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The promise of profit in neurobiology is exciting the neurons of venture capitalists all over the country (see accompanying story). It’s also stimulating gray matter at the stoic nerve centers of the pharmaceutical giants. Although they may be loathe to admit it, beneath the traditionally calm exterior at these companies, synapses—and scientists—are jumping. Some of the large companies, of course, have been searching for drugs that affect the central nervous system for years

Perestroika Comes None Too Soon Mikhail Gorbachev’s push to improve health care in the Soviet Union has led the Soviets to the doorstep of a small firm in Falmouth, Mass. Called Associates on Cape Cod, the venture was founded in 1974 by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution microbiologist Stanley Watson and pioneered the commercial use of a substance derived from the blood of horseshoe crabs—limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL)—to test for pyrogens in drugs. The new procedure was c

Pairing Youth And Experience By combining the long experience of SmithKline Beckman with the scientific expertise of Nova Pharmaceutical, the two drug companies hope to develop new therapies with which to treat central nervous system diseases. Under a partnership announced last month and awaiting stockholder approval, SmithKline Beckman would specifically target $49 million over the next seven years for central nervous system research performed by the Baltimore company (The Scientist, May 16,

Public Interest In Science Surges The public’s interest in science has boomed in the last decade and science museums are proliferating in response. According to preliminary findings of an international study conducted by the Association of Science-Technology Centers, attendance at U.S. science centers grew 38% from 1979 to 1986. In addition, 16% of the 131 institutions responding said they had been founded within the past seven years. Even more indicative of the growth trend: four out o

Caviling, carping, and quarreling, is this any way to advance science? New HAVEN, CONN. "For a science that deals with the apparently simple question of who is related to whom, phylogeny has been positively littered with bones of contention. The root problem, explains former Yale University taxonomist Charles Sibley, is that a creatures appearance may not always bean accurate guide to its place in the pantheon of beasts. So until recently, phylogenists were left to cavil over the appropriate

Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department revolutionizes psychology CAMBRIDGE, MASS--Daniel Osherson works with equations on paper. He is interested in the abstract and arcane topic of "inductive inference”" in particular, the theory of how evidence can support a hypothesis. William Quinn toils over collections of fruit flies in a biology lab, trying to discern how small genetic differences can cause subtle changes in memory and learning among populations of Drosophila. As unlikely as it m

Competition with fancy machines and wads of cash, state schools steal national center scientists Christmas came early in 1985 for serious number crunchers. In the spring of that year, the National Science Foundation christened five national supercomputing centers and sent them forth into the world to meet the grand challenges of science and engineering. The NSF's idea was to fund these silicon meccas so that they could maintain state-of-the-art technical facilities and provide supercomputing

The foundation battles to get the best and the brightest WASHINGTON--William WuIf is the kind of person who believes that when you’ve been supported by a system, you have an obligation to give something back someday. So the University of Virginia computer scientist was sorely tempted when the National Science Foundation asked him to come to Washington for two or three years to run its computer and information science and engineering directorate. As a young professor, Wulf had benefited f

Few issues have caused more fear and confusion than the question of the hazards of low-level radiation. There has been a remarkable failure to examine closely the evidence when discussing the issue and planning future studies. As a result, the public’s radiation phobia has been needlessly reinforced, and public money is being used on studies that are bound to be inconclusive. The problem arises, in part, because the general public—and even most scientists—are not aware that

In 1955, a puckish, 30-year-old Weishman resigned as lecturer in theoretical physics at the University of Manchester to become science correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. Unwittingly, the energetically eclectic John Maddox thus took his first step toward the editorial chair of Nature, which he has occupied with distinction on two occasions—between 1966 and 1973, and from 1980 until the present. A robust defender of what he calls “the scientific enterprise,” Maddox has

The Scientist has asked a group of expert. to periodically comment upon recent articles that they have found noteworthy. Their selectIons, presented here in every issue, are neither endorsements of content nor the result of systematic searching. Rather they are personal choices of articles they believe the scientific community as a whole may also find i.nteresting. Reprints of any articles cited here may be ordered through The Genuine Article, 8501 Market St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19004. BY SOK

Until recently, most artificial-intelligence researchers accepted the view that thinking consists of the manipulation of discrete symbols, such as the written or spoken language. With this understanding, they achieved a degree of progress, notably in machine understanding and generation of natural-language communication, in symbolic mathematics programs, and in the automatic proving of theorems and assertions by machines. Groups at MIT, Carnegie-Meilon, and Stanford dramatically extended theore