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Psychiatrist Kenneth Kool may have used the jargon of his profession, but you got the point: Gary Heidnik is delusional, he testified. And psychotic. And possessed of an unbalanced perception of reality. “I’m of the opinion,” he added, “that Gary Heidnik is not sane and has not been so over the years. Plus,” Kool tossed in almost gratuitously, “Heidnik’s lifestyle is bizarre and regressed.” Psychiatrist Robert Sadoff was equally obdurate. R

WASHINGTON—Two days after the end of an election campaign in which science was scarcely mentioned, the subject grabbed headlines when Energy Secretary John Herrington announced that Texas would be the site for the proposed superconducting supercollider. All of a sudden, politicians—especially those from Texas—were tripping over each other’s superlatives to praise basic research. “We need to reestablish the primacy of the United States in science,” thundere

For Would-Be Biotechnologists The demand for biotechnologists is growing faster than the supply, according to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). As a result, the institute has created a new program: Biotechnology Research Training grants. NIGMS will fund an institutional training program as well as individual predoctoral, postdoctoral, and senior fellowships. These provide an annual stipend ranging from $8,500 to $31,500 for three- to five-year projects that apply engi

Fermilab Faces Life Without The SSC The selection of Texas as the site of the multibillion-dollar superconducting supercollider last month (see story, page 1) has big loser Fermilab worrying about its future. Within hours of the selection, recent Nobel laureate Leon Lederman, director of the Illinois accelerator complex, launched a preemptive strike against an expected decline in morale by assuring the lab’s nearly 400 physicists and engineers that a proposed expansion of the lab’s

This year, the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation chose to honor Vincent P. Dole, the physician who first recognized that narcotic addiction is a physiological problem that can be treated medically, and two molecular biologists, Thomas B. Cech and Philip A. Sharp, who made independent fundamental discoveries about the role of RNA in living cells. Each Lasker award includes a $15,000 honorarium. Cech and Sharp share the honorarium for this year’s award in basic medical research. At an aw

More Support For Innovations? Congress is impressed enough with the Small Business Innovation Research Program to think about giving the scheme an extra boost. Begun in 1982, the.program funnels money to small new high-tech businesses in order to speed the flow of potentially commercial ideas from the laboratory to the market. The funds come from a tax on the research budgets of all large federal science agencies including NASA, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Department of Defense.

WASHINGTON—Elections are supposed to bring change. But the November 8 vote that denied Sen. Lowell Weicker (R-Conn.) a fourth term in office was not the sort of change scientists had in mind. “I have to talk through my tears,” laments lobbyist Lynn Morrison of the American Federation for Clinical Research. “Losing Lowell Weicker from the Senate is going to be tough for the entire biomedical community.” Weicker’s narrow defeat at the hands of Connecticut&#

So which patents—along with their universities and scientists— are leading the race for royalties? An exact ranking is difficult, thanks to inflation and closely guarded revenue figures. But here are a few of the top contenders, along with notable also-rans. Number One Patent: The biggest income producer of all time is probably cisplatin, a cancer drug developed at Michigan State University and licensed to Bristol-Myers. Royalties for this drug have already topped $55 million̵

Cambridge Welcomes Entrepreneurs Cambridge University has traditionally lagged far behind its U.S counterparts in spawning a ring of high-tech industries (The Scientist, May 16, page 8), but now an “innovation center” founded by Trinity College in 1986 has been so successful that the college will open another this month. Meanwhile, St. John’s College has opened an incubator of its own on a 22-acre site owned by the college. To date, St. John’s has invested $9 million in

As university after university joined the patent chase, one academic institution stood out as a bulwark of ethical resolve—that is, until now. The university was Harvard, and even though the school began licensing inventions more than a decade ago, it earned its reputation as a bastion of purity because of landmark decision in 1981. At issue then was a controversial proposal involving molecular biologist Mark Ptashne, whose advances in recombinant DNA techniques were giving rise to new t

Beating The Japanese At Their Own Game You wouldn’t enter a fist fight with one hand tied behind your bad so why fight Japan’s technological prowess with the serious handicap of being thousands of miles away from the island nation A far better strategy, argues John R Stern, executive director of the U.S. Electronics Industry’s Japan office, is to set up shop in the Land of the Rising Sun. In a recent talk at the Industrial Biotechnology Association’s annual meeting, Ste

SAN DIEGO—It is a rare scientist at Mycogen Corp. who makes it through the day without checking a small, hand-scribbled sign posted in the main hallway of the startup’s laboratory. The unassuming notice lists the bid, ask, and closing prices of Mycogen’s over-the-counter stock—and everyone in the company owns stock. “There are a lot of people who have a lot of money riding on what those numbers do every day” says Kathryn Nette, director of fermentation for th