PHOTO HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 13TH ICP
2001
March 24-26: 52nd Annual Meeting, American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS), Arlington, Virginia
April 3-8: 6th International Conference on Solar Energy and Applied Photochemistry and 3rd International Workshop on Environmental Photochemistry, Cairo, Egypt
May 20-25: XIIth Meeting of the Inter-American Photochemical Society, Ascochinga, Cordoba, Argentina
May 30-June 2: 19th Annual Missouri Symposium, "Plant Photobiology," University of Missouri, Columbia
June 5-9: IPA 9th World Congress of Photodynamic Medicine, Vancouver, British Columbia
June 14-16: First International Congress on Ultraviolet Technologies, Washington, D.C.
June 15-17: Light Symposium 2001, Biologic Effects of Light Foundation, Boston (stclair@ bioeffectsoflight.org)
July 7-12: 29th Annual Meeting, American Society for Photobiology, Downtown Marriott, Chicago (abstract deadline extended to March 15, 2001)
July 7-12: 14th International Symposium on Photochemistry and Photophysics of Coordination Compounds, Vezprém, Hungary
July 16-18: 4th International Conference on the Photostability of Drugs and Drug Products (PPS '01), Research Triangle Park, N.C.
July 31-August 3: XXth International Congress on Photochemistry, Moscow
September 1-5: Vth Femtochemistry Conference, Toledo, Spain
September 3-8: 9th Congress of the European Society for Photobiology, Lillehammer, Norway
September 4-6: Symposium on Asymmetric Photochemistry, Osaka
September 9-14: 5th International Conference on Atomic and Molecular Pulsed Lasers, Tomsk, Russia
2002
July 13-17: 30th Annual Meeting, American Society for Photobiology, Quebec City, Quebec (see page 3)
July 14-19: XIXth IUPAC Symposium on Photochemistry, Budapest
Aug. or Sept (tbd): 3rd South-East Asian Workshop on Photobiology in the Tropics (SEAWPIT 2002), Malaysia
2003
tbd: 31st Annual Meeting, American Society for Photobiology, Baltimore (Inner Harbor)
It is my pleasure to invite you to the 2001 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Photobiology, which will be held at the downtown Chicago Marriott Hotel on July 7-12. The meeting has been organized taking into account the interests and needs of all ASP members. A unique variety of invited lectures, symposia, and award presentations will be important parts of our meeting. The real success of each ASP meeting, however, is largely related to the attendance and participation by our membership. Platform and poster presentations, which provide new information on a wide range of photobiology topics of interest to our members, will be an integral part of the 2001 ASP meeting.
For the convenience of our members, we will be using on-line abstract submission and registration for the Chicago meeting. Please note that the deadline for receipt of abstracts has been extended to March 15. Student travel awards will again be offered and I invite all members to encourage their students and trainees to apply for a 2001 ASP travel award. Informational material for the meeting has been sent to all members. Additional information on the 2001 ASP meeting can be found at the Photobiology Web site: www.POL-US.net. I look forward to seeing all of you in Chicago in July!
Charles J. Gomer
Scientific Program Chairman
The following members were elected by mail ballot of the membership in early 2000. Their terms of office began at the 28th Annual ASP San Francisco. Congratulations to all!
President Elect: John Spudich
Councilor, Division Two: Masakatsu Watanabe
Councilors, Division Four: Frances Noonan and Paola Taroni
Councilor, Division Five: Steve Britz
ASP News is published quarterly by the American Society for Photobiology
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Editor: John S. Connolly, Ph.D.
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Greetings to photobiologists far and wide! As President of the Society for 2001, I plan to work aggressively with the Council and membership on some issues that I think are of major importance, especially two: first, to seek ways in which our yearly meeting can be improved; and second, to determine how the electronic version of Photochemistry & Photobiology should be marketed to maintain and enhance its readership while remaining financially solvent.
Before discussing these matters, let me say a word about upcoming meetings. With the memory of the outstanding International Congress in San Francisco still fresh, and with thanks to Nancy Olenick, Frank Gasparro, and many, many others who contributed so much, let me urge you to block the dates of July 7-12, 2001 for the next ASP meeting, to be held at the Marriott in Chicago. Past-President Chuck Gomer is chair for the program and has arranged outstanding sessions on timely topics. Plan to be there! Registration and abstract submission are both online at the ASP Web site: http://www.POL-US.net/ASP_Home/Meetings/Annual2001/29asp00.html. Please check it out.
Also, it is not too early to start thinking and planning for mid-July 2002, when I will be program chair for the annual meeting, which will be held at Le Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City, Canada, a fabulous hotel in a wonderful city with a European flavor. For that meeting, I plan to have fewer concurrent sessions. Instead, I hope that we can have multisession symposia on individual subject areas, and thus two or more days on each of a fewer number of topic areas. Input from as many of you as possible on how such a plan might be developed will be greatly appreciated. If it is successful, it could be carried on in subsequent years. The program for the 2003 meeting, which will be will be in Baltimore, Maryland, will be chaired by the current President-elect John Spudich.
While some features of the programs at the annual meetings seem to work very well, such as continental breakfasts in the poster areas and the Photobiology Schools, I think that a review of how the program might be improved is warranted. In particular, the number of parallel sessions, presently sometimes as many as five, may be more than needed for fewer than 400 registrants. Also, the need for so many meeting rooms has proved to be a problem in finding suitable hotel meeting sites. Do you think that that the annual meeting would serve you better if a multisession symposium were scheduled every two or three years in some aspect of your specialty? I am very anxious to have your responses to the general problem and suggestions or detailed proposals from you as to what might be considered. I will ask Council to authorize an ad hoc committee for this, so please do send me your observations and ideas as soon as possible to hastings@fas.harvard.edu.
None of us will have failed to take notice of the big changes in journals, the advent of electronic versions, and the new ways in which we search and read the literature. The Society's journal, Photochemistry & Photobiology, is an active player in the revolution. If you have not submitted a paper to the journal recently you should do so, if only to marvel at the Web site for online manuscript submission and review developed by our Editor, Tito Scaiano (see page 4). The time between submission and publication of accepted manuscripts has now been reduced to just four months, with the paper being posted online immediately after acceptance, thus reducing the time even further.
The full text of the journal itself is available in electronic form, now restricted to ASP members (at no extra charge; check it out) and journal subscribers (for a slight additional cost). ASP has also signed up with BioOne™, an enterprise that will offer libraries online access to a package of dozens of journals published by small societies like ours. However, the way in which the electronic form of the journal should be marketed so as to remain financially viable will continue to be under review. Charles Yocum of the University of Michigan chairs the Publications Committee, and welcomes any suggestions or knowledge you have on this matter. Contact him at cyocum@biology.lsa.umich.edu.
Together with your active and committed Council, I hope to be able to carry the ASP forward so that it will continue to prosper in its service to photobiologists. Let us know if you see ways whereby we can serve the community better.
Woody Hastings
REFLECTIONS ON THE ICP MEETING
By the time this is printed, there will have been plenty of time to reflect on the 13th ICP meeting in San Francisco last July. The intervening time gives perspective. It was truly a satisfying meeting.
After a few jitters on day one (or was it day 'zero'?), the meeting was launched. The festive entrance into the meeting room was ushered by Japanese dragon dancers and drum music. Once in the room, there was the laser-light show!
Then we got the science-all due to the efforts of Nancy Oleinick-who informed me afterward that me that she has caller-ID installed on her office phone, and she will never again answer any of my calls! Seriously, though, Nancy and I worked closely, talked constantly and, for the first few weeks after the meeting, called each other just to chat-it had become a habit!
Nancy and I always joked that the next time we would do things differently, saying "no" more often, etc., etc. On reflection, one may wonder why we do these things. Is it duty, courage, stupidity? No, it's because we feel can do them better than anyone else! So, to our successors, we say, "Please keep on doing it!"
Frank Gasparro
PHOTOCHEMISTRY & PHOTOBIOLOGY AND THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY
Over the last two years Photochemistry & Photobiology has been gradually embracing the World Wide Web. During 1999, our Associate Editors were busy implementing the electronic transfer and processing of manuscripts. These few paragraphs will bring our readers and contributors up to date with the changes that are taking place at P&P.
· The manuscript review process now takes place entirely through our editorial Web site (www.ASPeditor.com). As manuscripts are received in Ottawa, they are converted to PDF files and placed on the Web site. Associate Editors access the PDF versions of the manuscripts and assign potential reviewers. Appointed referees receive an e-mail message with access instructions that allow them to download the manuscript and enter their reports electronically. Once suitable advice has been received, the Associate Editors recommend a course of action to the Editor.
· Photochemistry & Photobiology is now also available on the Web, currently accessible as PDF files, but soon to include HTML versions of all contributions.
· We have recently started posting on the journal Web site the full text of manuscripts shortly after they are accepted. This cuts about 10 weeks off publication time. (Authors of accepted manuscripts must remember that their respective contributions cannot be posted unless the copyright-transfer form has been received.)
· Photochemistry & Photobiology has been testing author-tracking of manuscripts, and this service has been available to authors of all new manuscripts for several months. Authors receive specific passwords to access information on their manuscripts. This includes information on the Associate Editor handling the contribution, details of any style changes required, number and date of referee appointments, and the number of referee reports received. Further, authors will be able to download the copyright-transfer form. Authors are also requested to download the PDF files of their contributions to check for accuracy.
· Templates for Photochemistry & Photobiology contributions for several common word-processors and platforms are now available from www.ASPeditor.com. Please use them, as they should accelerate publication by avoiding delays resulting from missing abbreviations, missing keywords, wrong reference style, and other common problems.
· For over two years Photochemistry & Photobiology has been accepting electronic contributions in the form of PDF files. We have now begun accepting individual file contributions (please paste all your figures in the same file) in various versions of Microsoft Word for Mac and PC, as well as WordPerfect. In addition, Postscript files will also be acceptable. Authors preferring to generate their own PDF files, but lacking appropriate software to do so, can generate them by accessing http://cpdf1.adobe.com/.
· The ASP has reached a tentative agreement with Adobe to use its new PDF merchant software to produce documents for commercialization. As part of this arrangement, Photochemistry & Photobiology has been provided with copies of Adobe PDF Merchant software, and enough copies of Adobe Acrobat to provide this software to all Editors. Under this agreement, ASP has received over $12,000 worth of free software.
· While "first versions" of submitted manuscripts have been handled via the Internet, revised versions have been handled mostly in paper form, largely because most Associate Editors were not able to generate PDF files of revised versions. As part of the Adobe agreement, all Associate Editors now have the means of generating PDF files.
· When I accepted the position as Editor, one of my goals was to produce compilation volumes, on selected themes, based on articles published in the journal over a number of years. Under the umbrella agreement with Adobe, we plan to edit compilations of articles in the form of PDF books. These collections will be created as encrypted PDF files that anybody can download but only those who buy the key can open them. I am seeking suggestions on possible topics for these electronic books as well as the names of possible Guest Editors.
· The new CD-ROM with articles published in 1998 and 1999 is still available from the ASP office. For $35 you can save a foot of shelf space, and have a fully searchable version of Photochemistry and Photobiology.
As a final note, let me state that the quality of the Journal is not a function of how "electronic" it is, but rather of its Editorial Board and, most specifically, the quality of the articles submitted by our contributors. We hope that these changes, which ultimately aim at accelerating the publication process and increasing the visibility of Photochemistry & Photobiology articles, will encourage authors to submit their best work, deserving of rapid handling and publication. I look forward to your suggestions and, very especially, to your submissions.
J.C. Scaiano
Editor
Synthetic diamonds' optical properties distinguish them from their natural counterparts. On a recent installment of the PBS series "Nova," it was shown that, in contrast to the natural stones, the synthetic gems show both fluorescence and phosphorescence under UV irradiation. Scientists around the world, are trying to grow synthetic jewels without these optical properties. Why are researchers at diamond-giant DeBeer's working on this? To stay a jump ahead of the "bad guys."
SCIENTISTS MEET TO TALK ABOUT FINALLY SEEING THE LIGHT
Scientists say let there be light-just not too much.
More than 1,000 scientists-prepared with unsettling tales about ultraviolet-resistant plants spreading down the sides of a volcano and a report on beams of light that can kill the AIDS virus in human blood destined for transfusions-[were] in San Francisco this [July 4] holiday weekend.
They have one simple piece of advice: Wear sun block. Also, hang onto your hat-research into the chemistry of light will affect us all in the decades ahead.
The occasion [was] the 13th International Congress on Photobiology, which [was] opened Saturday by former University of California, Berkeley, Vice-Chancellor Roderick Park, long a photosynthesis researcher.
Even the term-photobiology-was almost unknown 30 years ago. But the study of light and its effect on humans and plants is becoming increasingly important, says UC Berkeley professor-emeritus of chemistry John Hearst, [who discussed] photomedicine in the 21st century at the congress.
Deciphering the human genetic code is going to have a huge impact on medicine, and light is going to play an important role, Hearst said. He is founder of Concord-based Cerus Corp., which is developing a method of killing the AIDS virus, hepatitis, malaria, and other viruses in blood to be used in transfusions.
Scientists use a three-minute burst of long-wave ultraviolet light, which activates a special chemical added to the blood.
Another company, QLT Therapeutics, treats macular degeneration-a common cause of loss of eyesight-using a special red laser light to stop leaking blood vessels in the retina, Hearst said.
It's true about those UV-resistant plants, says Professor Tom Coohill, Dean of Science at Sienna College, Loudonville, N.Y., a congress participant.
Coohill, whose speciality is effects caused by depletion of the protective ozone layer above the Earth, said the plants evolved atop Mauna Loa, the Hawaiian volcano, in a high UV-environment.
But the chlorofluorocarbons long used in spray cans, refrigerators and air conditioners destroy ozone, allowing more of the sun's destructive UV radiation to reach Earth. At the latitude of the Bay Area, there's a 4 to 7 percent loss, Coohill said.
But in the Antarctic during spring, the loss is 130 percent. And over nearby Australia's ozone, protection sometimes drops to 30 percent of normal.
In Hawaii, as the ozone layer has decreased, those UV-resistant plants are moving down the slopes of the volcano, Coohill said. "That may not be particularly important-but many food crops are very sensitive to ultraviolet radiation. Corn, for example.
"One we really worry about is cassava, a tropical plant with a nutrient-rich starchy root that is a main food plant in Africa," Coohill said. "It's highly sensitive to UV and it may take decades to breed in resistance."
Coohill said developed countries can expect a 1-percent increase in non-melanoma skin cancer, which is treatable if detected in time. There are about 1,900 deaths in the United States each year from non-melanoma skin cancers, but the number of cases reported is growing, nearing 1 million a year.
In underdeveloped countries, where people are outside a great deal, death rates will be higher, Coohill said.
On the whole-humans in sophisticated countries can cope with the UV increase by wearing a hat and water-resistant sun block when outside and avoiding the direct sunlight between 10 a.m. and 2 or 3 p.m., Coohill said.
"I'm of Irish-Celtic descent-fair skin, no protection at all against UV," Coohill said. "But ever since I was a kid and I got 'sun poisoning,' I've stayed out of the sun. Now, I'm 58 [but] my skin looks younger.
"The fact is that every photon of UV that strikes your skin makes you look older. It's a good way to keep kids out of the sun. They don't care about skin cancer-but I tell them, if you don't want to have a face that looks like an old catcher's mask, stay out of the sun."
If you have darker skin, the damage doesn't show as much, but it's there, Coohill said.
Hearst... said another area of hot photobiological research is examining the molecular mechanism that controls our circadian rhythms-the internal clock that regulates sleep.
Jet lag, which disrupts our sleep, receives the publicity, but scientists now have connected the night-time hours we spend under artificial lights to breast cancer, Hearst said.
"There are groups of researchers who now believe that because we live so much under artificial light, our night-times are substantially shorter and that might be one reason for the much higher incidence of breast cancer in developed countries," he said.
William Brand
Oakland Tribune
June 30, 2000
(reprinted with permission of the author)
Editor's note: There is a very nice article on the Web about the 13th ICP written by Keay Davidson, science writer for The San Francisco Examiner. I was going to reprint here, but the Examiner would not waive its policy of charging for the privilege. The fact that ASP was the host and is a nonprofit organization carried no weight. If you want to take a look, it's still available at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ examiner/archive/2000/07/05/NEWS15309.dtl-sections.
The Biologic Effects of Light Foundation is pleased to announce Light Symposium 2001, which will be held June 15-17, 2001, at the Westin Copley Place in Boston. The Symposium will offer two full days of presentations and discussions from an international panel. M.F. Holick and E.G. Jung, chairmen for the 1998 Symposium, will return to chair in 2001.
The goal of the Foundation is to bring together scientists from a variety of disciplines who are researching the effects of light on living organisms. To this end, the Foundation sponsors a symposium in which scientists from around the world participate. This year marks the sixth such gathering.
The Foundation honors photomedicine pioneer Arnold Rikli by bestowing an award and grant named for him for that work deemed as most advancing our understanding of the biological effects of light in relation to human beings.
Information about Light Symposium 2001 can be obtained by visiting www.bioeffectsoflight.org for the agenda, travel and registration assistance. For other details, write to stclair@bioeffectsoflight.org.
The U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine (USACHPPM) Online Laser Hazard Bibliography and Online UV Hazard Bibliography are now both available for downloading from the Internet as Adobe .pdf files. Alphabetical bibliography listings can be downloaded, or the bibliography can be downloaded according to individual sections.
Both bibliographies can also be searched from the Web. The main URL is: http://chppm-www.apgea.army.mil/laser/ publications/. For the Laser Hazards Bibliography, add Lsbib/. For the UV Hazards Bibliography, add UVBib/uvbib.html.
Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions or problems.
Steve Wengraitis
USACHPPM
Stephen.Wengraitis@apg.amedd.army.mil
"Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it." - George Orwell
STOPPING LIGHT COULD LEAD TO QUANTUM ADVANCE IN COMPUTING
Two teams of scientists have accomplished the seemingly impossible feat of trapping and stopping light-an achievement that could lead to major advances in quantum computing. The experiments were conducted by two teams working independently of each other in Cambridge, Mass. One team was led by Lene Hau of Harvard University and the Rowland Institute of Science, the other by Ronald Walsworth and Mikhail Lukin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Just a few years ago, Hau brought the speed of light down to a manageable 30 meters per second, much slower than its normal 300 million meters per second, according to Seth Lloyd, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose focus is on building quantum computers.
More recently, the two teams brought light to a halt by shining a pulse of light into a chamber of gas in which the beam got slower and slower and dimmer and dimmer before coming to a stop with the help of a technique dubbed "electromagnetically induced transparency." Hua's group used chilled sodium gas to act as a parachute, while Walsworth's team used gaseous rubidium, an alkali metal.
The light... essentially lost its "zing" as the information from the photons was transferred into the spin inherent in the gas atoms. Once paused, it could then be revived to its usual speed of 186,000 miles per second (3 x 108 m/s).
The achievement has sparked renewed enthusiasm among advocates of quantum computing.
"It is easy to send a photon from one place to another, but catching it at the other end is what is really hard," Lloyd said. "This is a beautiful way of catching bits stored [in] light and storing them in a medium. I think it puts us considerably forward in our schedule in building more powerful quantum computers and [a] quantum Internet."
"The problem with classical computers is that they can be zero or one only at a given moment," said Ben Stein, a senior science writer at the American Institute of Physics. "Quantum computers would use particles that act as a zero or one at the same time, giving them the ability to perform many, many calculations in parallel, while classic computers could only look at one possibility."
Physicists envision [that] a quantum computer could perform calculations that are exponentially faster than any computer now available, cracking the toughest encryption code in a matter of seconds and searching massive databases in a fraction of the time it takes today.
A top-notch quantum computer can process data in 7- or 8-bit chunks and perform a few thousand operations.
"That sounds pretty pathetic, but just five years ago we had a 2-bit computer on which we could do just one operation, and seven years ago, it had no bits at all," Lloyd said. "It would be irresponsible to speculate when we could have even more powerful quantum computers based on these developments, but this is really going to help."
Lloyd said that one of the hardest things in quantum computing is the transfer of information from light to atoms. Making light stand still so it can be looked at and manipulated will "be quite useful in building quantum computers."
Both MIT and Caltech are trying to build communication applications based on quantum physics, such as a quantum Internet that would have small quantum computers attached to each other with fiber optics sending and receiving information using photons.
Hau's experiment will be published in the journal Nature, and Walsworth's work will appear in Physical Review Letters.
Sandeep Junnarkar
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Jet Lag is a biological disruption caused by flying across time zones faster than the body can adjust. New research has shown that the root physiological causes of jet lag can be treated directly by carefully timed exposure to light and darkness.
Circadian Rhythms
Biological rhythms strongly influence virtually all plants and animals. Daily
(circadian) rhythms are especially powerful, putting us to sleep at night
and waking us up in the morning. It has become clear that rapid resetting
of our internal clocks is essential for the effective management of jet lag.
It is possible to use the brain's sensitivity to light and darkness to accelerate
the adjustments of our circadian rhythms to our new surroundings.
The Role of Light and Darkness
The most important regulator of circadian rhythms is the daily alteration
of light and darkness. Under ordinary circumstances, only bright light, i.e.,
levels found only in natural daylight or from specially designed artificial
light sources
(http://www.apollolight.com/10klux.html)
not in normal indoor lighting, can strongly synchronize human circadian rhythms.
Thus, our internal clocks are normally kept on local time by the timing of
sunrise and sunset.
Researchers have discovered that the internal clock can be quickly reset by exposing the eyes to bright light at critical times of the day. It is possible to adjust a traveler's circadian rhythms to a new time zone within one day, and produce complete adaptation within about three days. Ordinarily, full biological adaptation could take up to three weeks.
The above information was excerpted from New Light on Jet Lag, The Fast
Way to Reset Your Body Clock, by Roger J. Cole. For more information,
contact Circadian Solutions,
(800) 653-8524 or
info@apollolight.com.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - Albert Einstein
Bridgette Barry, the 2000 Edna Roe awardee, is professor of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics at the University of Minnesota. Professor Barry received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, where she worked on bacteriorhodopsin in Rich Mathies' laboratory. She carried out postdoctoral research under the guidance of G.T. Babcock and S. Ferguson-Miller at Michigan State University, where she carried out the experiments that first identified the primary electron donor to the reaction center chlorophyll of photosystem II as a tyrosine residue.
At Minnesota, Bridgette has blended her graduate and postdoctoral training into a unique research program that combines the techniques of biochemistry, biophysics, and molecular biology to study the structure and function of membrane-protein complexes. Her group developed the first highly purified, active photosystem II preparation from the transformable cyanobacterium Synochocystis PCC 6803. This material has been exploited in a number of experiments, including spectroscopic studies using EPR and FTIR, to characterize further the roles of tyrosine radicals and quinones in photosystem II.
Among Professor Barry's other projects has been the application of FTIR spectroscopy to an analysis of the structure of the photosystem II manganese-stabilizing protein and to the structure of the photosystem I primary donor, the chlorophyll dimer called P700. Most recently, she has used FTIR to probe the transport mechanism catalyzed by the Lac permease; these experiments have shown for the first time that a membrane potential can affect carboxylate groups in the enzyme.
Charles Yocum
NEUROBIOLOGY OF INSECT CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS
From our own sleep-wake cycles to the chirping of crickets on summer evenings, examples of circadian rhythms in behavior are abundant in Nature. These rhythms are driven by internal biological clocks that are synchronized with the earth's rotation by the daily cycles of light and temperature in the environment. In the past decade, researchers studying the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, have deciphered the basic mechanism by which biological clocks keep time: the clock's central gears are genes that turn on, then turn themselves off again, every day. Research in this laboratory examines the mechanisms by which clock genes act within cells and tissues to produce circadian rhythms of behavior.
Students in the lab use genetic, molecular, and cell biological techniques to investigate the dynamic regulation of clock gene products and to explore the interactions between clock genes and cellular physiology. A tissue-culture system was recently developed in this laboratory, in which the fruit fly's clock is dissected from the fly and kept alive and ticking in culture for several days. This preparation allows for a new level of analysis of the physiological mechanisms by which clock genes and the cells that express them can interact to generate circadian rhythms in behavior.
Kathleen King Siwicki*
P. Hardin and K.K. Siwicki, 1995, The multiple roles of periodicity in the Drosophila circadian clock, Seminars in the Neuro-sciences, Vol. 7(1), pp. 15-25
I.F. Emery, J.M. Noveral, C.F. Jamison & K.K. Siwicki, 1997, Rhythms of Drosophila period gene expression in culture, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 94: 4092-4096.
*http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/Biology/
Iapologize for the fact that you didn't get two issues last year and that this one is so late. The reason is that I experienced a variety of health problems in 2000. The most interesting-from a photobiology perspective-was a torn retina, the after-effects of which persist. Fortunately, I was able to diagnose the problem and get emergency treatment. The surgeon on call at my ophthalmologists' office is experienced in laser treatments for such problems, and I left the office after only 75 minutes with 359(!), 200-ms "spot welds" induced by a frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser. If my vision problems persist, it may be advisable for me to cut back on close-up work, including serving as editor of this publication. Look for more news in the next issue, which you should receive in about a month. - JSC
MORE PHOTO HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 13TH ICP
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