The Scientist - Home

'IRREPRESSIBLE': Carl Sagan died last month. The late Carl E. Sagan was remembered by friends, former students, and colleagues for his research and his passionate efforts to spark public interest in science at a tribute following his funeral December 23 in Ithaca, N.Y. The Cornell University astronomer, who had battled a bone-marrow disease for two years, died December 20 of pneumonia at age 62 in Seattle, leaving the science community in laudatory mourning. Joshua Lederberg, the Raymond and Be

More than 100 federal employees, administrators, and community-based organizational leaders attended a Sept. 7, 1996, Hispanic Leadership Retreat to discuss how to improve services offered to Hispanics by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the working environment at HHS for Hispanic employees. Retreat participants set priorities for a new vision of the Hispanic Employee Organization (HEO), a group that represents Hispanic employees of HHS. Members narrowed the list, and HEO l

BIDDING ADIEU: David Kessler, who headed FDA for more than six years, says he is pleased with his record. When David Kessler, the commissioner of the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA), announced his resignation in late November, many people were surprised. The controversial FDA head was in the middle of waging war against the United States tobacco industry when he decided to step down after more than six years in the job. His supporters, including public health advocates, contend tha

A MATTER OF PERCEPTION: While T.A. union officials at UC-Berkeley say that 30 percent of T.A.-classes in the natural sciences were shut down, an associate dean calls the union's figures, "wildly exaggerated." Teaching assistants (T.A.'s) boycotted their classes and set up picket lines at three campuses of the University of California (UC) for a week in November in an unsuccessful bid to pressure the administration to engage in collective bargaining with their unions. While estimates of the st

Amid mixed reputation, the organization, known as SHER, focuses on ending discrimination and providing support. Twenty-five years ago, a group of women at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., began meeting every Wednesday at noon to work together to combat sex discrimination at NIH. Today, a group of women meets every Wednesday at noon to work together to combat sex discrimination at NIH. Little more than the faces have changed, according to members of the organization, known as

Sidebar: For Further Information - Alternative Medicine With consumer interest in "natural" remedies on the rise, some academic and corporate researchers have begun to look for new drugs among ancient remedies. Several such efforts focus on the rich, detailed pharmacopoeia of Chinese herbal medicine, which has been painstakingly recorded and passed on for generations. In contemporary China-as in much of the world-herbal concoctions remain the predominant form of medication. In the hands of West

The National Science Foundation has joined the National Institutes of Health in considering changes to its peer-review system of rating grant applications (T.W. Durso, The Scientist, Dec. 9, 1996, page 1). NSF's current four-criteria system-assessing research performance and competence, intrinsic merit, utility or relevance, and the research's effect on science and engineering infrastructure-has been in place since 1981. NSF officials say it's time to revisit the criteria and that the proposed

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION - Alternative Medicine Date: January 6, 1997 Internet Resources: Alternative Medicine Home Page: http://www.pitt.edu/~cbw/altm.html AYSL Corp.: http://www.ayslcorp.com Paracelsian Inc.: http://www.paracelsian.com Pfizer Inc.: http://www.pfizer.com NIH Office: Office of Alternative Medicine OAM Information Center 9000 Rockville Pike, Room 5B-38 Bethesda, Md. 20892 (301) 402-2466 Fax: (301) 402-4741

It's 25 years and counting since President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act on Dec. 23, 1971, marking the United States' official declaration of war on cancer. The act provided funding to establish medical centers dedicated to clinical research and cancer treatment under the auspices of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Yet, after an estimated $28 billion spent to find cures and better treatments for the dreaded disease, the war is far from over. Most scientists note the tremend

Sidebar: The RGA's Committee's Recommendation CREATIVE BOOST: An alternative proposal from UCSF’s Keith Yamamoto adds innovation into the peer-review equation. As officials at the National Institutes of Health consider a proposal to change the peer-review process by which grant applications are considered, researchers offer divided opinions on whether the plan would help or hinder science. A highly disputed issue -- whether the changes would foster creative, innovative science -- has le

A prominent national science education reform program received a major blow when the National Science Foundation opted to discontinue its support. Sidebar: For Further Information - NAS Science Education Standards 'DISASTER': Without a funding renewal, Bill Aldridge worries about the fate of students and teachers in his project. Educators are devising ways of implementing the National Research Council's (NRC's) National science education standards, which were finalized and released a year ag

Sidebar: Further Information - Companies Creating Antisense Drugs BROADENED FOCUS: Shaji George says an equal number of biologists and chemists make up Innovir Laboratories' research team. Embracing the idea that tomorrow's drugs will not merely treat symptoms, but also attack disease-causing genes, scores of biotechnology companies are developing compounds to intervene in the cell's genetic machinery. One focus of this activity is antisense therapeutics: the use of synthetic nucleic acids de