Notebook

The Board of Directors of City Trusts of the city of Philadelphia honored three researchers last month for inventions that have contributed to the "comfort, welfare, and happiness" of mankind. The three were given John Scott Awards, consisting of a copper medal and a $10,000 prize. An unshared award went to Barry J. Marshall, a 1995 Lasker laureate and a clinical associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Virginia, for discovering the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in causing peptic ulcers (see story on page 1). In presenting the award to Marshall, The Scientist publisher Eugene Garfield noted that the "primordial paper" reporting this discovery (B.R. Marshall, J.R. Warren, Lancet, 1:1311-5, 1984) "has already been explicitly cited in over 800 papers, and it's therefore, by definition, a 'Citation Classic.'" SKY HIGH: Astronomers John Mather, left, and Joseph Taylor receive John Scott awards. John C. Mather, a researcher at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Joseph H. Taylor, a professor of physics at Princeton University and a 1990 physics Nobelist, were named to share an award for their contributions to "understanding our universe." Mather was cited for designing a sensitive infrared spectrophotometer to measure cosmic background radiation from the Big Bang (Hot Papers, The Scientist, Sept. 30, 1991, page 15). Taylor was named for his discovery of the first double pulsar. At the ceremony, Robin M. Hochstrasser, Donner Professor of Physical Science at the University of Pennsylvania and secretary of the John Scott Medal Advisory Committee, noted that the award to the two astronomers marked the first time the committee had "favored a discovery that reached in a direct way beyond our own planet." The award was endowed in the early 1800s by John Scott, a druggist from Edinburgh, Scotland, who named the city of Philadelphia to administer it. Scott never visited the city but is believed to have been an admirer of Benjamin Franklin. An Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) complaint filed in 1991 by 19 individuals against controversial psychology professor J. Philippe Rushton of the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada, has been dropped. Rushton, whose research focuses on measuring racial differences in brain size and intelligence (J.P. Rushton, The Scientist, Oct. 3, 1994, page 13; May 14, 1990, page 17), was accused of violating three sections of the Ontario Human Rights Code by "poisoning the academic learning environment" at the university. The complainants requested that Rushton's employment at the university be terminated; that any teaching of theories that constitute racism be prohibited; that a declaration that academic racism contravenes the Ontario Human Rights Code be issued; that the university be required to examine its curriculum so as to eliminate academic racism and reflect the province's ethnic diversity; and that continuation of racist research be prohibited at the university. In a November 24 letter to an attorney for some of the plaintiffs in the case, OHRC acting case coordinator J. Christopher McKinnon wrote that letters addressed to 11 of the complainants were returned as undeliverable and "since we have lost contact with the complainants, this case has been considered abandoned and the case-file closed." Rushton issued a statement to the press following the dropping of the case saying, "it [is] unfortunate that Canada [does] not have anything constitutionally as strong as the United States' First Amendment which would strike down inquisitional tribunals." In one of the less surprising revelations of the year, researchers at the University of North Carolina (UNC) and colleagues have confirmed that excessive consumption of beer can lead to the condition commonly known as "beer belly." At the same time, however, they discovered that, beyond aesthetic concerns, the condition may point to health hazards of a more serious nature. In a comparison of beer drinkers and wine drinkers, the scientists found that beer tends to build a central paunch, or "potbelly," while wine drinkers tend to have narrower waists, even when the same amount of alcohol and calories is consumed by both. "Previous studies have found that body fat distribution is an important risk factor not only for cardiovascular mortality, but also for all-cause mortality," according to Myra Carpenter, project manager of the Artherosclerosis Risk in Communities study, based at the Collaborative Studies Coordinating Center, a division of UNC's biostatistics department. The atherosclerosis study is the world's largest cardiovascular project of its kind, says Carpenter. It follows 15,800 black and white men and women through extensive interviews and examinations every three years. "The fat distribution that shows up as 'beer bellies,' or what scientists call 'central adiposity,' appears to promote heart disease in some way," Carpenter reports. Researchers measured the waists and hips of volunteers -- most of whom hailed from Forsyth County, N.C.; Jackson, Miss.; the Minneapolis area; and Washington County, Md., and were not heavy drinkers -- and calculated mathematical ratios. They found "small, but statistically significant evidence" that the more beer one consumed, the higher one's waist-to-hip ratio; the more wine, the smaller the ratio, according to a UNC statement. Investigators controlled for such variables as race, age, gender, economic status, level of drinking, and weight. They could not control for possible differences in personality between wine and beer drinkers. Tufts University researchers aimed a little higher in inventing an "artificial nose." The fiber optic and computer "nose" can identify many substances by their smells. The patented device they created can tell the differences between, for example, alcohols that differ by one carbon atom, and can identify five-carbon esters that smell like bananas. The nose uses 10 probes to record responses to up to a million substances. The nose acts much like a human nose, which houses millions of sensors that send messages to the olfactory bulb, a pea-sized structure between the eyes. The olfactory bulb pares the messages down to a few thousand, which it relates to the brain. Among the uses envisioned for the new device are detecting the signature odor of a human being for identification as well as diagnostic purposes; monitoring air quality; detecting fuel leaks, environmental contaminants, and substances in the blood; and determining food quality. The scientists aspire to detect odorless gases, like methane. One sobering note, according to a Tufts statement: The device is "in some cases, almost as good as a well-trained human nose. Not nearly as good, however, as a dog's nose." Especially, no doubt, when wet. CLONED: IMAGE cofounder Greg Lennon engulfed in 384-well plates. The largest public collection of human DNA clones in the world -- 200,000 in all -- is now available, for a fee, to scientists in considerably less time than before. The clones are thought to represent pieces of DNA from one-third to one- half of all human genes. Complementary DNA (cDNA) clones gathered and distributed by the Integrated Molecular Analysis of Genome Expression (IMAGE) Consortium and housed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. (K.Y. Kreeger, The Scientist, May 15, 1995, page 1), will now be handled by a group of five public and private organizations. These are: American Type Culture Collection of Rockville, Md.; Genome Systems Inc. of St. Louis; Research Genetics of Huntsville, Ala.; the Resource Center/ Primary Data Base of the German Genome Project in Berlin; and the United Kingdom UGMP Resource Centre in Hinxton, England. Research Genetics and Genome Systems are private biotech firms and the other organizations are nonprofit research centers. Funding limitations at Livermore and a growing demand for the clones prompted the development of this arrangement. Before, orders for clones took three to four weeks to be filled and were limited to three clones at a time. Now, requests are filled within 24 to 48 hours and scientists can order anywhere from one clone to the entire set of 200,000. Clones can be ordered via the World Wide Web at http://wwwbio.llnl.gov/bbrp/image/image.html. RED PLANET RENDERINGS: Scene from the CD Time capsules are buried all over Earth. In an other-worldly twist on this tradition, the Planetary Society of Pasadena, Calif., and New York-based Time Warner Inc. have developed a multi-media compact disk that chronicles human musings on the planet Mars, which will be left buried beneath that planet's surface. It will be carried there in a capsule attached to the Mars '96 Lander, an unmanned probe that is part of the Russian space mission to the planet late next year. The CD, "Visions of Mars," pulls together decades of references in popular culture to the red planet, covering key works of science fiction; images such as comic-book cover art; and audio segments like Orson Welles's infamous 1938 "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast. The disk contains more than 70 books, short stories, and articles written about Mars -- including works by Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, and Kurt Vonnegut -- as well as photos and artwork dating back to before the turn of the century. Narration for the disk is provided by "Star Trek: The Next Generation" star Patrick Stewart (Capt. Jean-Luc Picard). The disk, with instructions on how to play it, is intended to send greetings to future generations of Earthlings who might one day visit or colonize Mars. One catch: A CD-ROM player is not being sent because it couldn't withstand the rigors of spaceflight or a Mars landing. To view its contents, the developers are banking on future Mars visitors' being able to juryrig a player or tap into what by then (when a manned mission is launched) would be an old-style CD player back on Earth, say, one that might be part of a collection at the Smithsonian Institution. Present-day Earth dwellers won't have to wait for a trip to outer space to view "Visions of Mars." The disk is available through Virtual Reality Labs Inc., 2341 Ganador Court, San Luis Obispo, Calif. 93401; (800) 545-8515, or by E-mail at: vrli@aol.com, or 75300.3706@compuserve.com. Taxpayers Against Fraud, The False Claims Act Legal Center (TAF), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting use of the qui tam provisions of the federal False Claims Act (F. Hoke, The Scientist, Sept. 4, 1995, page 1), has expanded its World Wide Web site. Under qui tam, those with evidence of fraud against federal programs or contracts are empowered to sue the alleged wrongdoer -- including universities and their scientists -- on behalf of the government. The law allows for recovery of up to three times the amount of research grants involving fraudulent claims, plus penalties. TAF's Web site (http://www.taf.org) features an organization profile, frequently asked questions, statistical trends, publications, and an online version of the statute. TAF provides litigation support to private plaintiffs and counsel.

Notebook

The Scientist Staff

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