Notebook

National Institutes of Health administrators are unhappy once again--with self-styled fraud investigators Walter Stewart and Ned Feder, this time for alleged misuse of NIH stationery. It appears the infraction is that, under NIH letterhead on January 23, the two men forwarded a copy of an as-yet-unreleased congressional inquiry into alleged scientific misconduct by HIV researcher Robert C. Gallo of the National Cancer Institute to Kenneth Ryan, chairman of the federal Commission on Research Integrity and a professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School. The action landed Stewart and Feder a stern February 15 official reprimand from their supervisor, L. Earl Laurence, who called the mailing a "flagrant violation" of the terms of his April 1993 directives to them to cease misconduct in-quiries while on NIH time. In one 1993 letter, Laurence wrote, "So that there is no misunderstanding, you are not to use Government stationery, equipment, supplies, or other resources to pursue such activities." Stewart counters that he and Feder received written approval from Laurence to appear before Ryan's commission on November 7 and says that, during the course of their testimony, they were invited to furnish "follow-up materials" to the commission. With this in mind, he and Feder sent the Gallo report to Ryan on NIH letterhead because they considered it an extension of their approved appearance before the commission. Animal-rights activist Rodney Coronado, charged in a 1992 fire that destroyed research facilities at Michigan State University (MSU) as well as acts of theft, arson, and conspiracy in four other states (M. Devins, The Scientist, June 8, 1992, page 4), pleaded guilty to two felony charges March 3 in United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan in Grand Rapids. Coronado, 28, pleaded guilty to a charge of aiding and abetting the MSU fire that destroyed the laboratories and research of Richard Aulerich, who was studying the effects of toxins on mink, and Karen Chou, who ironically was investigating alternatives to animal models in an adjoining lab. The Animal Liberation Front had claimed responsibility for the acts. Coronado faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each charge at his sentencing, scheduled for June 7. Coronado had been charged in connection with other acts of arson and vandalism in Washington, Utah, and Oregon, and was the object of a 14-month manhunt before being captured at the Pasqua Yaqui Reservation outside of Tucson, Ariz., last September. Under the plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney's office, Coronado will not be compelled to provide testimony in any other federal proceedings on the incidents, although according to U.S. Attorney Michael H. Dettmer, Coronado has repudiated using violence for political ends and further involvement in animal-rights groups. Before you get ready to pick those spring flowers, it might be wise to bear in mind the findings of a recent State University of New York, Buffalo, study that plants retain an "immunological memory" of injuries done to them and react more quickly to future attacks as a result. "Plants are individuals with histories, who perceive their environments and who have evolved responses to those environments," according to Ian Baldwin, an associate professor of biological sciences at SUNY-Buffalo. The defensive responses plants are able to mount are limited to chemical ones-- after all, "animals can run away, plants cannot," Baldwin notes. His team observed that a substance called jasmonic acid is produced by tobacco plants when their leaves are damaged by insects. The acid, in turn, stimulates the plants to produce higher levels of nicotine--toxic to insects--in their leaves to ward off further attacks. By dosing the roots of tobacco plants with jasmonic acid, the researchers were able to signal the plants that they were under attack without damaging the plants. By then measuring nicotine levels in the leaves, they found that plants once challenged with the acid produced more nicotine faster than their naive counterparts. "The reason why vaccines work in humans and animals," Baldwin says, "is that you're stimulating the immune system to remember something. In the same way, it seems that plants do have memories from prior attacks." The Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, newly released by the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, D.C., an educational arm of the United States judiciary, aims to give judges clear, written guidelines for dealing with some of the complex scientific and technological issues often faced in the courtroom. The manual contains seven reference guides providing frameworks for assessing evidence in the fields of epidemiology, toxicology, survey research, forensic DNA, statistics, multiple regression, and estimation of economic losses in damage awards. It also addresses use of the so-called extraordinary procedures of court- appointed experts and special masters--independent experts who directly assist a judge in handling all or a portion of the scientific evidence in a given case. According to Joseph S. Cecil, scientific evidence project director at the center, the manual is intended to aid judges in the application of the rules governing expert evidence and in the management of such evidence, and serves only as a starting point for judges--the litigating parties must still educate the court about the specifics of a given case. Cecil says the center is eager to receive comments from the scientific community concerning the manual, which is available for sale from a number of publishers or via the Internet for free. Web browsers, such as Mosaic or Netscape, can be pointed to http://www.fjc.gov, the center's home page, where the manual is listed under the publications heading. Publishers selling the manual are also listed there. Participants in Purdue University's annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest have once again turned a simple task into an elaborate event. This year's challenge was to build a machine to turn on a radio. Sound simple? Not until you hear the rules: Use a minimum of 20 steps, with no human intervention, and within a five-minute time limit. Calling themselves the "Gluttons for Pun-ishment," the winning team of eight science and engineering undergraduates designed a radio theme into several segments of their 31-step gizmo. For example, the last series of steps involved dropping a pair of headphones onto a pipe, which poured a bowl of cereal called "Stereos." The weight of the cereal pulled a switch that turned on the radio. Referring to the pun-ishing part of the team's name, Alex Nicoll, a senior in electrical engineering, adds: "Considering the number of times we cut ourselves and skinned our fingers, we took a lot of punishment while building this thing." The Gluttons received a cash award of $200--which offset the $150 they spent on parts for the apparatus--among other prizes. They will now compete in the national championship, which will take place this week, also at Purdue. The contest honors the late cartoonist Rube Goldberg, known for his drawings of complex devices performing simple procedures. A study conducted by psychologists Mark Muehlbach and James Walsh of St. Luke's Hospital in Chesterfield, Mo., confirms what some overworked researchers may already have suspected: One or two cups of coffee can significantly improve alertness in night workers. In the study (M.J. Muehlbach, J.K. Walsh, Sleep, 8[1]:22-8, 1995), half of a group of 30 subjects ingested the java at 10:30 p.m. and 1:30 a.m.; the other half drank decaf. The researchers found that those who had the high-octane drink made corrections faster on an assembly-line, night-shift task than the decaf group did. According to a survey cited by Muehlbach and Walsh in their paper, three-quarters of night-shifters say they get sleepy every night and about one-fifth report having fallen asleep on the job. Another finding may not come as a cataclysmic shock, but does provide some new insights on an old problem, Harvard School of Public Health, Brigham Young University, and American Cancer Society researchers have concluded that environmental smoke and soot are "strongly associated" with increased risk of death--at a rate 15 percent to 17 percent higher than the risk associated with life in less polluted areas. The study of 151 U.S. cities involved more than 500,000 people--larger than any previous study on this subject. It compared, for the first time, the effects of particulate air pollution on smokers and those who had never smoked, according to the scientists. The investigators found that pollution damaged lung tissue, impaired lung function, and caused other health problems for nonsmokers as well as smokers. Stanford University chemistry professor Carl Djerassi, who received the National Medal of Science in 1973 for the synthesis of the first steroid oral contraceptive, the National Medal of Technology in 1991 for innovative approaches to pest control, and the Priestley Medal in 1992 for outstanding research in his field, has made another contribution to a different discipline-- literature. His book The Bourbaki Gambit, which he refers to as "science-in-fiction," has just been published by the University of Georgia Press. The novel deals with the invention and development of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and "addresses the twin issues of collegiality and the desire for fame," as Djerassi writes in the book's foreword. In the foreword, Djerassi acknowledges PCR's real inventor, Kary Mullis, and notes that "in no way should the actions or behavior of [the book's scientist characters] be attributed to any living person." The new novel is the second volume in what Djerassi calls a "projected tetralogy" on modern science; the first, Cantor's Dilemma, appeared in 1989 (C. Djerassi, The Scientist, Oct. 30, 1989, page 19). The multitalented chemist, who founded the Djerassi Resident Artists Program near San Francisco, selected the Rene Magritte painting The Sorcerer for the book jacket illustration. Biotechnology's ability to bring its creations to the marketplace was highlighted at a March 6 reception sponsored by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, and the Alternative Agriculture Research Center. All of the foods served at the Washington, D.C., event were whipped up with biotech-produced ingredients. And, amazingly enough, the much-hyped Flavr Savr tomato from Davis, Calif.-based Calgene Inc. was not on the menu. Attendees feasted on FreshWorld Farms Carrot Bites and sweet seedless peppers from DNA Plant Technology of Oakland; salsa made from DNA Plant Technology's tomatoes; pizza containing tomato paste from genetically modified processing tomatoes produced by Zeneca Plant Sciences of Wilmington, Del.; and glazed cinnamon nut bars made with flour produced from genetically engineered, herbicide- resistant soybeans from St. Louis-based Monsanto Co.

Notebook

The Scientist Staff

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