Word: molecular
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Killu Tyugu, 21, a thoughtful Soviet college student, remembers when the rector of Tartu State University in Estonia asked if anyone wanted to go to America. "Everyone laughed and said, 'He is a humorous man.' We didn't believe him," says Tyugu, a molecular-biology major. "But when he went on to ask, 'Who would like to apply for an exchange program?' I thought, Why not take a risk?" This autumn Tyugu is enrolled at Ohio's Oberlin College, while 55 of her Soviet peers are at 25 other liberal-arts colleges in eight states. The arrangement is part...
...that describes the Soviet economy as entirely planned. "It is wrong," she insists. "With economic reform there are a lot of changes in our country." Meanwhile at Oberlin, Killu Tyugu, who did not initially believe it was possible to study in America, is amused to find that her fellow molecular-bio students are poring over the same (U.S.-published) textbook she used back home. Typing away on an Apple computer, she revels in her good fortune: "Right now there seems no way to lose. Being a student seems to be fun on both sides of the globe...
Controlled-release systems first appeared in the 1950s with the introduction of Dexedrine's "tiny time capsules." Variations have included slowly dissolving wax-coated pills and small adhesive skin patches capable of delivering doses of medication. The new drug-delivery systems, based on advances in molecular biology, represent a dramatic improvement over their predecessors. Take the plastic wafer, about the size of a quarter, that can carry powerful drugs to brain-cancer victims. Researchers have known for some time that disks formed of chemical structures called polymers work well for dispensing small molecules like nitroglycerin, a pain reliever commonly used...
...promising new era in drug development. Scientists have traditionally stumbled onto treatments by testing existing substances for their therapeutic effects, as was the case with AZT, the only AIDS drug approved for widespread use by the Food and Drug Administration. But recent advances in the field of molecular biology have given researchers a clearer understanding of the most minute workings of the cell. This has enabled them to engineer structures that can disrupt the cycle of a disease at the molecular level...
...last week, at least for now, on one of the strangest tales of scientific controversy in recent memory. The story became public on June 30, when the prestigious British science journal Nature published a report, hedged with "editorial reservation," on a phenomenon that defied the laws of physics and molecular biology: water apparently retained a "memory" of some molecules it once contained in solution. When such water was mixed with blood cells, that phantom memory seemingly caused a reaction...