March 1995

Policy-watchers wonder if even modest increases for science will survive Republican lawmakers' fiscal conservatism The Clinton administration is striving to put the best possible "spin" on its $72.9 billion research and development budget for the 1996 fiscal year, which would provide modest increases--about enough to keep pace with inflation--for the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. White House science adviser John H. Gibbons contends that "science and technol

Veteran Administrators Sidebar: MINORITY SCIENCE EDUCATION RESOURCES Researchers, educators, and government officials involved in the effort to increase representation of ethnic and racial minorities in science, mathematics, and engineering are encouraged by the comprehensive and business-like approaches of several projects that have been instituted in the last few years. They say this despite being critical of the majority of such programs because of a lack of effectiveness and accountability.

Moves to companies by a small group of HHMI investigators shows the growing appeal of commercial- sector biological research jobs. Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators are acknowledged to be among the most creative and accomplished basic researchers working in academic laboratories today. Yet even these top scientists sometimes feel the urge for a different set of challenges. Some long for the chance to develop useful new drugs and therapeutics based on their ideas or to run a larger,

Researchers working on a large-scale plan to develop a linkage map of the genome of African Americans a project similar to the Human Genome Project (HGP)_vow to continue their efforts, despite being rejected for funding by the National Institutes of Health. As they pursue other sources of funding, they say they will carry on with the project in a loosely associated alliance of smaller research efforts at Howard University and other institutions. "It is just too important a project to be dismant

"So much to do, so little time" appears to sum up the busy program planned for the 209th national meeting and exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), to be held April 2-6 in the Convention Center and nearby hotels in Anaheim, Calif. The expected 10,000 participants will have a choice of attending more than 600 technical sessions, and more than 5,000 papers will be presented. The wide range of topics at this spring's meeting indicates the highly interdisciplinary nature of the field a

Following is a sampling of print- and computer-based directories of programs for minorities in science, mathematics, and engineering sponsored by professional societies, federal agencies, and universities. Some programs are not universal in whom they serve, but may vary according to minority or ethnic group, discipline, locale, and age group. HyperAMP, a three-part multimedia database of more than 1,400 financial aid sources for undergraduates and graduate students; a description of the Nationa

New York University Medical Center is isolated on the edge of Manhattan's affluent Kip's Bay neighborhood, an area that includes only sparse pockets of subsidized lower- and middle-income housing. According to Kay Ryan, director of clinical trials development for the center, "Here, the patient population is not more than half minority, and here we have to do something to recruit minorities." "Something," in NYU's case, is recruiting patients for its cancer trials from Bellevue Hospital Center,

Delores Parron, associate director for special populations at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Rockville, Md., refers to her office as the "mother cell," where the inclusion guidelines began. The NIMH office was put in place in 1983. Parron participated in a U.S. Public Health Service Task Force on Women's Health Issues from 1984 to 1985 that found, she states, "on those studies of diseases and disorders affecting men and women, to the greatest extent, women had been excluded."

Floyd E. Bloom, chairman of the neuropharmacology department at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., was named as the new editor-in-chief of Science last month. Bloom replaces Daniel E. Koshland, Jr., a University of California, Berkeley, molecular biologist who edited the journal for 10 years. According to the Washington, D.C.-based American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which publishes Science, the multidisciplinary publication is the largest peer-reviewed

On February 15, the New York-based Metropolitan Life (MetLife) Foundation recognized two teams of biomedical scientists for the significance of their research and the collaborative nature of their work. The cash portion of the prize, known as the Awards for Medical Research, totaled $500,000. It was shared by the team of Robert W. Mahley, director of the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease and a professor of pathology and medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and Ka

My opinion is that all known stocks of the smallpox virus should be destroyed as soon as possible. I disagree with the premise of the late Bernard Fields's argument (quoted in K.Y. Kreeger, The Scientist, Nov. 14, 1994, page 1) that "destroying it ends the whole issue of possibly understanding it in the future." The only moral, humane reason for a scientist to study a virulent microbe is to obtain the minimum amount of information needed for its eradication_that is, how to create an effective v

I just wanted to congratulate you for publishing the article by Billy Goodman on religious scientists (The Scientist, Jan. 9, 1995, page 1). It seems that most scientific publications, and perhaps many scientists, are embarrassed by the fact that there are theists in their midst. Rather than try to understand the origins and implications of such faith, the scientific media tend to ignore its existence. As a Christian, I have long been confused by the attempts of my atheistic and agnostic collea

A federal law requiring National Institutes of Health-funded disease studies to show an adequate representation of women, minorities, and racial and ethnic subgroups is forcing researchers to adopt novel methods of inclusion. These methods often go far beyond incorporating minority groups into their research design plans. Means that investigators have adopted to attract and retain populations that conform to the new law include buying lunch, paying bus fare, opening satellite clinics, even goin

RETENTION: TWO METHODS Date: March 6, 1995 New York University Medical Center is isolated on the edge of Manhattan's affluent Kip's Bay neighborhood, an area that includes only sparse pockets of subsidized lower- and middle- income housing. According to Kay Ryan, director of clinical trials development for the center, "Here, the patient population is not more than half minority, and here we have to do something to recruit minorities." "Something," in NYU's case, is recruiting pa

Edited by : Neeraja Sankaran C. Fleming, J.H. Wasson, P. Albertsen, M.J. Barry, J. E. Wennberg, "A decision analysis of alternative treatment strategies for clinically localized prostate cancer," Journal of the American Medical Association, 269:2650-8, 1993. (Cited in 88 publications through January 1995) Comments by Craig Fleming, HealthOutcomes Associates, Vancouver, Wash. This evaluation of the relative efficacy of therapies for localized prostate cancer is part of a multi-institutional st

Edited by: Neeraja Sankaran S.A. Lipton, Y.B. Choi, Z.H. Pan, S.Z. Lei, H.S.V. Chen, N.J. Sucher, J. Loscalzo, D.J. Sibgel, J.S. Stamler, "A redox-based mechanism for the neuroprotective and neurodestructive effects of nitric oxide and related nitroso-compounds," Nature, 364:626-32, 1993. (Cited in 127 publications through January 1995) Comments by Stuart A. Lipton, Harvard Medical School, and Jonathan S. Stamler, Duke University This paper describes the effects of redox-related forms of nitric