if (n == null) The Scientist - NCI's Reorganization, Director Scrutinized By Cancer Board   The Scientist 10[1]:, Jan. 08, 1996 News NCI's Reorganization, Director Scrutinized By Cancer Board By Myrna E. Watanabe Little official business was concluded at a two-day meeting of the National Cancer Advisory Board (NCAB) November 28-29. Rather, the proceedings were dominated by a lavish presentation of the wide-ranging reorganization of the National Cance

Sidebar: The People End: Fluidity and Flexibility Are Key Recent megamergers and acquisitions in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry have drastically altered the corporate landscape, and perhaps nowhere have the effects been felt more than in drug company research departments. However big pharmaceutical firms are, they are finding they can't -- or shouldn't -- do everything. And biotechnology firms, which are generally much smaller, are discovering the difficulties of conducting basi

The growth of the CRO industry has led to a plethora of new employment opportunities, both within CROs and pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms managing their relationships with CROs or other contract-service providers. BOOMING: Charles and Cathy Lineberry left positions at Glaxo Wellcome to form their own CRO. Pharmacologist/pathologist John S. Noble, president of Innapharma Inc., a small CRO in Suffern, N.Y., worked initially as a bench scientist, and eventually became director of worldw

Sidebar:NCI Divisional Structure Amid a swirl of controversy over leadership, budget priorities, and stifling bureaucracy, the new organizational structure of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) went into effect October 1. The reorganization was prompted by internal, agency, and congressional studies. Under the restructuring, many programs, laboratories, and branches fall under new or redesigned divisions, with an eye toward streamlining the agency, revamping its intramural program, and openin

Commitment To Discovery Author: MYRNA E. WATANABE Junk bonds were the financial cause célèbre in the 1980s, but in the mid-'90s, the mega-merger-in media, banking, or pharmaceuticals-has taken center stage. Although it may be argued that all such deals revolve around the bottom line, profits, and increased stock prices, for drug companies, the directions they follow as a result of these monster corporate pairings take on an added dimension: Lives depend upon the drugs they manufacture.

The pressures of practicing science in the 1990s are taking their toll on researchers in the United States and throughout the world. Some of the evidence is clear: rising unemployment and underemployment, as well as ferocious competition for rapidly dwindling resources. Other signs, scientists say, are less obvious --increased research misconduct, sexual discrimination, disrupted family and personal lives, and the creation of "serial postdocs" with less and less of a chance of ever obtaining a

DISCRIMINATING: Cecelia and Cabriel Manrique's research reveals bias against Asian Americans in academia. Chang-Lin Tien, chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley; Henry T. Yang, chancellor of UC-Santa Barbara; David Chang, president of Polytechnic University; Alice Huang, dean for science at New York University; James Wei, dean of engineering at Princeton University. These names are mentioned prominently when discussion turns to distinguished scientists and engineers of Asian ance

Editor's Note: This is the first of a two-part series on Asian Americans in academic science. It addresses issues concerning Asian American students. The second part, to appear in the May 29 issue, will examine the representation of Asian Americans on academic faculties and in university administration. A growing number of government and private programs throughout the United States are aimed at increasing the ranks of underrepresented minorities in university science classrooms. But one mino

A federal law requiring National Institutes of Health-funded disease studies to show an adequate representation of women, minorities, and racial and ethnic subgroups is forcing researchers to adopt novel methods of inclusion. These methods often go far beyond incorporating minority groups into their research design plans. Means that investigators have adopted to attract and retain populations that conform to the new law include buying lunch, paying bus fare, opening satellite clinics, even goin

Delores Parron, associate director for special populations at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Rockville, Md., refers to her office as the "mother cell," where the inclusion guidelines began. The NIMH office was put in place in 1983. Parron participated in a U.S. Public Health Service Task Force on Women's Health Issues from 1984 to 1985 that found, she states, "on those studies of diseases and disorders affecting men and women, to the greatest extent, women had been excluded."

New York University Medical Center is isolated on the edge of Manhattan's affluent Kip's Bay neighborhood, an area that includes only sparse pockets of subsidized lower- and middle-income housing. According to Kay Ryan, director of clinical trials development for the center, "Here, the patient population is not more than half minority, and here we have to do something to recruit minorities." "Something," in NYU's case, is recruiting patients for its cancer trials from Bellevue Hospital Center,

They live--thrive, even--in boiling water! They feed on sulfur or hydrogen. They could be from one of the moons of Jupiter. In fact, their existence here on Earth has led scientists to realize that planets they hitherto assumed to be lifeless might support life. These thermophilic, or heat- loving, microbes--Archaea--are attracting a small but growing cadre of researchers and serious research funding from the United States governmen