Notebook

SEEKING SHELTER : Surplus lab chimps need a place to stay. While no plans are under way to build them a golf course or shuffleboard court, a nonprofit organization has been established to create a "retirement home" for chimpanzees not needed in biomedical or behavioral research. Chimp Haven, a San Antonio, Texas-based group, aims to build a facility to provide long-term housing for the unneeded chimps. The United States has a surplus of chimpanzees bred for research purposes, a result of the success of a National Institutes of Health-funded breeding program established in the 1980s, the decrease in use of the chimp model for testing of HIV vaccines, and the fact that the animals can live for up to 60 years. Currently, more than 1,500 chimps are housed in U.S. labs, according to Chimp Haven. Linda Brent, a Ph.D. anthropologist who chairs the group's board of directors, notes that its proposed enclosures for large groups of chimps, as opposed to research labs' small-group facilities, would provide for keeping the animals "much less expensively than they can be housed in a laboratory setting." The planned facility would have indoor dens as well as outdoor enclosures with natural grass and trees. The chimps would be available for study by anthropologists and animal-behavior researchers; the public would also be invited for tours on a restricted basis. "We don't want to take the chimps away where nobody would see them," Brent explains. Chimp Haven is looking at sites in Central Texas, a location selected for its good weather as well as its proximity to the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research and the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Science Park, two of the largest U.S. chimpanzee colonies. According to Brent, the board hopes to raise $12 million, estimated for housing an initial population of 175 chimps; additional one-time start-up costs are estimated at about $4 million. "We hope to get things up and running in about 2 1/2 years," Brent says. For information, contact Brent at Chimp Haven Inc., P.O. Box 760081, San Antonio, Texas 78245; (210) 670-3217. Fax: (210) 670-3330. E-mail: lbrent@icarus.sfbr.org. CELL CEMETERY: A plant root tip, one site of apoptosis. It is now known that apoptosis-the genetically controlled process of cell death-is not restricted to members of the animal kingdom. A team of plant biologists from the University of California, Davis, has identified the process in tomatoes. They report their findings in the March 25 issue of Plant Cell (H. Wang et al., 8 :375-91, 1996). A companion paper by Douglas Ryerson and Michele Heath from the University of Toronto in the same issue discusses cleavage of nuclear DNA during apoptosis in fungal-infected cowpea plants (D.E. Ryerson, M.C. Heath, Plant Cell, 8 :393-402, 1996). Although in the last few years research paper after research paper has characterized apoptosis in animals, whether it occurs in the plant kingdom has been an unresolved question among plant biologists. "We didn't set out to look for it," remarks David Gilchrist, one of the UC-Davis paper's authors. The team was initially looking for developmental gene expression in disease-compromised plants. Re-sults, however, suggested that viruses, bacteria, and fungi invading plants are able to hijack the normally occurring process during infection. Apoptosis was also observed in root-tip cells, in which cellular death is a predetermined and necessary part of life. Knowing that apoptosis is triggered during infection, the team is developing new targets for genetically engineering disease-resistant plants. PERPLEXED: Len Pennachio, left and Richard Myers wonder how the gene works. Normally, finding a new disease gene is cause for celebration. So it was when researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of Helsinki in Finland discovered a gene that, when mutated, causes a rare form of epilepsy, progressive myoclonus epilepsy. But here's the rub: The gene instructs cells to manufacture a protease inhibitor, cystatin B, a pedestrian cell protein. Cystatin B is better known for stopping an enzyme from chewing up other proteins than for any connection to epilepsy, which is believed to involve misfiring brain cell signals. Despite this perplexing finding, the scientists-led by Richard Myers, an associate professor of genetics at Stanford, and doctoral student Len Pennacchio-may have some clues. For example, cystatin B or the protein that it should be inhibiting might be piling up in higher amounts in some areas of the brain associated with epilepsy, Pennacchio suggests. "We need to look at this particular area of the cell or these particular pathways and try to understand how they fit into brain function and epileptic seizures," he says. Pennacchio notes that the finding may lead to a genetic screen and improved diagnosis, as well as better treatments and an understanding of other forms of epilepsy. Colleges and universities anticipating new science faculty members this fall should be aware of a May 15 deadline for the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation's New Faculty Awards and Faculty Start-up Grant programs, designed to fund research and teaching activities of new faculty members. The former is a $25,000 unrestricted research grant given to 10 institutions that grant a doctorate in biochemistry, chemistry, or chemical engineering. The latter provides 10 unrestricted research grants of $12,500 to non-Ph.D.-granting institutions offering bachelor's or master's degrees in the same fields. Each institution may nominate only one instructor. The awards are announced in July and given in September, at the start, rather than the end, of a new instructor's first year, and are for faculty members due to begin their first full-time, tenure-track appointments then. For more information, write the foundation at 555 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10022, call (212) 753-1760, or send E-mail to rlichter@panix.com. Help For Wannabe Scientists High school students wanting insight into science programs at colleges and universities can look to a new guide to the United States' best colleges for science. Billed as the "first and only guide" to the "nation's leading colleges for science," Peterson's Top Colleges for Science describes 190 four-year colleges with what it terms in a press release "preeminent programs in biological, chemical, geological, mathematical, and physical sciences." The guide is the creation of Peterson's, a Princeton, N.J.-based publisher of various college guides and general educational materials. David Davis-Van Atta, consulting editor and director of the office of institutional research at Carleton College, established the criteria for the guide. The authors took into account three measures: the percentages of graduates who majored in the basic sciences and mathematics; the percentages of graduates who earned doctoral degrees in each of those areas; and the percentage of graduates awarded National Science Foundation fellowships for graduate study in the sciences and mathematics. In all, 1,442 schools were ranked in five fields. Entries describe courses, facilities, and research opportunities, among other topics, including "unique program features." A student interested in studying geology at Ohio State University, for example, can learn about research opportunities in Antarctica and the Arctic. A student looking to major in earth sciences and oceanography at Middlebury College can read about programs at Lake Champlain, the Green Mountains, and the Adirondacks. ROBERT FRI: He will start in his new museum post in May. Next month the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History will have a new chief. Robert W. Fri, 60, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future-a Washington, D.C.-based environmental nonprofit organization-will assume the museum directorship on May 1. Fri also served as president of Resources for the Future from 1986 to 1995. He will supervise a staff of 650 and oversee a budget of about $44 million for fiscal year 1996, not to mention collections of more than 120 million specimens. Fri, whose only role at the museum has been that of a visitor until now, says he was attracted to the job for two reasons: "the public-education opportunities" it offers and the "vibrant" areas of research at the museum. He holds an M.S. in business administration from Harvard University. Fri began his career in the environmental field in 1971, when he was appointed the first deputy director of the then newly created Environmental Protection Agency. That specimen that shows up under your microscope looking like a hip piece of modern art may win you more than just oohs and aahs from your lab workers. Melville, N.Y.-based Nikon Inc.'s 22nd annual International Small World competition, honoring excellence in photography through the microscope, includes such prizes as a $4,000 vacation trip and a variety of Nikon products. Each participant may submit up to three 35-mm transparencies of photos taken using a light microscope; the use of Nikon equipment is not required. Entries will be judged on originality, informational content, technical proficiency, and visual impact. The deadline is June 28, with winners to be announced in New York in November. The top photos will travel through the United States and Canada as part of an exhibition during 1997, and will be featured in a Nikon calendar. For more information, write to Nikon's Small World Competition, Nikon Inc. Instrument Group, 1300 Walt Whitman Rd., Melville, N.Y. 11747-3064, or call (516) 547-8500. The scientific community is mourning the loss of several distinguished individuals who died in March. March 19 was a particularly sad day, with three luminaries passing away on that date. One was Colin S. Pittendrigh, 77, the Harold A. Miller Professor, Emeritus, of Biology at Stanford University, who succumbed to cancer. Pittendrigh, noted for his studies of biological clocks (R. Lewis, The Scientist, Dec. 11, 1995, page 14), had been at Stanford since 1969. Recognized as a great teacher, he helped found Stanford's human biology undergraduate major in 1970. He also served as director of Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station from 1976 to 1984. "He gave me much valuable, tough-minded, scholarly, critical advice about science and publication," reminisces William Kaufmann, editor-in-chief, emeritus, of Annual Reviews, a friend of Pittendrigh's for more than 40 years. "But he always just looked forward to going out on a fishing trip. He was sort of an old-fashioned naturalist in that he knew all the plants and wildlife." Pittendrigh published an autobiographical essay in the Annual Review of Physiology in 1993 (C. S. Pittendrigh, "Reflections of a Darwinian clock-watcher," Ann. Rev. Physiol., 55 :16-54, 1993). Notes Joshua Lederberg, University Professor at Rockefeller University and former Stanford faculty member: "He approached biology from a very broadly interdisciplinary perspective, from the molecular to the evolutionary to the ecological." Also on March 19, eminent New York Times science writer Walter Sullivan, 78, died of pancreatic cancer, and 84-year-old Jane Marion Oppenheimer, a biologist and science historian at Bryn Mawr College, died after a brief illness. Sullivan joined the Times as a copy boy in 1940, serving as a foreign correspondent before becoming science news editor in 1962 and science editor in 1964. He retired in 1987, but continued to write for the paper until last January. He was known for his reporting on Antarctic exploration and on the International Geophysical Year, an international effort to study Earth and space. The American Geophysical Union named its science writing award in his honor, and as a tribute to him, a mountain chain in Antarctica has been dubbed the Sullivan Range. In February, the National Association of Science Writers gave Sullivan its Distinguished Science Journalism Award. Oppenheimer retired from Bryn Mawr as the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Biology and History of Science in 1980. She specialized in experimental embryology and the history of embryology, development of the central nervous system in fish, and 18th-century medicine in Great Britain. Her project to assess the effect of weightlessness on fish egg physiology flew aboard a Soviet satellite in the first U.S.-Soviet joint space expedition, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, in 1975. On March 26, David Packard, cofounder of Palo Alto, Calif.-based Hewlett-Packard Co., died of pneumonia at 83. Started in a Silicon Valley garage by Packard and William Hewlett, both Stanford alumni, Hewlett-Packard helped transform the computer sciences, and today is the second-largest computer company in the U.S., after IBM Corp. In his book The HP Way (New York, Harpers Business, 1995), Packard described his renowned method of doing business, which included an open-door management policy and the motivational technique of management by objective. Packard was named last year to receive the 1995 Bower Award for Business Leadership, presented by Philadelphia's Franklin Institute Science Museum (E.R. Silverman, The Scientist, Dec. 11, 1995, page 3).

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