What are the stress proteins for? - Old and new conceptions
Stress proteins constitute a ubiquitous, ancient cellular defense system. In the last twenty years the necessity of stress protein-mediated help in protein folding proved to be a rather general and essential phenomenon. Reorganization of protein structure is necessary for intracellular transport processes, signal transduction, protein degradation and the recovery of the cell after severe environmental stress. Hungarian groups have contributed quite a lot to explore novel functions of stress proteins: a model to understand the molecular details of stress protein functions has been constructed, the role of stress proteins in cytoplasmic organization was elucidated, stress protein-membrane interactions were analyzed, an important role of stress proteins in apoptosis has been established, stress protein co-inducers were proved to be effective in curing many diseases and the role of stress proteins in the development of civilization diseases, such as atherosclerosis, diabetes and cancer was proposed.
Science and the media
The general public find it increasingly difficult to absorb the new results as well as their implications for the society due to the rapid development of science and its applications. On the other hand in a democratic society science also bears the responsibility to the taxpayers to make sure that public funds allocated for research have been properly used.
As a consequence the social effects of the development of science have to be matched by an equally high level science popularization so that the public can have an informed opinion on every important issue affecting the life of science and express it through the available channels.
Sándor Jeszenszky - László Kovács - Albert Szalóky:
Ányos Jedlik - physicist, electrical engineer and professor
Ányos Jedlik, a Benedictine and physicist, was born 200 years ago. This is the time when practical applications of electricity, in other words, electrical engineering were beginning. As a professor, Ányos Jedlik made demonstration devices which are considered to be ancestors of various electrical appliances such as the electric motor, the dynamo and the electric lamp. In this respect he can be regarded as the first Hungarian electrical engineer. At the same time, he was teacher for 53 years, including 38 years spent as professor at the Budapest University of Science. As a professor he not only dealt with electricity but also with other areas of physics. The precision devices he created in order to demonstrate wave motion and produce optical grates are of great importance. The authors of this article introduce Jedlik's career from the perspective of physical research, engineering work and teaching.