-line minimum
• High Readership: 10,000 research scientists
• Precise Target: Experienced and qualified membership
• Convenient Deadline: First of month preceding month of issue

Contact: Rick Sommer
Phone: (301) 530-7153
Fax: (301) 530-7139

Postdoctoral research associate positions available to study the role of cell surface proteoglycans in both in vitro and in vivo systems relevant to vascular biology and atherosclerosis. A major focus in our laboratory includes investigating the biomechanics of cell movement. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to interact with members of the proteoglycan and vascular biology communities at Emory and at several collaborating institutions. This project has been funded by the AHA National Center and the NIH. Applicants should have a Ph.D. degree with training in biochemistry and/or cell/molecular biology. Send curriculum vitae and names of 2-3 references with e-mail addresses to: Dr. Elliot L. Chaikof, M.D., Ph.D., Emory University School of Medicine, Department of Surgery, 1639 Pierce Drive, 5105 WMB, Atlanta, Georgia 30322. Fax: (404) 727-3660. Email EOE/AA.

Postdoctoral research associate position available to study the molecular mechanisms of thrombosis on model lipid membrane systems using both in vitro and in vivo systems. Much of the work in our laboratory is at the interface of Chemistry and Biology. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to interact with members of the vascular biology and thrombosis communities at Emory and at several collaborating institutions. This project is funded by the NIH. Applicants should have a Ph.D. degree with training in biochemistry and/or cell/molecular biology. Send curriculum vitae and names of 2-3 references with e-mail addresses to: Dr. Elliot L. Chaikof, M.D., Ph.D., Emory University School of Medicine, Department of Surgery, 1639 Pierce Drive, 5105 WMB, Atlanta, Georgia 30322. Fax (404) 727-3660. Email EOE/AA.

Postdoctoral position available. Recent Ph.D. wanted for NIH-funded position to characterize the calreticulin-associated membrane complex involved in thrombospondin-signaling of focal adhesion disassembly. Thrombospondin is a counter-adhesive matrix protein that induces cytoskeletal reorganization via a PI 3-kinase and pertussis toxin-sensitive pathway (Greenwood et al., J. Biol. Chem 273:1755,1998). Studies will involve identification and characterization of a G-protein-linked membrane component utilizing protein chemistry, expression/mutagenesis, and cell biological/microscopy techniques. Candidate has the opportunity to participate in the supporting activities of the Cell Adhesion and Matrix Center. UAB is in the top 20 NIH-funded research universities and has an interactive,interdisciplinary research atmosphere. Birmingham is an active, small city that offers an affordable cost of living in a wooded, hilly terrain with a moderate four season climate within hours of the Gulf of Mexico and the Appalachian Mountains. Contact: Dr. J. E. Murphy-Ullrich, Department of Pathology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, G038 Volker Hall, Birmingham AL 35294-0019. Phone: (205) 934-0415; Fax: (205) 934-1775. Email EOE/AA.

Technical Director of Electron Microscopy and Immunocytochemistry Core Facility
A position is available August 1, 1998, for an individual with extensive experience in the preparation and analysis of cells and tissues by electron microscopy and immunocytochemistry.

The Director will be responsible for the operation of a core facility in the Division of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of California School of Medicine at San Diego. He/she must have achieved a high level of competence in the prepartaion and analysis of cells and tissues by electron microscopy and immunocytochemistry, including immunofluorescence, immunoperoxidase, ultrathin cryosectioning and immunogold labeling.

Other duties are to instruct technicians, students and postdoctoral trainees in the principles and practice of tissue preparation, ultracryomicrotomy, and immunocytochemistry, to work closely with faculty core director in development of new technologies, and to assist faculty in planning and data collection.

An MA degree or its equivalent and at least 5 years of experience are required. Salary and title based on years of experience and qualifications.

Send CV and names of 3 references to:
Marilyn G. Farquhar, Ph.D.
Division of Cellular and Molecular Medicine
University of California San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0651

University of California is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer

During my own tenure process ten years ago, one of my mentors told me that "tenure is just a poorly administered personnel policy." Nevertheless, it is a pivotal evaluation in the career of an academic scientist. Tenure can be a lovely recognition of achievement that emerges easily from one's scientific successes, or it can be energy-draining, stressful and full of conflicts regardless of the eventual outcome. Along the way, many factors will influence the process, some of which the candidate can anticipate in advance, while others may emerge at random but be no less important. On the basis of a broad sampling of tenure histories (including my own), I present ten suggestions that are designed to smooth the path of the candidate through the process. Ideally, preparation for tenure begins before arrival on the new campus.

1. Find out what the tenure requirements are and plan to meet them.
After the happy phone call offering you the position, you will receive a letter of appointment from the Dean or other executive officer. The letter of offer usually specifies the terms of your appointment, including the year in which you will be considered for tenure. For a typical initial academic appointment, it is probably best to leave yourself as much time as possible. Your department can always initiate the tenure process early if your work has gone well. It is a good idea to write a formal response to the letter of offer that summarizes the conditions under which you are accepting the offer, such as salary, teaching arrangements, setup funds and laboratory renovations with the target date for completion. The tenure clock does not stop if the maintenance crew is delayed by emergency remodeling of the Provost's conference room.

It is a good idea to request a copy of the faculty manual at this time because it will specify the general requirements, the timing of the process and the potential for flexibility in the tenure clock to accommodate parenthood or family emergencies, such as care for an elderly parent.

In addition to the general procedures outlined in the faculty manual, your department, school and college may have additional written tenure policies. Women and members of minority groups may be subjected to closer scrutiny during the tenure process, so it makes sense to know the rules. I was unaware of the existence of such documents until the year before I came up for tenure. To my surprise, the document contained a requirement to coordinate a departmental course. Appropriate arrangements were made, but advance knowledge would have been much better.

2. Create a record of productivity long before tenure.
Write grant applications before you move to the new institution so that they will be in review during the disruption of setting up your own laboratory. Design some "bread-and-butter" approaches that are sure to yield publishable results and will document your ability to complete scientific projects successfully. I am not suggesting that you abandon your sense of scientific standards, but it will not hurt to carry out some lower risk projects, perhaps with the help of undergraduates. If all of your projects are high-risk, your chances of obtaining tenure are high-risk. Be aware that even if you are able to pull off a highly significant scientific coup at the last minute, you will still be vulnerable to the accusation of uneven performance that many tenure committees use as an indicator of a poor productive future.

3. Gain the support of your department chair.
The chair almost always makes a separate tenure recommendation to the school and college and, because he or she is presumed to be familiar with your performance, this evaluation carries significant weight within the department and at higher administrative levels. The support of your chair may be the single most important factor in ensuring a smooth transition through the tenure process. The chair who hired you often has a stake in promoting your success and values your area of expertise. However, in an unstable department, sometimes multiple chairs can be appointed before you are considered for tenure. A new chair often has a different vision of the department from that of his or her predecessor, and the prospect of an additional faculty position to be filled with someone in a favorite specialty area can be tempting. Educate your chair and department about your field by inviting well-known scientists for seminars.

In some departments, the question of your tenure is not presented for a full departmental vote. Instead, a committee (appointed by the chair or possibly elected by the department) makes a recommendation. This can mean that your file is not open to the full department and can work to your disadvantage if your chair is not supportive.

The moral: make your chair's life easy. Make progress with your science, teach well, do your fair share of work and let your chair know of your successes.

4. Maintain cordial relationships within your department.
Ideally, your position will be in a cohesive and pleasant department that will make it easy for you to concentrate on your science while participating in departmental goals. However, this is not always the case and, if schisms develop, you may be pressured to choose sides. Such a no-win situation can be a big problem for support at tenure whether or not you tactfully avoid allying yourself with a particular party. One brilliant assay for such schisms (devised by Betty Craig of the University of Wisconsin and carried out during the job interview) is to ask each individual faculty member, "Where do you see this department going in the next 5-10 years?"

5. Recruit mentors.
Much has been written about the important contributions of mentors in ensuring a successful career path, especially for members of under-represented minority groups and women. You will need guides to the unfamiliar territory represented by your new position and institution. I am very fortunate to have had some wonderful mentors who have helped me at crucial points in my career. Some institutions assign mentors because they want their young faculty to do well. Even if you are in such an enlightened atmosphere, I encourage you to recruit several campus mentors so that you have access to a variety of advice. Take them to lunch. Chat. It is a compliment to them that you value their expertise, but be considerate of the other demands on their time. Recruit external mentors in your field of research and draw on their perspectives and experience.

6. Get to know others on campus.
Even though you should severely limit participation in campus committees and concentrate on your experiments, a few activities may be helpful because they permit you to get to know people in other departments. Such connections can expand your networking capabilities, enhance the identification of mentors, provide support at tenure and fulfill the modest consideration of service that is included in a tenure evaluation. Women and minorities need to be especially careful about overload because they will be highly visible and in demand for committee service and often feel a special responsibility to assume a role in shaping institutional policy. Ask your mentors for advice in making appropriate choices that will allow you to make a meaningful contribution without jeopardizing the research and teaching activities that are key to your achievement of tenure.

7. Know the procedures for tenure at your institution.
Who assembles your file? Do you get to see it? Do you have the opportunity to respond to the evaluation of your file by your chair or departmental committee? Are you requested to be available for information at the time your file is discussed? Who compiles the list from whom letters of recommendation will be requested? Who chooses which ones get included in your dossier? Is there a departmental committee that evaluates your credentials and, if so, is there a mechanism to ensure the accuracy of the information they are given? I know of two cases in which such a committee was given verbal information with serious inaccuracies. Are you notified as your tenure application is acted upon at each successive administrative level?

8. Ask for supportive letters.
As a tenure candidate, you usually contribute names of leading scientists in your field who will be able to place your scientific work in context and evaluate its quality. If it is permitted, you should contact these eminent scientists and ask whether they would be willing to write a letter of evaluation in the necessary time frame. Ideally, you are already acquainted with them and they admire your work. Letters about your teaching and service may also be requested from local faculty. This is a chance to draw on your mentors. If you have doubts, it is not inappropriate to ask whether the person feels they can write you a strong letter. Be sure that they are told whether or not their letter will be confidential, and make certain that they will be sent copies of all your papers and manuscripts.

9. Assemble complete documentation.
When you walk into your office as a brand-new faculty member, I suggest your first official act: Grab a file folder, label it "Tenure" and put it in the file drawer of your desk (not that filing cabinet across the room). EVERY time you give a talk at the local high school, organize a meeting, serve on a committee or receive an award make a note on a scrap of paper and throw it into the file. Otherwise, you will never remember the many contributions you have made when you are under pressure to assemble your tenure file five years later.

Be aware of your own tendency to be self-effacing. This is the time to highlight your achievements. When I was assembling my tenure file, I was permitted to page through a file from the previous year. I was surprised to see that the candidate had documented the number of times his papers were cited and that he had compiled a summary of his scientific achievements. This never would have occurred to me, but I decided that it made sense to present explicit documentation of the significance of one's scientific work, especially for committees at higher levels whose members might not be familiar with scientific fields.

10. Don't be afraid to fight.
If something goes wrong and you feel that you are not being evaluated equitably, it is probably a good idea to use the institutional appeal processes available to you, as outlined in the faculty manual. Let others in the department know what is going on and you may be surprised at the help and support that you receive. It may also be appropriate to seek legal advice or to apply for positions elsewhere. If the available administrative remedies do not resolve the issue (this may take 1-2 years), you will need to think long and hard about whether to engage in the stress and expense of a protracted legal battle which will affect your family and your science regardless of the outcome.

Tenure is a form of acceptance of one's professional merit and is an important landmark in the life of an academic scientist. It makes sense to prepare for the process so that it will run smoothly and provide a fair evaluation of the successes you have worked so hard to achieve.

-- CSara L. (Sally) Tobin, Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics

The ASCB Education Committee calls attention each month to several websites of educational interest to the cell biology community. The Committee does not endorse nor guarantee the accuracy of the information at any of the listed sites. If you wish to comment on the selections or suggest future inclusions, please send a message to Robert Blystone.

1. The NPAC Visible Human Viewer
   The Northeast Parallel Architectures Center and Syracuse University have developed a number of Web-based resources and tools which are summarized at http://www.npac.syr.edu/. One of those resources, developed by Yuh-Jye Chang, has to do with an interface to the Visible Human Database. A Java applet is used to provide the Web user an interface to the Visible Human Database. The somewhat slow-loading applet addresses the data in one of three planes: axial, sagittal, and coronal. By clicking on the small image of the reconstructed human male, the desired plane of view can be selected and a call is made to the database to download the human slice associated with the choice. Several levels of resolution are possible; however, a T-1 connection is recommended. For those who would like to explore the Visible Human Database and possibly use it for teaching anatomy, this is a good place to begin.
2. MCDB Video Lecture Catalog
   Have you ever wondered what it would be like to put a favorite lecture on the Web? The Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara has done just that. By using a technique called video streaming, it is possible to put audio, slides, and video of a lecture on the Web. You will have to install a free copy of Real Player in order to view the lecture. The homepage will direct you to the site to get the two megabyte software package which can perform video streaming. You may wish to choose to view the lecture by Kathy Foltz entitled, "Activating Development: The Ultimate Wake-Up Call." (Foltz was awarded the ASCB's Women in Cell Biology Junior Award in 1993.) The lecture she gives here is the Plous Award Lecture by an outstanding Junior Faculty Member at UC Santa Barbara. The lecture has to do with the events of early fertilization. The lecture would be an excellent supplement to a course in developmental biology. You can also get an idea of what a Webbased lecture might look like. Thanks to Rolf Christoffersen for the point to the site.
3. Integrated Taxonomic Information System
   Have you ever needed to have a specific reference or authority for the scientific name of something you were working with in the lab or lecturing about in class? Have you ever needed the scientific name for something for which you only have a vernacular name? This database is for you. Federal agencies in the United States, Canada, and Mexico have joined together to develop "an on-line, scientifically credible list of biological names focusing on the biota of North America." The initial homepage presents five choices. By selecting Data Access, the addressable database appears. This database can generate reports and download data to your computer. It also has something called Taxonomic Workbench which you might want to explore. By going to the Database Query, a five-kingdom check list appears. Three inputs are possible: scientific name, vernacular name and Taxonomic Serial Number. As an example of the database, by typing in the vernacular name "mice," the scientific name "Muridae" is reported. Illeger, 1815 is listed as the authority for this family name. If you like to know the scientific names for a variety of life forms, this is a good starting point. This site is a work in progress so not everything is there yet.

These sites were checked May 11, 1998. Previous ASCB columns reviewing Educational Web sites with the links to the sites may be found online.

-Robert Blystone for the ASCB Education Committee

The Committee's assessment was that the Annual Meeting is remarkably successful and that major changes are not indicated. The most significant exception to this analysis was the last day of the meeting, when attendance tends to fall, making that day less satisfying for exhibitors and scientific presenters than on the first four days of the meeting.

To address this issue, the Committee recommended, and the Council endorsed, several changes to the last-day (Wednesday) meeting format to help ensure enthusiastic attendance. These include:

• while retaining the two non-concurrent morning symposia and the six concurrent afternoon minisymposia, compressing the schedule so that the minisymposia conclude at 3:15 p.m. (instead of 5:45 p.m.)
• hosting a major reception in the Exhibit Hall following the conclusion of the minisymposia at 3:15 p.m., until 5:00 p.m.
• extending exhibit and poster hours until 5:00 p.m., to run concurrent with the reception
• continuing to schedule minisymposia that are anticipated to draw the greatest interest on the last day of the meeting.
• The Committee also recommended, and the Council approved, that:
• exhibitors be allocated one free scientific meeting registration for each booth rented;
• more tables and chairs be provided throughout the poster and reception areas
• Recommendations made and approved by Council will be implemented starting with the ASCB Annual Meeting in 1999, in Washington.

Guidelines for Supporting Meetings Organized Outside the ASCB
Another Ad Hoc committee, chaired by Ira Herskowitz and including Councilors Mary Lee Ledbetter and James Nelson, developed guidelines to respond to requests for support of meetings organized by entities other than the Society itself. The group's recommendations were adopted as follows, and are effective immediately:

• the privilege to request support of a meeting is reserved for ASCB members (that is, only a meeting organizer who is a Society member qualifies to apply to the ASCB for support of a meeting)
• the Society will not budget for support of outside meetings and will therefore consider support that causes the Society to incur incremental expense only in exceptional cases
• regular, periodic meetings (e.g. Keystone, Gordon Conferences, FASEB meetings) do not qualify for support
• requests for support should be submitted to the Executive Director; disposition of requests will be made by the President in consultation with the Executive Director
• if support is provided, it will be in one of three forms:
• assistance, which provides for advice and promotion of the meeting through the ASCB Website and the ASCB Newsletter
• endorsement, which provides the same support as does assistance, but allows the organizers to recognize the ASCB as a "sponsor" of the meeting. If such recognition is invoked by the organizers, the Society will serve in an advisory role to ensure appropriate meeting organization, speaker composition, format, etc. as specified in the guidelines
• sponsorship, which provides the same support as does endorsement, but may include limited financial assistance as specified in the guidelines, e.g. for travel of junior investigators. Sponsorship also requires the organizers to agree to certain parameters, including the overall scientific quality and interest, the seniority, gender and race of the program speakers and reasonable logistical accommodations as specified in the guidelines.

The complete ASCB Guidelines for Meeting Support are available upon request from the ASCB.

Secretary Presents 606 New Member Candidates
Secretary George Langford presented the names of 606 new candidates for admission into Society membership; all were approved (see page 5). Two hundred seventy-five of these were admitted through the Membership Campaign mailing in the Winter, which allowed regular ASCB members to sponsor new student or post-doctoral applicants for membership with dues for 1998 waived. One hundred ninety-one others had taken advantage of the opportunity to declare their intention to apply for membership at the 1997 ASCB Annual Meeting by pre-paying their 1998 dues at that meeting. Langford personally reviews each member application before presentation to Council. He also presented the names of five members who are applying for Emeritus Member status, all of whom were also approved.

The following recently-deceased members were remembered:

• Virginia Evans (member 1979-1997)
• Selma Silagi (member 1970-1997)
• Herbert Stern (founding member; see April, 1998 ASCB Newsletter)

Finance Committee Analyzes Annual Meeting Location; Investment Strategy; Molecular Biology of the Cell
Treasurer Carl Cohen reported on the financial status of the Society, noting with satisfaction that the most recent fiscal year, accounting for the 1997 Annual Meeting in Washington, produced a positive financial balance, breaking the pattern of debt performance for the Society in years when the ASCB holds its Annual Meetings in Washington. Cohen presented an analysis of financial results as they relate to Annual Meeting location, provided by Finance Committee member Gary Ward: it indicates that available data is not sufficient to claim a correlation between meeting location and the Society's financial performance.

Cohen reported on the Finance Committee's revision to current investment guidelines, increasing the limit for investment in equities from 40% of the Society's reserves to 50%. He noted that the Society's investments are approaching the level where income from investments may start to be applied to the operating budget to support Society programs.

Cohen noted that Molecular Biology of the Cell and MBC Online currently result in net expense to the Society, but indicated that he was hopeful that MBC Online access control, to be implemented in 1999, will result in reduced printing and mailing expense to the Society due to members choosing personal electronic access to the journal in lieu of the print journal currently mailed to all members. He also announced that the Society has entered into a marketing agreement with HighWire Press that promises to increase the number of institutional subscribers to Molecular Biology of the Cell and MBC Online.

Molecular Biology of the Cell Up 25%
MBC Editor-in-Chief David Botstein reported that manuscript submissions had increased 25% and published pages had increased 26% between the two most recent fiscal years. MBC Online also shows significant access growth, up nearly four-fold from its introduction last December, to 35,000 "hits" in March, 1998.

Botstein reported on plans to enhance MBC Online to include video and large data sets.

Genes & Development Added to ASCB Member Menu
Council approved the request of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press to include Genes & Development: A Journal of Cellular and Molecular Biology to the portfolio of subscription offerings to ASCB members. CSH agreed, consistent with Society policy for all publications offered to members, to provide a 25% discount to ASCB members, which must be equal to or greater than any other discount or promotion offered for the same title, directly by the publisher or by any means.

Committee Chairs Report on Activities and Plans
The Chairs of the Education Committee (Frank Solomon, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Minorities Affairs Committee (J. K. Haynes, of Morehouse College), Public Policy Committee (Paul Berg, of Stanford University) and Local Arrangements Committee (Rik Derynck, of the University of California, San Francisco) gave detailed reports to Council on their committees' activities and plans. Information about committee activities is reported to the membership in the ASCB Newsletter following each committee's semi-annual meeting: the Public Policy and Women in Cell Biology committees' reports appeared in the April issue; the Education and Minorities Affairs committees will meet this month and report to the membership in the July issue.

The ASCB Education Committee solicits nominations for The Bruce M. Alberts Award for Distinguished Contributions to Science Education

The nomination letter should include a description of the nominee's innovative and sustained activities with particular emphasis on the local, regional and/or national impact of the nominee's activities.

Send letter of nomination, letters of support and CV if possible to:

The American Society for Cell Biology
9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20814
Nominations must be received by August 3, 1998.

Mike Bishop
J. Michael Bishop, former President of the ASCB and Chancellor-designate of the University of California, San Francisco, was named 1998 ASCB Public Service Awardee. Bishop will receive the award from ASCB Public Policy Chair Paul Berg at the ASCB Annual Meeting this December in San Francisco.

Council unanimously endorsed the recommendation of the Public Policy Committee to name J. Michael Bishop recipient of the fifth annual ASCB Public Service Award, presented for outstanding national leadership in support of biomedical research. Bishop was cited for his many forms of service through the Society and the Joint Steering Committee for Public Policy, and for his national service, including as Scientific Advisor to the Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus and as Chairman of the National Cancer Advisory Board.

The ASCB Minorities Affairs Committee announces selection of the 1998 ASCB MAC Visiting Professors. The Visiting Professorship program seeks to acquaint science faculty with modern research tools and techniques, facilitate a network with community scientists and institutions, and bring the excitement of research science into the classroom. The program is supported by a Minorities Access to Research Careers (MARC) grant from the NIGMS of the NIH. Visiting Professors, will spend ten weeks this summer in the laboratory of ASCB member scientists:

• Wilfredo Hernandez of Ponce Medical School, Puerto Rico, will work with host James D. San Antonio of Thomas Jefferson University, on discovery of novel heparin-binding peptides using phage display libraries.
• Cecilia R. Kovac of Long Island University, will work with host Barbara K. Birshtein of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, on identification of Proteins that interact with the B cell transcription factor, BSAP (pax.5), utilizing a Yeast two-hybrid system.
• Andrew O. Martinez of the University of Texas, San Antonio, will work with host Gwendolyn S. Adrian of the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio on iron regulation of human transferrin synthesis.
• Iris McDuffie of Norfolk State University, will work with host Thomas J. Lauterio of Eastern Virginia Medical School on nutritional and endocrine regulation of body composition.
• Gloria C. Regisford of Prairie View A & M University, will work with host Barbara M. Sanborn of the University of Texas Medical School, Houston, on the role of heparin interacting protein (HIP) on testicular function.

In addition, the program will support the continued work of teams which were selected in 1997:

• Pearl R. Fernandes of Morris College, will continue work with host scientists Kim E. Creek and Lucia Pirisi of the University of South Carolina School of Medicine on the role of the EGF receptor in human papillomavirus type 16-mediated human cell carcinogenesis in vitro.
• John P.E. Tokeson of Virginia State University, will continue work with host scientist T.S. Benedict Yen of the San Francisco Veterans Administration, on cloning a transcription factor involved in ER stress signaling.

To be eligible for the ASCB MAC Visiting Professorship Program, professor and ASCB member host are required to plan and submit a research proposal together and submit it with a follow-up plan for the academic year. According to ASCB MAC member and program coordinator Maria Elena Zavala, applications were scored on a variety of variables: the subject of the proposed research and the quality of planned interactions for the professor, plans for ongoing interaction between professor and sponsoring lab after the conclusion of the fellowship, benefit to teaching, the qualifications of researcher and professor, and the potential impact on minorities and schools with high minority enrollment.

The ASCB Minorities Affairs Committee announces the selection of four graduate students for grants to support summer course attendance at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, MA. The Fellows are supported through an NIH MARC grant. They are: Tonya Anderson of the University of California, Los Angeles, attending the Embryology course; Andrea Foster of Stanford University, attending the Microbial Diversity course; Cruz Hinojos of the University of Texas, Houston, attending the Physiology course; and Tsahai Tafari of the University of California, San Diego, attending the Physiology course. Since 1985, the ASCB Minorities Affairs Committee has supported 90 students to attend MBL courses.

During the summer of 1998, the MAC will also support four students at the Friday Harbor Laboratories of the University of Washington. Of these, two undergraduate students, Michael Singho of Oberlin College and Doreen Samuel of Morris College, will participate in research apprenticeships, during which they will audit a course in marine invertebrate zoology or marine algae while spending the remainder of their time with FHL faculty in their labs. Graduate students Jamilla Marcus of Spelman College and Carlie Rodriquez of the University of Arizona will take the Comparative Invertebrate Zoology course with MAC support.

Elizabeth Blackburn (UCSF), Carol Grieder (John's Hopkins University), Walter Neupert (University of Munich) and Gottfried Schatz (University of Basel) received the 1998 Gairdner Foundation International Awards, in recognition of individuals whose contributions constitute tangible achievement in medical science.

Helen Blau of the Stanford University and ASCB member since 1978, was selected for the 1999 FASEB Excellence in Science Award, presented annually to a woman who has contributed significantly to further understanding of a particular discipline by excellence in research.

Judah Folkman of Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School and an ASCB member since 1982, received the 1998 Pincus Award from the Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research.

Ajit Varki of the University of California, San Diego and ASCB member since 1990, became President last month of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI).

For the first time, in addition to the summary figure that traditionally appears in the printed journal, readers will be able to click on that same image to see a QuickTime movie that presents the original video or represents an image in three dimensions.

The introductory issue features five "video essays" selected by MBC Video Editors Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz and W. James Nelson; they represent a broad spectrum of science and include essays from Kerry Bloom, Gary Borisy, Shinya Inoue, Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, and Mark Terasaki. This issue also launches MBC's first full-length article (Cali et al.), that includes videos allowing readers to examine the three-dimensional distribution of actin in yeast.

MBC Online will continue to feature both video essays and full-length papers containing QuickTime videos or three-dimensional images in future issues; authors are encouraged to submit papers that will be enhanced by this technology. Videos will be reviewed for the same high standard of quality as are papers.

MBC now accepts articles that contain large data sets, such as the tabular material underlying gene expression microarray data. Authors are encouraged to submit not only graphical representations of such data sets, but also the data sets themselves, which can be used by colleagues to appreciate and build upon the work being presented.

For details on how to submit this type of material, see the Instructions to Authors in MBC Online.

It is MBC's goal to make published articles as useful as they can be to both authors and readers. By presenting fully reviewed video, images and complex data, the editors hope to set the standard for the future, when such data become the rule rather than the exception.

Students who are interested in volunteering time (up to six hours) in exchange for free registration to the 38th ASCB Annual Meeting ($30 value for members; $60 value for nonmembers) and a free Social ticket ($35 value in advance; $50 value if purchased after October 2), may complete this form and return it to the ASCB. Priority is given to students who are ASCB members or member applicants. Interested ASCB Postdoc members may be selected after student members are placed.

Name:
University:
Department:
Street Address:
City/State/Zip:
Phone/Fax:
Email:

ASCB Student Member or Application Pending? Yes / No
(priority given to ASCB members or member applicants)

ASCB Postdoc Member or Application Pending? Yes / No
(post-docs who are not ASCB members and are not member applicants do not qualify for selection)

Return form or direct inquiries to:
The American Society for Cell Biology
9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20814-3992
Phone: (301) 530-7153; Fax: (301) 530-7139;
Email