December 1995

One July day in 1984, Barry Marshall, a medical resident at the Fremantle Hospital in Perth, Western Australia, walked over to his lab bench, pulled down a beaker, and mixed a cocktail. The key ingredient: about a billion Helicobacter pylori bacteria. Marshall hoped to show that the microorganism causes ulcers. He gulped the concoction, describing it as "swamp water." PHYSICIAN, STUDY THYSELF: Barry Marshall's daring experiment eventually garnered him awards. One hundred years earlier, Max vo

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

Decision Author: Robert L. Brent Many publications, including The Scientist, and reports by individual authors have commented on the implications of the recent United States Supreme Court decision on the proper standard for admissibility of scientific evidence in the courtroom (F. Hoke, The Scientist, June 13, 1994, page 1; June 27, 1994, page 1). The decision of the court involved the evaluation of expert scientific and medical testimony provided in a product liability lawsuit involving the d

Society for Research on Biological Rhythms University of Virginia Department of Biology Gilmer Hall Charlottesville, VA 22903 (804)-982-4500 E-mail: djh2t@faraday.clas.virginia.edu 400 members President: Irving Zucker Executive secretary: David Hudson Journal: Journal of Biological Rhythms Society for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms 10200 W. 44th Ave., Suite 304 Wheat Ridge, Colo. 80033-2840 (303) 424-3697 - Fax: (303) 422-8894 E-mail: 5686814@mcimail.com 400 members President: Christi

This year, the Bower Award and Prize in Science -- the richest American science prize -- as well as the Bower Award for Business will honor the development of computer technology. The awards are presented annually by Philadelphia's Franklin Institute Science Museum. PIONEER: Frederick Brooks, Jr. was cited for his "major contribution to making the computer useful. Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., who defined computer architecture in such a way that computer hardware and software developed independen

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: A Checklist for Evaluating Forecasts With the year 2000 approaching, scientific, environmental, technology, and health organizations have been making predictions about the state of science and technology in the next five years and beyond, as have some individuals. Many such agencies and associations are also using the approaching turn of the century to set goals for themselves. Should the predictions come true and the goals be met by the start of the next century, forecasters anticipa

Andy Hines, staff futurist at the research firm of Coates and Jarratt Inc. in Washington, D.C., lists several criteria for judging the many predictions that have been and will be made for or around the year 2000 (The Futurist, 29:20-24, November- December 1995): Author: What are the credentials or reputation of the author or institution? Do they have a bias? Are they advocates, enthusiasts, or opponents? Method: Is a formal method such as a Delphi survey -- a polling of experts-used? Assumpt

Association for Women in Science members are making plans to celebrate the victories of the past and look ahead to future challenges. 

Women Nobel Prize winners will help the Association for Women in Science (AWIS) kick off its 25th anniversary celebration in February. Laureates Rosalyn Yalow and Gertrude Elion will speak at a symposium titled "Women Nobelists: Their Work, Their Lives, and Their Impact on Science and Technology" at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), slated for February 8-12 in Baltimore. Also presenting at the symposium, scheduled for the afternoon of February

Engineering Going to Women Engin. Phys. Math/Comp. Agri./Biol. Sci. Sci. Sci. 1971 0.8% 14.7% 36.0% 24.1% 1991 15.5% 32.4% 36.1% 48.7% in Science and Engineering Going to Women Engin. Phys. Math/Comp. Agri./Biol. Sci. Sci. Sci. 1971 0.5% 5.8% 7.8% 14.5% 1991 8.7% 18.4% 16.9% 34.4% Source: National Science Foundation

By Creating A More Effective, Efficient FDA Author: Karl A. DeSante Without question, one of the most important endeavors facing the United States pharmaceutical industry is reforming the drug-review process at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Changes to help streamline the regulatory process can help ensure financial underpinning for ongoing research and innovation, and decrease the cost of medications while increasing the speed with which effective new drugs reach physicians and pati

Your good article on the "rising tide of irrationalism" [F. Hoke, "Scientists See Broad Attack Against Research And Reason," The Scientist, July 10, 1995, page 1] starts appropriately with a picture captioned "GROWING FEARS" and ends with a mainstream scientist's plaintive cry: "We are the oppressed. We have to find a voice." In between, we read about "the vitriolic tone of many of the speakers . . . polarizing vehemence . . . extreme and virulent form, almost hate- mongering. . . ." This is no

Lawrence S. Norris wrote in the letters section of the Nov. 13, 1995, issue of The Scientist [page 13]: "There has been no gene or loci of genes that define intellect. Until such a set of genes is definitely found, those who try to connect intellect and race with genotypes are racists masquerading as intellectuals." I am afraid that the author's statement may be sending an unintended wrong signal. What if a set of genes defining intellect (or stupidity) is discovered? Can we then go back to th

The power bestowed upon the reviewers to disqualify new ideas based on "unpublished" observations has to be removed from the process, unless applicants ignored peer-reviewed-published information. An example of weakness in a summary statement: "Therefore, it is unlikely that the proposed project will lead to new technologies or applications of knowledge that contribute . . . to the mission or health and welfare of the American people." The RFA did not state this condition, and the aims and hypo

Like many life sciences, chronobiology is a field that has transitioned from the organismal level, to anatomical dissection, to molecular analysis. 

A plant spreads its leaves, an insect scurries, a mold produces spores, and human blood pressures, hormone levels, and temperatures ebb and flow, in an oscillating pattern throughout the day. Animals mate and molt, migrate and hibernate, to the beat of internal timekeepers in sync to predictable changes in the environment. Researchers are exploring these biological clocks in a variety of species. Mice: Some of the rodent residents of Joseph Takahashi's neurobiology lab at Northwestern Universi

E.M. Brown, G. Gamba, D. Riccardi, M. Lombardi, R. Butters, O. Kifor, A. Sun, M.A. Hediger, J. Lytton, S.C. Hebert, "Cloning and characterization of an extracellular Ca2+-sensing receptor from bovine parathyroid," Nature, 366:575-80, 1993. (Cited in more than 100 publications through November 1995) Comments by Edward Brown and Steven Hebert, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston This paper describes the isolation, cloning, and molecular characterization of a receptor molecule for calcium ions

D.D. Ho, A.U. Neumann, A.S. Perelson, W. Chen, J.M. Leonard, M. Markowitz, "Rapid turnover of plasma virions and CD4 lymphocytes in HIV-1 infection," Nature, 373:123-6, 1995. (Cited in nearly 100 publications through November 1995) Comments by Martin Markowitz, Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, New York According to Martin Markowitz, a staff investigator at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center of the New York University School of Medicine, the main significance of this paper is that "it e

About Their Work Author: Ricki Lewis In the current age of electronic communication, the practice of sending postcards to colleagues to request reprints of their articles may seem quaint. Nonetheless, these postcards continue to crisscross the world at much the same volume as they have for years, scientists and journal publishers say. Article reprints serve several purposes. Many scientists see a reprint request as a pat on the back. "In my scientific youth, I kept an exact count of the numbe

ELIZABETH MARINCOLA, Executive Director, American Society for Cell Biology, Bethesda, MD "THE SCIENTIST is highly useful. It covers much of what I need to know as an administrator of a scientific society -- not just science itself, but policy and administration." The American Society for Cell Biology has long advanced biomedical research through its publications and its large and successful annual meetings. A more recently recognized imperative of the society is bridging the gap among scienti

Science And Art Author: Holly Ahern Cells of all types -- from organisms as simple as bacteria to those as complex as humans -- can be removed from representative tissues and grown in a culture vessel, where they reproduce and perform the same biological functions as cells in their natural state. When human skin cells such as fibroblasts are grown in culture, for example, they attach to the culture vessel and form a layer, just as if they were forming a layer of skin. Cultured fibroblasts secre

The Board of Directors of City Trusts of the city of Philadelphia honored three researchers last month for inventions that have contributed to the "comfort, welfare, and happiness" of mankind. The three were given John Scott Awards, consisting of a copper medal and a $10,000 prize. An unshared award went to Barry J. Marshall, a 1995 Lasker laureate and a clinical associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Virginia, for discovering the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its rol