August 1995

Directory assistance for the 919 area code in North Carolina no longer lists a phone number for Macronex Inc., a small biotechnology company located in Morrisville. Although technically still a going concern, Macronex currently has only two employees and is in the process of going out of business. STRAPPED: ImmunoGen CEO Mitchel Sayare observes, from hard experience, that "things are not going well for companies that don't have enough cash." "We've pretty much closed our operation . . . a cas

Within just a few years, a growing number of surgeons expect to be able to transplant cells, tissues, and organs from baboons, pigs, and other animals into humans as accepted therapy for a number of life-threatening conditions and diseases. Driven by scientific innovation and powerful medical need, the field of cross-species transplantation, or xenotransplantation, is moving ahead with several ground-breaking experimental human procedures this year, and more expected in the near future. EXERC

Among the numerous events being commemorated that coincided with the end of World War II, the University of Pennsylvania is preparing to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ENIAC, the world's first general-purpose electronic computer, built on campus to help the war effort. Although details of the celebration have not yet been finalized, university officials point to a number of projects under way, with festivities due to kick off on Feb. 14, 1996. On that date in 1946, ENIAC--Electronic Numerica

Because of its therapeutic promise, xenotransplantation is likely to go forward, despite fears of the introduction of new epidemics into the human population and other concerns. The question now being raised in several quarters is whether local or federal authorities should oversee the field, and whether voluntary guidelines or more formal regulations should be invoked. Stephen Morse, an assistant professor of virology at Rockefeller University, says that the issues raised by cross-species tra

Three times a year, in conference rooms at the National Institutes of Health's Bethesda, Md., campus, about 1,440 permanent members of 100 study sections (accompanied by an annual total of about 1,800 ad hoc members) meet for two days to review 9,000 grant proposals. Critics of the system charge that it is cumbersome; needlessly hard on both reviewers and the reviewed; and rife with the potential for incompetent decisions, abuse of power, and conflicts of interest. Even its supporters acknowled

The Maturing Of Scientometrics And Informetrics Author: Eugene Garfield In the early 1900s, scientists and librarians were already conscious of the exponential growth of the research literature. Small-scale bibliometric analyses--studies of papers, references, and authors--had been done at the turn of the century. A few classics, like Alfred J. Lotka's 1926 paper on author productivity (Journal of the Washington Academy of Science, 16:217-23) and the 1927 citation ranking of chemical journals

College on Problems of Drug Dependence Martin W. Adler, executive officer Temple University School of Medicine 3420 N. Broad Street Philadelphia, PA 19140 (215)707-3242 Fax:(215)707-1904 E-mail: baldeagl@vm.temple.edu 310 members - Robert L. Balster, President Journal: Drug and Alcohol Dependence Telnet to tn3270.cu.nih.gov At the help prompt, type: logon fnflfn5/none/627 3270 For information on journals that cover the neuroscience behind drug addiction, consult the Neurosciences Citation Ind

Immunology Author: Neeraja Sankaran This year, the New York City-based Cancer Research Institute (CRI) honored three prominent scientists with its William B. Coley Awards for Distinguished Research, which recognize outstanding research in the field of cancer immunology. The awards were presented at a black-tie dinner on June 28. Malcolm A.S. Moore, a hematologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), New York, and Timothy A. Springer, a professor of pathology at the Center for Blo

The story in the May 29, 1995, issue of The Scientist on the newly elected members of the National Academy of Sciences, "Howard Hughes Institute Makes A Big Showing In 1995 Class of NAS Members" [K.Y. Kreeger, page 3] neglected to note the significant role played by the National Institutes of Health in supporting the research of many of the new NAS members. Each year, a large number of new NAS members are NIH grantees or intramural scientists. This year, for example, 13 of the 60 new members ar

In your issue highlighting the Peter Duesberg theories of AIDS causation [B. Goodman, The Scientist, March 20, 1995, page 1; P. Duesberg, The Scientist,March 20, 1995, page 12], neither he nor his supporters ever discuss the example of maternal-infant transmission of HIV/AIDS. If the HIV agent is not the cause of AIDS, how does he explain the infants of infected mothers who demonstrate HIV infection with viremia, dropping CD4 counts and eventual AIDS? Have they been exposed to recreational drug

T.R. Sosnick, L. Mayne, R. Hiller, S.W. Englander, "The barriers in protein folding," Nature Structural Biology 1:149-156, 1994. (Cited in approximately 40 publications through July 1995) Comments by S. Walter Englander, University of Pennsylvania Medical Center "The protein folding problem--the way in which unfolded proteins manage to reach their native, three-dimensional, functional form--has become a central focus for many scientists," declares Walter Englander, a professor of biochemistry a

L.K. Su, B. Vogelstein, K.W. Kinzler, "Association of the APC tumor-suppressor protein with catenins," Science, 262:1734-7, 1993. (Cited in more than 100 publications through July 1995). Comments by Kenneth Kinzler, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore. This paper, says Kenneth Kinzler, an associate professor in the department of oncology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, gives evidence for "the association of [a protein called] APC with the catenins--intracellul