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PHILADELPHIA—A federal lawsuit involving the University of Pennsylvania professor who developed Retin-A, the now-legendary drug said to reverse the effect of aging on the skin, has wrinkled the brows of university administrators, who say they would prefer to settle the matter out of court. In a case that observers believe is the first of its kind, the university has been named an involuntary plaintiff in a suit filed by University Patents Inc., a Westport, Conn., patentlicensing firm

Biotech Wins Some, Loses Some State legislators throughout the country have started looking at biotechnology—and the results, according to one survey, have been positive for scientists. The Industrial Biotechnology Association (IBA) finds 51 legislative initiatives either pending or enacted in 24 states. In a flurry of lawmaking, five of the 51 bills were enacted this past March. Richard Godown, the IBA president, says he was pleasantly surprised by the survey’s results. “At

When Biospan—a biotech firm that is studying the severe muscle disease myasthenia gravis—opened for business last year, it employed a new financial instrument that is growing in popularity among science startups: venture leasing. A report issued last month by Venture Economics, a consulting firm in Needham, Mass., finds that venture leasing in the U.S. has accounted for more than $300 million in deals from 1986 through 1988. Biotechnology firms especially have shown interest in this

Dropouts Alarm Chemical Society Is the American Chemical Society (ACS) facing a membership crisis? Virtually stagnant growth in the ACS has prompted the group to forgo an increase in its $82 annual dues and to reexamine how it is perceived by its members. According to Attila E. Pavlath, chairman of the ACS membership committee, the 137,000-member organization gained only a net total of 14 new members last year. The preliminary findings of his study on the drop in renewals shows that the group

WASHINGTON—What goes from zero to $10 billion in one year? National Academy of Sciences president Frank Press’s solution to the problems facing the scientific community. Last spring, Press delivered a stem talk to academy members about the need to set scientific priorities. The federal budget is a zero-sum game, he warned them, and the scientific community had better decide what’s most important before Congress acts for purely political reasons. That speech was widely a

WASHINGTON—U.S. space scientists, frustrated by delays caused by the explosion of the shuttle Challenger, have increasingly pinned their hopes on joint experiments with a thriving Soviet space program. But serious technical problems in recent Soviet missions, combined with unprecedented domestic concern over the cost of the Soviet space program, now threaten to dim once-bright opportunities for scientific collaboration in many areas. Ironically, the recent Soviet setbacks also have s

IBM and Du Pont; Eastman Kodak, Hewlett-Packard, and Upjohn: just a few of tile U.S. corporations famous for being on the cutting edge of scientific research. And although each of these companies has long operated across international boundaries, this research has traditionally been conducted within the U.S. Increasingly, however, that is changing. In the past five years, all of these industry leaders have opened research facilities in Europe or Japan— regarding a new era of truly mult

In an effort to thwart bands of poachers who are decimating the population of wild animals in Kenya’s national parks, the African nation’s president has appointed famed paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey as Director of Wildlife Management and Conservation. 

The Deafness Research Foundation has pared down the size of its 1990 grant application form to a sleek six pages in an attempt to stem the paper tide that was flooding its review board. “We were getting applications 40, 50 pages long,” says a staffer. “It was ridiculous.” Beginning with this year’s cycle (deadline: July 15), applications received on other forms will be rejected. The New York-based public charity, started 30 years ago by a grateful Collette Ramsey

President George Bush recognized Mary Lasker as “a veritable beacon” of his proverbial thousand points of light on April 21, when he presented her with the Congressional Gold Medal for her contribu tions to medical research and public service. Lasker and her husband, the late Albert Lasker, owner of the renowned Lord and Thomas advertising agency, led the effort to increase funding for cancer research in the 1940s. They spearheaded a public-awareness campaign on behalf of the grou

Forty-five years ago Los Alamos was home to the Manhattan Project and its boy wonder scientists, a group whose average age was only 29. Since then the lab has aged and so have its scientists, lab officials complain. Director Sig Hecker noted recently in an in-house newsletter that the lab’s staff has reached an average age of 44, and as high as 46 in the applied divisions. The lab’s newest staff members aren’t much younger, Hecker remarked. The average new hire at Los Alamos i

WASHINGTON—The president’s new science adviser believes that the federal government doesn’t do an adequate job of dealing with the scientific and technical issues facing the country. The science adviser can play an important role in improving that situation, says Yale nuclear physicist Allan Bromley, if he is able to develop a close relationship with key figures in the Bush administration, oyersee a staff large enough to tackle those issues, and build public support for scie