Fritz Lehmann-Grube – författare

Four decades ago, lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus was discovered, at about the same time and independently, in 3 different localities in the U.S.A. Armstrong and Lillie encountered the agent in a monkey when they passaged a recent isolate of the St. Louis encephalitis virus; Rivers and Scott isolated 5 strains from patients with meningitis; and Traub revealed the virus in a colony of albino mice. Already in these first isolations mice were incriminated, and later observa­ tions proved beyond doubt that M. musculus is the principal reservoir of the virus in nature. For some time LCM virus was regarded as the sole etiologic agent of Wallgren's "meningite aseptique aigue". Soon, however, it became clear that Wallgren's syndrome had a multitude of causes, among which the LCM virus was of little relevance, and in subsequent years it disappeared from the sight of most viro­ logists. Indeed, it might have fallen into oblivion had it not been for Erich Traub who, practically all by himself, continued to investigate the intricate relationship between this virus and its natural host, the common house mouse.

In recent years, the popularity of virtual worlds has increased significantly and they have consequently come under closer academic scrutiny. Papers about virtual worlds are typically published at conferences or in journals that specialize in something - tirely different, related to some secondary aspect of the research. Thus a paper d- cussing legal aspects of virtual worlds may be published in a law journal, while a psychologist's analysis of situation awareness may appear at a psychology conference. The downside of this is that if you publish a virtual worlds paper at an unrelated conference in this manner you are likely to be one of only a handful of attendees working in the area. You will not, therefore, achieve the most important goal of - tending conferences: meeting and conversing with like-minded colleagues from the academic community of your field of study. Virtual worlds touch on many well-established themes in other areas of science. Researchers from all these fields will therefore be looking at this new, interesting, and growing field. However, to do effective research related to these complex constructs, researchers need to take into account many of the other facets from other fields that impact virtual worlds. Only by being familiar with and paying attention to all these different aspects can virtual worlds be properly understood.

In recent years, the popularity of virtual worlds has increased significantly and they have consequently come under closer academic scrutiny. Papers about virtual worlds are typically published at conferences or in journals that specialize in something - tirely different, related to some secondary aspect of the research. Thus a paper d- cussing legal aspects of virtual worlds may be published in a law journal, while a psychologist''s analysis of situation awareness may appear at a psychology conference. The downside of this is that if you publish a virtual worlds paper at an unrelated conference in this manner you are likely to be one of only a handful of attendees working in the area. You will not, therefore, achieve the most important goal of - tending conferences: meeting and conversing with like-minded colleagues from the academic community of your field of study. Virtual worlds touch on many well-established themes in other areas of science. Researchers from all these fields will therefore be looking at this new, interesting, and growing field. However, to do effective research related to these complex constructs, researchers need to take into account many of the other facets from other fields that impact virtual worlds. Only by being familiar with and paying attention to all these different aspects can virtual worlds be properly understood.