March 1996

But Various Regulatory Obstacles Persist Date: March 4, 1996 (The Scientist, Vol:10, #5, pg.1 & 8, March 4, 1996) (Copyright ©, The Scientist, Inc.) SIDEBAR : Functional Foods: An AG Biotech Boom? Life scientists are finding new opportunities to test wise words uttered by the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates: "Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine be your food." OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS: Louis Lasagna notes the field's potential. In academic and industry labs across the United

SENSE OF PROPORTION: "more needs to be done relative to the scale of the problem," remarks Stanford ecologist Gretchen Daily. The worldwide spate of emerging and reemerging infectious diseases in the first half of this decade has prompted a growing recognition of the connection between global climate change and human health. Individual researchers from such disparate disciplines as epidemiology and public health, ecology, virology, climatology, nutrition, and biomedicine have directly addresse

Optimism, Caution Date: March 4, 1996 (The Scientist, Vol:10, #5, pg.3 & 6, March 4, 1996) (Copyright ©, The Scientist, Inc.) When Oakland, Calif., AIDS activist-now patient-turned-guinea-pig-Jeff Getty received baboon bone marrow cells in December, doctors gave the daring cross-species experiment little chance of working. Now, three months later, scientists are debating not only whether or not the procedure was a success, but also if it was appropriate in the first place. In question also

Life Science Journals The career of nearly every scientist-male or female on a university faculty includes a stint reviewing papers for professional journals. But at the higher levels of editorial leadership-the editors-in-chief and other senior-level journal editors -- the number of men far outpaces the number of women. For example, Science, Nature, Cell, the Journal of Molecular Biology, Genetics, Molecular and Cellular Biology, the Journal of Immunology, and many others all have a male scien

Bringing together the normally disparate disciplines of ecology, ethics, environmental management, economics, and medicine is the goal of the two-year-old International Society for Ecosystem Health. The society and its journal, Ecosystem Health (Blackwell Science Inc., Cambridge, Mass.), are run by ecologist David Rapport, who holds the Eco-Research Chair in Ecosystem Health at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. In 1994 Rapport and University of Maryland ecologist Robert Costanza coc

In the excitement over functional foods in the supermarket, researchers shouldn't overlook other opportunities -- namely, animals and agriculture, according to George Kidd, president of the management consulting firm Kidd and Co. Inc. of Shorewood, Wis. Kidd believes that the animal feed market offers pharmaceutical companies the perfect chance to seize functional food technology. "There are 1,200 human health companies that specialize in biotech," he says. "On the other hand, only a few speci

Depletion Date: March 4, 1996 (The Scientist, Vol:10, #5, pg.9 & 12, March 4, 1996) (Copyright ©, The Scientist, Inc.) Editor's Note: Three months ago, the Nobel Prize in chemistry was presented to three researchers "for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone." In announcing the awarding of the 1995 prize to Paul Crutzen of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany; Mario Molina of the Massachusetts Institute of

Copyrightº 1996 by Eric Albert ACROSS 1 Glycolysis end product 5 Complex heterocyclic ketone 10 Strength 11 Of a chemical compound containing carbon 12 Chemical bond 13 Gland that releases oxytocin 16 Any of a class of spherically shaped carbon molecules 17 Protist's locomotion features 18 Radioactivity unit 20 Synthesis of more complex substances from simpler ones 23 Responding to stimuli 25 ____ of Henle (kidney piece) 29 Serve as a stimulus 30 ____ fragments (DNA substrands) 31 Ha

Equipment and Supplies Date: March 4, 1996 (The Scientist, Vol:10, #5, pg.19, March 4, 1996) (Copyright ©, The Scientist, Inc.) Amicon Inc. J.T. Baker Chemical Co. Beckman Instruments Inc. Bio-Rad Laboratories CAMAG Scientific Inc. Fisher Scientific PerSeptive Biosystems Inc. Pharmacia Biotech Inc. Pierce Chemical Co. Rainin Instrument Co. Inc. Scanalytics Sigma-Aldrich Chromatography Spectronics Corp. VWR Scientific Whatman Inc.

Copyrightº 1996 by Eric Albert ACROSS 1 Glycolysis end product 5 Complex heterocyclic ketone 10 Strength 11 Of a chemical compound containing carbon 12 Chemical bond 13 Gland that releases oxytocin 16 Any of a class of spherically shaped carbon molecules 17 Protist's locomotion features 18 Radioactivity unit 20 Synthesis of more complex substances from simpler ones 23 Responding to stimuli 25 ____ of Henle (kidney piece) 29 Serve as a stimulus 30 ____ fragments (DNA substrands) 31 Ha

That Ozone Politics Played A Role Date: March 4, 1996 (The Scientist, Vol:10, #5, pg.9 & 12, March 4, 1996) (Copyright ©, The Scientist, Inc.) In awarding the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry to the originators of the stratospheric ozone depletion hypothesis, the Swedish Academy of Sciences has chosen to make a political statement. Quoting from the citation: "The three researchers have contributed to our salvation from a global environmental problem that could have catastrophic consequences

Contributions To Knowledge Date: March 4, 1996 (The Scientist, Vol:10, #5, pg.9 & 12, March 4, 1996) (Copyright ©, The Scientist, Inc.) In December, Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina, and F. Sherwood Rowland received the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work toward understanding how stratospheric ozone is naturally produced and destroyed and wherein human activities are capable of reducing worldwide ozone. The many other scientists who contributed atmospheric observations, laboratory meas

Having taken part in the first Ig Nobel celebration, which Marc Abrahams staged five years ago, and two others since, I can reassure George Scherr [Letters, The Scientist, Jan. 8, 1996, page 12], if he ever does witness that event, he surely would not want to claim to have originated it! His strange letter may be a plea to be considered for Ig Nobel dis-stink-shun. Dudley Herschbach Harvard University Department of Chemistry 12 Oxford St. Cambridge, Mass. 02138

I am writing to set the record straight. In a letter in the Nov. 13, 1995, issue of The Scientist [page 13], Paul K. Strudler, a National Institutes of Health grants administrator, refers to my article entitled "How Federal Funding Mechanisms Stifle Basic Biomedical Research (The Scientist, Aug. 21, 1995, page 10) as evidence that I believe that NIH study sections are not reviewing basic science applications adequately. In fact, I wrote that new innovative research-that is, R01s -- whether in

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I recently read the letter that George Scherr had submitted to The Scientist concerning the relationship between the Journal of Irreproducible Results and the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR) [G.H. Scherr The Scientist, Jan. 8, 1996, page 12]. As a member of the editorial board of AIR, I felt I should respond. I was fascinated to read that Scherr asserts that neither Marc Abrahams nor AIR were ever associated with the Ig Nobel Prize. I participated in what I supposed to be the last two Ig

K. Braig, Z. Otwinowski, R. Hegde, D.C. Boisvert, A.Joachimiak, A.L. Horwich, P.B. Sigler, "The crystal structure of the bacterial chaperonin GroEL at 2.8 angstroms," Nature, 371:578-86, 1994. (Cited in more than 100 publications as of February 1996) W.A. Fenton, Y. Kashi, K. Furtak, A. Horwich, "Residues in chaperonin GroEL required for polypeptide binding and release," Nature, 371:614-9, 1994. (Cited in more than 60 publications as of February 1996) Comments by Arthur Horwich and Paul Sigle

W.J. Su, R.L. Woodward, A.M. Dziewonski, "Degree-12 model of shear velocity heterogeneity in the mantle," Journal of Geophysical Research -- Solid Earth, 99:6945-80, 1994. (Cited in more than 50 publications as of February 1996) Comments by Adam Dziewonski, Harvard University According to Adam Dziewonski, a professor of geophysics at Harvard University, this paper describes the "highest resolution available for three-dimensional, seismological models of the Earth." He relates that such models