🚀 go-pugleaf

The San Francisco Tesla Society will meet on Sunday May 12, 1996
from 1 - 4:30 p.m. at Fort Mason, Building C, room 205.  Free to
the public.  (A bowl is passed for donations.)

The speaker is Roulette William Smith, a Stanford Ph.D. who heads 
the Institute for Postgraduate Interdisciplinary Studies in Palo Alto.  
He has spent almost 20 years studying the slow viruses and molecular 
mechanisms of long term memory.  These mechanisms are intimately related 
to the immune system and to certain degenerative diseases.  Smith's 
theories suggest a radically different approach to treating AIDS.  His 
take on the evolution of the disease, and what we can expect in the 
future, is thought provoking.


Long Term Memory, Slow Viruses, Mad Cow Disease and AIDS:  How might
they be related?  --Roulette William Smith, Ph.D.

Many theories have been put forth to account for the molecular basis
of long term memory.  Some investigators, including Linus Pauling,
have suggested that proteins play such a role.  Other investigators
have posited that RNA may play an essential role.  Smith puts forth
a provocative hypothesis - that changes in and to DNA ultimately 
must be involved in the molecular basis of long term memory.  This 
hypothesis is a simpler way of discussing the molecular basis of long 
term memory in the brain (cognition and behavior).  The mechanism also 
accounts for long term memory associated with speciation, development, 
immunity and aging.  Interestingly, slow viruses and unconventional 
agents of transmissible spongiform encepalopathies (mad cow disease, 
scrapie, kuru and Crutzfeldt-Jakob disease) all disrupt long term 
memory.  This talk explores what role these agents play and describes the 
role that sleep and dreaming may play in the consolidation of
long term memories in the brain.

ROULETTE WILLIAM SMITH earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University,
taught at the University of California in Santa Barbara, served as
executive editor of two international journals, and attended
medical school at UCSF.  For the past 19 years he has studied AIDS,
scrapie and other slow progressive infectious diseases.

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The San Francisco Tesla Society meets monthly [except for July and
August] at Fort Mason.  The meetings are held on the second Sunday
of the month from 1-5 pm. in Building C, Second Floor.   At each
meeting a lecture on a topic of scientific interest is presented.
The meetings are open to the public; they are free.