Notebook

A Cell-abration At Rockefeller SEC Alleges Cyberspace Scam An Upholsterer's Dream Underendowed Stealth Stethoscope Heat-Seeking Enzymes Self-Improvement, Writ Large No Barneys Here Extinction for the Masses Shipping Science Rockefeller University (RU) marked the 50th anniversary of the use of the electron microscope in cell biology with a symposium, entitled "Journey Into the Cell," March 16-18. Lectures and special events highlighted the past, pres-ent, and future of the discipline. The program was organized by RU professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Gnter Blobel, a 1993 Lasker Award winner, and emeritus cell biology professor Philip Siekevitz. The first electron microscope image of an intact cell was published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine in March 1945 (81[3]:233-46) by RU scientists Keith R. Porter and Albert Claude in collaboration with Ernest F. Fullam of New York-based Interchemical Corp. Claude, who died in 1983 at the age of 84, won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1974 along with RU's Christian de Duve and George Palade, both of whom spoke at last month's event. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is the latest in a series of cops that have begun in earnest to pull over information superhighway travelers for violations. According to the New York Times (S. Antilla, "Market Place," March 16, 1995, page D10), SEC on March 14 sued a company called Telephone Information Systems and associated firms for allegedly promoting unregistered securities and a thinly disguised pyramid scheme on the America Online network. The Times quoted an SEC official who called the suit the first one in which the offer and sale of most of the securities took place in cyberspace. The article reported that more than 20,000 investors bought a "membership" share in Telephone Information Systems and were told that they would make money from a telephone lottery to be established in conjunction with an American Indian tribe. According to the article, an attorney representing John C. Hicks of Princeton, Ind., a lawyer for Telephone Information Systems named in the complaint, denies the charges. The University of Pennsylvania broke fund-raising records with its recently concluded Campaign for Penn, which netted $1.4 billion in cash and pledges. According to Penn officials, this is the largest amount ever raised in a higher-education campaign and surpasses the goal of $1 billion set at the initiation of the effort in 1989. Administrators at the Ivy League school say they have already received almost $1.1 billion of the total. The initiative resulted in the creation of 150 endowed chairs, reportedly the largest number ever created in such a campaign. Of these new chairs, according to a Penn spokesman, three are in chemistry, one in biology, 25 in medicine, one in anthropology, and 10 in engineering. Also newly endowed as a result of the campaign is the directorship of Penn's Morris Arboretum. The annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony--at which awards for dubious scientific achievement are bestowed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Museum, publishers of the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)--has lost its major source of support and is in danger of being discontinued, according to AIR staff. The festivities, held in MIT's Kresge Auditorium, generally attract a crowd of about 1,200 and require funding for union labor, props, equipment, printing, mailing, and other expenses, the "AIR-heads" stated in the March issue of "Mini-AIR," an electronic supplement to the journal. "Times are tight; these things happen," AIR cofounder Marc Abrahams tells The Scientist. The journal is suggesting a variety of ways for interested parties to endow the Ig Nobel Prizes. One is a contest (first prize: an AIR subscription; second prize: a poster and a chance to sit next to the Swedish Meatball King during the Ig Nobel ceremony), whose $1 entry fee goes to support the festivities. AIR-heads are also seeking sponsorship for this year's Heisenberg Certainty Lectures (four of which are given by actual Nobel laureates, three by invited guests such as Russell Johnson, who played the professor on TV's "Gilligan's Island"). Abrahams hopes those wishing to "preserve, protect, and defend the right of people" to carry on improbable research will chip in to sponsor the prizes--especially because "candidates are piling up at a very nice clip." In what may be the most versatile swords-to-plowshares example to date, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's pocket radar has stimulated more than 1,200 phone calls from companies and individuals as of mid-February. The technology, once used in defense applications, is currently licensed for automotive safety devices and electronic tools (K.Y. Kreeger, The Scientist, Sept.19, 1994, page 1). Researchers, however, are even more enthusiastic about its medical applications. "This is the greatest thing since sliced bread," remarks physician and mechanical engineer Elaine Ashby, Livermore medical engineering liaison. Because the radar detects motion, it can be used to monitor both the rate and motion of the heart wall. Other potential applications for the device include fetal imaging and monitoring sleeping infants. "One exceedingly simple use of it would be as a Sudden Infant Death Syndrome monitor. You could just put it underneath the mattress in the baby crib, and if the child stopped breathing and moving it could trigger an alarm," suggests Ashby. Health-insurance accountants might be interested to know that Livermore claims "the radar performs the same tasks for only $10 to $15 in off-the-shelf components as [medical] equipment that today costs approximately $40,000." Researchers are one step closer to realizing the much-touted scientific and commercial potential of enzymes from organisms that thrive at water-boiling temperatures (M.E. Watanabe, The Scientist, May 30, 1994, page 14). A team from the University of Georgia and the California Institute of Technology recently described the structure of one enzyme isolated from the hyperthermophylic marine archaeon Pyrococcus furiosus. The tungsten-containing enzyme--called aldehyde ferredoxin oxireductase (AOR)--is particularly interesting to evolutionary biologists and industrial chemists. By understanding the detailed structure of archael enzymes, Georgia biochemist Michael Adams predicts, Archaea "could be the key to understanding the evolution of various biological molecules." And because high-temperature enzymes such as AOR still function at temperatures above 100'C, chemists anticipate several practical applications for the heat- tolerant molecules, such as refining petroleum, converting corn starch to sweeter products, and developing stain-removing cleaners. Some might say science is taking the do-it-yourself movement a little too far, but investigators at two universities are researching forms of "grow-your-own" physiology. University of Michigan chemical engineer David Mooney is attempting to grow breast tissue for women who have undergone mastectomies by creating a biodegradable synthetic polymer matrix that will facilitate the growth of new breast tissue from small samples of a woman's own breast cells. The matrix would serve both to transplant the cells and as a template directing tissue development. The initial breast tissue expansion would be grown in vitro and implanted; over time the matrix would degrade. Mooney and others have already grown liver and cartilage tissue using this technology. Meanwhile, Jeffrey M. Isner, a Tufts University professor of medicine and clinical professor of pathology, is using gene therapy to help patients with severely clogged arteries grow their own "bypass." Through a process called angiogenesis--in which the smooth muscle cells lining a blocked arterial wall are infused with trillions of genes found to produce new blood vessels--Isner proposes growing collateral blood vessels to bypass the blockage. The first clinical trials of the process are under way at the Vascular Center at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Boston. On June 2, New York City's American Museum of Natural History will open two new halls to display the largest exhibition of dinosaur fossils in the world. On view will be some 100 specimens--85 percent of which are real, as opposed to casts-- representing roughly 5 percent of the museum's collection of about 2,000 dinosaur fossils, considered one of the most extensive in the world. In addition to the dinosaur fossils, interactive computer stations throughout the hall will combine films, animations, illustrations, and video interviews with museum scientists to examine both the evolutionary relationships of dinosaurs and their habitats in different periods. The opening of the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs and the Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs represents the second phase of a restructuring of the museum's fourth-floor fossil halls. When completed in 1996, the renovation will encompass six halls devoted to vertebrate evolution. The first two halls--the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing of Mammals and Their Extinct Relatives--opened last May. Whether humans may soon be joining the dinosaurs on display at the American Museum of Natural History was the theme of last month's issue of Geotimes (40[3]), the monthly magazine of the American Geological Institute in Alexandria, Va. Seven American scientists examined life on Earth before, during, and after extinction events and found the phenomenon "more pervasive, more common, more sudden, and of greater long-term evolutionary consequence than previously believed," according to the institute. Among the issue's various findings relating to present times, the researchers provided evidence to confirm the common belief of ecologists that modern rates of biodiversity loss are equal to or greater than those calculated for ancient mass extinction. The scientists predict global biodiversity crises will probably reach mass-extinction proportions early in the next century. The Washington, D.C.-based International Science Foundation (ISF) is making its facilities available, free of charge, to nonprofit organizations to ease the transfer of funds and equipment to noncommercial research and education programs in the former Soviet Union (FSU) and Baltic countries. Through its Grant Assistance Program, ISF will arrange for: the transfer of funds to FSU banks, exemptions from various taxes, shipping of lab supplies, discounted equipment purchasing, discounted airline tickets for FSU and Baltic scientists, secure delivery of shipments, and on-site grant management. Organizations utilizing ISF services assume the direct costs associated with the transfer of resources. For more information, contact the Grant Assistance Program, International Science Foundation, 1054 31st St., N.W., Suite 110, Washington, D.C. 20007; (202) 342-2760. Fax: (202) 342- 2765. E-mail: info@isf.org.

Notebook

The Scientist Staff

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