Professionalism in science

In everyday speech, the word “professional” has an ambiguous ring, applied to one who follows, by way of profession, what is ordinarily regarded as a pastime (e.g., a sport), or disparagingly applied to one who “makes a trade” of politics and the like. In this sense it is contrasted with “amateur”, one who does something, literally, for the love of it, without remuneration. The latter is generally regarded as superior to the former; remuneration being considered as likely to irremeably invest the activity with self-interest, resulting in the task at hand being merely accomplished with the minimally sufficient expertise and skill to obtain the offered remuneration, whereas the amateur strives to do whatever task is at hand as well as he or she possibly can, “ excellence for its own sake”

The regulation of scientific work

Government research councils, national science foundations and the like have become ubiquitous. The first one seems to have been the US National Science Foundation (NSF), created in 1950; the similarly named organization with an equivalent function in Switzerland was established in 1952; the UK Science Research Council was formed in 1965; and so forth. The mode of operation of these organizations was to issue “calls for proposals” (i.e., general invitations to scientists to submit project proposals) and then disburse funds according to an assessment of proposals received. The main effect seems to have been a general stifling of innovative ideas, since the final decisions whether to fund a given project are made by a committee, which, almost axiomatically, favours the most conservative ideas

Quantification of the number of adsorbed bacteria on an optical waveguide

A simple method is presented for determining the number of bacteria adsorbed on a planar optical waveguide from measurements of a single effective refractive index. It requires only knowledge of the shape and mean size of the bacteria

Experimental methods for investigating protein adsorption kinetics at surfaces

The adsorption of proteins at the solid-liquid interface is a process of fundamental importance in nature. Extensive reviews (MacRitchie, 1978; Andrade & Hlady, 1986; Norde, 1986) testify to the strong interest which has been shown in the problem during the past few decades. Norde & Lyklema (1978) have rightly pointed out that protein adsorption is scientifically intriguing; the phenomenology is complicated and includes many presently apparently irreconcilable observation

OWLS: A Versatile Technique for Sensing with Bioarrays

Optical waveguide lightmode spectroscopy (OWLS) is introduced as a precision technique capable of yielding detailed information on the structure of biological thin films, and on the kinetics of binding events between biopolymers. Unlike previous methods, it can be applied in situ under conditions closely approximating those of a living organism, without the need to label any of the molecules

Ergonomic Chair Design by Fusing Qualitative and Quantitative Criteria using Interactive Genetic Algorithms

This paper emphasizes the necessity of formally bringing qualitative and quantitative criteria of ergonomic design together, and provides a novel complementary design framework with this aim. Within this framework, different design criteria are viewed as optimization objectives; and design solutions are iteratively improved through the cooperative efforts of computer and user. The framework is rooted in multi-objective optimization, genetic algorithms and interactive user evaluation. Three different algorithms based on the framework are developed, and tested with an ergonomic chair design problem. The parallel and multi-objective approaches show promising results in fitness convergence, design diversity and user satisfaction metrics

Solubilization of planar bilayers with detergent

AbstractThe interaction of the nonionic detergent Triton X-100 with supported phosphatidylcholine planar lipid bilayers has been investigated by optically monitoring changes in the bilayer, using the technique of optical waveguide lightmode spectroscopy (OWLS). This technique has several advantages over the methods applied to the problem hitherto, including: high sensitivity; measurement in situ with good time resolution; the fact that the free detergent concentration is well-defined, and the lipid concentration in solution is zero; ease of studying the reversibility of the interaction; and the readiness with which absolute rather than effective amounts of detergent incorporated into the lipid can be determined. The main finding is that as the free Triton concentration increases, the detergent is first incorporated reversibly into the bilayer, then partly but never completely removes lipid, and finally (at or above the cmc) completely solubilizes the bilayer. The behaviour of the planar supported lipid bilayers is thus similar to that previously reported for lipid vesicles

Myelin basic protein peptide 45–89 induces the release of nitric oxide from microglial cells.

Continuous (24 h) exposure of mixed oligodendrocyte/microglial cells to peptides 45–89 derived from citrullinated C8 isoforms of myelin basic protein (MBP) induces cell death. In contrast, MBP-C8 at the same molecular concentration is not toxic to oligodendrocyte/microglial cells as detected by the MTT test and trypan blue exclusion method. The loss of oligodendrocyte/microglial cells resulted in the release of cytochrome c from mitochondria, suggesting MBP 45–89-induced apoptosis. On the other hand, peptides 45–89 stimulated the secretion of nitric oxide from microglial cells only via induction of iNOS. The addition of peptide 45–89 to the microglial cells led to a decrease of the level of the inhibitory protein IkB, indicating that activation of the transcription factor NF-kB is involved in these processes. We propose that the immunodominant peptide 45–89 induces damage of oligodendrocytes by activation of microglial cells and subsequent generation of nitric oxide, and that this may be the first step in the initiation of autoimmunity

Protein adsorption on heterogeneous surfaces

The adsorption of the protein bovine serum albumin from an aqueous solution onto substrata made from pure silica, pure zirconia, and a mixture of the two has revealed that the adsorption behavior of the protein onto the mixture very significantly diverges from the corresponding mean of the behaviors with the pure substrata. A tentative explanation in terms of matching substratum heterogeneity with protein surface heterogeneity is offered