In the coming year, biotechnology companies will continue to confront an unstable business climate, characterized by volatile financing markets and an unpredictable regulatory environment, according to a recent report on the industry's future. Company heads also say that biotechnology faces an added degree of instability injected into its plans by the prospect of change in Washington. Industry leaders are responding to these factors by using a number of tactics to "accelerate commercialization

Largely unchanged since the 1960s and virtually ignored by researchers over the past decade, the analytical ultracentrifuge has been the focus of energetic new interest in the past few years. Recently, a redesigned--nearly reinvented--version of the instrument has been released, according to a small, tightly knit group of molecular biologists. The new instrument, intended mainly for characterizing proteins and nucleic acids, has already helped to shatter the working models of some important bi

A recent federal court copyright decision should help protect the publishers of scientific and technical journals, according to those involved in the case and other observers. The court's decision in American Geophysical Union, et al. v. Texaco Inc., a test case brought by a group of academic publishers, mandates that permission fees be paid for photocopying done by research scientists in profit-making settings--revenues to which the publishers have long felt entitled. The case will result in

Neuroscience researchers have long wished for improved functional mapping of the brain--for the ability to create better images showing the brain in action, rather than just its structure. In the past, these researchers have depended mainly on positron emission tomography (PET), but safety concerns posed by the radioactive contrast agents involved, along with the relatively coarse resolution and slow speed of PET imaging, have limited the usefulness of their results. But now, a new, naturall

With knowledge gained, surgeons and researchers in Pittsburgh proceed with ambitious plans for xenotransplantation Clinicians and medical researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center are pressing forward with plans for a series of four baboon-to-human liver transplants, even after the death earlier this month of the first human recipient of a baboon liver. Despite the recipient's death, and despite strong opposition from animal rights groups, the transplant team hopes interspecie

The fifth NIH Research Festival, an in-house showcasing of hundreds of research projects supported by the 13 institutes operating under the National Institutes of Health aegis, will be held at the Bethesda, Md., campus September 21-25. Events scheduled for NIH's 16,000 researchers and other staff include five symposia, 31 workshops, three poster sessions with more than 450 presentations, and a scientific equipment show. Although originally planned to serve the intramural research community at N

When the technique of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) was first described by David C. Schwartz and Charles R. Cantor almost a decade ago (Cell, 37:67-75, 1984), many molecular biologists recognized its potential immediately. A flurry of innovation in instrumentation based on the idea followed in the next half-dozen years. Despite this interest and activity, only in the past few years has PFGE secured its place as a mature, integral laboratory tool in molecular genetics generally and the

The compilers of the new Directory of Federal Laboratory & Technology Resources, due out early next year, say their publication should make it easier for researchers and others to locate like-minded federal investigators and their facilities. Cooperative research projects involving federal and private researchers might be one important outcome, they say. But some in the nonfederal research and development community say that, while the directory may help with its primary purpose of technology

A recent work force survey by the Washington, D.C.-based American Chemical Society (ACS), building on data from a 1990 ACS salary survey, concludes that women in chemistry still face obstacles to advancement, despite an improved professional climate in recent years. Even so, conversations with women chemists working in the public and private sectors Lind many optimistic about their work and futures. But most also point to changes they would like to see in the profession of chemistry to lower the

A SAMPLING OF SCIENTIFIC BUYERS' GUIDES Published buyers' guides offer comprehensive listings of manufacturers and suppliers of products under various headings, according to Mary Ann Zimmerman, a buyer for the University of Maryland, College Park. Many include used equipment headings, useful for locating dealers. The guides are also helpful in keeping up to date on scientific equipment companies that move, merge, change names, or drop and add products to their lines. American Biotechnology L

This summer, three years after the prodemocracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square and the subsequent Chinese government crackdown on participants—including many scientists and students—at least two important scientific meetings, one in entomology and one in physics, have been scheduled in Beijing. Because of China's record of human rights abuses, the original siting of the meetings in China has been hotly debated within each scientific community, with some concerned United States

Sample preparation can be unpleasant, tedious, and time- consuming, but its careful execution is the backbone of a successful laboratory test or experiment. As many researchers are aware, some of the most demanding sample preparation procedures are called digestions. The aim of this process, like biological digestion, is to break a sample down into more basic constituents, but for analysis rather than for food use. Time, heat, and strong acids, oxidants, and bases are the agents of the proce