Notebook

Given the international attention accorded the recent Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, another historic cross- cultural event taking place in Israel has received somewhat less publicity. Khaled El-Shami, a surgical intern from Alexandria University Hospital, has become IsraelUs first doctoral student from Egypt. The 29-year-old El-Shami, who holds a masterUs degree in molecular biology from the University of Sussex in England in addition to an M.D. from the University of Alexandria, will be spending the next four years at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot studying the use of genetic engineering in cancer therapy. According to El- Shami, the adjustment to his new surroundings and colleagues was made easier by his strong friendship with several Israeli students while at Sussex. His decision to choose Weizmann, however, was mainly professional. "There are only a few leading centers in the world where advanced studies are being carried out on gene therapy for cancer," he explains. With a telerobotic vehicle turning the first shovelful of earth at groundbreaking ceremonies, Sandia National Laboratories has begun construction of a $33 million Robotic Manufacturing Science and Engineering Laboratory (RMSEL) on the lab's Albuquerque, N.Mex., grounds. Sandia officials say the 70,000-square-foot RMSEL will be one of the United States' premier facilities for research on and development of intelligent robotic systems. Housing about 150 staff, the facility is expected to handle all of the future R&D requirements in robotics and automation for Sandia and the Department of Energy. RMSEL will also serve to transfer new technologies to private industry. The National Science Foundation and the Washington, D.C.- based Whitaker Foundation are teaming up to provide funding for research into technical innovations that promise to reduce health-care costs. Grants of up to $250,000 are being offered as part of the Cost-Reducing Health Care Technologies program. Information on the program is available on NSF's Science and Technology Information System (STIS) and BMEnet, a biomedical-enginineering system sponsored by Whitaker. On STIS, refer to publication NSF 94- 99. For information about STIS, contact NSF's publications section at (703) 306-1130 and request "STIS Flier," NSF Publication 94-4, or send E-mail to stisinfo@nsf.gov (Internet) or stisinfo@NSF (Bitnet). Access BMEnet at gopher://niblick.ecn.purdue.edu:70/1 or send E-mail to wodicka@ecn.purdue.edu. Any Mexican food enthusiast with a healthy respect for the power of chili peppers should not be surprised at the potential efficacy of an ointment being prepared for clinical trials by a Johns Hopkins University neurologist. Marco Pappagallo is researching a salve to relieve the severe pain of peripheral neuropathy, a problem experienced by 10 percent of people with AIDS whose pain nerves in their legs and feet are infected with HIV. The balm, which contains a high concentration of ground peppers, has been shown to knock out the pain receptors of rats and mice, Pappagallo says, and he is hoping it will do the same in humans. Pappagallo notes, however, that the searing sensation produced when it's applied is so intense that clinicians at Hopkins' Blaustein Pain Treatment Center in Baltimore have to numb first-time patients with a spinal anesthetic beforehand. The Directories of Undergraduate Research, published biannually by the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR), are available. The directories describe 2,000 science departments at various schools stressing undergraduate research. For information, contact CUR, University of North Carolina at Asheville, 1 University Heights, Asheville, N.C. 28804; (704) 251-6006. Fax: (704) 251-6002. E-mail: CUR@UNCA.edu. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Md., has announced the availability of its Standard Reference Data Catalog 1994. Two of its 92 computerized databases and compilations, an NIST statement notes, are databases that could be useful to life and physical scientists. One new database, CHETAH, version 7.0, is designed for chemists to predict the performance of substances that they use routinely. Another, the Solution Kinetics Database, version 2.0, used by environmental scientists, chemists, and pharmacologists for modeling chemical reactions in solution, has been expanded. It now holds data on the rates of 10,800 free radicals derived from more than 14,000 experiments. For more information, contact SRDP, A320 Physics Building, NIST, Gaithersburg, Md. 20899- 0001; (301) 975-2208. Fax: (301) 926-0416. E-mail: SRDATA@enh.nist.gov. A North Carolina State entomologist is fighting bugs with bugs in an attempt to battle a pest threatening one of the state's cherished institutions: its golf courses. Rick L. Brandenburg, a professor and entomology specialist, is using pollen-eating flies and parasitic nematodes to take on the mole cricket, a tunneling insect with an appetite for grass. Golf courses are especially hard hit. But, says Brandenburg, "the red-eyed fly and entomogenous nematodes are the natural predators of the mole cricket" and are "genetically programmed to seek out and destroy it." Red-eyed flies attack and kill the crickets by laying eggs in them; the nematodes are parasitic worms that carry a bacteria lethal to the crickets. Brandenburg has worked with groundskeepers to conduct controlled releases of the flies and nematodes at North Carolina courses with successful results.

Notebook

The Scientist Staff

Sep 4, 1994

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