January 1992

A Rocky Mountain biotech firm proves that success requires something more than strong management and top-notch research For 10-year-old biotech company Synergen, 1991 was a banner year indeed. The Boulder, Colo.-based firm raised $52.5 million in an R&D limited partnership and $95 million in a stock offering. Stock zoomed from $12 per share in January to $69 in November, and seven of its protein-based pharmaceuticals entered or advanced further in clinical testing. Moreover, the company broke g

"We're a state school that depends on the kindness of the board of regents and the state government," says Charlotte Tilson, marketing manager at the University of Arizona Press. "But if the point is getting regular funding, we might be better off having ties with the Mafia. Nobody seems to care very much. "When the latest [state] funding cuts went through and the [university] marching band lost $75,000 to $100,000, you never heard such an uproar in your life. There were bake sales and mar

Sidebar: NIH's Nealy to Play the Numbers Game Sidebar: NSF's Ambitious Plans Outpace Budget Hikes Despite big budget hikes for NIH and NSF, many researchers and officials claim that government backing is inadequate WASHINGTON--The budgets of most federal research agencies rose this year, some by double digits, as Congress once again was generous to science. The primary sources of money for academic research had good years: the National Institutes of Health's budget increased by 9 percent, t

Publishing books on or about science presents unique challenges, academic press directors say. First among these challenges, says Susan Abrams, executive editor for the natural sciences at the University of Chicago Press, is the fact "that some scientists just won't write them--it's not their style. And, of course, [finding the] time is a problem. With the state of grant support being what it is, people are spending more and more time just trying to get their work funded." Unlike scholars

David Sanchez presides over a $600 million budget as assistant National Science Foundation director for the mathematical and physical sciences. But even with steady growth each year in that budget, he says he's hard-pressed to find the money next year to continue work on, among other projects, a $211 million laser interferometer gravity wave observatory (LIGO), a $192 million eight-meter telescope, and a $120 million high magnetic field laboratory. "If we put in much less than what the proje

National Institutes of Health director Bernadine Healy says she is trying to shift the debate over adequate funding for biomedical research away from scientists and toward health as she sells the idea of a larger NIH budget to Congress and the public. But sometimes it's hard to separate the needs of her colleagues and the needs of the country. "I'm not talking about a full-employment program for scientists," she told a recent meeting of the director's advisory committee that was focusing on

In regard to the article on mentoring in the Oct. 28, 1991, issue of The Scientist [page 19], I find the comment that "it has become crucial for older, white, male scientists to become comfortable mentoring people who are not carbon copies of themselves" to be an inaccurate reflection of the way things are. I am one of those "older, white, male scientists." In my 23 years of being a professor of mathematics, I have had about as many female graduate students as males. My first doctoral student wa

In the November 11, 1991, issue of The Scientist [page 13], you published an opinion piece by Ken Croswell entitled "Dealing With Problems On A First-Name Basis." I would like to respond to the opinions he expressed about the use of initials rather than first names on scientific publications. Croswell wonders if authors who use their initials rather than their first names on publications are "reclusive" or are attempting to "appear more scientific," and then notes that in such cases he

Date: January 6, 1992, pp.16 S.C. Hyde, P. Emsley, M.J. Hartshorn, M.M. Mimmack, et al., "Structural model of ATP-binding proteins associated with cystic fibrosis, multidrug resistance, and bacterial transport," Nature, 346:362-65, 1990. (MOLECULAR BIOLOGY) Christopher F. Higgins (Microbial Genetics Laboratory, Imperial Cancer Research Fund, University of Oxford, England): "The ATP- binding cassette superfamily of transporters includes many biologically and clinically important proteins, such

Date: January 6, 1992, pp.16 S.H.E. Kaufmann, "Heat shock proteins and the immune response," Immunology Today, 11:129-36, 1990. (IMMUNOLOGY) Stefan H.E. Kaufmann (University of Ulm, Germany): "I assume that until recently most of my colleagues working in immunology associated the term `stress' with the feelings one has when an experiment does not work well or when a paper has been rejected. "Cell biologists earlier had found that cells show a stress response that very much resembles our own

Date: January 6, 1992, pp.16 H.-M. Jantzen, A. Admon, S.P. Bell, R. Tjian, "Nucleolar transcription factor hUBF contains a DNA-binding motif with homology to HMG proteins," Nature, 344:830-36, 1990. (MOLECULAR BIOLOGY) H.-Michael Jantzen (Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, Berkeley): "During the past few years there has been tremendous progress in the identification of transcription factors that bind to specific promoter sequences of eukaryotic genes. However, little is

Date: January 6, 1992, pp.16 C.A. Smith, T. Davis, D. Anderson, L. Solam, et al., "A receptor for tumor necrosis factor defines an unusual family of cellular and viral proteins," Science, 248:1019- 23, 1990. (MOLECULAR BIOLOGY) Craig Smith (Immunex Corp., Seattle): "There are three reasons why the molecular cloning of this tumor necrosis factor (TNF) receptor has turned out to be a reasonable milestone. "First, there is the intrinsic scientific interest. TNF is an outstanding mediator of ho

Udall Fellowships Support Federal Service The congressional board of the Office of Technology Assessment has renamed its fellowship program to honor Morris K. Udall, the Arizona Democrat and longtime OTA board member who recently retired from Congress. The Udall Fellowships support up to six technical experts annually in one-year appointments to the OTA staff. Those who have completed doctoral-level research in some technical field related to OTA's mission are eligible to apply. Relevant discipl

John Guckenheimer, a professor of mathematics and of theoretical and applied mathematics at Cornell University and director of Cornell's Center for Applied Mathematics since 1989, has been named the first director of research programs at the Cornell Theory Center. The Theory Center is one of four National Science Foundation-funded supercomputer centers. It provides advanced computational tools to approximately 2,000 scientists. Guckenheimer, 46, received his B.A. in 1966 from Harvard University