April 1990

WASHINGTON -- Last month 10 scientists got to keep their labs open, thanks to a new policy at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. The policy lets NIGMS edge further away from scientific merit in funding decisions and ration support so smaller laboratories can survive the increased competition for NIH funds. The beneficiaries are those scientists - like the 10 who didn't make the initial cutoff - who have no other sources of support or who are first-time applicants. The potential

As this week's rallies approach, four tell how their concern for the environment has changed their lives and careers Chemical physicist Michael Oppenheimer remembers staring for hours at the poster in his bedroom. The vertical cliffs of granite that had once been Colorado's Glen Canyon shimmered down pink and orange from the wall of his Cambridge, Mass., apartment. Several years earlier, in 1967, a dam had been built and the canyon flooded, its beauty lost forever. "It blew me away," says the

WASHINGTON -- The South shall rise again - along with states from the Midwest, Southwest, Rocky Mountains, Pacific Northwest, and Great Plains. At least, that's the hope of supporters of a National Science Foundation program to help states whose scientists receive dispropor-tionately little federal support. They are trying to use that program as a model for a government-wide effort at geographic self-help. "We have a common problem - poverty and bad politics," says biochemist Kenneth Pruitt, a

Analysts say the Roche deal blunts the impact of a report in which the firm's top product fares poorly against its competition Genentech took it on the chin last month when a massive study by Italian scientists found that tPA, tissue plasminogen activator, was no more effective in treating heart attacks than streptokinase, a bacterial enzyme that costs one tenth as much. But the stock price of the South San Francisco, Calif., company, which manufactures the drug, hardly budged. Although tPA i

A flood of applications for small amounts of money reflects the problem of financing needed repairs to academic laboratories WASHINGTON -- New programs at the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation offer overwhelming evidence that the demand for federal funds to replace crumbling academic research facilities is substantial. Defying odds that would scare off any self-respecting bettor, university administrators are expected to shower NIH with more than 100 requests f

WASHINGTON -- On March 22 the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology rolled up its sleeves and got down to business, namely, the task of getting United States industry to play a larger role in strengthening science. The council has a mandate to provide the president with all manner of scientific and technological advice on pressing issues of the day. And its 12 members, who were sworn in February 2 (The Scientist, March 5, 1990, page 3), represent a diverse elite, from billi

Temporary shutdown of research reactor turns into three-year hiatus as managers try to understand the world after Chernobyl OAK RIDGE, TENN. -- Though it may be impolite, it's hardly news when a scientist avoids a meeting to carry out an experiment. But for Oak Ridge National Laboratory nuclear physicist George Wignall, showing up late for an interview with a reporter was cause for celebration. "We've been waiting three and a half years for this machine," he explained to a reporter, exulting

More than 11,000 scientists from 30 countries are expected to attend the 199th national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston next week. The six-day-long gathering (April 22 through April 27) at the Hynes Convention Center will feature more than 4,400 papers presented during 604 technical sessions. The presidential plenary, which kicks off the week-long gathering Sunday, April 22, at 4:30 P.M., will focus on a problem that the field of chemistry shares with other disciplines: the

Sharing Science "Kids are natural scientists," says Yale biology senior Geoffrey Laff. "We're trying to capture them at a point when they think that learning is still a cool thing to do." Laff is founder of DEMOS, a volunteer student group that shares the magic and excitement of science with third, fourth, and fifth graders in New Haven, Conn., elementary schools. Every week, the 35 members of DEMOS (the acronym doesn't really stand for anything: "I like to let people use their imaginations," s

An immunologist who has turned entrepreneur builds a one-man publishing business around a 30,000-item directory It is one of those small yet irksome inconveniences that dog immunologists and those working with biological reagents. No matter how generous one's funding or how proficient one's technicians, there are certain nettlesome tasks that threaten to halt one's research. What to do, for example, when an experiment requires a highly specific monoclonal antibody? If it can't be found in a ca

While scientists contribute much to society through professional research, study, and teaching, most scientists have been trained in a professional culture that considers going outside of one's discipline - and certainly outside of scientific research and study - as being unprofessional. Getting involved in politics, of all things, is something like educational prostitution. This tendency toward compartmentalization is one factor contributing to the gulf of mutual ignorance that exists between

Repeatedly over the past few years, the American public has been subjected to a litany of catastrophe - to predictions of impending disaster that are claimed to be unique to modern civilization. The oceans are dying, the atmosphere is poisoned, the earth itself is losing its capacity to support life. The reported "hole" in the ozone layer is the most recent scare. Cancer, generally blamed on man-made chemicals, is rampant - so the doomsayers say. Warnings that in the past came from the pulpit a

A few days ago I received a recent issue of your newspaper. While I would like to express my pleasure at finding my name on a list appearing in the article "Physicists Dominate List Of Most-Cited Soviet Scientists" (The Scientist, Feb. 19, 1990, page 23), I am also happy to inform you that I am not dead, as indicated in the article, but quite alive - and in rather good shape! I was very surprised by this erroneous information. Such an announcement could do great damage to my career, as I am st

You are to be commended for the timely article "New Policies Offer Pension Choices To Academic Scientists" (The Scientist, March 5, 1990, page 25). Julia King correctly pointed out that there is the catch that some of the more flexible policies ". . . must first be adopted by the university where the professors are employed." She went on to suggest that employees can lobby for their employers to adopt the new policies. Despite the fact that TIAA-CREF insists that contracts are with individuals

I believe I was misquoted in the recent article "Biotech Panel Wrestles With Oversight Role" (The Scientist, Feb. 19, 1990, page 1), which was about government review of biotechnology research as it moves out of the laboratory and into the field. The misquotation has gotten me into some warm water with my superiors and colleagues in other agencies. The sentence I refer to is: "So people doing outdoor research don't know when their experiments are covered by NIH and when they enter the general e

Your recent coverage of perestroika and science (The Scientist, Feb. 19, 1990) was excellent, with many articles of interest to the international scientific community. I applaud your thorough coverage of a timely and important topic. The Fogarty International Center, the international arm of the National Institutes of Health, is keenly interested in promoting scientific collaboration with East European and Soviet scientists and institutions, and we already have several exchange programs in pl

While working toward his doctorate in 1973, plant geneticist Peter Gresshoff received an invitation to attend one of the meetings sponsored every summer by the Gordon Research Conferences. For Gresshoff, the mere fact that he was tapped to join the select group of 100 scientists participating in the conference constituted an honor in itself. Substantially more exciting, though, was the prospect of spending a week in close quarters with some of the top researchers in his field. The invitation c

Last year, administrators at the California Institute of Technology received a pleasant surprise: a letter from a Hong Kong foundation asking if they would be interested in having the foundation support Asian graduate students at Caltech, particularly students from the People's Republic of China. The letter came from the Shaw Foundation, a private charitable enterprise established in 1973 by Sir Run Run Shaw, an 82-year-old native of Shanghai. Sir Run Run heads the Shaw Brothers Organisation,

The approximately 11,000 chemists gathering in Boston for the American Chemical Society meeting next week will undoubtedly be glad to hear that in today's job market, it appears they have the right chemistry for obtaining employment. In many cases, chemists are commanding increasing salaries and finding new opportunities, thanks to a favorable imbalance in the age-old relationship between demand and supply. For instance, veteran chemists with Ph.D.'s can expect to see annual pay increase highe

Massachusetts Institute of Technology artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky has reason to feel a bit like singer Paul McCart-ney these days. Like the former Beatle, the computer scientist recently attracted a crowd of teenagers while on a trip to Japan. Minsky says that after being recognized by a group of Japanese students on an airplane, he concluded that they, in general, "are as excited about a scientist as [United States students] are about a rock 'n' roll star." The reason for Min

For Eric E. Conn, teaching certainly has its rewards. The University of California, Davis, professor of biochemistry has been awarded the 1990 UC-Davis Prize for Teaching and Scholarly Achievement. Established by the Cal Aggie Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports UC-Davis, the $25,000 prize pays tribute to faculty members on campus who demonstrate throughout their academic careers a dedication to teaching undergraduates as well as to the achievement of personal scholarly goals. T

Matthew Headrick has won first place in the 49th annual Westinghouse Science Talent Search for high school students, joining a list of previous winners that includes five Nobelists, two winners of Fields Medals, and eight winners of MacArthur Foundation Fellowships. What will the 17-year-old do for an encore? "I'm keeping my options open," says Headrick, a senior at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools High School. But he says he has narrowed his choice to studying math or physics at e