Notebook

Probe Of Stewart And Feder Transfer Going to the Source NIH AIDS Office Head Named Does It Pay To Advertise? Scents And Sensibility Information Freebie Law Enforcement's Other 'Bug' Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) announced February 14 that the General Accounting Office had agreed to undertake an investigation of the April 1993 forced reassignments of Walter Stewart and Ned Feder at the National Institutes of Health. The internal personnel transfer effectively ended the pair's long- standing but controversial scientific misconduct investigations at NIH. Their offices, containing confidential files on many cases of potential misconduct, have been sealed since the transfer. In September 1993, Grassley and Sen. William Cohen (R- Maine) asked for a GAO investigation of the action against Stewart and Feder as a possible violation of the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, of which the two senators were cosponsors. "I believe it is vital that those who reveal waste and fraud of taxpayer money be protected from reprisal," Grassley said in a statement. As readers of The Scientist's Jan. 24, 1994, issue learned, National Science Foundation director Neal Lane recognizes that women are "underrepresented" in science. He expressed his feelings on page 12 of that issue in a commentary titled "Women In Science: Much Has Been Accomplished, But Much Remains To Be Done." Lane called on members of the science, math, and engineering community "to accelerate progress to provide women the same opportunities as men," and invited readers to share with him any ideas on this issue by writing to him at: NSF, 4201 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, Va. 22230. Now, Lane has established an ad hoc E-mail address dedicated to receiving suggestions on improving the status of women in science. Readers are invited to submit their ideas to Lane at the following address: eowomen@nsf.gov. This direct link will be in effect until mid-August. On February 16, National Institutes of Health director Harold Varmus named a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) immunologist, William E. Paul, to head the Office of AIDS Research (OAR). Paul was a member of the search committee for the position until other committee members prevailed upon him to consider the post himself. He will oversee an OAR newly consolidated by the NIH Revitalization Act of 1993. Under that law, OAR will directly control the $1.3 billion in AIDS funding for all of the NIH institutes, including a $100 million discretionary research fund. The 1993 legislation also removed OAR from the jurisdiction of Paul's former boss, NIAID director Anthony S. Fauci, who had originally created a less- powerful version of OAR in 1988. AIDS activists say they are pleased with the appointment, but will be watching closely to see how the Paul-Fauci relationship develops. Launched last November and running through this coming May, a celebratory series of lectures, seminars, and symposia at New York City's Rockefeller University honors three scientists-- Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty. As noted in the Feb. 21, 1994, issue of The Scientist (J. Lederberg, page 11), this year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication by this trio of a research report that, essentially, showed that genes are made of DNA ("Studies on the chemical nature of the substance inducing transformation of pneumococcal types," Journal of Experimental Medicine, 79:137-58, Feb. 1, 1944). According to many scientists intimately acquainted with the team's achievements, it is a disappointing footnote to the history of 20th-century genetics that Avery, MacLeod, and McCarty were never awarded the Nobel Prize--despite their reputation for having provided the gateway to modern biomedical research. At one of the celebratory events last month, Nobel Prize-winning molecular virologist Alfred Hershey posed a relatively simple explanation for the team's regrettable underrecognition; in so doing, Hershey may have delivered a subtle message to those of today's scientists who consider self-promotion a vice: "If their work did not have a more immediate impact," Hershey said of the Avery team, "it was due to their modesty. They refused to advertise." Researchers at the University of Washington's Center for Process Analytical Chemistry (CPAC) have fashioned a device to detect odors--especially bad ones, indicating spoilage--in foods during their processing. The artificial "nose" consists of four quartz crystals, each coated with a polymer film sensor to selectively bind molecules belonging to four distinct aroma groups. The molecules cause changes in the surface properties (temperature or mass) of the crystals, which in turn affect the frequency and speed of sound waves vibrating in the crystal. Searching for information on the National Library of Medicine's (NLM) AIDS-related databases is now free. This change in policy is a direct result of recommendations made at the National Institutes of Health HIV/AIDS Information Services Conference last June, where attendees said that fees were inhibiting their access to information. Four databases are affected: AIDSLINE, with 90,000 references in journals, books, audiovisuals, and conference abstracts; AIDSTRIALS, containing information on 500 clinical trials of drugs and vaccines; AIDSDRUGS, which lists 190 agents tested in clinical trials; and DIRLINE, with information on 15,000 organizations and information services that provide HIV/AIDS and health-related information to the public. For more information, contact Robert Mehnert, Office of Public Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md. 20894; (301) 496-6308. Forensic experts may be able to use insects in determining the geographic location of a murder. Alexis Byrne, a biochemistry major in her senior year at the University of Georgia, Athens, has shown that the biochemical composition of an insect's cuticle--the creatures' hard-shell outer covering--can give valuable information regarding the type of area it normally inhabits. As insects are among the first living things to discover and infiltrate a dead body, Byrne and Karl Espelie, a professor of entomology at Georgia, speculate that it would be possible to determine whether a dead body was moved from the original scene of the crime by investigating the insects associated with it. Byrne, who conducted this research as part of her senior project under Espelie's guidance, was awarded the President's Prize at a research presentation competition sponsored by the Entomological Society of America.

Notebook

The Scientist Staff

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