ACADEMIC FREEDOM: Political Scientist Becomes Cause Celebre

On 11 May, a criminal court in Vienna found one of Austria's most prominent political scientists, Anton Pelinka, guilty of defaming former Freedom Party leader J?rg Haider. Haider, an outspoken populist who has made questionable comments about Nazism, accused Pelinka of defaming him for asserting in an interview on Italian television in May 1999 that some Haider statements had "trivialized" Nazism. In the 3 months since the judgment, an array of academic and human rights groups have rushed to Pelinka's defense.     

Frequent recombination in a saltern population of Halorubrum

Sex and recombination are driving forces in the evolution of eukaryotes. Homologous recombination is known to be the dominant process in the divergence of many bacterial species. For Archaea, the only direct evidence bearing on the importance or natural occurrence of homologous recombination is anecdotal reports of mosaicism from comparative genomic studies. Genetic studies, however, reveal that recombination may play a significant role in generating diversity among members of at least one archaeal group, the haloarchaea. We used multi-locus sequence typing to demonstrate that haloarchaea exchange genetic information promiscuously, exhibiting a degree of linkage equilibrium approaching that of a sexual population.     

Acute axonal dystrophy caused by fluorocitrate: the role of mitochondrial swelling

Fluorocitrate, a Krebs cycle inhibitor, induices neurons to rapidly expel multitudinous lysosomes, mitochondria, and other cytoplasmic constituents into their axons. After convulsive seizures commence, spectacular axonal balloons develop owing to obstruction of axonal flow by "log jams" of extruded organelles. A swelling of neuronal mitochondria is apparently responsible for the disgorgement of cytoplasmic material into axons.