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Allan Goldstein believes the thymosins he discovered can cure immune diseases, and he hopes his company and institute will prove it WASHINGTON--Science moves too slowly for biochemist Allan Goldstein. For most of his professional life, he has been trying to unravel the mysteries of the human immune system through a better understanding of a group of hormones known as thymosins. He discovered them 26 years ago, and their use in 1974 to save the life of a five-year-old girl, along with his encou

Love of their institutions motivates many to make the transition from university laboratories to executive offices What's it like to be a medical school dean? Geneticist Leon E. Rosenberg, dean of Yale University's School of Medicine, describes the experience as sometimes elegantly harmonious, sometimes extraordinarily fast-paced--and rarely dull. "When I'm feeling serene," Rosenberg says, "I say that [the job] is sometimes like being a conductor of an orchestra: searching for the right sound

As sources of money dry up, potential backers demand that science startups have prototypes to show off, if not products ready to roll PALO ALTO, CALIF.--For much of the eighties, software engineer Eric Hannah rode the roller coaster of venture capital funding for new high-tech startups in northern California. But after one rocketing success and one crashing failure, he's promised himself never to risk another ride. In fact, one of the things he likes most about the Silicon Valley company he's

A House panel, demanding changes in the way grants are managed, accuses scientists of overstating the crisis in research funding WASHINGTON--In a report that has left National Institutes of Health officials "a little shell-shocked," a House committee has laid out an unprecedentedly specific set of spending guidelines in an effort to fix what it sees as a longstanding problem in the way NIH has handled its rapidly growing budget. In blunt language, the House report says its members are tired o

Gary Alpert strayed from his career track, but at Harvard he found he could still do good research as well as make good money BOSTON--When Gary Alpert arrived at Harvard 15 years ago as a graduate student, he was eager to pursue an academic career in insect behavior. Then the Pharaoh ant got in his way. Lots of them, actually. They were all over the place, running rampant through the biology labs and hallways and showing up in lunch bags and research preparations. Years earlier, the bugs had h

Some university scientists willingly forsake their lab investigations; others strive to maintain a balance between research and administration Geologist Franli H.T. Rhodes knew the time had come when he had no idea where the time had gone. Now president of Cornell University, Rhodes was vice president for academic affairs at the University of Michigan when he reluctantly decided to stop conducting laboratory research. Research isn't the only activity that academic scientists abandon when they

Funds for five first-time MERCK-AFCR Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowships will be available July 1, 1991, for U.S. and Canadian M.D.-Ph.D. scientists. The program is jointly sponsored by the Rahway, N.J.-based Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories and the American Federation for Clinical Research Foundation (AFCR). Candidates for these new fellowships must have already been accepted by an appropriate institution for a postdoctoral training program. Fellowship funds are slated for research wo

SNOWBIRD, UTAH--Time was when five ecologists couldn't sit in a room without arguing about what exactly their field was and where it was headed. Last month, however, about 2,000 of these scientists agreed on precisely those issues. The result is a document that commits ecologists to examine topics important to both science and society. Although the document summarizing that consensus has a long title, The Sustainable Biosphere Initiative: An Ecological Research Agenda for the Nineties, its mes

Bye-Bye, American Pi The Gift Of Life Wanted: Ideas For Advanced Technology Integrity In Research New On The Job Who Says Science Can't Be Fun? It was supposed to be a joke, but some scientists aren't laughing. On July 1, the New York Times published a letter from UC-Berkeley mathematics professor Paul Chernoff that called for his colleagues to ask the government for big bucks to keep the U.S. No. 1 in determining "the entire decimal expansion of pi." The letter was meant to spoof the current t

Top scientists from eight companies discuss what it takes to maintain a creative and productive laboratory environment Back in 1983, scientists at Calgene Inc. in Davis, Calif., began to tinker with genetically engineered corn. Their goal at the time - to improve the vegetable's carbohydrate storage as well as its resistance to pests - seemed to make pretty good sense from both the scientific and the business points of view. Just five years later, however - after spending $5 million - Calgene

A routine hearing turns explosive when a critic of the program finds himself under attack by a prominent senator WASHINGTON - On the morning of July 11, in the rear of Room 366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, health policy analyst Robert Cook-Degan was pacing anxiously. It was supposed to be a routine hearing, a chance for officials from the government's Human Genome Project to explain to a very sympathetic audience how well two federal agencies - the National Institutes of Health and t

Director Robert Stevenson takes its mission beyond keeper of the country's microbes to attract key researchers and funding ROCKVILLE, MD. - Like a headmaster looking after a huge dormitory of slumbering schoolboys, Robert Stevenson watches over 50,000 microbes suspended in a sleep of absolute biochemical inactivity. As director of the American Type Culture Collection, the 64-year-old bacteriologist provides scientists with clean, well characterized cultures of yeasts and fungi, monoclonal anti