story has long been exploited to transfer human culture and concepts. it is the most consistent verbal form to the human mind. therefore, its audience spectrum is more widespread and its influence power is higher. though the qur'an's main language is the language of religion and spiritual guidance, it exploits the storytelling method in its complete form to disseminate its message.  u...

Scientists present talks all the time. The talk is one of the main tools of our trade. Some people give so many you wonder how they fit in experiments at all. Lab heads give seminars and conference speeches to sell their work to the world, and to attract the best people to work for them. Aspiring lab heads give job talks to sell themselves to potential employers. Nearly everyone gives talks so ...

"Tell a story," my mother instructs her graduate students as they prepare their talks. I will make use of her advice here, and will tell several short stories. The themes revolve around the practice of science-what motivates us to go into science and how we choose questions once we get there. I also touch on progress in scientific tools, teaching, good mentors, and good colleagues, all of which...

Educational accounts typically focus on schools in the centre of the social mainstream with much less attention to the stories of schools perpetually on the periphery. Such schools on the edge face a constant struggle to forge a closer alignment between home and school, parents and teachers, and between the formal world of school and the informal world of neighbourhood and peer group. The decli...

Introduction Among the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) Yugoslavia was one of the ‘success stories’ with respect to tourism. (The term Yugoslavia used throughout this paper refers to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia before its break-up into five/six states from 1991 onwards). There was significant growth in incoming international tourist numbers and exp...

CONTEXT In August 1998, the US Food and Drug Administration licensed the first vaccine against rotavirus, the most important cause of severe childhood diarrhea. Fourteen months later, amid intense media activity, the vaccine was withdrawn after an association was found with intussusception. OBJECTIVES To examine the character of news media stories about rotavirus vaccine before and after intu...

This is a study of how members of a collaborative group interested in promoting convivial civilisation in human society took up exchanging practice stories – stories of doing something or seeing something done as examples of convivial backyard civilisation – in order tacitly to create an informal learning environment where practices of such a convivial backyard civilisation could seem normal, d...

The recent Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory meeting ‘Mechanisms of Eukaryotic Transcription’ was a potent reminder of the astounding depth and complexity of the biological world. Despite years of intensive study and the extraordinary advances that have been made, transcriptional regulation remains a vibrant area of research that retains its ability to inspire and to surprise. Indeed, for the 470 p...

WASHINGTONPresident Bush pledged Tuesday to sub­ mit detailed revisions to Ronald R eagan’s budget next month and suggested highlevel negotiations between the White House and Congress to produce an early agreem ent. The White House acknowl­ edged that Bush had not kept his prom ise to send his team of budget negotiators to Congress on the first day of his presidency. Likewise, it ap­ peared unl...