Page 1:

• A new look and feel for EMBL’s official WWW pages (see Page 2)
• It was a (very short) dark and stormy night... (see Page 8)
• A talk with Harold Varmus (see Page 4)
• Alumni meeting update: New advertisement for the alumni meeting taking place on October 21-23, 1999 in Heidelberg.
• Photographs: Image of the solar eclipse and picture of Harold Varmus

Page 2:

• A much-needed overhaul of EMBL’s website: Feedback from inside EMBL is requested to launch afterwards the official website for external users.
• Image: Aspect of new EMBL website

Page 3:

• FAQs fearfully anticipated questions: questions that may arise regarding the new developed EMBL website.
• EBI Hinxton – the BioInformer: Publicity about this website that keeps up-to-date on what is happening in EBI outstation.
• Image: BioInformer home page.

Pages 4 and 5:

• A talk with Harold Varmus: Interview by Russ Hodge of Varmus which was was the Director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).
• Photographs of Harold Varmus

Page 6:

• Hamburg Outstation. Future structural biology with a Free Electron Laser: Announcement of a new linear collider called TESLA with a projected centre-of-mass energy of 500 GeV. It would complement DESY’s particle storage ring facilities. X-FEL facility is also planned. Written by Matthias Wilmanns (EMBL Hamburg Outstation).
• Kids @ EMBL: A second-grade class of the Gaiberg elementary school visits EMBL Heidelberg.
• Photographs: Kids at EMBL and artwork by the kids (also on Page 7.)

Page 7:

• The EMBO corner: EMBO offers short-term and long-term fellowships. The article is an explanation of the application and evaluation processes. Written by Frank Gannon, Executive Director of EMBO.

Page 8:

• From the sister sciences... – When small things pass in front of the sun: Article about the 1760 transit of Venus.
• cooey! anyone out there?: EMBL was contributing to a USA initiative to search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. Written by Freddy Frischknecht & Sarah Sherwood.
• Photograph: Image of the solar eclipse

Page 9:

• Science & society: EMBL has organized a panel discussion for Monday 4 October to talk about the expansion of the application of intellectual property rights (IPR) and their protection in patents.
• Administrative announcement – unresolved legal dispute to oblige the registration of all EMBL personnel in the German Central Government
• People @ EMBL – New people at EMBL and new Group leaders

Page 10

• Announcements: Safety Office now on the intranet, late or weekend work and the new library newsletter called “Simply Szilárd”
• Blunt ends & fill-ins: EBI has decided to launch a new database in which protein structures will be represented by various shapes and sizes of noodles.
• Space links: links related to articles in Page 8.
• False Positives: Winners of Medline competition.
• ...but are you ready for Y10K?: Dates in the SWISS-PROT, PROSITE and SWISS-2DPAGE databases are stored as ASCII text strings using four digits and there should be no problem until December 31, 9999.

[Index kindly prepared by EMBL alumna Patricia Resa-Infante.]