A Doctor Facing Turbulent Times: Antoni Tomasz Jurasz, Citizen of the World

The eponymous of the Jurasz procedure is Antoni Tomasz Jurasz (1882–1961). The procedure is a standard approach to treating mature pancreatic pseudocysts that are in contact with the stomach, although recent advances in instrumentation have empowered surgeons to perform pseudocystogastrostomy laparoscopically for this problem. Dr. Jurasz was born in Germany but felt himself as Polish as his ancestors. He graduated from Heidelberg with a degree in medicine. Over the following years, he developed a German surgery school, especially helping with the achievements of Erich Lexer and Erwin Payr. During the period between World Wars I and II, Jurasz chaired and led the Surgery Clinic of Poznan University in Poland; and he gave lectures and performed public operations abroad. These activities, together with articles published in German-, French-, and English-language medical journals, made him a world-renowned figure in the field of abdominal and thyroid surgery. During World War II, he revealed exceptional traits, taking part in the September Campaign in Poland as a surgeon. He then organized the Polish School of Medicine and the Paderewski Hospital in Edinburgh. Despite his outstanding mind, generosity, and merits, A. T. Jurasz became persona non grata in Communist Poland, which ultimately persuaded him to emigrate to the United States

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Ubiquitous molecular substrates for associative learning and activity-dependent neuronal facilitation.

Recent evidence suggests that many of the molecular cascades and substrates that contribute to learning-related forms of neuronal plasticity may be conserved across ostensibly disparate model systems. Notably, the facilitation of neuronal excitability and synaptic transmission that contribute to associative learning in Aplysia and Hermissenda, as well as associative LTP in hippocampal CA1 cells, all require (or are enhanced by) the convergence of a transient elevation in intracellular Ca2+ with transmitter binding to metabotropic cell-surface receptors. This temporal convergence of Ca2+ and G-protein-stimulated second-messenger cascades synergistically stimulates several classes of serine/threonine protein kinases, which in turn modulate receptor function or cell excitability through the phosphorylation of ion channels. We present a summary of the biophysical and molecular constituents of neuronal and synaptic facilitation in each of these three model systems. Although specific components of the underlying molecular cascades differ across these three systems, fundamental aspects of these cascades are widely conserved, leading to the conclusion that the conceptual semblance of these superficially disparate systems is far greater than is generally acknowledged. We suggest that the elucidation of mechanistic similarities between different systems will ultimately fulfill the goal of the model systems approach, that is, the description of critical and ubiquitous features of neuronal and synaptic events that contribute to memory induction

Environmentalism, pre-environmentalism, and public policy

In the last decade, thousands of new grassroots groups have formed to oppose environmental pollution on the basis that it endangers their health. These groups have revitalized the environmental movement and enlarged its membership well beyond the middle class. Scientists, however, have been unable to corroborate these groups' claims that exposure to pollutants has caused their diseases. For policy analysts this situation appears to pose a choice between democracy and science. It needn't. Instead of evaluating the grassroots groups from the perspective of science, it is possible to evaluate science from the perspective of environmentalism. This paper argues that environmental epidemiology reflects ‘pre-environmentalist’ assumptions about nature and that new ideas about nature advanced by the environmental movement could change the way scientists collect and interpret data.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45449/1/11077_2005_Article_BF01006494.pd