Notebook

Late last month, the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an earlier decision allowing the National Science Foundation to maintain confidentiality in its peer-review process. In 1994, Wanda and Robert Henke, engineers who own and run Lutherville, Md.-based Dynamic In Situ Geotechnical Testing Inc., brought a suit against NSF and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), challenging the agencies' right to keep private the names of grant-proposal reviewers. From 1990 to 1993 the Henkes' proposals for funds to develop a device to test how soils would respond to earthquakes were repeatedly turned down by both NSF and NIST. Low technical or business-plan scores were cited in each case. The court's latest decision centers on two points involving the Privacy Act-the basis on which the Henkes filed their original case. The judges ruled that the act protects the identity of evaluators of applications for federal contracts, and that NSF gave an express promise of confidentiality to reviewers. "It's a very important case because the peer-review system is the critical element of the entire federal grant process, and confidentiality has been a key way to get objective reviews," remarks NSF deputy director Anne Petersen. The Henkes' NIST appeal was turned down by the Washington, D.C., appellate court. A copy of both decisions is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/FedCt/cadc.html. Speaking at the Biotechnology Industry Organization's annual meeting in Philadelphia on June 10, BIO president Carl B. Feldbaum was introducing the Philadelphia-area high schoolers who won the Washington, D.C.-based organization's 1996 Geneius Awards, honoring the top five projects from the regional Delaware Valley Science Fair. He stated, "The true understanding and knowledge of the industry is coming up from beneath." As if to prove his point, Feldbaum then stumbled over three of the project titles and had to be corrected by the winners. "This is a humbling experience for me," he said with a sheepish smile. "My children would enjoy being here." Dana C. Torpey, a senior at Philadelphia's Central High School and a lab worker at the Fox Chase Cancer Center, took first place for her project, "A comprehensive analysis of the binding sites of hpak1." She was one of the students who assisted Feldbaum. Hpak1, a protein in the brain and the term that gave the Bio president some trouble, is "our lab mascot," Torpey tells The Scientist. "All of our experimentation revolves around pak. It's a fascinating protein. There's not a lot known about it." Dennis Erlick, a Central High teacher and research coordinator who taught Torpey and two other students in the top five, notes, "It's scary the level at which 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds are working. It makes me very proud." The Delaware Valley Science Fair finalists-20 projects in all-were displayed at the meeting along with Geneius winners from San Francisco and Toronto. With 1996 marking the 20th anniversary of the biotechnology industry, BIO surveyed politicians and prominent scientists for their views on how the industry will benefit lives 20 years from now, in the year 2016. In answers ranging from a short paragraph to several pages, respondents to the "Vision 20/20" survey were, not surprisingly, upbeat. "Biotechnology will continue to open new and exciting avenues for treatment and prevention of disease," enthused United States Health and Human Services Secretary Donna E. Shalala. Then there were the predictions from advanced-placement biology students at Lower Merion (Pa.) High School, BIO president Carl B. Feldbaum's alma mater. Their answers included, in addition to hopes of wiping out birth defects and diseases such as AIDS, warnings of potential damage (such as "something along the lines of 'Jurassic Park'") as well as some unusual views. "Bacteria might be engineered to perform new functions such as eating trash," one ninth-grader wrote. "Cure baldness," suggested another. "I want cyberpuppies because they would be just as cuddly as real puppies, but they could perform special tasks like bringing me my orange juice," hoped a third. Commenting on the industry's history of questions and uncertainty, Feldbaum declared, "Biotechnology is often a function of our imaginations." KNOCK FIRST: Astronomer Vera Rubin has seen shifts in science and housing. In a June 5 ceremony at which she was presented with the 1996 Weizmann Women and Science Award, observational astronomer Vera C. Rubin of Washington, D.C.'s Carnegie Institution spoke of the evolution of scientific knowledge of galaxies along with the evolution of her acceptance into the field of astronomy. The award, which includes a $25,000 research grant to the project of the recipient's choice, is given by the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science-a promotion and fund-raising arm of the Rehovot, Israel, research center-to honor a female researcher who has made significant contributions to her field. Rubin received the award for her studies of invisible, or dark, matter, which has a gravitational pull on gas and stars in galaxies, and of large-scale motions of clusters in galaxies. Rubin noted in her acceptance speech that when she became the first woman to use the telescope at the Palomar Observatory 40 miles northeast of San Diego in 1965, she was isolated on the upper floor of the observatory's guest house. In 1970, she related, she was no longer segregated from her colleagues. Instead, she stayed in one of two bedrooms that shared a bathroom without door looks: "I was on one side of the bathroom, [and] a male astronomer was on the other side of the bathroom." Scientifically, things have changed as well, she said. When she began studying astronomy, astronomers "understood galaxies as isolated island universes." Today, she continued, researchers know that "galaxies clump into clusters" and that "gravity is a dominant force in the evolution of galaxies." Although it is unlikely that this phrase will be heard in the United States military any time soon, a project sponsored by the Naval School of Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., is moving closer to this scenario. The school's Interactive Courseware Development Division, which develops multimedia training programs for military medical staff, now is sponsoring development of a field-usable, interactive CD-ROM. The software will aid in identification of venomous animals that military personnel could encounter in the field as well as in treatment methods for bites, stings, or other toxic encounters with these animals. The prototype software was introduced to the public June 5 at a symposium on Management of Environmental Emergencies, sponsored by Bronx, N.Y.'s Jacobi Medical Center of Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Wildlife Conservation Society (formally the New York Zoological Society). The symposium was dedicated to the memory of Warren W. Wetzel, the former director of trauma and the surgical intensive care unit at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y. Under development by Analysis and Technology Inc. of McLean, Va., the program is set up like a daily planner. Judith A. Goldman, biomedical training systems manager for the naval health sciences school, sees it as training software for military personnel. She also envisions it as a diagnostic aid for fleet hospital computers, to be readily accessible by communications link to battalion aid stations that are likely to be treating the patients. The impetus for the development of the software was Operation Desert Storm, during which the military needed expertise on venomous animal stings and bites but had only one expert available. "It will certainly go out to every hospital we have; it will go out to every clinical computer," Goldman says. Although Goldman notes that the war chest the Army assembles to bring into the field in times of deployment contains a laptop, the military is very far from laptops as standard issue. Meanwhile, this will be the 51st in the Navy's list of programs for its multimedia computer system, named the Visual Information Performance Enhancement Resource (VIPER). Apt name, indeed. NEW HOPE: Stanford surgical resident Gregg Adams is leading a fetal-tissue transplant trial that may eliminate diabeteics' need for insulin shots. A Stanford University Medical Center team led by surgical resident Gregg A. Adams is about to give juvenile-onset diabetes patients new therapy to hope for. With the implantation of fetal pancreatic tissue into diabetics' forearms, the need for daily insulin injections might be eliminated, say the researchers. The pancreatic tissue could potentially provide an internal, self-regulating insulin source. Clinical trials start later this summer in 10 diabetic kidney-transplant patients. Those who undergo this treatment will need to take immunosuppressive drugs for the rest of their lives, so the kidney patients-who have to take these types of drugs anyway-were selected for this first trial. Fetal transplants have been tried since 1928 to combat diabetes, but because of the lack of adequate growth factors, implanted pancreas cells did not mature and produce insulin. Now, Adams and colleagues will try to overcome this hurdle by treating newly implanted tissue with insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1). In experiments using rats, IGF1-treated pancreas cells proliferated and produced insulin.

Notebook

The Scientist Staff

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of