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Sharing Science "Kids are natural scientists," says Yale biology senior Geoffrey Laff. "We're trying to capture them at a point when they think that learning is still a cool thing to do." Laff is founder of DEMOS, a volunteer student group that shares the magic and excitement of science with third, fourth, and fifth graders in New Haven, Conn., elementary schools. Every week, the 35 members of DEMOS (the acronym doesn't really stand for anything: "I like to let people use their imaginations," s

An immunologist who has turned entrepreneur builds a one-man publishing business around a 30,000-item directory It is one of those small yet irksome inconveniences that dog immunologists and those working with biological reagents. No matter how generous one's funding or how proficient one's technicians, there are certain nettlesome tasks that threaten to halt one's research. What to do, for example, when an experiment requires a highly specific monoclonal antibody? If it can't be found in a ca

What happens when an eminent Soviet scientist, battling for reforms in his own country, must confront U.S. peer review? WASHINGTON -- The wave of perestroika in Soviet science has crossed the Atlantic and is lapping up on the shores of the Potomac. And one of the first landmarks it has encountered is the process of peer review. Two years ago biologist Valery Soyfer was waiting to emigrate to the United States after enduring nearly a decade of isolation for his human rights activities. At the

While Japan is bearish on the potentially lucrative field, American government and industry fail to show enthusiasm or backing WASHINGTON -- To promoters of U.S. competitiveness, Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry sometimes seems invincible. MITI has an enviable reputation for helping industry develop new products - often based on United States discoveries - that eventually dominate global markets. So MITI's decision to spend almost $200 million in the next decade on marine b

From Q To GLQ223 Eight months after the FDA stopped a San Francisco group from giving an unauthorized drug called Compound Q to HIV-infected patients, another version of the drug will be dispensed to the same patients - this time by a pharmaceutical company and a biotechnology company now clinically testing the compound. Derived from a plant protein imported from China, Compound Q had been offered in 1988 and 1989 to between 80 and 100 patients by Project Inform, an AIDS advocacy group. Genelab

ACS' 10 Millionth Customer It may not garner as much hoopla as, say, being Macy's 10 millionth customer or, perhaps, scoring major league baseball's 10 millionth run. But the American Chemical Society's Chemical Abstract Service has recently achieved a milestone in its own right. The CAS chemical registry is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year by recording its 10 millionth chemical substance. CAS, which abstracts and indexes all the world's literature on chemical science and technology,

The San Francisco disaster proved the urgency of work toward mitigating damage as well as predicting when future quakes will strike WASHINGTON -- The physical aftershocks from last fall's deadly earthquake in San Francisco have ceased. But earthquake scientists are hoping that the political aftershocks from that devastating event, and the recent smaller trembler near Los Angeles, persist long enough to invigorate a field that has suffered from more than a decade of neglect since the launching

NSF told Congress about a great new plan for technology transfer but doesn't intend to spend much money on it WASHINGTON -- The National Science Foundation wants more university scientists to get into the technology transfer act. But a new program to do just that seeks only one tenth its originally planned funding. It also offers little assurance that the program will be around long enough to generate any commercial products. Last year NSF presented Congress with its plans for an $85 million

Department of Microbiology & Immunology University of Illinois Chicago A surface glycoprotein that is anchored via a lipid to the trypanosome cell membrane is transferred in vitro to red blood cell membranes, sensitizing the latter to attack by anti-trypanosome antibodies. M.R. Rifkin, F.R. Landsberger, "Trypanosome variant surface glycoprotein transfer to target membranes: a model for the pathogenesis of trypanosomiasis," PNAS, 87, 801-5, January 1990. (Rockefeller University, New York)

Paul Ehrlich, professor of biological sciences at Stanford University, and Edward O. Wilson, professor of science at Harvard University, have been selected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to share the 1990 Crafoord Prize. The two scientists will split the $240,000 award, which honors the field of population biology and the conservation of biological diversity. The prize is named for the late Holger Crafoord, former founder and chairman of a medical supply firm in Sweden, and his wife,

In the estimation of the American Institute of Chemists, Harry Gray's studies of electron transfer have outpaced those of all his competitors to earn him a Gold Medal this year. Gray, the Arnold O. Beckman Professor of Chemistry and director of the Beckman Institute at the California Institute of Technology, has been selected to receive AIC's 1990 Gold Medal. Gray, 54, was cited by AIC for his studies of inorganic chemistry and chemical reactions involved in electron transfer, a fundamental pro

Harvey M. Florman has been appointed to the faculty of the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology in Shrewsbury, Mass., as a staff scientist. He comes from the University of Wisconsin, where he was a senior scientist. Florman is a reproductive biologist with particular interest and expertise in the study of sperm-egg interactions. He holds a grant from the National Institutes of Health for a research program concerned with sperm binding receptors on mammalian eggs, and will be affiliated