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Better Late Than Never Gruesome Child's Play Breath-Taking Advance Accelerated Science Foundation Taking A Global View Different Strokes... Just Like Grandma Used To Make Thomas Alva Edison finally got his B.S. degree yesterday--61 years after his death. Thomas Edison State College in Trenton, N.J., which specializes in adult education, conferred upon Edison a posthumous degree in applied science and technology, with a specialization in electrical technology, at commencement ceremonies as part of the college's 20th anniversary observance. College administrators stressed that the degree given to Edison, accepted by one of his descendants, was an earned, not an honorary, degree. Researchers at the Thomas A. Edison Papers project of Rutgers University teamed up with Edison State College officials and faculty consultants from Rider College, Penn State University, and other schools to assess Edison's college-level learning as documented in approximately 3.5 million pages of his lab notebooks, correspondence, and related papers. Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit and 22 other children's books, had an interest in nature that was unusual for a young woman of her time--and a bit bizarre. In its exhibit "The World of Peter Rabbit: The Art and Science of Beatrix Potter," which runs until January 10, Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences is featuring Potter's nature drawings in addition to her more well-known sketches of Peter, Squirrel Nutkin, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, and the rest of the gang. According to a biography prepared by exhibit curator Robert McCracken Peck, Potter never went to school; she was raised in virtual isolation by nannies. To amuse themselves, she and her brother, Bertram, observed the animals in the forests of Dalguise, Scotland, where the family summered. Sometimes, they boiled the flesh from dead animals in order to observe and draw the skeletons. A research team at the North Carolina Supercomputing Center (NCSC) in Research Triangle Park, N.C., has developed the "supercomputer lung," a computer-simulated model that inhales, exhales, and draws in particles and gases. The program for the lung is so complex it requires NCSC's Cray Y-MP supercomputer as well as two other smaller computers to run it. Project leader Ted Martonen, a research biophysicist with the Environmental Protection Agency's Health Effects Research Laboratory, also in Research Triangle Park, says the lung model will reveal the mechanisms that operate when particles of air pollution and therapeutic drugs enter the lung and concentrate in some areas, but not in others. The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the United States Department of Energy have recently opened a new science education center in Batavia, Ill. Called the Leon M. Lederman Science Education Center, in honor of Fermilab's second director, the facility will provide precollege education programs for teachers and students from all parts of the country. The Lederman Center will also provide science laboratories and computer/technology classrooms for more hands-on instruction. The center opened to the public on September 25. The Association of Biotechnology Companies, a Washington, D.C.- based trade group with more than 310 members from 25 countries, will open a West Coast office October 13 in San Francisco. According to the association's vice president for Asia, Frank Kung, the move is a recognition of the fact that California represents 27 percent of the U.S. biotechnology industry and that Japan and other Pacific Rim countries, as well as some Latin American nations, are moving aggressively in biotechnology. "The ABC is an international biotech association," says Kung. "It makes sense for us to open up an office here." Anthropologists, geneticists, archaeologists, and even linguists will meet at the Human Genome Diversity Workshop II, at Penn State University, University Park, Pa., October 28-31. The workshop is the second in a series to design a survey of human genetic diversity that will preserve, for study, genetic materials from hundreds of different human populations around the world. Kenneth M. Weiss, a professor of genetics and anthropology at Penn State and a co-organizer of the meeting, says that the Human Genome Project (HGP), which is based on small numbers of people from the industrialized nations, is not about diversity, but rather about some stereotype of the human genome. "Human geneticists and anthropologists have been--I think complaining is the right word--that [HGP] is not going to represent important aspects of human diversity, evolution, and history," he says. The planned study could answer questions about human origins, prehistory, settlement patterns, current diversity, and genetic diseases, Weiss says. A horticulture professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., has genetically engineered a type of tomato that produces thicker tomato sauce and ketchup with less processing. The lab of professor Avtar Handa cloned and reversed the gene for pectin methylesterase, the tomato's enzyme involved with ripening. Using genetic engineering, Handa then inserted the backward copy of the gene into the tomato. The altered ripening stages that result increase the tomato's consistency in soluble solids, like ketchup.

Notebook

The Scientist Staff

Oct 25, 1992

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