Issue | January 1993 | January 1993 | The Scientist Magazine®

News

Undaunted By Skittish 1992, Biotech Experts Express Optimism About New Year's Potential

Executives and analysts see industry perking up, thanks to increases in product flow and supportive legislation The past year was a tumultuous one for the biotechnology industry, according to corporate executives and industry analysts. During 1992, the unprecedented level of financing that had been available in 1990 and 1991 virtually disappeared. Public biotech companies saw their stock lose nearly half its value from highs in January to lows at midyear. Landmark legislative decisions in fa

Cryptozoologists: An Endangered Species

Researchers who stalk rare or fantastic creatures must endure the scorn of colleagues and funding agencies Physical anthropologist Grover Krantz sometimes fantasizes about flying his ultra-light aircraft over the Pacific Northwest on a warm spring day. Controls in one hand and an infrared heat detector in the other, Krantz scans the thawing ground-cover in search of the telltale heat of a rotting Bigfoot carcass. Bagging a body would be the ultimate evidence in a decades-old quest that has l

Biomedical Career Horizon on Cloudy Side For 1993

While salaries are on the upswing, the number of job opportunities is predicted to decline The coming of a new year, the establishment of a new presidential administration, and some encouraging signs of an economic upturn may yield professional gain for some in the science community. Nevertheless, research directors and human resource managers at United States biomedical research institutions say their approach to the hiring of scientists will remain cautious in 1993. Many add, however, tha

Noted Researchers Laud Donation To Russian Science

George Soros, a Hungarian-born investor active in promoting free and open societies in Central and Eastern Europe through his philanthropy, has announced a $100 million donation to support scientific research in the countries of the former Soviet Union. His donation will establish an International Science Foundation for the Former Soviet Union. Although details about the foundation's staff and procedures remained sketchy when Soros announced the donation at the National Academy of Sciences in

Notebook

Burning Up The Track Scientists Say The Darndest Things Sunshine Science Clinical Training Prized Quarry Comparing Notes Beltway Fellows The feasibility of solar-powered cars will be on display when Sunrayce 93 takes place this summer. Starting in Texas on June 20 and going to Minnesota, the 1,000-mile, seven-day race is expected to draw hundreds of college students from 36 North American universities to determine who has designed the fastest and most efficient solar-powered vehicle. T

Opinion

NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin Explains Timing, Purpose Of Big Changes At Agency

Editor's Note: Daniel Goldin, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, was named to his $14 billion agency's top post seven months ago, having come from a position as vice president of TRW Inc.'s Space & Technology Group in Redondo Beach, Calif. In October, he initiated a series of major changes in the structure of NASA's space sciences research program. For example, Goldin has separated Mission to Planet Earth, the agency's Earth-observation satellite program, from t

Letter

A Scientific Foremother

I was deeply disturbed by the entry on Beatrix Potter in the "Notebook" section of The Scientist on Oct. 26, 1992 [page 4]. The article used words like "gruesome" and "bizarre" to describe Potter's childhood interest in science, while giving no indication that Potter was an important scientist in her era. Her work on the symbiotic nature of lichen--the first to be published in the British isles--was read before the Linnaean Society of London by her uncle. She could neither deliver the work herse

Journal Standards

This letter is meant to bring two common complaints, one petty and one not so petty, formally to the attention of the scientific public. First, as documented in Science (L. Roberts, "The rush to publish," Science, 251:260-3, 1991), there is great inequity in the peer review process of manuscripts. These irregularities can have consequences for the investigator on funding, job opportunities, and scientific priority. I would make a simple proposal that journals have a standard reply time, for e

Commentary

As We Launch Into The New Year, Reality Must Temper Expectations

As the The Scientist publishes its first issue of 1993, Bill Clinton stands ready for his presidential inauguration. As a candidate focused on "change," he enjoyed the strong backing of scientists. But it is not unreasonable, given his promise, to suggest that the scientific community may harbor some heightened expectations that should be tempered with reality. For example, expectations that Clinton will magically relieve agonizing budget constraints on basic research must be softened by the un

Research

Convergence Of Disciplines Propels Cognitive Science

The mind is a difficult thing to understand. And to get a handle on how it works requires not just a biological, but also a psychological and philosophical approach, say those in the field of cognitive science, a 30-year-old discipline that now seems to be making headway in its quest to understand thought and the mind's function. "The bottom line is, we're a bunch of blind men searching for a black cat in a dark room. You grab at anything you can get," says Jonathan D. Cohen, a cognitive neuro

Hot Paper

Immunology

C.J. McMahan, J.L. Slack, B. Mosley, D. Cosman, et al., "A novel IL-1 receptor, cloned from B-cells by mammalian expression, is expressed in many cell types," The EMBO Journal, 10:2821-32, 1991. John E. Sims (Immunex Research and Development Corp., Seattle): "Interleukin-1 is a central mediator of inflammatory responses, and it has significant immune and hematopoietic effects, as well. For these reasons, it is highly desirable to understand its mechanisms of action and, hopefully, to discover

Technology

Bibliography-Building Software Eases A 'Cruel' Task

"One of the biggest nasty chores in writing a scientific paper is putting together the bibliography," says Walter Alvarez, a professor of geology at the University of California, Berkeley. "It's just always been a big nuisance." To help scientists cope with this chore, software packages to manage and produce bibliographies began to appear in the early 1980s. Now more powerful, more user-friendly, and more numerous than ever before, these programs offer the capability not only to automatically

Profession

Advance Planning Is The Key To Avoiding And Surviving Layoffs, Career Experts Say

A survey of 836 United States companies released in September by the New York-based American Management Association found that one in four of them planned layoffs by June of this year. In government, the news is also grim. When President Bush proposed increasing 1993 science spending by 6.5 percent, Congress slashed it to a paltry 2.3 percent, paralyzing budgets at many agencies. And President-elect Bill Clinton's focus on technologies that meet social needs more immediately than does basic res

EPA Seeks Greater Interaction With Research Community

One issue that Environmental Protection Agency director-designate Carol Browner will be assessing is the dual nature of the agency's mission. It is a regulatory agency, but through its Office of Exploratory Research (OER), within the Office of Research and Development (ORD), it also funds some basic research. This double focus has made EPA a difficult research partner for environmental scientists, several top EPA managers acknowledge. Unfortunately, EPA's grants program for investigator-initiat

People: Lehigh Professor Is Named Chemical Society's President-Elect

Ned D. Heindel, a chemistry professor at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., was voted president-elect of the American Chemical Society (ACS) by the society's membership through a mail ballot. He will serve as president-elect for one year before taking over the full presidency for two years, beginning in January 1994. Heindel, whose field of study is medicinal and pharmaceutical chemistry, says he wants to make the 144,000-member, 116-year-old organization more member-friendly. The focus of th