Kudos

Endocrinologists Rajesh Garg, Assadulla Khaishgi and Paresh Dandona have joined the chorus of scientists warning against prescribing Viagra as a quick fix for impotence. In a letter published in the British medical journal, Lancet, the scientists, all from the Division of Endocrinology, reported finding two cases of impotence in their diabetic patients that were caused by overproduction of the hormone prolactin. One patient's impotency already was being treated with Viagra by his urologist when the endocrinologists screened him to rule out sex-hormone abnormalities and found high levels of prolactin in his blood. Further investigation revealed a small, noncancerous tumor of the pituitary gland, which was causing overproduction of the hormone and was responsible for his impotence. The second patient's complaint came to light before Viagra was available. He also was treated successfully by normalizing his prolactin levels. "These cases demonstrate the importance of systematic evaluation for the cause of impotence before prescribing sildenafil (Viagra)," Garg wrote.

Stuart Shapiro, professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been elected president and director of Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Inc., a charitable organization concerned with fostering research and communication on knowledge representation and reasoning. Its primary activities include organizing conferences, collaborating on workshops on related topics and maintaining informational materials on the World Wide Web.

Bharat Jayaraman, associate professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering in the College of Arts and Sciences, chaired the National Science Foundation panel for the selection of graduate research fellows in computer science for 1999, held in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 4-7. The panel's 15 members were drawn from university faculty and industrial researchers from across the United States. Jayaraman also has been invited to serve on the program committee for the First International Conference on Principles and Practice of Declarative Programming to be held in Paris Sept. 28-30. He will co-chair a workshop on Sets to be held in conjunction with the conference.