THE SCIENTIST VOLUME 7, No:23 November 29, 1993 (Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.) Articles

                          THE SCIENTIST


VOLUME 7, No:23                                 November 29, 1993
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)

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TI :                      CONTENTS
PG : 3 
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NO EASY TASK: One of the great challenges ahead for two 
recently confirmed science agency directors--Neal Lane of 
the National Science Foundation and Harold Varmus of the 
National Institutes of Health--will be to advance the cause 
of basic science in the face of increasing pressure from 
Congress and the public for more directed and technology-
based research  
PG : 1


BIOENGINEERING BOOM: The complex, multifaceted field of 
bioengineering is attracting throngs of life science and 
engineering undergraduates to academic research institutions 
throughout the United States. Moreover, observers are 
optimistic that, as bioengineering applications increase, 
industry will expand correspondingly to provide jobs for 
these students by the time they get their undergraduate or 
graduate degrees  
PG : 1


PUTTING SCIENCE IN PERSPECTIVE: NSF and the National 
Endowment for the Humanities are cosponsoring a program 
aimed at boosting science literacy through exploring the 
relationship of science and the humanities in everyday life.  
PG : 3


BUILDING A RESEARCH CONSORTIUM: Sparked by a $2.5 million 
grant from the Dana Foundation, researchers from Cold Spring 
Harbor Laboratory, Stanford University, and Johns Hopkins 
University are joining forces in an effort to track down the 
genes responsible for manic-depressive illness  
PG : 4


SHIFTING FOCUS: With the end of the Cold War and changing 
national priorities, U.S. national laboratories must narrow 
their focus and develop a comprehensive, long-term program 
of job-creating, pioneering research and development 
collaborations with industry resulting in technology 
development and transfer, and defense R&D conversion, says 
Roland W. Schmitt, president emeritus of Rensselaer 
Polytechnic Institute  
PG : 11


COMMENTARY: Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon M. Lederman 
laments Congress' rejection of the superconducting 
supercollider, observing that the megaproject's termination 
is symptomatic, among other things, of the general public's 
science illiteracy  
PG : 12

NOBEL ENDEAVORS: The achievements of this year's Nobel Prize 
winners in chemistry, physics, and physiology or medicine 
have been well known to their colleagues for years, and 
citation analysis confirms the broad influence of their work 
on the subsequent advances of other researchers in their 
respective disciplines  
PG : 1


HOT PAPERS: An astrophysicist discusses his paper on the 
opacity of stellar matter  
PG : 16


THERMAL CYCLERS: Just as use of the polymerase chain 
reaction is sweeping through laboratories, an essential 
support tool for PCR--thermal cyclers--has gained in both 
popularity and sophistication  
PG : 17


ADJUNCT OPPORTUNITIES: Adjunct professorships serve a dual 
need in the world of academia. They allow scientists from 
varying environments access to academic life, and at the 
same time provide universities with the use of these 
scientists' skills in education and research  
PG : 20


RUTH F. NUTT, former senior scientist at Merck & Co. Inc., 
has been named director of chemistry for Corvas 
International Inc.  
PG : 22


NOTEBOOK  
PG : 4

CARTOON  
PG : 4


LETTERS  
PG : 12

CROSSWORD  
pG : 13

OBITUARIES  
PG : 22

SCIENTIFIC SOFTWARE DIRECTORY  
PG : 30


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
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                              NEWS

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TI : 1993 Nobel Prizes Honor Basic Research And Development 
     Of Tools That Drive It

Rivals share laurels for medicine, while work on pulsars and 
gravitation earns the big award in physics


AU : DAVID PENDLEBURY

TY : OPINION

PG : 11


This year's Nobel Prizes in science have celebrated two 
types of research achievement: on one hand, discoveries 
about nature itself, and, on the other, inventions that have 
significantly aided researchers' ability to explore nature.


In the first category, Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor 
were awarded the physics prize for their discovery of a 
binary pulsar and for what it revealed about relativistic 
gravitation, while Richard J. Roberts and Phillip A. Sharp 
were given the prize in physiology or medicine for their 
mutual but independent discovery of split genes. In the 
second category, Kary B. Mullis and Michael Smith received 
the chemistry prize for the invention of two techniques: the 
polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and sitedirected 
mutagenesis, respectively.


By its choices, the Nobel committee implicitly revealed that 
it values the creation of novel techniques on a par with 
experimental achievement. Not all in the scientific 
community would agree that the two types of contribution are 
of equal merit. A peevish comment, one that was delivered 
under the cloak of anonymity in the pages of Science 
magazine, suggested that PCR was no more than "a clever 
technical trick that doesn't have the intellectual content 
of Nobelquality work" (T. Appenzeller, Science, 263:507, 
1993). That is probably not an atypical view. But as the 
advance of knowledge depends increasingly on investigators' 
ability to probe ever tinier aspects of the physical and 
biological world, the tools on which scientists relyand the 
inventors of those toolsmay find their worth more widely and 
generously recognized.


Chemistry
The 1993 Nobel Prize in chemistry exemplifies the second 
type of scientific accomplishment. The prize was shared by  
Mullis of La Jolla, Calif., and Smith of the University of 
British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Both men 
created novel techniques for biochemists and molecular 
biologists that have transformed and accelerated genetic 
research. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences recognized 
Mullis for inventing the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and 
Smith for important contributions to oligonucleotidebased 
sitedirected mutagenesis. Mullis and Smith will share an 
$825,000 cash award that accompanies the prize this year.


 "The chemical methods that Kary B. Mullis and Michael Smith 
have each developed for studying DNA molecules of genetic 
material have further hastened the rapid development of 
genetic engineering," reads the announcement of the academy. 
"The two methods have greatly stimulated basic 
biochemical research and opened the way for new 
applications in medicine and biotechnology." 


Described variously by his colleagues as an original, 
iconoclastic, and even outlandish scientist, Mullis, 48, 
thought up the PCR technique in April 1983 during a 
latenight drive through Northern California's redwood 
forests (K.B. Mullis, "The unusual origin of the polymerase 
chain reaction," Scientific American, 262:56, April 1990). A 
description of the technique, which amplifies specific 
segments of DNA millions of times in just a few hours, was 
published in 1985 (R.K. Saiki, et al., "Enzymatic 
amplification of betaglobin genomic sequences 


and restriction site analysis for diagnosis of sicklecell 
anemia," Science, 230:1350). An improvement of the 
amplification method, using the enzyme Taq, appeared in 1988 
(R.K. Saiki, et al., "Primerdirected enzymatic amplification 
of DNA with a thermostable DNA polymerase," Science, 
239:487). 


Having attracted a total of some 6,750 citations by the end 
of September 1993, the 1988 paper ranks as the most cited 
article in science during the last five years. (The 1985 
report collected nearly 3,150 citations by September 1993.) 
And, if anything, the influence of PCR is underrepresented 
by counts of explicit citations for at least two reasons. 
First, papers describing variations of PCRsuch as socalled 
anchored PCRare collecting citations instead of the original 
papers, and, second, the technique is now so well known that 
scientists feel it is becoming less necessary to cite the 
original papers, a phenomenon sociologists of science refer 
to as "obliteration by incorporation" (R.K. Merton, Social 
Theory and Social Structure, New York, Free Press, 1968, 
pages 279, 358). In fact, citations to the paper seem to 
have reached a plateau during the last several yearsabout 
1,700 annuallywhile the use of PCR continues to expand.


The importance of the PCR methodfor basic biochemical and 
genetic research, for medical diagnostics, and for forensic 
studieshas been formally recognized by the research 
community many times already and in various ways. In 1990 
Science magazine named PCR (somewhat confusingly) "Molecule 
of the Year." In 1992, the Gairdner Foundation of Canada 
recognized PCR by naming Mullis a winner of its prestigious 
Gairdner International Award, a prize that often anticipates 
the Nobel committee's selection, as in this case. And last 
year, the city of Philadelphia presented Mullis with its 
John Scott Award, which honors inventions that have 
contributed to society in a practical way (B. Spector, The 
Scientist, Jan. 11, 1993, page 23).


For many, then, the Nobel Prize for PCR was not unexpected. 
Even Mullis told reporters, "I figured it would happen 
eventually" (K. Carr, Nature, 365:685, 1993). 


Smith, 61, was honored for developing during the 1970s and 
1980s a method for pinpointing specific oligonucleotides in 
a gene and replacing them with others. Sitedirected 
mutagenesis, as it is known, helps researchers understand 
what each nucleotide contributes to a protein's function; it 
also enables researchers to create tailormade proteins. The 
Nobel committee's announcement noted that, thanks to this 
technique, "protein design has already become a 
[wellestablished] concept."

Sitedirected mutagenesis, which is said to have come to 
Smith during a coffee break, uses a mutated single strand of 
the DNA and a normal strand to which the mutated one binds 
to form a double helix. This altered DNA is then multiplied 
in a bacterium. Half of the proteins generated carry the 
mutation that was introduced, and the properties of this 
material can then be studied to learn how the alteration of 
a nucleotide has changed protein function. To some degree, 
PCR has now replaced bacteria as the medium for producing 
the mutated genetic material.


The technique continues to find applications on many fronts, 
the academy noted: in attempts to create a blood substitute, 
to design specific antibodies to fight cancer cells, and to 
fashion plants that make more efficient use of atmospheric 
carbon dioxide, among others.


In 1978, Smith and colleagues published a paper that 
described the successful use of the technique (C.A. 
Hutchinson, et al., "Mutagenesis at a specific position in a 
DNA sequence," Journal of Biological Chemistry, 253:6551), 
but the standouts, in terms of citation impact, came in the 
form of three papers published in the early 1980s: M.J. 
Zoller, et al., "Oligonucleotidedirected mutagenesis using 
M13derived vectors: an efficient and general procedure for 
the production of point mutations in any fragment of DNA," 
Nucleic Acids Research, 10:6487, 1982 (about 600 citations 
by September 1993);  M.J. Zoller, et al., 
"Oligonucleotidedirected mutagenesis of DNA fragments cloned 
into M13 vectors," Methods in Enzymology, 100:468, 1983 
(1,000 citations); and M.J. Zoller, "Oligo 
nucleotidedirected mutagenesis: a simple method using two 
oligonucleotide primers and a singlestranded DNA template," 
DNA, 3:479, 1984 (650 citations). All easily qualify as 
citation classicspapers that, for their field, have been 
extremely highly cited.

Unlike Mullis, Smith was reported to have been surprised by 
the news of his Nobel, which he learned about from a radio 
broadcast. 


Physiology Or Medicine
The 1993 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine recognized 
insightful and bold work by two investigators, work that 
revealed a previously hidden aspect of the structure and 
function of genes in higher organisms.


The prize went to Sharp, 49, head of the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology's department of biology, Cambridge, 
and to Roberts, 50, currently research director of New 
England Biolabs, Beverly, Mass., and until recently 
assistant director for research at the Cold Spring Harbor 
Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y. Roberts and Sharp will split 
the $825,000 prize for their mutual but independent 
discovery of split genes in 1977.


Until Roberts and Sharp announced their finding, at the same 
meeting in June 1977 held at Cold Spring Harbor, it was 
thought that the genetic information embedded in DNA was 
continuous. This understanding arose in large part from work 
on prokaryote systems, such as E. coli. But in eukaryotes, 
the genetic information is, in the vast majority, 
interrupted by nucleotide regions that do not code for 
proteins. These are called intervening sequences or introns. 
The domains that carry proteincoding amino acids are known 
as exons, because their information is expressed. In these 
structures, the genetic information is split into pieces, 
hence the name "split genes." 


Roberts and Sharp, who knew of each other's work and were 
racing toward the same goal, both used electron microscopy 
to directly observe the activity of mRNA and DNA in 
adenovirus, a virus that causes the common cold. Both teams 
could actually see that mRNA lined up with only certain 
portions of the DNA, leaving large loops of the DNA unread. 
This showed that only portions of DNA were used by mRNA to 
create proteins. It also changed the world of molecular 
biology.

Sidney Altman of Yale University, who himself won the Nobel 
Prize for chemistry in 1989, told the Associated Press: 
"Next to the discovery of the structure of DNA, this is 
probably the greatest discovery in genetics in the last 70 
to 80 years."


The finding helped start the biotechnology revolution, too, 
since it revealed the mechanism of gene splicing and 
fostered the idea of building wholly new proteins with novel 
functions. It also has explained about onequarter of some 
5,000 inherited diseases, which turn out to result from 
splicing errors; as such, it has already contributed to work 
on gene therapy.  


The breakthrough was reported in two papers, both published 
in 1977. The article by Sharp and colleagues (S.M. Berget, 
et al., "Spliced segments at the 5e terminus of adenovirus 2 
late mRNA," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 
74:3171, 1977) collected about 500 citations by the end of 
September 1993. The report by Roberts and colleagues (L.T. 
Chow, et al., "Amazing sequence arrangement at 5e ends of 
adenovirus 2 mRNAs," Cell, 12:1, 1977) received about 450 
citations by September 1993.


Both articles are undoubtedly undercited in proportion to 
their influenceas is the 1953 Nature paper by James Watson 
and Francis Crick on DNA's structure. Most of these 
paradigmshattering papers have suffered the obliteration 
phenomenon. Sharp suspected this to be the fate of his 
report: "Within a few months many other labs were reporting 
their findings of split genes." 

On paper, Sharp has for some time been a good bet for 
winning a Nobel. He ranked 48th in the world in terms of 
total citations to his papers published in 198190 (E. 
Garfield, A. Welljams-Dorof, "Of Nobel class: a citation 
perspective on high impact research authors," Theoretical 
Medicine, 13:117, 1992); he ranked 16th in the world in 
molecular biology and genetics for papers published in 
198892, in terms of average citations per paper (Science 
Watch, 4[7]:12, July/August 1993); and he is the author of 
at least a dozen papers that have achieved citationclassic 
status. Moreover, he is a member of the U.S. National 
Academy of Sciences and a previous winner of both the 
Gairdner Inter national Award and the Albert Lasker Basic 
Medical Research Award, receipt of which is also recognized 
as a strong indicator of those who may eventually win a 
Nobel Prize.


But it was the discovery of split genesnot a lifetime of 
accomplishmentthat was recognized by the Swedish Academy. 
That is why other researchers who are the peers of Sharp on 
paper have not yet won the Nobel Prize.


Physics
The Nobel Prize in physics was also split between two 
investigations this year, but unlike Roberts and Sharp, the 
awardees were paired as teacher and student rather than as 
rivals. Taylor, 52, of Princeton University, and Hulse, 43, 
of Princeton's Plasma Physics Laboratory were honored by the 
academy for "their discovery of a new type of pulsar, a 
discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study 
of gravitation."


In the mid1970s, while Taylor was a professor of physics at 
the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Hulse was 
there as his graduate student, the two were searching the 
heavens for pulsars. These superdense, rapidly rotating 
neutron stars, first discovered in 1967 by Anthony Hewish 
and his student Jocelyn Bell of Cambridge University, emit 
radiation like a beacon at precise intervals.


Working with the 300meter radiotelescope at Arecibo, Puerto 
Rico, Taylor and Hulse studied many pulsars and monitored 
the exact timing of their radiowave emissions. But they 
found one object (PSR1913+16) that exhibited a slight 
irregularity in its pulse. What they found, in fact, was a 
pulsar rotating around anotherthe first binary pulsar. This 
was much more than a rare species, however. It offered 
Taylor and Hulse a kind of "space laboratory," as the Nobel 
committee called it, and a chance to test Einstein's theory 
of general relativity, which predicted that such massive 
bodies in close association would produce gravitational 
waves, ripples or warping in spacetime.


After meticulous measurement over several years, Taylor 
reported in 1979 that the rotation of the pulsar was 
decreasing ever so slowly and this implied the loss of 
energy being given off as gravity waves. The finding accords 
with what Einstein predicted in 1916. "So far," the acad emy 
noted, "Einstein's theory has passed the tests with flying 
colours."


The account of the discovery appeared in 1975 (R.A. Hulse, 
J.H. Taylor, "Discovery of a pulsar in a binary system," 
Astrophysical Journal, 195:L51), and has been cited in about 
200 publications since then. Several years later, Taylor was 
able to confirm the existence of gravitational radiation at 
the predicted levels (J.H. Taylor, et al., "Measure ments of 
general relativistic effects in the binary pulsar 
PSR1913+16," Nature, 277:437, 1979); this paper has been 
cited some 150 times. Since radio astronomy papers tend to 
collect far fewer citations than those in biochemistry and 
molecular biology, it is certain that these two reports have 
had, like the others highlighted  here, significant impact, 
perhaps even greater than the citation record suggests. 


Hulse, after earning his Ph.D. at the University of 
Massachusetts, left astrophysical research for the field of 
fusion studies. Taylor has continued to study pulsars and 
relativistic gravity. Teacher and student will now share the 
$825,000 prize for their fruitful collaboration.


David Pendlebury is an analyst with the research department 
at the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in 
Philadelphia. He also edits Science Watch, an ISI 
newsletter that tracks trends and performance in basic and 
applied research.

(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
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TI : NSF's Lane, NIH's Varmus Poised To Articulate Research 
     Priorities

Now that they've been confirmed, the two Clinton appointees 
must cope with tough choices and political pressures

AU : FRANKLIN HOKE

TY : NEWS

PG : 1


Mounting a defense of basic research will likely top the 
agendas of two recently confirmed presidential appointees, 
as political pressures to divert resources to more targeted 
work continue to grow, researchers and policy observers say. 
University of California, San Francisco, molecular 
virologist Harold Varmus, new head of the National 
Institutes of Health, and Rice University provost and 
physicist Neal Lane, director of the National Science 
Foundation, both will confront questions about the 
appropriate level of support for fundamental investigations.


Varmus, confirmed by the full Senate this month as NIH 
director, made his position on the issue clear at a hearing 
November 3, in a reference to the work that led to his 
sharing the 1989 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.

"As an investigator who has seen the pursuit of an obscure 
chicken virus create a new vision of human cancer, I will 
defend open-ended basic science against calls for restricted 
application to what we already know," Varmus told the 
Committee on Labor and Human Resources.


Reminding Varmus of the many powerful voices that seek to 
influence the use of NIH resources--including several in the 
Senate--Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) told the nominee, "You're 
going to need a lot of steel to resist the tremendous 
pressures in terms of how you administer the institutes." 
Committee chairman Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), echoing 
Coats, told Varmus he would need a "steel backbone" to be an 
effective director.


Physicist Neal Lane, in place as director of the National 
Science Foundation only since October 7, will face similar 
demands. Maintaining support for fundamental research while 
responding to calls for more applied investigations will be 
one of his biggest challenges, observers say.


"The new NSF director faces an uphill fight, because the 
notion of untargeted, peer-reviewed research is 
unfashionable right now, particularly in Congress," says 
Harvey Brooks, a professor, emeritus, of technology and 
public policy and applied physics at Harvard University. 
Brooks is also a former chairman of the National Academy of 
Sciences' Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public 
Policy (COSEPUP).


`Reinventing' NIH
At Varmus's confirmation hearing, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-
Md.), in whose state NIH's Bethesda campus lies, spoke of 
the institutes' being "adrift." Picking up on the vocabulary 
of Vice President Al Gore's ongoing campaign to improve 
government, Mikulski charged the director-designate with 
"reinventing" NIH for the next century. She later asked what 
plans Varmus had for renewing the agency.


Varmus responded that a major reevaluation of the $1.2 
billion intramural research program was already under way 
and that he would move to address the "encumbrances" of the 
extramural grant review system. He also noted that several 
important personnel searches were in progress, including one 
for a director for the Office of AIDS Research. Varmus later 
told reporters he hoped to fill the position by February 1.


Several times during the hearing, Varmus touched on the 
importance of addressing the AIDS epidemic, perhaps seeking 
to allay the concerns of some early critics of his 
nomination. Reportedly, AIDS activists initially were 
worried that Varmus would not be sufficiently supportive of 
their agenda, owing, at least in part, to his focus on 
undirected research. What differences may have existed, 
however, between Varmus and those pressing for more 
attention to AIDS appear to have been settled in a meeting 
held since his nomination.


"There isn't any opposition here," says David Barr, director 
of treatment education and advocacy for Gay Men's Health 
Crisis in New York City. "The thing I'm really most 
interested in is that he cooperate with the new Office of 
AIDS Research director, and there was some concern that he 
was opposed to that. But as we talked it through with him at 
the meeting, I didn't find that to be the case."


Barr notes that Varmus's focus on fundamental research will, 
in fact, be critical to defeating AIDS.


"Certainly, among AIDS treatment activists, the call for 
beefing up the basic research effort has been our demand of 
the year," Barr says. "Not that we're opposed to clinical 
research, but we've sort of hit a dead end. Clinical 
research is only valuable if you've got a drug to study."


Varmus also stressed that he hopes to confront racial and 
sexual discrimination charges that have dogged NIH. As proof 
of this effort, he announced at the hearing that Ruth 
Kirschstein, director of the National Institute of General 
Medical Sciences, had agreed to take the position of NIH 
deputy director formerly held by Jay Moskowitz. Kirschstein, 
who stepped in as acting director following Bernadine 
Healy's resignation at the end of June, has long been active 
in efforts to correct inequities for women researchers at 
the institutes.


A version of the strategic planning process, which became a 
focus of controversy during Healy's tenure, will continue 
under Varmus, although it apparently will have a decidedly 
different character.


"I hope to have a member of the office of the director 
traveling about the country looking for ideas from the 
extramural community that might have some significant 
influence on the way we do business, the way we set goals," 
Varmus said. He noted that several of the constituent 
institutes at NIH use such a process successfully, bringing 
academic investigators together from around the country 
periodically to consider the future.


"The products [of this planning process] are often obsolete 
by the time they're published," Varmus said, "but the 
process of thinking about directions often has a very direct 
effect on program planning."


Policy Deja Vu?
Contending with pressures for more goal-oriented research is 
something of a cyclic struggle, according to Harvard's 
Brooks. He recalls testimony he gave to Congress in 1970 on 
similar issues, the main points of which closely mirror the 
debate today. At that time, he says, the social welfare 
goals of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society initiative 
were cited by those seeking changes in research funding 
allocations.


"Today it's economic competitiveness, but there's a great 
deal of parallelism between the two," Brooks says. "In each 
case, the criticism of the NSF was that it supported 
research that the scientists wanted to do instead of the 
research that somebody--and who that should be, of course, 
is the big question--thought was important for society."


Lane "has the task of responding to these feelings in a 
reasonable and plausible manner without destroying the 
scientific enterprise," Brooks adds.


Marye Anne Fox, a professor of chemistry at the University 
of Texas, Austin, agrees that carrying the case for basic 
research to members of Congress and others will be one of 
Lane's principal challenges. Fox is a member of the National 
Science Board, which oversees NSF, and was a member of the 
Special Commission on the Future of the National Science 
Foundation.


"What [Lane] faces is the difficulty in conveying the 
importance of basic research in a clear way, how relevant it 
is for the nation's competitiveness," Fox says. An aspect of 
the message will be how basic research should be formulated 
as a national goal in light of cutbacks on basic research in 
industry, she says.


The desire to make better use of the nation's scientific 
leadership for social benefit is reasonable enough, 
according to Phillip A. Griffiths, director of the Institute 
for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J. Significantly 
redirecting research at NSF toward strategic purposes, 
however, is not what is needed and is not, in fact, 
something that industry itself has called for, says 
Griffiths, who is a member of the National Science Board  
and  current  chairman of COSEPUP.


"Rather, industry has indicated that the NSF should have as 
its primary mission to support excellence in science and 
engineering education and in pioneering research," Griffiths 
says. "Once the objective of insuring a solid foundation of 
basic research is being met, then special attention to basic 
research in strategic areas is appropriate." 


NSF, as a non-mission-specific funding agency, fills a 
unique role in United States science, observers say.


"It's the only agency that is really responsible for the 
health of science overall," Brooks says. "With all the other 
agencies that support science, their support is justified by 
their mission, whereas the mission of the NSF is the support 
of science and science education."


J. David Litster, vice president and dean for research at 
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, expresses a 
similar view.


"Over the past decade or so, the NSF has really become the 
one agency which is responsible for stewardship of the 
country's capability of basic research in the physical 
sciences," he says.


Litster says that defense-related motives for basic research 
have declined with the end of the Cold War. Part of the 
pressure on science to contribute to economic goals is a 
reflection of this change and the overall national effort to 
reorient to new purposes.


"There's a lot of pressure to support research which will 
contribute to the economic position of the country," he 
says. "That pressure is being interpreted as that the NSF 
should do more applied research and not as much fundamental 
research. We need a strategy for research in this country, 
but part of that strategy for the NSF should be making sure 
that we don't lose the fundamental underpinnings for the 
other things we do."


Finding and communicating the best combination of basic and 
applied research for science and for the country, although 
crucial, will not be an easy task for Varmus or Lane, 
observers agree.


"The whole research enterprise is a seamless web," Brooks 
says. "If you go too far in trying to pick and choose just 
those things that appear--temporarily, to the layman--to be 
relevant to economic competitiveness, you destroy the whole 
infrastructure, which is essential for economic 
competitiveness in the long run."


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
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TI : More Undergrads Embrace Bioengineering Discipline


AU : MYRNA E. WATANABE

TY : NEWS

PG : 1

Prepped in the operating room, a patient may to be too 
uneasy or too  drowsy to notice the tools of modern medicine 
at hand: endoscopes that transmit images of internal anatomy 
to video screens; computers that help analyze these data; 
surgical lasers; pulse oximeters; respirators; and all of 
the other machinery commonplace in today's surgical 
environment.


Such immensely valuable clinical tools are, directly or 
indirectly, the products of biomedical engineering research. 
But the fruits of laboratory investigation in this field are 
by no means limited to the operating room.


The structure of subcellular components, the development of 
artificial organs made of nonbiological materials--even the 
devising of medical information systems and methods of 
downstream processing for pharmaceutical manufacturing--fall 
within the discipline's extraordinary range of concerns.


Extraordinary as well is the apparent attractiveness of the 
field to undergraduate students: Young life sciences, 
medical, and engineering students are flocking to schools 
throughout the United States that offer programs focused on 
the field, say academic officials.


Graduate fellowships and faculty awards in bioengineering 
are now available in all of its subspecialties; and, unlike 
the waning job situation in many other science disciplines 
these days, there seems to be no dearth of opportunity for 
current bioengineering graduates. Moreover, observers are 
optimistic that, as bioengineering applications grow, 
industrial opportunities will cor- respondingly expand to 
accommodate the graduates' career pursuits.


A Complex Field
The field is so diverse that it is defies simple definition.  
Respondents to a 1991 University of Utah survey of 
biomedical industry workers defined a bioengineer as "an 
individual skilled in the interaction between physical and 
life sciences or between engineering and medical practices'" 
(R.A. Normann, et al., Biomedical Engineering Society 
Bulletin 15/4:57-60, 1991). David Katz, chairman of 
University of California, Davis, biomedical engineering 
program, terms the discipline "as much a mindset and a 
toolbox as it is a formal academic sector."


Janie Fouke, an associate professor of biomedical 
engineering at Case Western Reserve University, explains 
that her design and mathematical skills, honed as a graduate 
student in biomedical engineering, are the key to her 
function on a team consisting primarily of clinicians. "I 
can design and build the measurement devices," says Fouke, 
"and I can write the mathematical models that try to 
interpret the results." The latter, she adds, is where "the 
engineer comes in."


Those in the field agree with Fouke on the dynamic interplay 
required between life sciences and engineering skills. 
Generally speaking, biologists and medical researchers use 
their knowledge of anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and 
molecular biology to present problems and hypotheses, while 
solutions to the problems may entail sophisticated 
understanding of design and structure, often calling 
electrical, mechanical, aerospace, or chemical engineering 
skills into play.


Academic Efforts
Among the growing number of bioengineering research programs 
in U.S. academic institutions--schools such as Johns 
Hopkins, the University of Washington, Duke University, Case 
Western Reserve, and the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology--several are benefiting from a rise in funding 
for certain targeted efforts. One of these specialties is 
the relatively new field of tissue engineering, in which 
researchers are striving both to create human tissues by 
means of cellular transplantation and to regenerate human 
tissues that have been damaged or are diseased.


Shu Chien, director of the Institute for Biomedical 
Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, is 
such a researcher. He is taking a molecular mechanics 
approach to tissue engineering, studying molecular models of 
blood cell deformation and attempting to determine the 
factors responsible for cell adhesion. He hopes his work 
will elucidate how blood vessels become clogged with 
leukocytes and how leukocytes function in the immune 
response.


Using quantitative approaches to determine how tissue is 
structured and how it functions, scientists at UC-San Diego 
also are working to develop skin grafts in vitro, consisting 
of living cells and proteins, to aid in healing the wounds 
of burn victims. Other UC-San Diego bioengineering 
researchers are working to determine pressure-flow 
relationships within the heart, to develop a laser that 
measures the thickness of retinal nervous tissue (to 
diagnose glaucoma), and to create implantable glucose 
sensors.

At another major bioengineering center, the Georgia 
Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Robert M. Nerem, 
Institute Professor and holder of the Parker H. Petit 
Distinguished Chair for Engineering in Medicine, is studying 
the endothelium--the lining of the blood vessels--and its 
interactions with blood flow.


Nerem is reconstituting blood vessels out of living 
endothelial cells, muscle cells, and other components. In 
order to do this, Nerem says, he utilizes his background in 
aeronautical engineering--he received his Ph.D. in that 
field from Ohio State University--to study how mechanical 
forces alter the composition and function of blood vessels. 
Other studies at Georgia Tech look at biomaterials, 
controlled release of biomolecules, targeted drug delivery, 
pancreatic transplants, improved blood dialysis pumps, and 
computer modeling for radial keratotomy surgery. 


Meanwhile, the University of Utah--known for its work on the 
artificial heart and the bionic arm--has a strong tissue 
engineering research program. Building on silicon-based 
microelectrodes, researchers such as Richard A. Normann, 
chairman of the  bioengineering department, are creating a 
system that will allow blind people with a functional visual 
cortex in the brain to receive stimuli from a video camera 
via microelectrodes implanted within the cortex.


It follows that Utah also is a leading academic center for 
research on synthetic materials that can be used for 
artificial organs. Karin Caldwell, director of Utah's Center 
for Biopolymers at Interfaces, says that among these 
materials are bioerodable polymers, used in artificial organ 
implants, that degrade as the body's cells grow to replace 
them. These bioerodable polymers also are useful for 
targeted drug release. They must be compatible with blood, 
she explains, so that the molecules can stay within the 
bloodstream long enough to function. They also must be 
soluble in the body, and must not trigger its immune 
response.

Applying The Skills
According to Georgia Tech's Nerem, who is president of the 
Washington, D.C.-based American Institute for Medical and 
Bioengineering (AIMBE), approximately 160 bioengineering 
Ph.D.'s are now granted annually in the U.S., but an 
approximately equal number of degrees in chemical, 
mechanical, electrical, and other engineering specialties 
are granted to people whose training is in bioengineering. 
Recognizing the increasing need for reliable job-market 
forecasts for this burgeoning field, AIMBE is considering a 
manpower study to develop useful projections.


Meanwhile, researchers such as UCDavis' Katz predict that 
"in the 21st century, a lot more [engineering] is going to 
be biologically oriented." James McIlhenny, chairman of 
biomedical engineering at Duke, says there currently are 21 
accredited undergraduate bioengineering departments in the 
U.S. and more than 64 graduate programs.


One of the largest undergraduate bioengineering programs in 
the U.S. is at UCSan Diego; 400 students are enrolled there 
this year, up 100 percent over five years ago. The 
University of Pennsylvania has one of the largest graduate 
programs, with approximately 100 students.


Onethird to onehalf of bio engineering undergraduates 
nationally go on to medical school, an equal proportion opt 
for graduate school, and 20 percent to a third of them take 
jobs in industry, observers estimate. Master's program 
graduates tend to pursue their doctorates or else enter 
medical school, while those with doctorates most often take 
jobs in either academia or industry.


Currently, according to Karen Mudry, an official at the 
Washington, D.C.-based Whitaker Foundationan enthusiastic 
supporter of bioengineering researchthere are relatively few 
academic positions available. Sources agree that the bulk of 
industrial jobs is with biomedical instrumentation 
companies; but in the past five years, according to many 
academics, bioengineers increasingly have been finding 
management jobs at biotechnology firms. As the biotech field 
grows, sources believe, it is expected to absorb more 
bioengineers.


The Funding Picture
Although bioengineering research is supported by the 
National Institutes of Health and the National Science 
Foundation, many investigators say that without the support 
of the Whitaker Foundation, the field would not have 
developed as rapidly as it has. Whitaker's most recent 
venture, according to its vice president for biomedical 
engineering programs, Peter G. Katona, is a joint initiative 
with NSF begun a year ago for support of research into 
costeffective health care technologies.


Formed in the mid1970s by electronics industry entrepreneur 
Uncas A. Whitaker, the foundation has long been a source of 
research support for individual bioengineers (A. Martello, 
The Scientist, Feb. 5, 1990, page 26). In 1989, the 
foundation began administering development awards to 
universities for improvement of bioengineering education 
programs. The first two schools to 


receive awards were Johns Hopkins and the University of 
Washington. Two years later, a second set of awards was 
givento UCSan Diego, the University of Utah, and Georgia 
Tech. Development award grantees receive $1 million for 
capital investment, and $500,000 a year for four years that 
is not earmarked but can be used to recruit bioengineering 
faculty, award graduate fellowships, and run core 
facilities. Upon review, the award may be extended for two 
years. At the end of the award period, schools are given $1 
million in transition funds to help phase in other funding 
sources.


The Whitaker Foundation is not the only source of private 
support for bionengineering, however. The University of 
Pennsylvania's Laboratory for Injury Research and 
Prevention, for example, has received funds from automobile 
manufacturers and insurance companies, explains Gershon 
Buchsbaum, a Penn professor of bioengineering.


Some researchers complain that NIH and NSF bioengineering 
funding levels are low, although the federal government is 
still the largest provider of research support for the 
field. Nevertheless, Katz of UCDavis contends that the NIH 
review panels need to have a better understanding of the 
relevance of engineering to research proposals. Murray B. 
Sachs, Massey Professor and director of Johns Hopkins School 
of Medicine's department of biomedical engineering, says, 
with regard to NIH, "Study sections sometimes don't have 
engineers or mathematical people on them."

Myrna E. Watanabe is a biotechnology consultant in Yonkers, 
N.Y.


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
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NEXT:



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TI : WOMEN AND MINORITIES IN BIOENGINEERING

AU : MYRNA E. WATANABE

TY : NEWS

PG : 1


There is agreement among bioengineers that their field 
offers excellent career opportunities for women. Georgia 
Institute of Technology's Robert Nerem, for example, says 
that in 199192, 35 percent of the bioengineering bachelor's 
degrees, 30 percent of the master's degrees, and 24 percent 
of the Ph.D.'s went to women.


However, the Whitaker Foundation's Karen Mudry points out, 
these figures indicate a recent trend, since, at present, 
"there are very few senior women in the field." 


Some other frequently underrepresented minorities, however, 
are not well represented among the ranks of professional 
bioengineers, either. Georgia Tech's Nerem notes that in 
199192, AfricanAmericans earned only 3 percent of the 
bachelor's degrees, 1 percent of the master's degrees, and 
essentially no Ph.D.'s in the field. Although exact figures 
are unavailable, it is believed, he adds, that there are 
slightly more Hispanic than AfricanAmerican bioengineers.


Cato Laurencin, an orthopedic surgeon and biochemical 
engineer who is director of a polymer materials laboratory 
in the division of health sciences at the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology, believes that current 
bioengineering recruitment initiatives at the late high 
school or college level are not sufficient to attract 
minorities. He says that the effort to recruit minority 
students must start early in high school, if not before, and 
suggests that universities or bioengineering departments 
enter into partnerships with high schools to increase 
awareness of the field.


--M.E.W. 

(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
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NEXT:



-----------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Joint Program Aims To Explore Links Between Science And The Humanities


AU  : TRACEY D. WEBB

TY  : NEWS

PG  : 3


The National Science Foundation--hoping to boost science 
literacy among Americans of all ages--has joined with the 
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in a program 
aimed at examining the relationship between science and the 
humanities in everyday life. The two agencies have awarded 
five states $40,000 to $50,000 grants for public education 
projects aimed at highlighting the role of the humanities in 
understanding science and technology.


Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont 
are the first recipients of grants under NSF and NEH's 
Nature, Technology and Human Understanding program. The 
federal project is the result of talks that began in 1992 
between former NSF director Walter Massey and former NEH 
director Lynn Cheney. Massey wanted NSF to increase its 
efforts to promote science literacy and believed examining 
science and technology in their cultural context was a 
unique way to achieve that goal, says NSF program director 
Rachelle Hollander.


"NSF sees this program as a way to show that science and the 
humanities should not be viewed as two unrelated disciplines 
and that one doesn't understand science without 
understanding the human and social context in which it 
exists," Hollander explains.


>From NEH's perspective, the project is a way to encourage 
thought and discussion among the general public about the 
human implications--good and bad--of science, says NEH 
spokesman Jim Turner.


"There is the notion that the humanities and science have 
absolutely nothing to do with each other," Turner says. "But 
there are a lot of people who are concerned with the value 
judgments and human concerns surrounding science and 
technology. We believe the projects selected for grants are 
broad-based enough to allow schoolchildren to adults to 
understand how the two disciplines are connected and that 
they are not mutually exclusive."


In all, 12 state humanities councils submitted proposals for 
grants. Turner says the five awardees will submit reports 
back to NEH and NSF once the projects have been completed.


"The councils are all NEH affiliates, and all had impressive 
proposals," Turner says. "The five states awarded grants 
were selected by a panel of science and humanities scholars 
on the basis of the diversity of the projects and audience 
that those projects would reach."


For example, Massachusetts's program--"Knowing Our Place: 
Humanistic Aspects of Environmental Policy Making"--
addresses environmental concerns of the public by focusing 
on the impact of nuclear power.


"We plan on using the history of nuclear power and the 
controversy that has surrounded it as a case study of how 
public perception plays a role in environmental and energy 
policy," says David Telbaldi, executive director of the 
Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities.


Telbaldi says the project will begin in March with a series 
of live television broadcasts linking local studio 
audiences, viewers across the state, and a panel of science 
and humanities experts. The broadcasts will include 
discussions on the place of scientific expertise in forming 
environmental policy, the challenges of making technological 
decisions within a democracy, and future sources of energy.


The Georgia project will connect science with the 
achievement of African Americans in the field. "Technology 
and the African American Experience" will focus on the role 
of African Americans in the development of science and 
technology with a two-day symposium and four public lectures 
on the topic.


The theme of Kentucky's "Science in Our Lives" project is 
change from an agricultural to a technology-based economy. 
The project's intent is to examine the implications of the 
state's own current transition from agrarian to high-tech 
through a series of public lectures, readings, and 
discussions.


The aim of New Hampshire's project is to show how science 
incorporates social and cultural perspectives. The program, 
entitled "Of Apples and Origins: Stories of Life on Earth," 
will include public radio and television broadcasts as well 
as public reading and discussion programs. The project is 
also sponsoring a public conference on computer technology 
and artificial intelligence.


Vermont's "Mother Goose Asks Why" project is targeted toward 
increasing science literacy among the state's 
schoolchildren. The key part of the program includes 
educating parents on how to help their children perform 
simple science activities at home.


While NSF's main goal is still promoting and funding basic 
science research, Cora Marrett, assistant director of the 
agency's social, behavioral, and economic sciences division, 
says the NSF-NEH program should be encouraging to the 
science community because it provides a two-fold benefit.


"This program will not only help foster science literacy, 
especially among young students, but could also help in 
advancing humanistic science research," Marrett says. She 
says the science agency hopes to fund and award more grants 
under the joint project in the future, although no concrete 
plans exist to continue the program until it is evaluated.


For more information on the Nature, Technology and Human 
Understanding program, contact NSF at 1800 G St., N.W., 
Washington, D.C. 20550 or call (202) 357-9498.


Tracey D. Webb is freelance writer based in Philadelphia.


(The Scientist, Vol:7,#23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
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NEXT:



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TI : Consortium Of `Best Minds' To Seek Manic-Depressive 
     Illness Gene

AU : NEERAJA SANAKARAN

TY : NEWS

PG : 4


Funded by a $2.5 million grant from the Charles A. Dana 
Foundation, scientists from three of the United States' 
premier research institutions--Cold Spring Harbor 
Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University, and Stanford 
University--are joining forces in a consortium to search for 
the genes responsible for manic-depressive illness (MDI).


In an effort the foundation is calling a new model for 
collaborative research, the Dana Consortium for the Genetic 
Basis of Manic-Depressive Illness is bringing leading 
researchers from disciplines as diverse as genetics, 
psychiatry, and informatics together toward a common goal.


"Some of the best minds from the pure sciences and clinical 
sciences are coming together," says David Mahoney, chairman 
and chief executive officer of the New York City-based Dana 
Foundation and chairman of David Mahoney Ventures, also of 
New York. Mahoney, a businessman, serves on the board of 
advisers of the David Mahoney Institute of Neurological 
Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania and as chairman 
of the governing council of the Harvard Mahoney Neuroscience 
Institute at Harvard Medical School.


"Researchers from these different universities are 
collaborating--not competing for the funds--to get to the 
results," says Stephen Foster, executive vice president of 
the Dana Foundation. "Scientists with their unique areas of 
expertise at the different institutions need each other to 
find all the answers."


Each of the three institutions will be concentrating on a 
different aspect of the investigation. Trained clinical 
psychiatrists at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore will be 
identifying families who show strong evidence for a genetic 
origin of MDI. Geneticists at Stanford in Palo Alto, Calif., 
will be doing the actual genetic analyses--examining the DNA 
from these patients, searching for markers or "signposts" 
that will point to the genes that cause the disease. The 
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y., is 
forming a new Dana-Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Center, 
headed by Cold Spring Harbor director James Watson, to serve 
as the central facility for the project. It will house a 
database to integrate clinical and genetic data from the two 
other institutions.


"[What] makes this collaboration unique is the role played 
by Cold Spring Harbor and Watson," says J. Raymond DePaulo, 
a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, and 
head of the MDI project there.


Watson, a Nobel laureate who recently stepped down from the 
directorship of the Human Genome Project, will help in the 
acquisition of resources and data management for the 
project. Recently, he was also appointed chairman of the 
executive committee of the International Science Foundation 
for the Former Soviet Union, an organization founded by 
investor George Soros to aid Russian scientists (B. Goodman, 
The Scientist, Jan. 11, 1993, page 3).


In addition to setting up the database, Cold Spring Harbor 
Laboratory will function as a conduit for information on 
MDI, coordinating basic research with studies on social and 
ethical consequences of the disease, and organizing periodic 
meetings among scientists to discuss advances made in the 
field. The first of these meetings, scheduled for December 
of this year at the laboratory's Banbury Center, will 
address critical issues concerning MDI, with an emphasis on 
diagnosis. The consortium also plans to educate health and 
public policy- makers about MDI through briefings.


One of the biggest problems about working with manic-
depressive disease, says DePaulo, is that there is no 
established pathology to aid in its proper diagnosis. 
Finding the genes that either cause or increase the 
patients' susceptibility to MDI will enable doctors to 
diagnose the disease in the early stages. MDI, which 
afflicts about 2.5 million Americans, is a leading cause of 
suicide among both adults and adolescents. According to Kay 
R. Jamison, the clinical director of the Dana-Cold Spring 
Harbor Center, early diagnosis will go a long way in 
prevention efforts among people at risk and is thus one of 
the most important reasons to find the genes.


"We chose MDI because [the] tools seemed to fit the goal," 
says David Botstein, a professor and chairman of the 
genetics department at Stanford University, where he leads 
the consortium's team of geneticists and molecular 
biologists. In 1986, Botstein, along with Eric Lander, a 
professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology, published some landmark papers on the 
identification of complex genetic diseases; that is, 
diseases caused by defects in more than one gene (E.S. 
Lander, D. Botstein, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Symposium 
on Quantitative Biology, 51:49-62; E.S. Lander, D. Botstein, 
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 83:7353-7). 
They developed a "simultaneous search" theory that could 
identify up to five genes involved in causing disease, 
provided a complete map of the chromosomes was available. 
The lack of any consistent patterns of inheritance of MDI 
indicated that perhaps multiple genes were involved here.


"The project is very exciting because it allows us to test 
out this theory," says Chris Clark, a postdoctoral fellow 
who will be working on the project in Stanford. "Thanks to 
the genome project we now have available a complete map with 
markers or `signposts' to identify genes on all 23 
chromosomes."


Using these markers, scientists can trace the genes to 
different lineages and hope to identify the mutant genes 
responsible for MDI. Since more than one gene is involved, 
the genetic analysis requires a significant number of 
samples to properly locate all possible culprits. The team 
at Johns Hopkins is responsible for identifying 50 families 
with at least three afflicted members. Compounding the 
search is the criterion that the disease be inherited from 
only one side of the family. If both families have a history 
of MDI, the identification of the responsible genes would 
not be possible. So far, the team has selected 25 families.


Cold Spring Harbor's Tom Marr developed the special software 
for the MDI database. "Ultimately, we hope to go beyond 
published papers and have the database include all the 
background information," says Jan Witkowski, a geneticist 
and director of the Banbury Center. "One could be able to 
trace information through it, to see how others got it and 
what they are doing with it."


For administrative purposes, the grant money is being 
dispensed as three separate awards to the institutions. 
Roughly $1.5 million is being channeled to Cold Spring 
Harbor and the remainder to Stanford and Hopkins. Earlier 
this year the Dana Foundation announced a commitment of $25 
million toward neuroscience, and the MDI project alone is 
receiving a tenth of this amount.


"The initial investment is $2.5 million over three years," 
says Mahoney. "If the project is working--and early results 
show every sign of significant progress--we expect to add 
and increase to this original amount."


Neeraja Sankaran is a science writer at the Cancer Research 
Institute in New York City.


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
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NEXT:


                            NOTEBOOK


---------------------------------------------------------------
TI : SissBoomBarium!

TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)

PG : 4

  
On a cold, rainy, blustery November 6, some 52,000 football 
fans huddled in East Lansing, Mich.'s Spartan Stadium to see 
Michigan State square off against Big 10 rival Northwestern. 
By all accounts, the game turned out to be a sloppily played 
affair, with MSU winning, 3129. For some in the standsthe 
scienceminded, especiallythe best moments came at halftime, 
when 109 marchers, each carrying a 28 x 44inch placard, 
congregated at midfield to form a "Living Periodic Table." 
What compelled these hearty souls to brave the elements, so 
to speak, in such fashion? According to Michael Kenney, a 
visiting lecturer in MSU's chemistry department, the 
intention was to remind people that chemistry affects 
everyone, every day. The event was Kenney's idea to promote 
National Chemistry Week, November 713. The volunteers 
including Michigan State president Peter McPherson, 
representing neilsbohrium (Ns)paid $100 each for the 
privilege of shivering with their favorite element, with 
proceeds going to the MSUbased chapter of the American 
Chemical Society.


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
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NEXT:


------------------------------------------------------------
TI : MegaLibrary

TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)

PG : 4

A library documenting the development of U.S. 
infrastructuretransportation, communications, and physical 
structuresthat may eventually comprise more than 100,000 
volumes is in the process of being digitized in a joint 
project spearheaded by Cornell University Library and 
Cornell Information Technologies. The material to be 
incorporated into "The Making of America" project is part of 
Cornell's collection and spans the period 1860 to 1960. Many 
of the books and papers in the collection are currently too 
brittle to be handled by the public. The Cornell effort is 
designed to complement similar preservation initiatives, 
such as the U.S. Library of Congress' "American Memory 
Project," which will convert archival collections in 
American culture and history to electronic form; and Yale 
University's "Open Book" project, which will create digital 
images from microfilmed versions of 10,000 books. Cornell 
has already digitized more than 1,000 books and demonstrated 
the ability to gain access to them on Internet. Advisory 
panels of scholars from various institutions will decide 
which works will be preserved in "The Making of America."


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================

NEXT:

------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Testing The Waters

TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)

PG : 4


Scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in 
Massachusetts and Penn State University have tested two 
prototype acoustic "thermometers" off the coast of Bermuda 
as part of an experiment aimed at measuring ocean 
temperatures on a global scale. A pair of surface suspended 
acoustic receivers (SSARs), large buoys attached to 
thousands of feet of cable equipped with various sensors and 
underwater microphones, use electronics and signalprocessing 
techniques to map global oceans. The buoys will be used as 
part of the Global Acoustic Mapping of Ocean Temperature 
(GAMOT) program. The techniques used in GAMOT differ from 
conventional ocean temperature measuring methods because 
they use loosely moored sound sources and the SSARs, rather 
than fixed sound sources and receivers. Another test of the 
SSARs is planned in the Pacific next year.


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================

NEXT:


------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Chemistry For Kids

TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)

PG : 4

The American Chemical Society has testlaunched a program 
designed to bring the excitement of chemistry to children. 
"Kids & Chemistry" provides children, ages 912, with handson 
experiments that relate chemistry to everyday life. The 
experiments are contained in lunchbagsized kits holding 
enough experimental materials for four children. For 
example, the "Acid Rain" kit will show the effects of acid 
rain on various surfaces, and "Chemical Reactions" gives 
kids insight on how their body digests food. Other 
components of the program are classroom programs, penpal 
arrangements with scientists, and a schoolbased mentoring 
program to promote gender equity in math and science. Kids & 
Chemistry is being tested for a year in Irvine, Calif.; 
Baytown, Texas; Minneapolis; and Arlington, Va. If 
successful, the program will go national through ACS's local 
chapters. For more information, contact ACS, 1155 16th St., 
N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036; (202) 8724450. Fax: (202) 
8724370.


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
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NEXT:

------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Challenging Einstein

TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)

PG : 4

Stanford University has subcontracted Lockheed Missiles and 
Space Co. of Sunnyvale, Calif., to build a $100 million 
spacecraft that will transport Gravity Probe B, a physics 
experiment designed to test two crucial predictions of 
Einstein's general theory of relativity. Stanford is 
developing Gravity Probe B under contract from the National 
Aeronautics and Space Administration. The experiment will 
measure how space and time are "warped" and "dragged" by the 
presence of Earth and its rotation. To conduct the 
experiment, four superround gyroscopes will spin on gas jets 
within a quartz block so that they touch nothing while 
spinning. By freezing the environment surrounding the 
gyroscopes to near absolute zero, the Stanford researchers 
will be able measure the minute changes in spin. If the 
experiment confirms Einstein's theory, astrophysicists will 
be more confident in applying the theory to new star 
systems. If not, prevalent views of the structure and origin 
of the universe would be radically altered. Gravity Probe B 
is slated to be tested aboard the space shuttle in 1995, and 
sent into polar orbit around Earth in 1999.


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
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NEXT:


------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Who's Fooling Whom?

TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)

PG : 4

The third annual Loebner Prize competition is scheduled for 
December 8 at the National University Technology Center 
(NUTEC) in San Diego. In the competition, administered by 
the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies in 
Massachusetts, human judges interface with a bank of 
computers to determine which terminals are controlled by 
humans and which by computers. Using a scoring system that 
ranks the terminals most humanlike to least humanlike, the 
author of the software given the highest score by the judges 
receives $2,000. Robert Epstein, chairman of the National 
University psychology department and coordinator of all 
three contests, notes that in the previous two competitions 
some of the judges were completely fooled by the software 
programs. This year's competition was supposed to be held in 
September at Cambridge, but was postponed and moved to NUTEC 
after a July fire razed the Cambridge center. Epstein says 
that the competition is open to the public, but that space 
is limited. For information, contact Epstein by phone at 
(619) 4364400 or by fax at (619) 4364490.


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
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NEXT:


                          OPINION

-----------------------------------------------------------
TI : National Labs Have Vital New Role To Play In The 1990s

AU : ROLAND W. SCHMITT

TY : OPINION

PG : 11


Editor's Note: In a recent speech at Lawrence Livermore 
National Laboratory in California, Roland W. Schmitt, 
president emeritus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 
Troy, N.Y., candidly explored the vast changes in global and 
national affairs that are having significant impact on the 
mission of United States governmentoperated labs.


Schmitta former General Electric Corp. executiveaddressed 
the traditions and achievements of these research centers; 
he discussed the pattern of governmental financial support 
for their endeavors over the years; he reviewed the 
traditional balance among federal, industrial, and academic 
involvement in supporting and influencing their activities; 
and he made clear his feelings concerning the ways in which 
the national labs must adjust their mode of doing scientific 
business in response to the demands of a rapidly changing 
set of international concerns.


Following is an excerpt from his speech, in which he 
addresses the conceptual reconfiguration of the national 
labs in response to a politically and economically 
reconfigured global environment.


National Labs Have Vital New Role To Play In The 1990s

                           ------


My concerns about the national labs have focused on the 
tradition of "chuck wagon technology," where you cook up 
whatever technical goodies fit your talents or interests, 
and then yell "come and get it."


This is plainly an ineffective way to approach technology 
transfer to the commercial sector, since a hungry client may 
not always be able to digest what's served.  And  yet the 
national labs still use it distressingly often.


For the last four decades, three primary themes have 
characterized federal science and technology policy: 
maintaining a strong technology base for defense, developing 
technologies for missionoriented federal agencies, and 
supporting fundamental and exploratory research.


Defense technology has been dominant. It spawned a huge 
infrastructure that includes federal laboratories, 
universities, and industry and it currently accounts for 
about onethird of the United States' total R&D expenditures. 
Now, however, the nation's scientific and technical 
community must respond to lightningquick changes: the end of 
the Cold War, our altered defense needs, international 
economic competition, shifting domestic prioritiesall these 
factors have thrown science and technology into the same 
turmoil  that  is  roiling  the  rest  of society.

New Goals
Recently, the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public 
Policy of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering 
and the Institute of Medicine proposed a new basis for 
federal science and technology policy. The committee 
suggested two goals: leadership in all major areas of 
science to which the nation can quickly apply and extend 
advances; and, beyond this, leadership in additional 
selected areas of science identified according to criteria, 
including national objectives, that are external to the 
field of research.


The committee also urged the federal government to maintain 
leadership in technologies that promise major and continuing 
impact on broad areas of industrial and economic 
performance. In particular, the government should pursue 
this goal in areas in which U.S. firms have shown they can 
convert the technology to marketable products or where the 
areas of emphasis are based on national strategic 
considerations.


As a result, there is increasing pressure on scientists to 
be more motivated byand move faster onthe nation's problems 
and less by their own curiosity. This pressure is 
exemplified by California congressman George Brown, Jr., who 
has lamented the failure of science and technology to make 
the U.S. a leader in infant health, life expectancy, worker 
productivity, or the efficient use of resources. A Carnegie 
Commission reportLinking Science and Technology to Societal 
Goalshas called for setting tangible, longterm science and 
technology goals in many policy areas, among them the 
environment and natural resources, health and social 
welfare, food production and distribution, and the public 
infrastructure.


To respond to these challenges, science and technology 
policy in the 1990s should add several new themes to those 
of the past. These are:

* longterm job creation through the exploratory and 
pioneering efforts that launch new industries, products, and 
services;


* technologies for selected social issues; and

* defense R&D conversion.
The last two are, I believe, widely accepted by the 
political leaders. The first, I fear, is being overlooked at 
present. But I believe that the most promising targets of 
opportunity are jobcreating, pioneering, and socially 
oriented R&D endeavors, especially those that center on the 
fields of environment, waste cleanup, and infrastructure.


Until now, little pioneering work in nondefense areas has 
emerged from the national labs. However, scientists and 
engineers at those labs are eminently capable of such work 
if motivated and supported with the right programs. The key 
is to design programs to generate discoveries and inventions 
in areas relevant to industry and to ensure that these 
breakthroughs are linked with entrepreneurial firms, large 
or small, that can turn worthwhile inventions into 
profitmaking enterprises.


Two kinds of organizations develop and convert pioneering 
technology into jobcreating businesses: startup firms and 
newbusiness or newproduct subgroups within existing firms. 
The national labs can help both by reducing their risks.


National labs should choose their research initiatives by 
charting their courses with help from industry. Each lab 
could build on its present expertise and identify industries 
that most closely approximate its research skills. With help 
from people in these industries who know where the barriers 
and opportunities lie, the lab could identify areas in which 
fundamental knowledge is lacking and in which new 
discoveries or inventions could make a difference. Once 
these areas are identified, the lab's best and brightest 
should be set loose to address these concerns.


Dollar Support
Such work could be funded initially from directors' 
discretionary funds, which amount to 10 percent of each 
lab's total budget. In time, considerably larger portions of 
the lab's budget could be devoted to successful efforts.


Technology transfer also is a key. The transfer of 
information, services, equipment, and people to 
entrepreneurial firms most likely will take place 
regionally. To succeed, businesses need seed money and, 
later, venture capital. Many states now have programs 
designed to encourage these enterprises. The national labs 
would need close alliances with these regional economic 
activities as well as all the private infrastructure that 
nurtures new ventures.


The objective should be to transfer resources, especially 
equipment and people. By assuming major responsibility for 
the early coststhose associated with the pioneering work of 
discovery and demonstrationnational labs would help minimize 
risks to those seeking to develop new industries, 
businesses, and products.


The federal government's return on investment would be 
highquality jobs, in either startup or existing firms. The 
deal between the riskreducing national labs and the 
entrepreneur should spell out the jobcreating milestones on 
which continuation of the project would depend.


Providing A Link
To transfer technology successfully to new business 
divisions of existing firms, the labs and firms must 
participate in programs that link people as well as ideas, 
knowledge, discoveries, and inventions. Team forming across 
organizational interfaces is essential. The paradigm that 
works best is a process in which people work together early, 
often, and over long periods through successive experiences 
of successful innovation.


For the past decade, the government has encouraged the 
national labs to promote technology transfer through 
legislation and various executive orders. Each of these 
actions has sought to remove constraints and barriers that 
have stymied technology transfer.


But removing constraints, although necessary, is not 
sufficient. For national labs to contribute significantly to 
U.S. industrial strength, their relationships with industry 
must be based on a longterm strategic vision, not on 
projectbyproject improvisation.


In narrowing the focus to what I'm proposing as a major 
targetjobcreating, pioneering worklegitimate questions 
emerge: Can such concrete goals fuel the creative juices of 
lab scientists and engineers? Will such research evoke the 
best, most innovative contributions of the scientist? Or 
will heavyhanded, topdown direction undermine the commitment 
of scientists who are often motivated by an intense personal 
desire for knowledge?


 History is on our side. Research aimed at addressing 
practical needs often has sparked pioneering efforts that, 
in turn, have fueled knowledge and cleared the way for new 
realms of inquiry. Time and again, scientists have examined 
realworld problems and contributed to both society and 
science. You know who some of these scientists are: Louis 
Pasteur, who started with sour wine; Irving Langmuir, who 
started with blackened light bulbs; Karl Jansky, who started 
by listening to static. Today, from Pasteur, Langmuir, and 
Jansky, we have bacteriology, surface chemistry, and radio 
astronomy. Practical problems don't detract from the work of 
creative scientiststhey enrich it.


National lab scientists who participate in these downtoearth 
programs must be willing to cast their nets into the streams 
of industrial barriers and opportunities. The wider they 
cast for places where the scientific and technical mind can 
work, the more challenges, opportunities, and creativity 
they will find.


To what extent are the national labs prepared to pursue the 
course I've outlined? Some labs already have forged programs 
to promote entrepreneurial spinoffs. Many have research 
programs motivated by other goals that could be transformed 
into the kind of effort I'm suggesting.


Solutions lie in fostering government/industry research 
teams that expose scientists and engineers to ideas for 
relevant, pioneering research and development.


Solutions lie in policies that make job creation an explicit 
goal and that allow labs to carry out programs that 
represent riskreducing subsidies for commercial activities.


And solutions lie in policies that encourage the transfer of 
people, equipment, discoveries, and knowledge to target 
organizations.


If successful, such programs will boost an ailing economy, 
downsize the national labs in an orderly and productive 
manner, and leave them larger than they otherwise would 
bebecause they will have learned to do something new and 
important for the nation.


Roland W. Schmitt is president emeritus of Rensselaer 
Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
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NEXT:


                         COMMENTARY

------------------------------------------------------------
TI : What Can We Learn From The Supercollider's Demise?

AU : Leon M. Lederman

TY : OPINION (COMMENTARY)

PG : 12


A stunned subset of the scientific community, the particle 
physicists, is wrestling with Congress' recent rejection of 
the superconducting supercollider. It becomes intensely 
important to try to understand what this episode means in 
the broad sweep of United States history.


Science has many fronts, each making its justifiable claim 
to passion and to the power to illuminate. However, the 
quest to discover the primary building blocks, the particles 
and fundamental laws of nature, has a unique objective. 
Although these laws are not useful to cure the common cold 
or understand the turbulent progress of hurricanes, they 
provide a solid base for the pyramid of understanding.


The U.S. grew rich by exploring and settling its frontiers. 
We learned that the bolder the thrust, the greater the 
returns. Isn't the supercollider a sort of wagon train into 
the frontier of our comprehension of the universe? How could 
we not continue? What does this tell us about the state of 
America's mind? What does it augur for the future?


We cast about for reasons. Maybe we can blame our failed 
educational system, which produces those legislators who, 
looking for the approbation of their constituents, proudly 
announced that they lack the vaguest idea of what the 
supercollider is all about. Maybe we can blame the unhelpful 
testimony by colleagues in other science fields, stressed as 
they are by their own difficulties in securing adequate 
research support. (In fact, we particle physicists would 
feel infinitely better todayin this winter of our 
discontentif the money saved would appear in the other 
science budgets. Unfortunately, we do not believe this will 
happen.)


This brings us to the general state of science in the 
nation. Across the board, biological, medical, chemical, and 
physical research are increasingly under stress. Young 
investigators are spending up to 40 percent of their time 
seeking research20funding. Bureaucratic and regulatory 
requirements eat up time and research funds. Creationists, 
animal rights extremists, and congressional fraud hunters 
hardly cheer up the environment in which research must 
flower. And there are increasing pressures from policymakers 
who insist that research must be more targeted to immediate 
goals and must not, above all, be curiositydriven.


Superimposed on the litany of troubles is the fact that 
American industry is giving up on research. One after 
another, once proud and productive research labs are being 
either closed or reduced to shadows of their former 
splendor: RCA, IBM, Bell Labs, Westinghouse, GE, DuPont, and 
so forth. At the same time, the great research universities 
are experiencing financial difficulties impacting the vigor 
with which their research is carried out.


Thus, the SSC decision may be viewed in the context of a 
national mood that is obsessed by immediacy at the expense 
of longterm investment. The inertia with which America is 
addressing the crisis in educationso intimately woven into 
the future of scienceis surely a related issue.


The questions raised here are, of course, open. We need the 
benefit of perspective and, although I identify many of the 
concerns we have as scientists, I remain optimistic. I 
cannot remember ever seeing so many bright young scientists, 
eager to practice their skills. The promise of science has 
never been greater, and I don't believe anyone seriously 
questions the notion that science and technology are 
essential to survival and evolution of humankind on this 
planet.


What must be understood is that vibrant and productive 
science is a tapestry of many threads, and each, in its 
proper balance, plays a vital role: applied science and 
engineering, basic research, big science and small science, 
neurophysiology and cosmology. We need to kindle the sparks 
of curiosity in our future scientists. Every child is a 
candidate, and every young aspirant is sensitive to the 
messages that emanate from our political and social leaders.


We are in a tough period and, incidentally, our colleagues 
in many other industrial nations are facing similar 
difficulties. We obviously need to intensify efforts at 
international collaboration. The federal government and 
Congress must establish a sane research policy so that never 
again will the support of three administrations and four 
Congresses lure thousands of young scientists, engineers, 
and technicians into a project that can so casually be 
canceled.


Most important, scientists must rededicate themselves to a 
massive effort at raising the science literacy of the 
public. Only when citizens have reasonable science savvy 
will their congressional servants vote correctly.


Leon M. Lederman, a Nobel Prizewinning physicist and 
director emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, 
is a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 
Chicago.


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
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NEXT:



                      LETTERS

------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Fetal Tissue Opposition

AU : KEITH A CRUTCHER

TY : OPINION (LETTERS )

PG : 12


I find it ironic that The Scientist, which states on its 
contents page that "one of its most valued aspects is its 
commitment to open discussion of controversial topics," 
would publish the kind of article that appeared in the 
October 4 issue on the federal funding of research using 
aborted fetal human tissue (M.E. Watanabe, page 1). Of 
greater irony is that the same issue contains a story on the 
establishment of a new ethics institute (R. Kaufman, page 
3), in which we find an expert profoundly stating that 
"there are lots of ethical issues facing scientific 
researchers" and a dean observing that making students aware 
of ethical questions "is part of doing science right." But 
scanning the article on funding of fetal tissue research 
reveals no discussion of the ethical issues.


Who is surprised to learn that the advocates (read 
"recipients") of federal funding for fetal tissue research 
"breathed a collective sigh of relief" when the ban was 
overturned? If readers were interested in exploring the 
ethical debate that erupted (and continues) around this 
issue, no clues for further exploration are given in the 
article or the suggested reading list. Such readers might be 
surprised to learn that objections have been voiced within 
the scientific community regarding the clinical efficacy of 
fetal tissue transplantation. They would certainly have a 
hard time finding support for the conclusion that such 
transplants "have been used successfully in individuals with 
Parkinson's disease, diabetes," and the other diseases 
listed. That politics have played an inordinate role in the 
determination of ethically sound science is unquestionably 
true. However, dismissing the issues as nothing more than 
politics misrepresents the underlying questions and 
polarizes the discussion.


As a scientist with some familiarity with the scientific and 
ethical issues related to the use of aborted fetal tissue, I 
remain opposed to the federal funding of any research that 
depends on the systematic and intentional destruction of 
innocent human life. There are other scientists who hold 
similar views. Rather than ignore the controversy, The 
Scientist would do a greater service to its readership by 
fulfilling its goal of promoting open discussion and explore 
all sides. At the very least, the advocates of fetal tissue 
research should be given the opportunity to establish the 
ethical foundations of their position by demonstrating the 
weakness of the arguments made on the other side. Because it 
ignores such arguments, readers may rightfully wonder if The 
Scientist is displaying the same tendency exhibited by the 
lay media, in which appearance is more highly valued than 
substance.


KEITH A. CRUTCHER
Department of Neurosurgery
University of Cincinnati Medical Center

(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
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NEXT:

------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Grad Student Support

AU : ROBERT V. SMITH

TY : OPINION (lETTERS)

PG : 12


Thank you for the fine article on dilemmas faced by academic 
scientists as a result of funding constraints (B. Spector, 
The Scientist, Sept. 6, 1993, page 1). I would like to offer 
a correction and clarification of an item referred to in 
that article. First, graduate tuition at Washington State 
University (WSU) increased 35 percent during the past five 
years and is now about $10,000 per year for nonresidents and 
$4,000 for residents, not double and not $15,000 as 
indicated in the article.


The clarification is related to my comments on the "hiring" 
of graduate assistants vs. technicians and postdocs. We 
encourage faculty to hire graduate students on grants, but 
with increasingly competitive stipends (about $15,000 per 
year), the cost of resident tuition (outofstate tuition is 
waived at university cost for students appointed onehalf 
time or greater), and statemandated health insurance 
benefits (averaging $1,000 per student), the "total package" 
for a halftime graduate research assistant is close to 
$20,000 per year. WSU faculty increasingly report that it is 
difficult to justify the support of graduate assistants when 
fulltime technicians and postdocs can be hired for a little 
more than the cost of the graduate student "total package" 
alluded to previously. This situation does not bode well for 
people aspiring to graduate study in the sciences.


ROBERT V. SMITH
Vice Provost for Research
and Dean of the Graduate School
Washington State University
Pullman


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================

NEXT:


                         HOT PAPERS

------------------------------------------------------------
TI : NEUROSCIENCE

TY : RESEARCH (HOT PAPERS)

PG : 16

L.R. Berkemeier, J.W. Winslow, D.R. Kaplan, K. Nikolics, 
D.V. Goeddel, A. Rosenthal, "Neurotrophin5: A novel 
neurotrophic factor that activates trk and trkB," Neuron, 
7:85766, 1991. 


Arnon Rosenthal (Department of Neuroscience, Genentech Inc., 
South San Francisco, Calif.): "Development of the vertebrate 
nervous system is controlled by multiple diffusible factors. 
These factors regulate the proliferation of pluripotent 
neuronal precursors, the transition to postmitotic 
differentiated neurons, and the growth of nerve fibers to 
their specific cellular targets as well as neuronal 
phenotype and neuronal survival. The bestcharacterized 
polypeptides that control the survival of neurons are 
members of the nerve growth factor (NGF) protein family 
collectively designated neurotrophins.

This family includes NGF, brainderived neurotrophic factor, 
and neurotrophin3. "The structural similarity of these three 
proteins enabled us to identify a fourth mammalian 
neurotrophin that was designated neurotrophin5, or NT5. (The 
same mammalian protein was subsequently designated NT4 or 
NT4/5.) 

"NT5, a 13 Kd secreted polypeptide that is 50 percent 
identical to NGF, was recently found to be a potent survival 
factor for several distinct populations of embryonic neurons 
in culture. These include spinal motor neurons, which 
degenerate in ALS disease (C.E. Henderson, et al., Nature, 
363:26670, 1993); sensory neurons, which may degenerate in 
peripheral neuropathies (A. Davies, et al., Journal of 
Neuroscience, in press); midbrain dopaminergic neurons, 
which degenerate in Parkinson's disease (M. Hynes, A. 
Rosenthal, in preparation); and nonadrenergic locus 
coeruleus neurons, which degenerate in Alzheimer's disease 
(W.J. Friedman, Experimental Neurology, 119:728, 1993).

The finding of a novel survival factor for neurons may help 
to explain the mechanism by which the number of mature 
neurons is epigenetically regulated in vertebrates. 
Furthermore, NT5, which promotes the survival of normal 
neurons, may prevent or ameliorate the death of neurons in 
prevalent neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson's 
disease, ALS, and Alzheimer's." 

(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================

NEXT:

------------------------------------------------------------
TI   : BIOCHEMISTRY

TY   : RESEARCH (HOT PAPERS)

PG   : 16


C. Dingwall, R.A. Laskey, "Nuclear targeting sequences a 
consensus?" Trends in Biochemical Sciences, 16:47881, 1991. 


Colin Dingwall (Wellcome Trust Cancer Research Campaign, 
Cambridge, U.K.): "Our understanding of protein accumulation 
in the cell nucleus has progressed from the `entry by 
diffusion and retention by specific binding' model to our 
current appreciation that this is a highly selective active 
transport process mediated by a nuclear localization 
sequence (NLS) in the transported protein. However, despite 
a detailed earlier analysis of the SV40 large T antigen NLS, 
it was not possible to identify an NLS with any confidence 
by sequence comparison.


"Early in 1991 we published our studies of the NLS of the 
Xenopus protein, nucleoplasmin (J. Robbins, S.M. Dilworth, 
R.A. Laskey, C. Dingwall, Cell, 64:61523, 1991). This 
analysis allowed us to define a bipartite NLS, in which two 
`patches,' or `clusters,' of basic amino acids constituting 
the recognition elements are separated by a `spacer' segment 
of 10 amino acids, the sequence of which is not important in 
nuclear targeting. We found a matching sequence in almost 
half the nuclear protein sequences in the database, but in 
less than 5 percent of the nonnuclear proteins. This 
immediately identified candidate sequences for 
investigation, and the analogy with Xenopus nucleoplasmin 
predicted the properties of these candidate sequences. Since 
then, the number of nuclear proteins in which bipartite NLSs 
have been mapped has increased steadily, and the function of 
a bipartite sequence has been shown to be regulated by the 
phosphorylation of adjacent amino acids (T. Moll, G. Tebb, 
U. Surana, et al., Cell, 66:74358, 1991). 


"One remarkable feature of the bipartite NLS is that longer 
spacer segments do not abolish nuclear localization. Perhaps 
the spacer segment is looped out to present the basic 
clusters to a receptor molecule in a precise orientation. It 
is clear that other classes of NLS exist, but the importance 
of this research is that one class is now clearly defined 
and provides a precise tool in the search for receptor 
molecules." 


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
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NEXT:

------------------------------------------------------------
TI : PHARMACOLOGY


TY : RESEARCH (HOT PAPERS)

PG : 16

A. Petros, D. Bennett, P. Vallance, "Effect of nitric oxide 
synthase inhibitors on hypotension in patients with septic 
shock," Lancet, 338: 15578, 1991. 

Patrick Vallance (Department of Pharmacology and Clinical 
Pharmacology, St. George's Hospital Medical School, London): 
"Endo theliumdependent vasodilatation was first described in 
1980. Seven years later the mediator of this phenomenon was 
identified as nitric oxide. We have been interested in 
exploring the role of nitric oxide in the regulation of 
vascular tone in humans. Initial studies examined the 
effects of the nitric oxide synthase inhibitor NG 
monomethylLarginine (LNMMA) on human arteriolar and venous 
tone in healthy volunteers. 


"The finding that LNMMA substantially increased arteriolar 
tone indicated the importance of the L arginine:nitric oxide 
pathway in the control of blood flow and pressure in humans. 
Inevitably, overproduction of nitric oxide was then 
implicated in a variety of diseases associated with 
excessive vasodilatation. Studies in vitro and in animals 
demonstrated that products of infection (such as endotoxin) 
or inflammatory mediators (such as cytokines) caused 
expression of an inducible isoform of nitric oxide synthase 
in the blood vessel wall and the increased nitric oxide 
production accounted for the vasodilatation and hypotension 
associated with experimental models of inflammatory shock. 


"In order to assess the relevance of these observations to 
the clinical situation of septic shock, we gave low doses of 
LNMMA to two patients with severe sepsis complicated by 
profound hypotension refractory to conventional 
vasoconstrictor therapy. Inhibition of nitric oxide 
synthesis produced a dramatic increase in mean arterial 
blood pressure and systemic vascular resistance consistent 
with an important role for nitric oxide in septic shock. As 
a result of these studies, the possibility of using 
inhibitors of nitric oxide synthesis to treat septic shock 
is currently being explored. A fundamental mechanism of 
vascular changes in sepsis has been identified, but it 
remains to be determined whether the increased vascular tone 
produced by LNMMA is beneficial in terms of tissue perfusion 
and damage or patient survival." 


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================

NEXT:


------------------------------------------------------------
TI : ASTROPHYSICS

TY : RESEARCH (HOT PAPERS)

PG : 16

F.J. Rogers, C.A. Iglesias, "Radiative atomic Rosseland mean 
opacity tables," Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 
79:50768, 1992.


Forrest Rogers (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 
Livermore, Calif.): "Opacity is a measure of how strongly 
matter impedes the flow of radiation. It plays an important 
role in determining the internal structure and observable 
properties of stars. Its quantification is essential for 
stellar modeling. In general, the more bound electrons an 
ion possesses, the greater its opacity. As a result of 
nucleosynthesis, the matter available to form young stars is 
richer in heavy elements than was the matter that formed old 
stars. Consequently, young stars have higher opacity in 
temperaturedensity regions where the heavy elements are only 
partially ionized, which affects their evolution. "Our paper 
provides extensive tables of the opacity of stellar matter. 
Prior to our work, most astrophysical modeling was done 
using tables produced at Los Alamos National Laboratory. 
Those tables were quite successful in explaning the main 
features of stars. Nevertheless, a number of observational 
properties of stars resisted theoretical explanation. For 
example, some of the largest and most luminous stars, known 
as b Cephei, are observed to vary in both size and 
luminosity over periods of a few hours. The mechanism 
responsible for this variability was sought unsuccessfully 
for more than 30 years. "We showed that, contrary to earlier 
estimates, a detailed treatment of the atomic physics of 
heavy elements provides an important source of opacity. This 
increases the mean opacity by factors of three to four at 
temperatures near 3 x 105 K and is just what was needed to 
cause pulsational instability in the bCephei stars. "The new 
opacity has led to several other successes. Using the 
earlier opacity data in astrophysical models of classical 
Cepheids and RR Lyrae stars, the mass could be adjusted to 
give the correct luminosity or the correct pulsation period, 
but not both. With the new opacity calculations this 
socalled mass discrepancy disappears. The predicted 
nonradial acoustic oscillation spectrum of the sun and the 
Liabundance in the Hyades cluster stars are now in better 
agreement with observation."


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================

NEXT:


                     TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY

------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Supporting PCR, New Thermal Cyclers Find Diverse Laboratory Uses


AU : CAREN D. POTTER

TY : TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY

PG : 17


Thermal cyclersor automatic temperature cyclershave not been 
around very long, but, having ridden to popularity on the 
coattails of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), they are 
fast becoming essential laboratory instruments for many 
biological researchers.


PCR is the DNA amplification process introduced in the 1980s 
that has revolutionized geneticsrelated research. PCR 
replicates a small amount of DNA in a series of heating and 
cooling steps and has been used in diverse research 
applications, including molecular biology, epidemiology, and 
paleontology. Reflecting the importance of the innovative 
process, PCR's inventor Kary Mullis was awarded this year's 
Nobel Prize in chemistry (see story on page 1). Thermal 
cyclers, for their part, have cut the time needed to run PCR 
by as much as twothirds.


"In the 2 1/2 years I've been in this industry, I've seen 
the uses for PCR and the market for thermal cyclers expand 
dramatically," says Karen StuderRabeler, director of new 
product development at Coy Corp., a thermal cycler 
manufacturer located in Grass Lake, Mich. "PCR is used in 
anything from the study of fossil ambers to genetic 
engineering of corn."


Thermal cyclers allow the PCR process to proceed 
automatically by subjecting the reagentsDNA nucleotides and 
a heattolerant polymerase, among othersto a userspecified 
heating and cooling sequence. In PCR, a thermal cycler heats 
samples to open the double helices of DNA, lets the 
temperature drop to bind primers, increases the temperature 
somewhat to build new strands, then heats up again to begin 
a new cycle.


The development of thermal cyclers lagged behind that of PCR 
itself because the first enzymes used for PCR were 
thermolabile (unstable when heated, and therefore unusable 
after one cycle), explains Simon Foote, senior research 
scientist at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research 
in Cambridge, Mass. PCR had to be done manually by placing 
sample tubes in water baths set at various temperatures, 
then adding new enzymes to the tubes after each heat cycle. 
"There was no way to automate the process with a device such 
as a thermal cycler until thermostable enzymes became 
available," Foote says. 


Such enzymes are now available, making the use of thermal 
cyclers a significant improvement over the manual method. 
The most significant benefits of thermal cyclers are 
unattended operation, faster throughput (since thermal 
cyclers are designed to reach target temperatures as quickly 
as possible), and enhanced temperature control to provide 
uniform heating and cooling over the entire body of samples.


Capacity Range
One of the most striking ways in which the thermal cyclers 
now available differ from each other is in the number of 
samples they are designed to process at once. At one end of 
the spectrum is a small, lightweight model called the 
MiniCycler, from M.J. Research in Watertown, Mass., that has 
a capacity of 16 0.5ml tubes or 25 0.2ml tubes. At the other 
end is what is commonly known as "the waffle iron" because 
the honeycomb pattern of its large well plates resembles the 
surface of that appliance. The official name of this 
instrument is the TC 1600 Thermocycler, and it is made by 
IAS Products Inc. of Cambridge, Mass. Depending on the 
configuration chosen by the researcher, it can process 
simultaneously up to 3,072 samples (16 microtitration plates 
times 192 wells).


"The waffle iron was spun out of a custom project we did for 
the Whitehead Institute to help them automate their work on 
the Human Genome Project," says Steven Gordon, president of 
IAS Products. This thermal cycler is the most expensive on 
the market at $45,000, but, as Gordon says, "It's 
costeffective if you need that kind of throughput." The 
MiniCycler, by contrast, sells for $2,795.


Four waffle irons equipped with sixteen 96well plates are in 
constant use at the Whitehead Institute, supporting the 
institute's work of mapping the complete human genome. "We 
average three runs per waffle iron per day," says Foote. The 
Whitehead lab is in the process of converting to well plates 
for even greater capacity, he adds.


Some thermal cyclers, the waffle iron included, offer 
researchers the ability to divide the instrument's capacity 
into independently cycling sections. For example, the waffle 
iron can process four different heating and cooling 
profiles, one for each quadrant of the device. A smaller, 
more affordable model called the TwinBlock System from 
Ericomp Inc., San Diego, has the ability to run two 
different cycling programs simultaneously. David Brown, a 
research coordinator who works with a TwinBlock in a 
University of Georgia in Athens genetics lab, praises this 
feature.


"Aside from the confidence that the instrument reliably 
produces the temperatures you expect from a particular 
program, the ability to run two independent programs was a 
real selling point," he says. "Often two people in our lab 
run different programs on the TwinBlock. If you had another 
machine with the same capacity but only one cycling program, 
others would have to wait until the first person was 
finished." 



Heating And Cooling
Thermal cyclers must reach appropriate temperatures quickly 
and provide a uniform temperature over all samples. To 
achieve these objectives, manufacturers of thermal cyclers 
have turned to different technologies for heating the 
samples and then cooling them down. Most, but not all, use 
an electrically heated element to deliver heat to a metal 
plate (usually aluminum) that surrounds the sample tubes.


For cooling, several approaches are used. Some models do not 
offer active control when it comes to cooling, they simply 
let excess heat escape into the ambient air. "These are the 
cheapest to manufacture, but they can have uniformity 
problems," says John Hansen, director of special projects at 
M.J. Research.


Another method of cooling is that used by PerkinElmer, the 
largest manufacturer of thermal cyclers. This approach 
relies on a vapor compression heat pumping, which is similar 
to a typical refrigeration unit. Other devices such as the 
waffle iron use water for cooling the samples. "You can get 
much more efficient cooling out of water because there is a 
physical mass that absorbs the heat and pulls it away," says 
Gordon. 


Efficient cooling is a must for a unit that generates as 
much heat as the waffle iron. Because it handles such a 
large number of samples, this device requires a tremendous 
amount of power. "When you start multiplying things by 16 
[the number of microtitration plates in the waffle iron], 
you start getting to numbers like 200 volts times 70 amps," 
says Gordon. "This becomes a potentially dangerous device." 
(Compare this with the requirements of a clothes dryer or 
oven, about 10 amps each.) IAS Products built five redundant 
safety systems into the waffle iron, Gordon adds.


Another technology used in thermal cyclers is an electronic 
process called the Peltier effect. Depending on the 
direction of the electrical current in a Peltier unittwo 
ceramic outer layers sandwiching an inner layer of 
semiconductor materialit can actively transport heat either 
into or out of a sample block. As current passes through the 
semiconductor material, electrons migrate from one surface 
of the sandwich to the other, dragging a small amount of 
heat with them. This effect can cause a temperature 
differential between the top and bottom of the unit of as 
much as 70 degrees C. Reversing the flow of the current 
reverses the flow of heat as well.


Discovered in 1834 by Jean Peltier of France, this 
electronic means of pumping heat remained a lab curiosity 
until the 1930s, when Maria Telkes, a solidstate physicist 
at Westinghouse Research Laboratories, discovered how to use 
a crystal instead of a bimetallic junction in the device, 
according to Hansen of M.J. Research. "Telkes's findings 
increased the efficiency of Peltier units an order of 
magnitude."  Today's Peltier units are efficient 
semiconductor heat pumps that involve no moving parts or 
chlorofluorocarbons.


M.J. Research and Coy Corp. introduced thermal cyclers based 
on the Peltier effect in 1988. Thermal cyclers from M.J. 
Research have bidirectional Peltier control (that is, the 
Peltier effect is used for both heating and cooling); models 
from Coy use the Peltier effect only for cooling.

Initially, the materials used in Peltier units proved 
problematic for thermal cycling applications. "They were 
designed for steadystate conditions where the temperature 
doesn't vary," says Hansen. "If you put these modules into a 
thermal cycler they wouldn't last very long, which is why 
many manufacturers have shied away from them. We've devoted 
years of research to building better Peltier units 
specifically for a temperature cycling process."


Using the Peltier effect for both heating and cooling makes 
thermal cyclers from M.J. Research highly adaptable to field 
conditions. One research team took MiniCyclers to the 
McMurdo Sound region of Antarctica to investigate genetic 
diversity in moss. "Preliminary isozyme and morphological 
studies gave no conclusive clues, but with our little 
MiniCyclers we were able to conduct DNA amplification at two 
sites in the field," says Dieter Adam, principal 
investigator from the University of Waikato in New Zealand. 
"A little gas generator could run both a MiniCycler and a 
gel box simultaneously and the speed of the machine allowed 
us to run several amplifications a day."


In Situ Amplification
DNA amplification was, until recently, always performed in 
tubes. Although this method is unquestionably a powerful 
tool for molecular biologists and related researchers, those 
who deal with whole organisms often need to know the 
location within the cell of the DNA sequence of interest. 
With traditional DNA amplification procedures, they may know 
that there was at least one template in the tube when they 
started the process, but not where it came from. 


With in situ DNA amplification, sections of tissue are put 
on glass slides and the process is carried out while the DNA 
is still inside the cell. "This technique has not been 
perfected, and there are some who doubt its ultimate 
validity, but others consider in situ DNA amplification to 
be the most significant breakthrough in molecular biology 
since the development of PCR," says Hansen.


Since in situ amplification still requires temperature 
cycling, thermal cyclers can automate the procedure in much 
the same way they automate the process when it takes place 
in tubes. Several vendors have already adapted their 
instruments to handle slides. With these devices, PCR can 
now be performed in morphologically intact cells, making the 
process more useful in applications such as clinical 
diagnostics, particularly virology, histopathology, and 
detection of genetic mutations. 


For a detailed protocol for in situ amplification, see O. 
Bagasra, et al., Journal of Immunological Methods, 
158:13145, 1993. Also, Coy Corp. offers a technical brochure 
on the procedure. Even before these in situ units became 
available, innovative researchers were taking matters into 
their own hands and modifying their traditional tube thermal 
cyclers with aluminum foil to accommodate slides.


Caren D. Potter is a freelance science writer based in 
McKinleyville, Calif.


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================

NEXT:



------------------------------------------------------------
TI : THERMAL CYCLER VENDORS

TY : TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY

PG : 19


The following suppliers are among those offering thermal 
cyclers for use in PCR related experiments.


Applied Biosystems
Division  of PerkinElmer Corp.
850 Lincoln Center Dr.
Foster City, Calif. 94404
(415) 5706667
Fax: 5722743
(800) 5457547 (for sales information and ordering)


Coy Corp.
14500 Coy Dr.
Grass Lake, Mich. 49240
(313) 4752200
Fax: (313) 4751846

Ericomp Inc.
6044 Cornerstone Court West
Suite E
San Diego, Calif. 92121
(619) 4571888
Fax: (619) 4572937

IAS Products Inc.
142 Rogers St.
Cambridge, Mass. 02142
(617) 3543830
Fax: (617) 5479727

M.J. Research Inc.
149 Grove St.
Watertown, Mass. 02172
(617) 9242266
Fax: (617) 9242148


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================

NEXT:



                         PROFESSION

------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Adjunct Science Faculty Contribute Valued Expertise To 
     Universities


AU   : RICKI LEWIS

TY   : PROFESSION

PG   : 20


Why would a scientist take an adjunct faculty positiona job 
that pays little, or sometimes even nothing at all? Why 
would an academic institution, already burdened with keeping 
track of its own faculty, reach out to industry to solicit 
the participation of corporate researchers as adjunct 
professors?


Scientists and academic administrators say that both the 
researcher and the institution have a lot to gain from such 
appointments: Adjunct professorships allow a university to 
make the most of scientists' skills and knowledge, while 
giving researchers from a range of workplaces access to the 
academic life.


"Adjunct appointments give scientists much broader areas in 
which to work, so that expertise is spread out," says 
geneticist William H. Stone, a distinguished professor at 
Trinity University and an adjunct professor at the 
University of Texas and the Southwest Foundation for 
Biomedical Research, all based in the San Antonio area.


"Being an adjunct allows versatility, expanding your 
horizons, specifically if you are at an undergraduate 
institution where there is only one immunologist, one 
physiologist, one geneticist[not] a megauniversity, where 
there might be 20 people specializing in one area," says 
Stone, who was a professor of biology at the University of 
Wisconsin, Madison, for 32 years before coming to Texas.


>From a university's standpoint, adjuncts fill gaps in course 
offerings. From a scientist's stance, a change in routine 
from a fulltime industrial, government, or museum workplace 
is often most welcome.


"There's the possibility of having students, and of 
associating with a group of people engaged in teaching and 
research," says William Culberson, a professor in the botany 
department at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and former 
chairman of the department. Most adjuncts teach at this 
second home, but some agree to an adjunct association to 
make use of the university's research resources.


An individual scientist like Stone may have adjunct ties to 
more than one institution. Stone says he chose San Antonio 
"because it gave me the opportunity to wear three 
hatsteaching at a very sophisticated, elegant undergraduate 
institution, and [doing] research at the medical school and 
foundation."


Often an adjunct professor network weaves together a 
scientific community. For example, academic institutions in 
the capital district of upstate New Yorkthe State University 
of New York in Albany, Union College in Schenectady, and 
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troybenefit from the 
expertise of adjuncts from Albany's Wadsworth Center for 
Laboratories and Research (part of the state department of 
health), General Electric's Research and Development Center 
in Schenectady, and Virogenetics Corp. of Troy, among 
others.


Assignments Vary
The degree of commitment that comes along with the title of 
adjunct can vary greatly. An adjunct may be a professor in 
name only, lending the prestige of name recognition, but 
requiring no inclass time. This is the case for the National 
Institutes of Health's Robert Gallo, who is an adjunct 
professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Gallo "is 
listed as an adjunct professor of veterinary microbiology, 
immunology and parasitology, and . . .  has an assigned 
office in the Veterinary Research Tower here, but a phone 
number that probably rings at the NIH," says Roger Segelken 
of Cornell's News Service.


Another example of a situation in which an adjunct doesn't 
teach is Stone's affiliation at the Southwest Foundation for 
Biomedical Research, which is strictly researchoriented. K. 
Douglas Nelson, a professor of geology at Syracuse 
University in New York, is an adjunct associate professor of 
geological sciences at Cornell, where he is continuing 
research begun as a graduate student and postdoc at 
Cornell's Institute for the Study of the Continents. "When 
he does something interestinglike obtain a profile of the 
mountains of Tibetwe public relations types claim him as one 
of our own, and mention in tiny type that he is also 
connected to another institution," says Cornell's Segelken.


Many adjuncts are industry, government, or museum scientists 
who teach occasional courses at nearby colleges or 
universities, usually on a topic that the regular faculty do 
not wish to teach, or do not have the precise expertise to 
teach. Still other adjuncts are scientists in between 
permanent positions, or those accompanying a spouse who has 
a faculty appointment. They might be in search of something 
to do while job hunting, or may regard an academic 
connection, albeit temporary, as a foot in the door to a 
more permanent position. These faculty standins may carry 
quite a loadtwo, three, or even four courses a semester.


Adjunct affiliations also help define the work of scientists 
whose expertise doesn't neatly shoehorn into traditional 
departments. This is the case for Douglas R. Hofstadter, an 
expert in cognitive science at Indiana University in 
Bloomington, who is currently on sabbatical in Spain. At 
Indiana, he is a professor of computer science, a professor 
of cognitive science (although there is no such department), 
and an adjunct professor in the departments of psychology, 
philosophy, and the history and philosophy of science. 
Students taking his courses receive credit in whichever 
department the course is listed in. Hofstadter's numerous 
titles reflect the fact that his field, cognition, is part 
psychology, part computer science, and part philosophy. Such 
an arrangement regular faculty with adjunct status in 
related departments within the same institutionis not 
uncommon.


On Loan From Museums
Adjunct professors from museums represent a good symbiosis, 
as museum scientists can fill gaps in an academic department 
and offer students diverse research opportunities. The 
department of botany at Duke, for example, has tapped into 
the expertise and enthusiasm of the Smithsonian Institution 
in Washington, D.C., to broaden graduate students' 
experience. "A number of plant biologists at the Smithsonian 
are very active in evolutionary biology, and we have asked 
selected ones of them to be adjunct professors at Duke," 
says Culberson. "As such, they can direct graduate students 
in research."


One such Smithsonian scientist now very happily in front of 
the classroom is paleobotanist Vicki Funk. "I felt the need 
to be involved more with students and stay connected with 
the university scene," she says. "You can get isolated being 
in a lab all the time and only talking to people who do what 
you do."


Funk says she was thrilled to be offered adjunct status at 
Duke because of the school's excellent program in plant 
systematics, to which she feels some departments give short 
shrift in their search for more molecular biologists and the 
funding they bring. Funk at first made the fourhour trek to 
Duke from Washington to give frequent seminars and serve on 
graduate student committees. Then, when a sabbatical leave 
came up, she gladly came to Durham, where she now teaches a 
graduate course in the systematics of flowering plants. 
"There was no money to start a tropical collection here at 
Duke, and no money at the Smithsonian for starting a 
graduate program," she says. But courses offered by Funk and 
three Smithsonian colleagues are helping to expose students 
to professionals in the field. "Hopefully, in the future, 
systematics can have more of these kinds of collaborative 
programs between universities and zoologists and botanists 
from museums," she says.

Norton Miller is another museum paleobotanist who is 
enthusiastic about his university connection. Miller travels 
throughout the Northeast and Midwest to obtain 
millionyearold fossilized plants, which he studies at the 
New York State Museum in Albany. He teaches a course in 
plant taxonomy and morphology at nearby SUNYAlbany. "Three 
years ago, some undergraduates asked for additional courses 
on organismal biology," says Miller. "One colleague from the 
museum, Bob Daniels, had taught a successful course in 
icthyology at the university, and we were persuaded by that. 
It was a way to get a highly specialized faculty member 
there." Both Funk and Miller see their adjunct appointments 
as ways for graduate students to conduct research at their 
museums.


Alternative Lifestyles
An adjunct appointment can be a lifeline to academia for 
scientists who have wandered off the tenure track. New 
parenthood and adjunct stints are particularly compatible, 
scientists say. Beth Burnside, for example, taught 
undergraduate biochemistry at the University of Maryland 
when having children and between permanent positions in the 
pharmaceutical industry. "Being an adjunct is pretty 
amenable to a family situationI could work at home and go in 
to give lectures and hold office hours," she says. Burnside 
has just resolved her child care dilemma, and she has 
accepted a position as an assistant director of 
pharmaceutical development at Pharmavene Inc. in 
Gaithersburg, Md.


For Alexis Burton, becoming an adjunct allowed him to 
maintain his university ties when he had to retire from his 
regular faculty appointment a decade ago for health reasons. 
Burton taught basic science to medical students at the 
University of Texas Health Science Center. He no longer 
teaches, but makes frequent use of the parking permit that 
comes with his adjunct status so he can use the library, 
attend seminars, and continue to interact with his 
colleagues. And scientists who have enjoyed successful 
stints as nontenuretrack faculty can maintain connections by 
becoming adjuncts.

Industrial Links
An industrial scientist can give students a taste of the 
real world that isn't quite the same as traditional course 
fare. In return, he or she networks with basic researchers 
in a manner that can lead to fruitful collaborations. The 
relationship between the Glaxo Research Institute in 
Research Triangle Park, N.C., and the University of North 
Carolina, Chapel Hill, illustrates the mutual benefits 
possible from an academicindustrial alignment.


The GlaxoUNC collaboration began when the United 
Kingdombased company sought temporary laboratory space in 
Chapel Hill, and borrowed a UNC undergraduate lab for four 
years until its new facility was built. While on campus, 
Glaxo researchers forged important relationships with 
professors.


"We got to know the faculty and their research projects, and 
can support their work if it meshes with what we do," says 
Dan Sternbach, principal research investigator at the Glaxo 
institute, who holds an adjunct appointment at UNC. "The 
arrangement is a pipeline to the company. University people 
work here in the summers, and we teach courses at the 
university. Other things go along with it, too. For example, 
Glaxo and UNC sponsor the Glaxo UNC Frontiers in Chemistry 
symposium, inviting speakers spanning the biological to the 
physical sciences."


Rewards Are Not Monetary
Despite their great value, adjunct professors aren't paid 
much, if anything. Beth Burnside says her $5,000 for 
teaching biochemistry was paltry compared to her former 
salary as a research scientist at Johnson & Johnson of 
Raritan, N.J., where she worked in 1991 and 1992. But 
actually, this is at the higher range of adjunct pay for 
those who do not have a concurrent fulltime position 
elsewhere. Percourse compensation ranges from $2,000 to 
$6,000, according to veteran adjunct teachers.


Adjuncts on loan from industry, a museum, or government 
usually re ceive no extra pay. Says Funk, "I don't get paid, 
I just do it." One research chemist at General Electric's 
Research and Development Center is paid $4,000 for teaching 
a graduate course in inorganic chemistry at Rensselaer 
Polytechnic Institute, but in order to have time "off" to 
teach, he's agreed to turn over the check to GE.


And, of course, there is no job security for a position that 
is semesterbysemester. An adjunct at a large state 
university was lulled into "real job" complacency because 
she had taught one or two courses a semester for six years, 
tackling the large, nonsciencemajor courses that many 
regular faculty avoid. But when the state ran into budget 
problems, and as a result regular faculty were given heavier 
teaching loads, she received a "termination notice" in her 
campus mailbox.


The use of adjunct and other nontenuretrack faculty is a 
source of concern for some academics. According to a report 
entitled "The Status of NonTenureTrack Faculty" by the 
American Association of University Professors (Academe, 
79[4]:3946, JulyAugust 1993), "the growth of nontenuretrack 
faculty erodes the size and influence of the tenured faculty 
and undermines the stability of the tenure system. The large 
numbers of faculty who now work without tenure leaves 
academic freedom more vulnerable to manipulation and 
suppression. The professional status of faculty suffers when 
so many are subject to economic exploitation and demeaning 
working conditions inconsistent with professional 
standards."


Lack of a hefty paycheck and job security, however, are of 
little concern to most adjuncts, because their motivations 
aren't monetarythe attraction of an adjunct position is 
interaction with people, particularly students just 
beginning their scientific careers. And the regard many 
adjuncts have for their students is refreshing.


"I love graduate students. They are so committed and 
interested," says Funk. Adds Stone, "I immensely enjoy 
stimulating work with undergraduates, training them in 
science. Sitting right beside me now is one undergraduate 
who enjoys research so much that he has decided to pursue an 
M.D./Ph.D. That makes me feel really good."


Ricki Lewis, an adjunct assistant professor of zoology at 
Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) and of biology at the State 
University of New York, Albany, writes college biology 
texts.


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #23, November 29, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================

NEXT:



                           PEOPLE

------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Peptide Chemist, Ruth Nutt, joins Corvas

AU : PHIL BECK

TY : PROFESSION (PEOPLE)

PG : 22


Ruth F. Nutt, a peptide chemist and former senior scientist 
at Merck & Co. Inc., Rahway, N.J., has joined Corvas 
International Inc. in San Diego as director of chemistry. In 
31 years at Merck, Nutt, 53, was responsible for the 
development of five major drug candidates, including one now 
in clinical trials. In addition, she was on the first team 
to chemically synthesize an enzyme and led the team that 
first synthesized the HIV protease, preceding recombinant 
production of the enzyme by about a year.


Much of Nutt's work at Merck involved antithrombosis