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In the new wave of neural network startups (see The Scientist, October 17, page 1), NeuralWare Inc. has distinguished itself from the pack. In October, the magazine Synapse Connection called the company “the sales leader in neural computing products.” And, with between $1 million and $3 million in 1988 sales of its software, the Sewickley, Pa-based firm expects to see a profit—just 21 months after mathematician Casey Klimasauskas and his wife Jane founded it with $90,000 of th

Vast untapped business markets mean little to Cray Research Inc. unless people in these markets un derstand what supercomputers can do. So along with its surge into industry, Cray has been developing university accounts, which it sees as a fertile training ground for future corporate scientists. Larry Swan, director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, explains just how important this strategy is to the development of future markets for Cray. "T

FRANKLIN, TENN.—Three years ago, when an oncologist named Robert Oldham created a company called Biotherapeutics, some called it genius; some called it downright unethical; still others called it capitalism in its most predatory form. But everyone acknowledged that the concept bad the potential to change the face of cancer therapy. Oldham, former head of the National Cancer Institute’s biological therapy program, proposed to offer experimental treatments to any cancer patient w

After a five-month hiatus, the biology journal Cell will begin filling new subscriptions next month. The influential publication found itself in the awkward position last summer of turning away potential readers. In its July 29 issue, the magazine ran a full-page ad declaring: “Cell is sold out for 1988!!’ Because a subscription to Cell begins in January and ends in December, mid-year subscribers typically receive months of back issues when they join up. But this year, according to

IVREA. ITALY—In a cluttered laboratory on the first floor of a new building in the northern Italy town of Ivrea, three Olivetti employees huddle together at a bench. One scribbles with a pencil on a small electronic slate connected to a computer, while the others peer intently at the screen, where the image entered on the slate appears. Their goal to shoehorn a telephone, a scanner (for entering documents into the computer), a printer, and the electronic “paper” into a box li

For being at the right place at the wrong time, Bernard Erlanger missed the road to riches back in 1957. The Columbia University microbiologist knew that he had helped pioneer a powerful technique for making antibodies to steroids, and he even suspected that it might have commercial applications. Indeed, the method is now commonly used for everything from controlling animal litter size to testing human hormonal disorders—and the paper Erlanger wrote has become one of the most cited in his

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.