November 1992

Science policy leaders are applauding the findings of a Carnegie Commission task force that has called for establishing a new, nongovernmental "national forum" to develop long-term science and technology goals for the United States. Frank Press, president of the National Academy of Sciences, says he hopes that steps can be taken quickly to implement the study group's recommendation that the forum be based within the NAS complex. "The procedure will be for us to make a proposal to the Carnegie

Date: November 23, 1992 In the first major move toward translating into research the National Institutes of Health's "largest coordinated study of women's health ever undertaken," a coordinating center has been named. Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center will be overseeing research efforts and analyzing the data from up to 45 clinical centers, the first 15 of which will be identified by NIH in March. Each center will employ about nine researchers. During the course of the Women's

Cornelius J. Pings, due to become president of the Association of American Universities (AAU) February 15, will be a strong advocate for university-based basic science, say academic investigators, research administrators, and Washington policy professionals. Fifty-six United States and two Canadian universities with strong research programs constitute the 92-year-old AAU's membership. The institutions, about half public and half private, are represented by their chief executive officers. Base

Two government agencies have granted Dartmouth College nearly $445,000 to organize a curriculum and develop a course plan designed to teach budding scientists about research ethics. The designers of the project anticipate that the educational materials, once they are published, will be used by other schools developing similar programs. The Dartmouth effort consists of two distinct projects organized by the school's Institute for the Study of Applied and Professional Ethics. Both the National S

A scientific society's burgeoning growth is usually seen as unadulterated good news for its members, promising, among other things, increased political clout for their discipline. But according to some scientists, very large societies can also have a downside. Size-related problems may include a disproportionate skewing of a society's focus away from small but important subdisciplines, and meetings whose overloaded formats make it hard for attendees to focus on science, researchers say. Some a

Date: November 23, 1992 Editor's Note: Indications are that the National Institutes of Health's controversial gene-patenting initiative, now widely seen as moribund, is really as good as dead. At press time, a final decision on the matter was still in the hands of Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan, but sources at HHS feel the initiative is on insecure legal footing and will be dropped. Before the proposal more or less gave up its ghost, however, it served to stimulate anim

I am grateful for the attention you have given the plant sciences (Scott Veggeberg, The Scientist, Sept. 14, 1992, page 14) and the breadth of opinions reflected in your interviews. I'd like to clarify one important point, however, regarding your summary of the National Research Council report "Plant Biology Research and Training for the 21st Century." Our report does not say that "the majority of the agency's [the United States Department of Agriculture's] research budget goes to land grant u

I have just read an article by Sherry Leonard in your Aug. 31, 1992, issue (page 11) entitled "Researchers Would Benefit Immensely From A Scientific `Consumer Reports.' " I would like to point out that there is such a publication for part of the scientific community. Analytical Consumer, a monthly newsletter devoted to instrumentation for the analytical chemistry lab, provides information on a measuring technology each month. Our subscribers report that our unbiased information is a valuable i

Date: November 23, 1992 A major goal of all animal rights activists is to stop the use of animals in scientific research, no matter how humanely it is conducted or how many human or animal lives would be saved or enhanced by it. The only differences among the various animal rights groups are the tactics and timetables for achieving that goal. Guided by what they consider a higher ethic, some animal rights zealots will use any means, including terrorism, to accomplish their objectives. The cli

Date: November 23, 1992 Even as the superconducting supercollider survives another funding battle and lurches toward completion, some physicists are already wondering what comes next. The power of SSC collisions will fall far short of re-creating the state of matter at the instant the universe was born--an eventual goal of particle physicists. In order to give high- energy colleagues a new generation of tools to continue probing the mysteries of matter, a few plasma physicists are working on

L.-H. Tsai, E. Harlow, M. Meyerson, "Isolation of the human cdk2 gene that encodes the cyclin A- and adenovirus E1A-associated p33 kinase," Nature, 353:174-7, 1991. Li-Huei Tsai (Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, Charlestown, Mass.): "Regulation of the onset of cellular DNA synthesis appears to be an important mechanism for small DNA tumor viruses to immortalize cells. Both the retinoblastoma gene product (pRB) and cyclin A, two of the adenovirus E1A targeted cellular proteins, hav

Date: November 23, 1992 Until recently, computation-intensive programs that allow researchers to control their data pictorially--through program shells known as Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs)--were largely impractical for research chemists using MS-DOS-based personal computers. On-screen manipulation of molecules, for example, requires many recalculations per cycle of the central processing unit (CPU); and with real-time chemistry data acquisition, the computational requirements become even

When astronomer Bruce Partridge left Princeton University to join the faculty at Haverford College, a small liberal arts college in southeastern Pennsylvania, his colleagues thought he was crazy. But 22 years later, Partridge says it was the best decision he ever made. "Sure, there's times when I wish I was in the fast lane," says Partridge, now Haverford's provost. "But I'm more fulfilled personally in this setting. I've been able to maintain a research career that made me happy, it's a pleas

For years, critics have argued that the National Science Foundation's system of grant review is not receptive to novel or unorthodox ideas. But NSF has not failed to take notice of this charge. In 1989, spurred by complaints about reviewer conservatism, NSF introduced a new type of award known as Small Grants for Exploratory Research (SGER). Although still not widely known today, these grants exist expressly for the purpose of supporting speculative research endeavors that might not otherwise r

Office At NIEHS Date: November 23, 1992 In an effort to attract more minority students to careers in science-related fields, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has established the Office of Institutional Development (OID). Marian Johnson-Thompson, a former biology professor at the University of the District of Columbia, has been named the office's first director. Founded in August, OID, whose administration will be located in Research Triangle Park, N.C., will pr

Date: November 23, 1992 "It just happens that I'm female," says Marjorie A. Hoy, an entomology professor at the University of Florida, adding that any professional interest in her should be focused on her research rather than her gender. In September, the university bestowed upon Hoy the title of eminent scholar at the Gainesville campus' Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences; she is the first woman to receive the honor from the school. "Hopefully, my research and academic qualificatio

Office At NIEHS Kimball C. Atwood 3rd, a geneticist who developed molecular hybridization for chromo- some analysis, died October 13 at his home in Woods Hole, Mass. He was 71 years old. From 1961 to 1969, Atwood worked at the University of Illinois, Urbana, as head of the department of microbiology. From 1969 to 1987, he was a professor of human genetics and development at Columbia University. He received his M.D. from New York University College of Medicine in 1942. Frederic A. Gibbs, a ne

Eyes Forward Xenotransplant IIf Microchip Masterpieces Physicists, China Collide Prehistoric Desk Reference In one of his last public appearances before the 1992 presidential election, White House science adviser D. Allan Bromley dwelled somewhat on the past but set his sights on the future. In Philadelphia October 19 to accept an honorary doctorate of science from Drexel University, Bromley, during the presentation ceremony, lauded the Bush administration's achievements in science duri