Issue | March 1993 | March 1993 | The Scientist Magazine®

News

Reporter's Notebook: AAAS Annual Meeting

The American Association for the Advancement of Science returned to Boston, the city of its birth, for an annual meeting held February 11-16 that drew 5,000 scientists and students, plus more than 700 reporters. The meeting, which seemed to touch upon the entire breadth of science, featured appearances by such science luminaries as Harvard University pop-paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould and cosmologist George Smoot of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, who led the group that, in his words, "discover

Mounting Threat Of Infectious Diseases Contributes To Rising Need For Immunology Research Specialists

In today's otherwise sluggish biomedical job market, career prospects for these scientists are improving in academia as well as industry Immunology research is riding the crest of a wave, with significant laboratory results proliferating, observers of the field say. "Immunology remains one area in biomedicine that has relatively good prospectives for employment, and one that is likely to continue doing somewhat better than most others," says Robert Rich, a professor of microbiology, immuno

Intangible Factors Are Crucial In Research Universities' Quest For High Achievement In Science

An institution's locale, reputation, and spirit can be as important as big budgets and elegant labs, researchers claim Few academic scientists would disagree with the notion that the research prowess of a university depends to a great extent on how much money the school is willing to invest in its scientists and the material needs that their investigations entail. And few would deny that the impact of the research reports a school generates each year is one valid gauge of return on that inve

Two Major Scientific Meetings Slated Next Week

Two major scientific meetings will be taking place next week--one marked by controversy, the other by change. Denver is the site of the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), set for March 28-April 2. ACS officials say they are unfazed by a boycott of the state of Colorado by gay-rights activists and others angry about the passage in November of Amendment 2, an amendment to the state constitution banning local antidiscrimination laws for homosexuals. At press time, the boycott

Notebook

Closing the Door Softly A "Strong Move" Setting A Score AMP-lification What About Bugsy? More Media Messages Home Improvement Now that Bernadine Healy has said she will resign June 30 as director of the National Institutes of Health, at least some of her previous critics have opted to let bygones be bygones--and to sound more favorable in assessing Healy's tenure at NIH. For example, Phillip Sharp, head of the biology department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a past NIH det

Opinion

The Future Of NSF: Four Key Issues Require Clarification

A recent article in The Scientist, headlined "NSF Still Wrestling With Science Board Over Recommendations For Agency Future" (Barton Reppert, Feb. 8, 1993, page 1), discussed the report of the National Science Board's Commission on the Future of the National Science Foundation. This commission, of which I was a member, was asked to answer two questions: (a) How can NSF best ensure its continued support of basic academic research? and (b) What, if anything, should NSF do differently to meet the

Commentary

Let's Put An End to `Chemophobia'

Chemistry is one of the oldest sciences, with a distinguished history of intellectual and practical achievement. Chemists consider it the "central science," interacting with physics as well as with biology, with engineering, and with materials science. The names of some subfields tell this story: physical chemistry and chemical physics, biochemistry and chemical biology, medicinal chemistry, neurochemistry, petroleum chemistry, polymer chemistry, agricultural chemistry. Chemistry courses in co

Letter

Confocal Microscopy

A statement attributed to Roger Tsien of the University of California, San Diego, gave the mistaken impression that there is no commercially available laser-based confocal system today capable of video-rate imaging. To the contrary, Meridian Instruments Inc., Bio-Rad Microscience Division, and Noran Instruments Inc. all market systems capable of capturing 30 frames a second. In our case, we have been marketing the INSIGHT Laser Scanning Confocal Microscope (a real-time, real-color system offeri

An Oversimplification

As a faculty member at a highly selective liberal arts college, I need to comment on your recent article entitled "Doing Science Off The Beaten Track At Liberal Arts Schools" (Linda Marsa, The Scientist, Nov. 23, 1992, page 21). The article is incorrect in presenting an oversimplified view of what a liberal arts college is like. A well-informed scientist would never think of saying, "The University of Thus-and-Such is a great science school"; he or she would articulate a more informed view of

An Avalanche?

I found Joshua Lederberg's representation of knowledge as akin to natural disaster--an avalanche of bits of information increasing exponentially, threatening to bury us all--a bit daunting (The Scientist, Feb. 8, 1993, page 10). His solution for storing his voluminous notes using document scanners and CD-ROMs reminded me of an encounter in Paris between French writer Paul ValEry and Albert Einstein. Valery, who always noted each and every one of his ideas meticulously, asked Einstein if he carr

Research

Immunology: Highlights From A Hot Biological Field

Some of the most influential papers in 1992, according to data provided by the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information, were in immunology. This is not surprising, given the field's applications in stemming AIDS, cancer, and other pressing diseases. The most cited paper published within the last two years is from the Max Planck Institute for Biology in Tbingen, Germany (K. Falk, et al., Nature, 351:290, 1991). This paper, which by the end of February 1993 had been referred to i

Hot Paper

Solid-state Physics

J. Unguris, R.J. Celotta, D.T. Pierce, "Observation of two different oscillation periods in the exchange coupling of Fe/Cr/Fe(100)," Physical Review Letters, 67:140, 1991. John Unguris (National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Md.): "Our paper examines the relationship between atomic order and magnetic coupling in artificially grown magnetic multilayer structures. Some of these structures have the fascinating property that the magnetization in alternate magnetic layers ma

Molecular Biology

C. Abate, D. Luk, T. Curran, "Transcriptional regulation by Fos and Jun in vitro: interaction among multiple activator and regulatory domains," Molecular and Cellular Biology, 11:3624, 1991. Cory Abate (Rutgers University, Piscataway, N.J.): "The fos and jun oncogenes were isolated independently as cellular transforming genes. However, their protein products function cooperatively as components of a dimeric transcription factor complex. A great deal is known about the dimerization and DNA- bi

Neuroscience

N. Burnashev, H. Monyer, P.H. Seeburg, B. Sackmann, "Divalent ion permeability of AMPA receptor channels is dominated by the edited form of a single subunit," Neuron, 8:189, 1992. Nail Burnashev (Max-Planck Institute for Medical Research, Heidelberg, Germany): "In our brain the influx of calcium ions into neurons is an exquisitely controlled event, because calcium entry is important for learning and memory functions and, if excessive, can lead to cell death. One way for the controlled entry o

Leaders of Science

Dean F. Martin

DEAN F. MARTIN, Distinguished Service Professor and director of the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa, views his surroundings through the eyes of a chemist: "Ours is a world of coordinate compounds." A faculty member since 1964, Martin has directed his work toward natural environmental management of noxious chemicals and organisms. Martin and his colleagues have been focusing their attention on the Florida red tide, a condition marked by the sudd

Technology

Interferons And Interleukins: From Bench To Bedside

Interferons (IFs) and interleukins (ILs) are immune system biochemicals at the intersection of basic research and medical technology. Part of the class of secreted cellular regulators known as cytokines, IFs and ILs have experienced dizzying public relations ups and downs, hailed one season as tomorrow's wonder drugs, derided the next as toxic side effects emerge during therapy. type_Document_Title_here With many questions about the basic biology of these enigmatic immunochemicals stil

Profession

Chemical Information: A Career Alternative For Chemists

Chemists who are contemplating career alternatives in today's highly competitive job market might want to consider an emerging specialty: chemical information. Information professionals perform a wide variety of tasks, including library research, patent research, marketing research, preparation of customer service materials, acquisition of books and journals for libraries, and updates of electronic research systems. As computer networks, online databases, and various types of document delive

Fractal Developer Wins Wolf Prize, Science Historian is Elected to Congress, Robert W. Holley - Obituary

Fractal Developer Wins Wolf Prize Science Historian Is Elected To Congress Robert W. Holley - Obituary Benoit B. Mandelbrot, a fellow at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., will be awarded the 1993 Wolf Prize in Physics by the Israeli-based Wolf Foundation on May 16. Since 1978, the Wolf Foundation has been granting $100,000 prizes for individual achievements in agriculture, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, physics, and the arts. This year, the prizes wil