Reading and Reasoning 51

PROFILE: RITA LEVI-MONTALCINI

FINDING THE GOOD IN THE BAD

I. REFLECTING UPON THE LAYOUT OF THE TEXT

Since women have had the opportunity to choose a career, many of them have been successful in different professions.

TASKA

Match the following ñames with their corresponding achievements. After you have completed the

exercise, compare your answers with a partner's.

All of the women mentioned below are well-known scientists. The first is a genetician, the second one is a neurobiologist. Both the third and the fourth are chemists.

ÑAMES

1. Barbara McCIintock

2. Rita Levi-Montalcini

3. Marie Curie or Maria Skolodowska

4. Dorothy Crowfoot-Hodgkin

ACHIEVEMENTS

a. discovered radioactivity of thorium; discovered polonium and radium and isolated radium from pitchblende.

b. determined the molecular structure of penicillin and other substances.

c. discovered genetic elements known as "jumping genes".

d. elucidated a substance essential to the survival of nerve celis.

52 Reading and Reasoning

TASKB

Based on your own knowledge about "nerve celis" and the information included in text 2, "Brain

as a Renewable Resource", discuss the following statements.

1. A neuron is a type of cell.

2. Neurons are not normally replaced after damage.

3. Mouse brain celis can replace dead neurons.

4. Alzheimer's and Huntington's are diseases of the nerve system.

TASKC

Now, look at the title, the caption and the picture. Try to predict the main content of the reading.

TASKD

Find the relationship between the title and the caption. Then try to answer the following questions.

1. Who is mentioned in the title?

2. What is her occupation?

3. What awards has she got?

4. What was happening while she was doing her research?

II. FACE TO FACE WITH THE TEXT

Read the following text carefully and then complete the table in Task A.

PROFILE: RITA LEVI-MONTALCINI

Finding the Good in the Bad

As a feminist in a family with Vlcto-rian mores and as a Jew and free-

. thínker in Mussolini's Italy, Rita Levi-Montalcini has encoimtered various forms of oppression many times in her life. Yet the neurobiologist, whose tenac-ity and preciseness are immediately ap-parent in her light, steel-blue eyes and elegant black-and-white attire, embraces the forces that shaped her. "If I had not been discrim-inated against or had not suffered persecution, I would never have received the No­bel Prize," she declares.

Poised on the edge of a couch in her apartment in Rome that she shares with her twin sister, Paola, Levi-Montalcini recalls the long, determined struggle that cul-minated in joining the small group of women Nobelists in 1986. She won the prize for elucidating a substance essential to the survival of nerve celis. Her discovery of nerve growth factor led to a new understanding of the development and differenti-ation of the nervous system. Today it and other similar factors are the subject of in­tense investigation because of their potential to revive damaged neurons, especial-ly those harmed in such dis­eases as jMzheimer's.

The joumey from Turto, where she was bom in 1909, to this serene and impecca-ble Román living room laden with plants and with the etch-ings and sculptures of Pao-la, a well-known artist, test-ed Levi-Montalcini's mettle from her earliest years. "It was a very patriarchal society, and I sim-ply resented, from early childhood, that women were reared in such a way that everything was decided by the man," she proclaims. Initially, she wanted to be a philosopher but soon decided she was not logically minded enough. When her governess, to whom she was devoted, died of cáncer, she chose to become a doctor. There only remained the small matter of getting her father, an engi-

neer, to grant permission and of mak­ing up for the time she had lost in a girls' high school, where graduatlon led to marriage, not to the university. That "annoyed me so much that I decided to never do as my mother did. And it was a very good decisión—at that time, I could never have done anythíng in par­ticular if I had marrled." Levi-Montalci-

NQBf'I. LAURÉATE Hita Levi-Moniakini comimMd neumhioloíf kai rcsnmii as hnmhs feü on her town durimi World War }¡.

ni pauses, leans forward and asks in-tensely, "Are you married?" She sighs with relief at the answer. "Good," she says, smiling.

After she received her father's grudg-ing consent, Levi-Montaldni studied for the entrance examlnation and then en-rolled in the Turin School of Medicine at the age of 21. Drawn to a famous, ec-centric teacher, Giuseppe Levi, she de­cided to become an intern at the Insti­

tute of Anatomy. There Levi-Montalcini became adept at histology, in particu­lar at staining nerve celis.

Since Levi was curious about aspects of the nervous system, he assigned his student a Herculean labor: to figure out how the convolutions of the human brain are formed.'ln addition to the overwhelming undertaking of finding human fetuses in a country where abor-tion was illegal, "the assignment was an impossible task to give your student

or an established scientist," Levi-Montalcini explains, her voice hardening. "It was a re-ally stupid question, which I couldn't solve and no one could solve."

She abandoned the proj­ect—after a series of un-pleasant forays for subject matter—and with Levi's per­mission began to study the development of the nervous system ln chick embryos. Several years later she was forced to stop that work as well. Mussolini had declared his dictatorship by 192 5 and since then anti-Semitism had grown in Italy. By 1936, hos-tüity was openly apparent, and in 1939, Levi-Montalcini withdrew from the universi­ty, worried about the safety of her non-Jewish colleagues who would be taking a risk by letting her smdy.

Levi-Montalcini accepted an invitation to conduct her research at a neurological in­stitute in Belgium. But, fear-ing for her family, she soon retumed to Turin—just be­fore Mussolini and Hitler forged their alliance. Unde-terred, Levi-Montalcini con-tinued her research: "1 im­mediately found a way to establish a laboratory in my

bedroom." In the years that followed, bombs fell repeatedly, and again and again she would lug her microscope and slides to safety in the basement.

In spite of the hardship—or perhaps, as Levi-Montalcini sees it, because of the adversity—it was during this time that she laid the groundwork for her lat­er investigation of nerve growth factor. "You never know what is good, what is bad in life," she muses. "I mean, in my

32 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN January 1993

case, it was my good chance." Levi-Mon­talcini and her family left Turin in 1942 for the surrounding hills and success-fully survived the war in hiding. By con-vincing farmers that she needed eggs for her children (whom she did not have), Levi-Montalcini studied how embryon-ic nerve tissue differentiates into spe-cialized types. The prevailing theory, de-veloped by renowned biologist Viktor Hamburger of Washington University, held that the differentiation, or special-ization, of nerve celis depends in large part on their destination. In his experi-ments, Hamburger removed developing limbs in chick embryos to see how such excisión would affect the later growth and differentiation of the nerve celis destined for that región of the embryo.

Hamburger observed that the centers of embryonic nerve celis near and in the developing spinal column—where the celis start their joumey out to other tissues—were much smaller when he ex-cised the limb buds. He suggested that some inductive or organizing factor, probably contained in the limb, could no longer cali out to the nerve celis. Therefore, they neither specialized ñor grew away from the developing spinal cord into the región of the absent limb.

After conducting experiments dlrect-ed at the same question, Levi-Montal­cini reached a different conclusión. She found that fewer nerve celis grew into the área where the limb bud had been eliminated, but she proposed that some kmd of nutrient, important for the sur-víval of nerve celis and normally pro-duced by the limb, was missing. Her theory differed from Hamburger's view because Levi-Montalcini proposed that nerve cell differentiation did take place despite the removal of the limb but that the celis soon died because they did not receive some sustaining, trophlc factor. The limb did not contribute to differen­tiation, that is, it did not contato an organizing factor; rather it produced something that nourished already spe­cialized nerve celis.

A paper of hers on this topic was published in a Belgian joumal and was read by Hamburger, who invited her to St. Louis in 1946. Hamburger wanted to work with Levi-Montalcini on the problem of nerve cell differentiation— and, indeed, later carne to agree with her interpretatlon. Although she initial-ly accepted a semester-long research position at Washington, Levi-Montalcini remained until 1961. She is now profes-sor emeritus at Washington but spends most of her time in her native country.

Levi-Montalcini recalls being unsure of the future of her research after she arrived in the U.S. One aftemoon, a series of observations, as well as the

presentation of a challenge, gave her a renewed sense of purpose. At that time, neurobiologists thought differenc­es in the nuraber and function of vari-ous nerve celis were mostly the conse-quence of proliferative processes.

But Levi-Montalcini was about to dis­cover that the developing nervous sys­tem, at least in parts, uses a strategy dif­ferent from the one previously assumed. She had prepared a series of tissue slides

"I simply resented... that women were rearad in such a way that everything was decided by the man."

of chick embryo spinal cords in differ­ent stages of development. By looking at the succession of slides, she was able to observe the migration of nerve celis early in development to their final po-sitions alongside the spinal column, There, for the fírst time, she saw the later elimination, or pruning back, of some of them. "I put on a Bach cantata because I was so terribly happy. I had realized that there was still so much to be discovered," says Levi-Montaldni, her delight vivddly clear.

Over the next several years, Levi-Mon­talcini focused on searching for the mys-terious trophic factor that she had intu-ited during the war. A former student of Hamburger's had fortuitously noticed that a certain mouse tumor cell Une— called sarcoma 180—caused more nerve celis to grow. When Levi-Montalcini to-corporated the tumor celis into devel­oping chicks, she observed the same ef­fect. Something in the tumor caused the differentiation of the nerve celis to ac-celerate; it also caused the creation of excessive numbers of nerve fibers.

Levi-Montalcini started trytog to iso-late the trophic factor and began to col-labórate with biochemist Stanley Cohén, then at Washington and now at the Van-derbilt University School of Medicine. They found that the partially purified factor contained both protein and nucle-ic acid. By adding enzymes from snake venom—which breaks down these com-pounds—in hopes of determining which component contained the biological ac­tivity, the two discovered that the ven­om itself contained the factor,

This finding (described in detail in her autobiography, In Praise of Imperfectiori) led to the realization that nerve growth factor is produced to sallvary glands in mice, providing a new, easy source for studies of the material. By designing an antiserum, Levi-Montalcini and Cohén were able to chart the role of the factor.

It became clear that it is essential to the differentiation and health of nerve celis.

In 1986 Levi-Montalcini and Cohén shared the Nobel Prize for this achieve-ment. When the phone rang in Rome with the news, she was pages from the end of j\gatha Christie's Evil under the Sun. "At the moment that I was finding out about the criminal, they told me that I was awarded the Nobel," she laughs, getting up to retrieve the book from the hallway. She points to a hand-written note on the second-to-last page—befítting a neuroscientist, her ed-ition has a skull on the cover—where she had marked "cali from Stockholm" and the time. "So I was very happy about it, but I wanted much more to know the end of the story," she admits.

Although she says her popularity in-terferes with her life, Levi-Montalcini has used the Nobel to extend her work into áreas that concern her. She is president of the Italian Múltiple Sclerosis Associ­ation and is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences; she was the fírst woman to be elected to the academy. "I can do things that are very, very impor­tant, which I would never have been able to do if I did not receive it," she says. "It has given me the possibllity of helping a lot of people." And she helps whomev-er she can. The phone rings incessantly in her apartment. "People ask for medi­cal help," she explatos, after answering each cali and graciously talktog with the parents or other relatives of someone ill. "But sometimes there is nothing to do."

In addition, Levi-Montalcini and her sister recently started their own project: a foundation that wül provide mentors, counseling and grants to teenagers de-ciding what ñeld, whether it be art or science, to enter. For several hours ev-ery week, she receives young students in her laboratory at the Institute of Neuro-biology at the National Research Council in Rome and talks with them about their interésts and her experiments. "The only way to help is to give young people a chance for the future. Because we can-not fight the Mafia, we cannot fight cor-ruption without giving an altemative to young people," she says.

Levi-Montalctai's research at the insti­tute, which she founded in the 1960s, has also taken a new tum. She is study-ing the role of nerve growth factor in the immune and endocrine systems. "The neotrophic factor was just the tlp of the iceberg," she notes. "So even now I am dotog something entirely differ­ent. Just in the same spirit as when I was a young person. And this is very pleasing to me," she says, laughing. "I mean, at my oíd age, I could have no more capacity. And I believe I still have plenty." —Marguerite Hoüoway

36 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN January 1993

Reading and Reasoning 55

TASKA

Complete the table below. Some information needs to be deduced.

EVENTS

1. Rita is born.

2. She becomes professor Emeritus.

3. She receives an invitation to conduct her research at a neurological institute.

4. She lives with her twin sister.

5. She establishes a laboratory ¡n her bedroom.

6. She survives the war in hiding.

7. She publishes a paper about her theory which differs from Hamburger's.

8. She receives an invitation from Hamburger.

9. Rita and Cohén share the Nobel Prize.

10. She and her sister set up a foundation to help young researchers.

11. She studies the role of nerve growth factor in the immune and endocrino system.

PLACE TIME

56 Reading and Reasoning

TASKB

Based on the information in the text, indícate if the following statements are True "T" or False

"F". Then, correct the false ones and compare your answers with a partner's.

_F 1. She followed her mother's lifestyle She never followed her mother's steps. After qraduating she decided to qo to the university.

2. Rita decided to become a doctor after her governess died of cáncer.

3. Her early life was ruled by male society.

4. Discrimination against women challenged her to achieve success.

5. She decided to study the development of the nervous system in chick embryos.

6. She was forced to hide in the countryside.

7. She asked farmers for eggs, pretending that she needed them for her children.

8. During the war she established a laboratory in her bedroom.

9. Her main contribution to science was the revival of dead neurons.

10. She joined a group of female Nobel Prize winners working on the development of an essential substance for curing cáncer.

Reading and Reasoning 57

TASKC

The scientists mentioned in the reading helped to discover a substance essential for the survival of nerve celis. The chart below about The Nerve Growth Factor represents their contributions.

Read the chart and select the ñames of the scientists that correspond to each step of the

research on The Nerve Growth Factor.

1. Levi-Montalcini 4. Montalcini and Cohén

2. Cohén 5. Hamburger's student

3. Hamburger

e.

THE NERVE GROWTH FACTOR

It was suggested that it is contained in the limbs.

It was found not to be present in áreas related to limbs which had been removed.

c.

d.

It was noticed that fewer nerve celis grew in the área where the limb was missing and that some nutrients were produced there.

It was observed to be present in a mouse tumour cell line.

It was discovered that it is produced in salivary glands in mice.

An antiserum was designed to chart its role.

58 Reading and Reasoning

I. JUDGING AND PROPOSING SOLUTIONS

TASKA

Answer the question below and then discuss it with a partner. What was "the good in the bad" in Rita Montalcini's life?

1. 2.

3.

TASKB

FINDING THE GOOD I N THE BAD

Not everything is entirely good, not everything is entirely bad. Tell your classmate about a bad experience in which you have found something good or viceversa.

Get into groups of three students and share your opinions. Then, summarise the experience in the space given.

Reading and Reasoning 59

TASKC

There is always a positive, (good) and a negative, (bad) aspect to every human action. Work in pairs. One of you should find the pros and the other the cons for each one of the situations below. Exchange your opinions with your partner.

STATEMENTS

1. Life in General

a. Watching televisión

b. Living in a big city

c. Living alone

d. Being an only child

2. Life at University

a. Having classes in different faculties

b. Being a monitor

c. Taking context courses*

d. Doing sports

Context courses are courses given at the National University to provide students with the

opportunity to acquire a greater awareness of their socio-political and cultural environment.

60 Reading and Reasoning

TASKD

IN AND OUT

You are a journalist and work for a magazine

called "ln and Out". You have been asked to

investígate the role of women from the thirties

to the present day.

Look at the activities below. Did women do these things in the 1930s? Do they do them today, or both? Put ticks S_ in the corresponding columns.

HCZ3

ACTIVITIES

a. Doing embroidery.

b. Being the bread winner.

c. Teaching at a university.

d. Living with a partner, without being married.

e. Living with the parents.

f. Having more than four children.

g. Studying medicine.

h. Publishing scientific articles.

i. Performing managerial roles,

j . Being a housewife.

1930s TODAY BOTH

Reading and Reasoning 61

2. Suggest more activities which are IN (women do them), or OUT (women do not do them anymore) TODAY.

TODAY

a.

b.

c.

d.

e.

OUT

IN

¡N

OUT

OUT

TASKE

1. Look through the text. Identify Carlos' problem. Whte it in your own words in this space.

A REBIRTHING THERAPY

Carlos is 23 years oíd and lives in Santafé de Bogotá. He is an engineer, and he has a little problem. He cannot stand the word "marriage". He goes to a psychiatrist who prescribes rebirthing therapy. He enters into a hypnotic state.

After that, the doctor realizes that in one of Carlos' previous lives, in the 1930's, he had been a woman finishing high school in Bogotá at a time when, for women, graduation was followed by marriage and not by going to university.

MCMTÍXX

62 Reading and Reasoning

She had decided to break all the rules and not to do what every woman did, namely to "look for a husband". Instead, she had decided to study medicine.

Unfortunately, she had not been able to do that because her father had obliged her to get married to one of his best friend's sons.

When the doctor heard all the story he said to him "Calm down. ln fact, you could not have studied medicine in those days because

it was not a university subject; it was also

impossible for you to go to university

because you were a woman, even though

university studies were compulsory for all

people. So, what you should do now is to

accept the situation and try to forget that

marriage is bad. When you wake up, be

positive about marriage. Find the right girl,

and marry her. Now, when I click my fingers,

wake up".

2. The doctor made three factual mistakes during Carlos' session, find and list them below. Give reasons for your answers and discuss them with a classmate.

First,

because

Second,

because

Third,

because

Reading and Reasoning 63

,<KT

TASKF

LANGUAGE AWARENESS

1. Based on Carlos' problem, match column A with column B to complete the sentences. After finishing your task, compare your answers with a classmate.

FOR EXAMPLE

- If the doctor had not cured me, I would have looked for another psychiatrist.

- I would have spent more money if I had looked for another psychiatrist.

Study answers a and f.

COLUMN A

a. If the doctor had not cured me,

b. If I had spent more money on therapy,

c. I would not have been able to get married

d. If I had made more progress in the therapy

e. If I had not met this psychiatrist,

f. I would have spent more money

COLUMN S

I would not have been able to buy a new computer.

I would have looked for another psychiatrist.

If I had looked for another psychiatrist.

I would have wasted my money on consulting other therapists.

If I had not looked for professional advice.

I would have increased my self-esteem.

As you can see, the above sentences are used to talk about unreal past situations.

64 Reading and Reasoning

2. Once you have completed exercise number one, try to explain the meaning of the sentences in the spaces provided.

FOR EXAMPLE

CONDITIONAL SENTENCE

If the doctor had not cured Carlos, he would have looked for another psychiatrist.

If Carlos had looked for another psychiatrist, he would have spent more money.

MEANING

The doctor did cure Carlos, so he did not look for another psychiatrist.

Carlos did not look for another psychiatrist, so he did not spend any more money.

If his father had not forced him to get married in his previous life he would have been able to stand the word marriage.

His father forced him to get married in his previous life, so he

b. If Carlos had not been a woman in the 1930s, he would not have been forced to get married.

Carlos was a woman, in the 1930s, so he

If Carlos had not undergone the rebirthing therapy, he would not have found out about his past life.

Carlos did undergo the rebirthing therapy, so he

Reading and Reasoning 65

SELF-EVALUATION FORM

- ÑAME OF THE ARTICLE:

- AUTHOR:

SOURCE: DATE:

PURPOSE OF THE TEXT:

KEY WORDS

TASKS I LIKED BEST

THINGS THAT I HAVE LEARNT:

OPINIONS ABOUT THE TEXT:

TOPICS I WANT TO GO INTO MORE DEEPLY:

- EXTRA ARTICLES I HAVE READ

66 Reading and Reasoning

STRATEGIES APPLIED:

Grouping

Placing new words into a context

Semantic mapping

Recognizing and using formulas and patterns

Reasoning deductively

Transferring

Highlighting

Using synonyms

Planning for a language task

Self-evaluation

Discussing your feelings with someone else

Asking for clarification or verification

Developing cultural understanding

Posing hypotheses

Making decisions

Associating/elaborating

Using imagery

Using keywords

Getting the idea quickly

Analysing expressions

Summarising

Selecting a topic

Organizing

Self-monitoring

Taking risks wisely

Asking for correction

Cooperating with peers

Becoming aware of others' thoughts and feelings

Solving problems