Bücher der Reihe Heidelberg Science Library

I believe that the most intriguing thing in the world, be sides the world itself, is the human brain. Therefore a book on the brain, be it the fly's or the mouse's brain, needs no justification. An idea is introduced that turns up repeatedly in the rest of the book, namely, that the structure of brains is information about the world.

Teaching a course on nucleic acid structure is a hazardous undertaking, especially if one has no continuous teaching obligations. I still have done it on several occasions in various French universities, when colleagues, suffering from admin- istrative overwork and excessive teaching obligations, had asked me to do so. This was generally done with a pile of notes and a dozen slides, and I always regretted that no small, concise, specialized book on nucleic acid structure for students at the senior or beginning graduate level ex- isted. Every year, the lecture notes became more and more voluminous, with some key reprints intermingled. Everything changed when, in the spring of 1973, I re- ceived an invitation to teach such a course, under the UNESCO-OAS-Molecular Biology Program at the Universi- dad de Chile in Santiago during October 1973. I had ac- cepted rather enthusiastically, but soon discovered that it would be necessary to produce a photocopied syllabus for the students. This was the fi rst premanuscript of this book. For nonscientific reasons, the course was first canceled and then postponed until December 1973. Nearly a year later, the course, in slightly amended form, was presented at the Lemonossow-State University in Moscow.

viii From discussions with our colleagues, we know that they recognize the problems and worry about them, but simply do not have the time to thoroughly study the highly specialized genetic literature available. This book is an attempt to fill this void. We have made an effort to keep it as short and clear as possible and to limit it to the important and most frequent genetic abnor- malities. In particular, we have tried to take into consid- eration the difficulties of the average student in under- standing genetic logic and to eliminate the most common errors. This guide is not designed to provide more than basic information. No reader will arise from the study of this volume as an expert genetic counselor. That requires, in this as in all other sciences, knowledge of the highly spe- cialized literature as well as extensive experience. Some geneticists therefore take the position that the general practitioner (or specialist in any other field of medicine) cannot possibly give proper genetic counsel to his patients. Because he is not a genetics expert, he should, without exception, refer all such cases to the geneticist. This point of view would condemn this guide as potentially more harmful than helpful in that it might increase the cases of well-meaning error as well as encouraging those who are not competent in this field to deal with problems which are beyond their capacity. We, obviously, do not share this pessimistic standpoint.

This book is based on Hans Zahner's Biologie der Antibiotica, published in 1965. There is a vast literature on antibiotics, covering chemical, phar- macological, and clinical aspects. We have made no attempt to cover this literature comprehensively. Our effort is directed toward discuss- ing antibiotics as biological agents. They are substances produced by living cells, yet they are able to inhibit the growth of living cells - in many cases even the cells that produce them. We have taken this apparent biological paradox as our point of departure and have tried to look in this light at the production of antibiotics and at their mode of action. In a sense antibiotics are comparable to mutations. They are useful as tools in the study of metabolism by blocking specific reactions. At the same time their mode of origin and their effects on the organisms that produce them are interesting problems in their own right. We have tried to incorporate both aspects into our consider- ations. This little book, designed for biology students and medical stu- dents, provides them with a framework into which to fit more specialized and detailed information on antibiotics.

THE idea of collecting these essays occurred to me when, in the leisure of retire ment, I scanned some of my own books and found that two of the more widely read show a startling change of attitude to some of the fundamental concepts of science.

This book represents the interests and attitudes, the information, and the philosophy that define my work and career as it has evolved over the years.

The history of science is mostly written retrospec tively, a generation or two after the actual events being discussed.

There is growing evidence that an amalgamation of systems theories and communication and information theories will become the leading conceptual model for addressing human behavior.

, energy levels of electrons in atoms, energetic considerations of bonding in diatomic molecules, and packing of ions in the simplest solid state structures we believe form a good basis for students to progress to more complicated systems in a qualitative way.

The aim of DEALING WITH DILEMMA is to inte grate medical and genetic information with the psychoso cial aspects of genetic counseling, in order to provide a working manual for genetic counselors.

This review will not consider plasmids of prokaryotic origin, even though certain bacterial plasmids, such as the tumor-inducing (Ti) plasmids of Agrobacterium tumefaciens, may be intimately associated with transformation of the eukaryotic host.

This geometry, also called hyperbolic geometry, is part of the required subject matter of many mathematics departments in universities and teachers' colleges-a reflec tion of the view that familiarity with the elements of hyperbolic geometry is a useful part of the background of future high school teachers.

The titling of this book - "Facing Reality" - came to me unbidden, presumably from my subconscious! The other component of the title - "Reality" - is the ultimate reality for each of us as conscious beings - our birth - our self-hood in its long stream of becoming throughout our life - our death and apparent annihilation.