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Gallo Investigation: A `Messy Business' Raises Many Issues Author: SCOTT HULER As the probe into alleged misconduct by the National Cancer Institute lab of Robert Gallo in its search for the AIDS virus deepens, the scope of the investigation broadens as well. Recently joining the National Institutes of Health's Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI) in its long-running investigation of Gallo are the General Accounting Office, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ho

Block That Kick! Study That Gene! Fiction, Fact - As Long As It's Science Patently Outstanding Take A Meeting Dubious Distinction Camden, N.J.-based Coriell Institute for Medical Research is putting a lot of muscle into its effort to survive the budget crunch facing research institutions. On April 15, a fund-raising event dubbed "Coriell Sports Day: Sports & Science United" is being held at the Eagles' Nest Country Club in Sewell, N.J., owned by former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback

In an era marked by the growing interdisciplinary nature of science, this new program will call on specialists from disparate fields such as physics, computer science, chemical engineering, and applied mathematics to tackle current problems in molecular biology. Their goal, in Hood's words, will be no less than to "develop the tools that are going to push us into the 21st century." Funded by a $12 million gift from William Gates III, founder and chairman of the Microsoft Corp. of nearby Redm

In February, President Bush announced "major new ground rules" to streamline the regulation of the biotechnology industry. And on the same day, the president's Council on Competitiveness published--under the auspices of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)--a policy for all biotech-regulating agencies that set out a "risk-based, scientifically sound approach to the oversight of planned introductions of biotechnology products into the environment." OSTP's risk-based approach means

In recent months, the problems that the former Soviet scientists are encountering in their newly divided homeland have been well-publicized: the scarcity of funding, the lack of scientific information, and the threat of total scientific isolation. Meanwhile, many U.S. scientists, eager to help, have run up against what they consider a frustratingly lethargic show of support by scientific colleagues and administrators. One of these U.S. researchers is Eugene Skolnikoff, a professor of politic

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To chemists arriving in San Francisco for next week's American Chemical Society meeting, Arnold Thackray, director of Philadelphia's Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry, suggests something to keep in mind. If you check into a hotel room today, he says, and you're wearing a polyester suit, "odds are everything in the room is composed of chemically processed polymers except for your body--and we're on the verge of decoding [even] that." During a time of remarkable advances, one might

From Limelight to Hotspot George, Eat Your Broccoli! These Jobs are the Pits No Loose Lips Here Merging Cultures Lifting Off Early Stanford University president Donald Kennedy, who last fall took a lot of heat from Congress for the school's management of indirect costs associated with federally sponsored research grants, is headed for the very venue from whence the heat arose. After stepping down as president this coming August, Kennedy--in January 1993--will become the first faculty

While hallway conversations may turn to federal biotech streamlining, this year's Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology meeting programs will be heavy on basic research, with the theme of "growth factors, receptors, and signal transduction." FASEB is expecting 13,000 researchers, students, and exhibitors to converge on Anaheim, Calif., from April 5 to April 9. More than 7,000 scientific reports will be delivered and companies will be displaying about 700 exhibits in the Anahe

The 12,000 or so attendees at the 203rd national American Chemical Society meeting, running April 5-10 in San Francisco, will spend a lot more time discussing purely chemical issues than safety or job concerns; most of the 656 technical meetings, the 6,200 paper presentations, and the 425 expo- sition booths highlight such topics as anticancer drug taxol, plastics recycling, and AIDS prevention. Still, many safety and career topics will be covered. The following are examples: * Aspects of chem

When Christine Benally was a high school student in Shiprock, N.Mex., on the easternmost edge of the Navajo Reservation, her educational goals went no further than getting a vocational degree--as her father, a mechanic, did before her and as many of her friends would do, as well. "I figured something like that would do me," recalls Benally. "Get a technical degree, get out fast, start earning money." Yet some 15 years later, Benally has a doctoral degree in environmental toxicology under her b

Date: March 16, 1992 Revamping of the biology directorate and creation of a social sciences unit aims to accommodate new trends in life sciences When Cora Bagley Marrett assumes full duties in May as the first assistant director of the new social, behavioral, and economic sciences division (SBE) of the National Science Foundation, she will give social scientists something for which they have long lobbied: their own voice in high-level NSF decisions. NSF announced the new directorate last Oc