|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Biomedical SearchThe National Center for Biotechnology Information's Entrez search service provides access to millions of citations, abstracts, and many full text articles in PubMed-Medline and other life sciences databases, with links to online journals.Biology SearchVadlo life sciences search allows users to search for Protocols, Online Tools, Seminars, Databases, or Software.Biology & Medical Journal SearchGoogle Scholar searches many academic journals with this one form:https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/search_result?query=kashiwagi&pdf=true Scientific Document and Citation SearchCiteSeerx (originally ResearchIndex, then CiteSeer), hosted by Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology, "is a free public service that aims to improve communication and progress in science". Over 1,164,939 articles and over 22 million citations are included in the index. The system provides information on most cited articles, citations and authors.Biology & Life Sciences News & Information LinksThe Scientist is an online journal of life sciences news.A comprehensive General Biology site from the U. of Arizona, high school and college level, with tutorials and problem sets, including some in spanish. Biology Online is another comprehensive general biology site, not quite complete, but full of good information for users at the high school or introductory college level. The Phylogeny Tree of Life is an attempt to arrange all known species into one phylogenetic tree at the U. of Arizona. They currently have about 1% of the 1.4 million known species (which is about 10% of the estimated total number of species). Microbe Wiki: E. coli All about Ecoli, the bacteria growing in your gut that is one of biology's supermodels. Dennis Kunkel (Microscopy Web) supplies outstanding (but copyrighted) microphotography of microbes, insects, crystals, etc., with much accompanying information. The Web Atlas of Cell Structures contains dozens of pictures and some professional how-to information, such as cell staining techniques and advice on selecting microscopes and lighting for micrography. Botany: Plant News & Information LinksThe Texas A&M U. Vascular Plant Image Gallery has over 6000 pictures and links to more.The Internet Directory for Botany provides rapid access to a wide variety of botany resources online. The Ultimate Tree Ring Web Pages include a primer, photos, the International Tree Ring Database, news, and more. Volk's Fungi has over a thousand photos of fungi, information, and of course, the Fungi of the Month. Zoology: Animal News & Information LinksAnimal Diversity Web has info on 1600 species, plus hundreds of photos of animal skulls, articles, and more. This searchable site is written by students at the U. of Michigan.1909-1915 Congo Expedition This digital library site at the American Museum of Natural History is loaded with 2000 photos and 300 watercolors from the expedition by James Chapin and Herbert Lang (you will need Flash 5 to view the images), plus much more information from field notebooks. Primates.com has a list of living primate species, with photos & info. The Whole Mouse Catalog is a guide to Internet resources on this important 'supermodel' organism. Ultimate Ungulate is a website with information about and photos of hoofed mammals. The term 'ungulate' groups together six taxonomic orders, all descended from Condylarthra, an extinct order of hoofed mammals from the upper Cretaceous period (65 million years ago). Ornithology: Bird News & Information LinksCornell Ornithology Lab has a bird megasite, with bird FAQs, the bird, sound, and image of the week, population studies, conservation studies, a free email newsletter, and more.Marine Life News & Information LinksReefBase is a comprehensive online information system on coral reefs. The Reefbase Photo Gallery includes thousands of coral reef related images, taken from underwater, the surface, air, and space. If it won't load, try ReefBase via Wayback. Also see MarineBio.org: Coral Reefs.The Cephalopod Page has photos of and information about octopuses, squids and the like, with links. FishBase is a fish database, with information on over 23,000 species. Entomology: Insect Life News & Information LinksInsect Images, from the Bugwood Network and the USDA Forest Service, is a searchable gallery of over 5400 photos of insects, which are freely available for non-profit use.The U. of Florida Book of Insect Records lists 39 insect 'records', with explanatory information. The Entomology Index of Internet Resources, from Iowa State U., contains over 1200 searchable links to insect information. Drosophilia FlyBase at Indiana U. is a central storehouse for information on the fruit fly drosophilia, one of biology's supermodel organisms. Reptiles from The Center for Biological Diversity. The almost 8000-page Pasteur Institute BioNetbook, formerly linked to here, has been discontinued, and, apparently, destroyed. It cannot be accessed via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, because the Pasteur Institute blocked indexing of Bionetbook pages. |
Biology and Biosciences NewsCell.com Biology and Biosciences News |
|
TIME Magazine, June 27, 1949, p. 66: MEDICINE: Frontal Attack (cover story) ...Gangster Cells. The "cancer problem," as pathologists call it, is one of the strangest and subtlest that medicine has faced. Cancer is not an outside enemy that can be fought in the open like a foreign invader. It is a civil war among the body's own cells, and it runs through all of nature like a red fiber of ruin spun into the thread of life. All vertebrates, including frogs and fish, get cancer. In all probability, the experts say, invertebrates and plants have cancer too. As a normal thing, the several hundred trillion cells in a human body cooperate loyally, subordinating themselves to the body's higher life. Their functioning and their usually slow rate of multiplication are controlled, most scientists believe, by the chemical hormones which are poured into the blood by a set of regulating glands. Sometimes, for reasons which medicine does not yet understand, a cell turns out to be different from normal cells. Most such "mutations," less competent than the normal cells, die and are absorbed by the body. But occasionally a variant cell appears that is disastrously competent. Something in its chemistry allows it to defy the hormones that regulate the growth of ordinary cells. It multiplies wildly, growing into a useless mass of disorderly tissue. The tumor pushes among the normal cells, presses on nerves, thrusts organs aside or invades them. Often the gangster cells get into the blood and spread around the body like seeds carried by the wind. Where they lodge they grow into "metastases"--secondary tumors as lawless as the first one. That is cancer: war between the body and its rebel cells. But it is not a two sided civil war, because the body has no defenses. The body creates no antibodies against cancer as it does against diphtheria or typhoid. It builds no tissue walls to confine the destructive cells. It feeds them well, allows them to grow unchecked, and dies helplessly when they disrupt some vital function... |
|
TIME Magazine, September 6, 1948, p. 66: SCIENCE: "Dear Teacher..." Professor Anton R. Zhebrak is a Soviet geneticist who has enjoyed international respect. Like most reputable scientists, he has believed in the Morgan-Mendelian theory of genetics (i.e., hereditary characteristics are controlled by genes which cannot be altered by ordinary environmental conditions). That belief made him a heretic in Russia, where science must take the Communist view that Environment Is All. Last year Zhebrak was roundly denounced by Pravda for admitting in the U.S. weekly, Science, that may Russian geneticists still uphold Mendel's laws (TIME, Sept. 22). With Zhebrak's capitulation, a debate that has gone on in Russia for over a decade came to an end. Henceforth, all vegetables, flowers and other plants in the U.S.S.R. will grow straight along the Marxian line. Under the vigorous influence of their Communist environment, they will cast off all Western bourgeois tendencies that might make them follow their heredity. The man who finally won this long-standing argument is Geneticist Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, president of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Lysenko rose to his present eminence by being able to make his science toe the party line. Although Lysenko has gained increasing recognition in Russia, most Western and some Soviet geneticists have regarded his party-line genetics as scientifically naive. This summer, at the eight-day meeting of the Lenin Academy, Lysenko rose to insist on his views once again. Several scientists, including Professor Zhebrak, tried to start the old argument. It was then that Lysenko sprang his big surprise: his theory had been officially endorsed by the Central Committee. Taking its cue, the Academy hastily dashed off a note to Scientist Stalin: "You, our dear leader and teacher, have helped Soviet scientists day in, day out, to develop our progressive materialist science serving the people in all its labors and exploits, a science expressing the ideology and lofty aims of the man of the new Socialist society... Advanced biological science rejects and pillories the erroneous idea that nature cannot be guided by the human control of conditions." Last week the Academy swung into action. It purged itself of two of its most noted members: Physiologist L. A. Orbeli and Morphologist I. I. Shmalgauzen; liquidated a laboratory on cytogenetics (the study of cell formation), and accused its director, world-famous Geneticist N. P. Dubinin, of having taken "anti-scientific positions." All textbooks on biology were ordered rewritten; teaching will be oriented to the Lysenko doctrine. |
|
TIME Magazine, July 4, 1949, p. 45: MEDICINE: How Much Radiation? Dr. Robert R. Newell, director of Stanford's radio-biological laboratory, polled 32 of the nation's topflight radiologists and physicists on the question: How much radiation would it take to kill a man? Last week Dr. Newell reported his findings. The radiologists gave such widely varied answers that the important question was left hanging. For example, the experts were asked how much radiation a man could stand over a few hours without showing symptoms of illness. The answers ranged from 25 roentgens (the standard measure of X-ray dosage) to 1,000. Another question was how much radiation would be needed to to knock out of combat 90% of exposed persons within a few hours; answers varied from 100 roentgens to 10,000. The confusion was no laughing matter. It meant that in case of an atomic bombing, or a mishap at an atomic plant, no one would be able to say just when it would be safe to send in rescue squads. Said Dr. Newell: "This is like saying you don't know whether a teaspoonful or tumblerful of poison will make a man sick." |