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Although the term “designer drugs” has already become trendy, the actual work of modifying chemical compounds to attack certain proteins and enzymes associated with various diseases has only just gotten off the ground. Fueling the progress in research during the past five years have been significant advances in such areas as X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance technology. And leading the support for this field of scientific investigadon has been the National Insti

GAO Defends Livermore Investigation Three months after a congressman called for the General Accounting Office to retract its Inaccurate, misleading, and biased” investigation of Lawrence Livermore founder Edward Teller (see The Scientist, March 20,1989, page 1), the GAO has declined the offer. In a letter last month to Rep. Fortney (Pete) Stark (D-Calif.), who had led the quest for a retraction, the agency said that it stands by the conclusion of its June 1988 report that the letters Tel

WASHINGTON—The view with respect to Yale nuclear physicist D. Allan Bromley seems to be unanimous: The new assistant to the pres- ident for science and technology, in the words of one colleague, “cuts through the crap to get things done.” On April 20, the White House issued an announcement that the science community had been anxiously awaiting for months: President Bush had selected his new science adviser. Long rumored for the position, Bromley comes to the job with true

A Lab To Call Your Own Rockefeller University, one of the nation’s foremost centers of biomedical research and graduate education, is looking for a few good minds to participate in its new Fellows Program in Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology. Last March the Lucille R Markey Charitable Trust of Miami contributed a whopping $5 million to support this expansion of the New York City-based institution’s 18-year-old University Fellows program. The fellowships provide an opport

Navy First To Fund Utah Fusion With a $400,000 grant issued earlier this month, the Office of Naval Research has become the first government agency to fund the University of Utah’s groundbreaking fusion research (See The Scientist, May 1, page 1). The grant will support additional basic research by electrochemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann “to confirm their claims [of room-temperature sustained fusion] or, if that’s not what’s going on, to get to the truth,

WASHINGTON—The resignation of James Wyngaarden last month after more than seven years as director of the National Institutes of Health may have caught scientists by surprise. But it was a long time coming for the 64-year-old Wyngaarden. In fact, his last day on the job, July 31, will be nine months past the date when the soft-spoken former Duke University medical schcol administrator had hoped to leave the post. It’s clear that Wyngaarden has had his fill of the political battles

Wildlife Cashes In On Ecuador IOU Two U.S. conservation groups have turned Ecuador’s foreign debt into a boon for that country’s wildlife areas and endangered species. The World Wildlife Fund and the Nature Conservancy have agreed to pay off $9 million of Ecuador’s debt at a rate of 11 7/8 cents on the dollar—an expenditure of little more than $1 million. In exchange for having the debt retired, the Ecuadoran government will give a private conservation group in the Sout

Using Neutron Analysis To Find Bombs In addition to the usual indignities of being tossed into the cargo hold and then hurled onto the baggage carousel, your luggage may also soon be bombarded by neutrons, thanks to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) of LaJolla, Calif. But this is one form of harassment that none of us is likely to mind. When an Air-India Boeing 747 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 23, 1985, a disaster widely believed to be the work of a bomb, SAIC re

Using Science To Solve Murders Forget Scotland Yard. Forget the FBI. Forget bloodhounds and fingerprint experts. Richard Merritt, an aquatic entomologist at Michigan State University, is the specialist that police call upon when they need help in determining the time of death of a decomposed corpse. Merritt’s research into the insects that live in streams and lakes has earned him a spot in the small cadre of forensic entomologists. “I’ve worked with all those insects that liv

No Conclusion Yet On Value Of Imreg-1 It was lmreg Inc., of New Orleans, La., playing David opposite the well-established, well-heeled, well-staffed, pharmaceutical Goliaths last summer. At that time, lmreg was one of the five companies in the race to develop anti-AIDS drugs that had completed FDA clinical trials for its AIDS products—and with nine scientists on board it was by far the smallest firm. (See “A Tiny Biotech Startup Wages War Against AIDS,” The Scientist, August

It wasn’t a run-of-the-mill midlife-crisis that made Jeff Wine abruptly abandon his life’s work. It was the salty taste he noticed whenever he kissed his baby daughter Nina. In the fall of 1981, Wine was a 41-year-old associate professor in Stanford University’s prestigious psychology department. A physiological psychologist, he had already won wide recognition for his use of crayfish to study how nerve cells control behavior. He was also a firsttime parent, but not an anxio

“[Here we are on] the Halloween preceding 1984,” Carl Sagan solemnly told a gathering of scientists and reporters in Washington, D.C., “and I deeply wish that what I am about to tell you were only a ghost story, something invented to frighten children for a day. But unfortunately, it is not just a story.” Thus began a spellbinding tale of doom, delivered in inimitable Sagan fashion. Should nuclear war erupt between the world’s two superpow ers, warned the Corn