The founder of the Whitehead Institute (Massachusetts) describes the issues and challenges encountered in establishing a private research institute, focusing on the evolution of the institute's affiliation with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Autonomy, taxes, the differences between academic and industrial organizations, and defining…

Some problems in the changing pattern of relationships between bedside teaching, clinical research, and provision of medical services in academic hospitals are examined, including patient types, sophistication of medical intervention, and specialization. Four elements of government policy that might favor desirable development in these areas are…

Describes the history, research, teaching strategies, and specialties of the University of California at Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. Documents effects of changing societal attitudes toward wildlife, pets, working animals, and food animals on curriculum, the systems approach to disease, comparative genetics, biotechnology, the ecology of…

Outlines the path that the scientific, technical and medical scholarly publishers must follow to be successful in electronic publishing. Lists 12 "rehab rules" which focus on cooperative planning and implementation; sharing findings and debating openly; embracing change; retaining open standards and rejecting proprietary solutions; striving for…

Discusses topical relevance and situational relevance, which takes into account the impact of the retrieval system on the user, in the context of medicine. Topics addressed include scientific validity; limitations of current evaluation methodology, including recall and precision; and a framework for future retrieval research based on an…

Examines the discussion of results in medical research articles to determine the strategies used by the writers to persuade the readers that their research is either new or a development of previous work and that their study is a contribution to a specialist field. Twenty-four research articles were analyzed using Swales moves analysis as well as…

Discusses normal anogenital anatomy in children in relation to the medical evaluation of child sexual abuse and summarizes state of current knowledge. Suggestions for further research, including cross-sectional studies comparing normal and abused children, and cross-sectional and longitudinal studies comparing different racial/ethnic groups.…

This article (1) examines the overall structure of regulatory research oversight in the United States; (2) details the origins and evolution of federal legislation pertaining to the protection of human subjects in biomedical and behavioral treatment and research; and (3) describes the expansion of oversight regulation from biomedical and…

This article describes an innovative curriculum module the first author created on the two-way exchange between statistics and applied ethics. The module, having no particular mathematical prerequisites beyond high school algebra, is part of an undergraduate interdisciplinary ethics course which begins with a 3-week introduction to basic applied…

This report presents an overview of research on childhood lead exposure and poisoning, and the related social issues. The report first summarizes the history of lead poisoning and its prevalence in the United States, and discusses the basis for recent changes in guidelines for lead exposure by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The report then…

According to researchers, the family may be changing but it is still one of the central institutions in society. Studies report a shift in more than 20 attitudes and values, most of which relate to the context of family life. Specifically, these include attitudes toward marriage, divorce, childbearing, childrearing, working women, family violence,…

Three papers and two responses comprise this section comparing the degree to which research is utilized among various professions. Christine H. McGuire, in "Diffusion and Application of New Knowledge in Medicine," states that, because the medical profession must serve people with clearly perceived problems, these practitioners are under…

A system of data recording and retrieval which defines a family practice population of patients is described. The costs of this recording process in nonteaching practices, the use of such data as an educational resource for the training of primary care physicians, and the evaluations of health care delivered are discussed. (Editor/JT)

To increase awareness of ideas that have potential for solving nursing problems, the papers in these proceedings review research findings, describe the application of problem-solving techniques, and underscore the joint responsibility of service and education for testing innovations in better patient care. The proceedings contain: (1) "Don't Just…