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The EPA has incurred the wrath of the biotechnology industry with its draft of new biotech regulations. Both the Industrial Biotechnology Association (IBA) and the Association of Biotechnology Companies (ABC) took a gander at the draft regulations at an EPA Biotechnology Science Advisory Committee meeting December 21 and promptly fired off press releases expressing their ire. The draft regulations - which were to be formally proposed at the end of January - represent a step backward for the EP

Physicist George Pratt's invention has found its niche, but it didn't happen easily. Pratt, a professor in MIT's department of electrical engineering and computer science, had devised an ultrasound method that could be used to test bone strength. The patented technology was initially licensed to Equine Biomechanics and Exercise Physiology Inc. (Unionville, Pa.) for use in the examination of horses' legs. When that idea fizzled, EQB licensed the technology to businessman Thomas Sherwin, preside

Three years ago, Dennis Darnall was comfortably and, one would have thought, firmly entrenched in the groves of academe. As professor of chemistry at New Mexico State University and director of the school's science research center, he held a position of high rank. And thanks to federal and state grants, he even had the opportunity to indulge in his scientific passion: devising ways that algae could be used to recover metal from industrial wastewaters. A scientist's paradise? Not for Darnall; he

A key experiment has been approved, but many researchers worry that slipping genes into humans is premature. BETHESDA, MD.--Maybe W. French Anderson wouldn't be in the center of a slow-burning controversy if it weren't for the letters. But he can't escape them. Several times a week, new correspondence lands on his desk on the seventh floor of Building 10 at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. The letters come from all across the United States and from dozens of foreign countries, a

Carl Djerassi's two track career in academia has brought him both fame and wealth STANFORD, CALIF.--If there's any doubt that a scientist can honorably serve two masters, Carl Djerassi stands as living proof. For the last 36 years, the chemist has been a self-described "intellectual bigamist"--partaking of the freedom of academia while churning out discovery after lucrative discovery for industry. And while other scientists, particularly in the fields of biotechnology and computer science, h

William F. Loomis Department of Biology University of California, San Diego La Jolla, Calif. " Basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), a 155 amino acid protein found in Xenopus eggs, induces mesodermal differentiation. It may be brought into play during gastrulation by the product of the Vg-1 gene that is localized at the vegetal pole. D. Kimmelman, J.A. Abraham, T. Haaparanta, T.M. Palisi, M. Kirschner, "The presence of fibroblast growth factor in the frog egg: Its role as a natural mesoder

Peter D. Moore Department of Biology King's College London, U.K. " Histological and chemical analyses of fossil bones of a hartebeest from the Swartkrans cave in South Africa have demonstrated that the remains had been subjected to temperatures consistent with their being cooked at a campfire. This provides the earliest record of the use of fire by a hominid, in this case either Australopithecus or Homo erectus. C.K. Brain, A. Sillen, "Evidence from the Swartkrans cave for the earliest use of

Bruce G. Buchanan Department of Computer Science University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, Pa. " Two methods have been developed for efficiently processing bit strings: compactly encoding the strings (for example, wing lengths of runs of 0's and 1's) and processing the strings on multiple machines in parallel. A recent article describes a combination of the two techniques and makes suggestions for generalizing this method to two-dimensional digitized pictures. A.Y. Wu, A. Rosenfield. "Parallel pr

Ron Magold Medical Products Department E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. Wilmington, Del. " Modifications in cyclopropyl iminium ion rearrangements have led to the new synthetically versatile methodology. Total synthesis of (+)-Lycorine has been used to exemplify this elegant method. R.K. Boeckman, S.W. Goldstein, M.A. Walters, "Synthetic studies of the cyclopropyl iminium ion rearrangement. Part 3. Application of the cyclopropyl acyliminium ion rearrangement to a concise and highly convergent s

Recent figures show that of approximately 21,500 engineering professors in the U.S., only 200 are black, only 300 are Hispanic, and only 400 are female. The GE Foundation of Fairfield, Conn., is doing its best to change those demographics for the next generation of scientists by committing $35 million to two programs, one aimed at doubling the number of college-bound students from inner-city schools by the year 2000, and the other hoping to double minority faculty in science and engineering.

Several years after inventing an instrument capable of both measuring a cell's direction of motion and determining which parts of the cell are shifting forward, David Soll, University of Iowa biologist and cell motion expert, just isn't satisfied with the two-dimensional tool. He and colleague Edward Voss have embarked on a project to create a viewing system that will allow scientists to look at cells in three dimensions. Soll sees a need for such an instrument because, "A living cell placed

When one of the most widely used methods in the analytical laboratory also tops the lists of least-loved jobs, there has to be room for improvement. And for many years, this has been the situation with the Kjeldahl method for nitrogen (or protein nitrogen) analysis. Now 105 years old, this mainstay technology of many chemists in food laboratories has proved its worth for several reasons. First, unlike more modern instrument-based methods, the Kjeldahl method can be used on large sample sizes