Notebook

PEACEMAKER: Award-winner David Kritchevsky said he wanted "to prevent squabbles". David Kritchevsky received no official advance notice that he would receive the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR)'s first-ever Research Achievement Award, but he had been told it would be a good idea to attend AICR's annual research conference, held late last month in Washington, D.C., the organization's home city. "They didn't just pull me off the street," recalls Kritchevsky, the Institute Professor at Philadelphia's Wistar Institute. "I had been advised to come to the meeting because something would happen to me." AICR presented Kritchevsky with the award to recognize his work in diet, nutrition, and cancer -- the areas that happen to be the group's exclusive focus. The award includes a $5,000 grant. Kritchevsky, who also teaches at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine, reports that his acceptance speech included both some praise of his own and a little practicality: "I said, 'This award, of course, is a tribute to the hard work of my associates. They all share in the honor, but to prevent squabbles, I'll keep the money.'" SWEET SMOKIN' : A recent paper explores a possible link between pot and chocolate Barely longer than a page, and under the headline "Brain cannabinoids in chocolate" (E. di Tomaso et al., Nature, 382 :677-8, 1996), the piece of scientific correspondence submitted to Nature by a team from the Neurosciences Institute (NSI) in San Diego hardly seemed to be earth-shaking news. But mixing the sweet and the stoned garnered far-reaching attention. The paper reports that chocolate contains three compounds related to anandamide, "a brain lipid that binds to cannabinoid receptors with high affinity and mimics the psychoactive effects of plant-derived cannabinoid drugs." It may not have been life on Mars (the planet, not the candy company), but the possibility that M&Ms and marijuana may contain similar chemicals was enough to launch a flurry of news reports. "We expected some media attention because it was a curious study, but not that much, quite frankly," coauthor Daniele Piomelli, an NSI senior fellow, tells The Scientist. Asked what he attributes the hubbub to, he replies, "The popularity of chocolate, I assume, and the popularity of hashish -- marijuana." Piomelli and his colleagues write: "How can activation of the endogenous cannabinoid system participate in the subjective feelings associated with eating chocolate, and in chocolate craving? Cannabinoid drugs are known to heighten sensitivity and produce euphoria." The team recommends "further examination." MARVIN CASSMAN : He will look into the fate of new NIGMS grantees. Last month, National Institutes of Health director Harold Varmus named Marvin Cassman the new director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). Cassman had been NIGMS deputy director since 1989 and acting director of the institute since July 1993. He oversees a $947 million annual budget that supports more than 3,300 research grants in such areas as cell biology, pharmacology, and biological chemistry. In a Nov. 7, 1994, letter, Cassman informed NIGMS grantees that the institute would make special efforts to fund research proposals that contain risky or unorthodox ideas (K.Y. Kreeger, The Scientist, Dec. 12, 1994, page 14). These are grant applications that have gone through the normal peer-review process, explains Cassman. Within the last two years, he reports, institute officials have not been "entirely satisfied with the outcome of that experiment." Although he notes the applications were all "good," he adds that the applications were not "the kind we were looking for. But that's something we hope to change." One remedy, says Cassman, is that NIGMS "is considering the possibility of soliciting these kinds of [risky] applications rather than trying to identify them after the fact." Another area that the institute has been closely reviewing over the last year is the fate of new applicants to the NIH grant process. Cassman lists some of the questions he will tackle in a committee that he cochairs with Elvira Ehrenfeld, the newly appointed director of the Division of Research Grants: "Are the new investigators at a disadvantage in some significant way? Is the investigator population being refreshed at a rate so that 20 years from now we will have a healthy, vibrant biomedical research community?" THEY BOLDLY WENT : The timeless crew of the Enterprise. An entire generation has reached maturity in the 30 years since the immensely popular and influential television series "Star Trek" first aired on Sept. 8, 1966. "It affected a lot of scientists who watched it growing up," says Lawrence Krauss, author of The Physics of Star Trek (New York, Basic Books Inc., 1995), and chairman of the physics department at Case Western Reserve University. The "Star Trek" phenomenon now stands at four TV series, seven films, and millions of fans. One aspect of the mania that appeals to Krauss is that in the 23rd century, in which the show is set, "science and technology make society better. The future is a rosy one where we overcome our present myopic tendencies, with science itself contributing to that." At the twilight of the 20th century, according to the National Science Foundation's Science & Engineering Indicators -- 1996, more than 70 percent of Americans believe that the benefits of scientific research outweigh any present or potential drawbacks, an attitude that hasn't changed for the last 20 years. "I think 'Star Trek' has helped contribute to the hopefulness of the possibilities, of the neat things that science might bring to the future," offers Krauss. "I think that's the reason 'Star Trek's' popularity has been so widespread." The American Chemical Society (ACS) has started a new program to compensate for the dearth of proper scientific instrumentation among universities, research laboratories, and scientists -- particularly in economically disadvantaged areas worldwide. According to ACS officials, United States firms have approached the society with offers to donate used instrumentation and lab equipment to needy institutions. ACS's newly inaugurated Project Instrumentshare will serve as a go-between to match donor and institution. The program will help coordinate the process, identifying appropriate recipients and engineering the equipment shipments. For more information, potential donors as well as recipients may contact ACS's Project Instrumentshare, Office of International Activities, American Chemical Society, 1155 16th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036; (202) 872-4088. Fax: (202) 872-6317. E-mail: f_popp@acs.org. MEET THE BEETLES : One of the entomological wonders features in the documentary Microcosmos. "Humor, romance, chivalry, and entomological eroticism" are some of the ingredients of a new film on the world of insects. Microcosmos, a 77-minute, G-rated documentary, will open at theaters in New York and Los Angeles next month. The movie's directors and writers -- French biologists Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennou -- note that it was a hit at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. Speaking through an interpreter in a phone interview, Nuridsany and Perennou tell The Scientist that the film struck a positive note with festival-goers because it was so different from the regular entries. The French filmmakers say the most unusual insect they shot was a rare aquatic spider. "She's able to build her own diving bell," says Nuridsany, referring to the air bubble in which the insect encases itself while swimming underwater. For their first feature-length film, the team chose insects to provide something "magical for the watchers," notes Perennou. It took two years to design the special equipment needed to peer into the microscopic world of insects. "With a special technical lens, you can discover another world," remarks Nuridsany. "It's something of a paradox; you don't have to go to the other side of the world to be amazed." IBM Corp.'s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., is offering previews of its latest World Wide Web technologies to Internet users free of charge. Late last month the company introduced alphaWorks, a combination "online laboratory" and Web site providing free access to software still in development. The site, available at www.alphaWorks.ibm.com, debuted by offering six technologies; the company plans to add three to six new IBM products regularly. The site also includes commentaries from IBM researchers and programmers and articles on the use of the Web; planned for the future is an electronic exchange enabling users to share ideas. IBM anticipates developing and refining some alphaWorks technologies and making them available as full-featured products, as well as licensing others to be marketed by other companies. Also downloadable free of charge from IBM is techexplorer, a new Web browser plug-in that makes it easier to display equations and scientific expressions on Web pages and Internet documents. The hypermedia browser formats and displays documents coded with TeX and LaTeX, two standard scientific publishing languages. IBM's techexplorer Hypermedia Browser Version 1.0 requires Netscape Navigator 2.0 or above for Windows 95 or Windows NT and can be found at http://www.ics.raleigh.ibm.com/ics/techexp.htm.

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September 1996

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