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THE SCIENTIST
VOLUME 8, No:21 OCTOBER 31,1994
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
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TI : CONTENTS
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NEWS
1995 BIOTECH PROSPECTS: Despite severe setbacks in clinical trials
and a harsh financing climate for the biotechnology industry over
the past year, a prestigious annual report predicts that biotech
will prosper in 1995, a forecast winning cautious support from
industry officials
PG 1
CLOUDS ON BUDGETARY HORIZON: While the 1995 budget process brought
few major unpleasant surprises, veteran science-policy watchers
see ominous indications for future budget battles, and some are
questioning the government's commitment to research
PG 1
SUPERCOMPUTING IN PARADISE: Scientists and government officials
say a new United States Air Force supercomputing facility in
Hawaii, equipped with one of the world's most powerful
supercomputers, will become a center of collaboration for
government, academic, and industry researchers, and a vital
scientific communications link with Asia
PG 1
CONSOLIDATING THE AIDS FIGHT: With final approval in hand, United
Nations officials expect a unification of AIDS programs sponsored
by six international organizations to significantly enhance
worldwide research and social-policy efforts to combat the
epidemic
PG 3
NUCLEAR SHIFT? The Clinton administration's two selections for the
1994-95 Enrico Fermi Award--both of whom have been somewhat
critical of nuclear energy in the past--reflect a movement away
from the award's original intent to recognize applications in the
field toward more theoretical interests, and, perhaps, a
governmental change in attitude toward nuclear power in general,
say some observers
PG 4
OPINION
CONFOUNDING IRONIES: Johns Hopkins University graduate biology
student Mark H. Paalman says that researchers starting out on
their careers are facing a bitterly ironic pair of roadblocks:
general science illiteracy and mistrust on the part of the
population, undermining popular support for their work; and
unchecked production of Ph.D. scientists into a system that is
already oversupplied
PG 12
COMMENTARY: It's time for a revised approach to science-education
reform that focuses on fixing the system rather than the students,
says Shirley Malcom, director of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science's Education and Human Resources Directorate
PG 13
RESEARCH
FULLERENES FUEL CHEMISTRY: Citation data indicate that articles on
fullerenes and related molecules have dominated the chemistry
literature in 1990s, although other areas in the discipline are
closing the gap, according to the newsletter Science Watch
PG 14
HOT PAPERS: Cell biologist Keith Burridge discusses focal
adhesions in cells; computational chemist Jiali Goa reports on his
simulations of biological macromolecules; statistician Gareth
Roberts expands on MCMC methodology
PG 16
TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY
NEW WINDOW ON STATISTICS: Sparked by the application of Windows
technology, mathematical and statistical software has become
considerably more versatile and easier to use
PG 17
PROFESSION
GRANTING REQUESTS: In the final installment of a three-part series
of excerpts from his book A Ph.D. Is Not Enough!, physicist Peter
Feibelman offers tips on proposal writing to young scientists
PG 23
DAVID M. GOLDENBERG AND JEAN-PIERRE MACH, president of the Garden
State Cancer Center and a biochemist at Lausanne University,
respectively, have received the 1994 Abbott Award
PG 24
SHORT TAKES
NOTEBOOK PG 4
CARTOON PG 4
LEADERS OF PG 10
SCIENCE
LETTERS PG 13
STATISTICAL AND MATHSOFTWAREDIRECTORY PG 19
NEW PRODUCTS PG 22
CROSSWORD PG 24
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.3, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
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NXT:
NEWS
-----------------------------------------------------------------
TI : 1995 Budget Draws Praise_And Concerns
Though many expressgeneral satisfactionwith allocations, some
observers warn of toughfunding battles ahead
AU : BARTON REPPERT
TY : NEWS
PG : 1
The 1995 federal budget process has produced its traditional share
of beneficiaries and victims, champions and critics. Some, for
example, are heartened by a 14 percent funding increase for the
National Science Foundation, while others view a modest budget
raise for the National Institutes of Health as woefully
inadequate.
In general, many officials of scientific associations and other
science-policy watchers are expressing satisfaction with this
year's congressional appropriations for research funding.
Several other observers, however, see in this and other recent
budget go-rounds indications that do not bode well for the future.
They caution that the U.S. research community will need to
redouble its lobbying efforts and push for sustained support in
the next budget year, in view of increasingly tight caps on
federal discretionary spending.
Rep. George E. Brown, Jr. (D-Calif.), chairman of the House
Science, Space, and Technology Committee, warns that the final
budget numbers may represent a more fundamental problem. He fears
that the Clinton administration and Congress may be retreating
from key long-range goals--such as achieving a 50-50 balance of
civilian and military research.
"Overall--and I try to keep everything in perspective here, with
regard to the total investments in R&D--I'm not very happy," Brown
said at a news conference. "Military R&D continued to go up. When
the president requested less in real dollars for NASA, he
requested more in real dollars [for the Pentagon]--and ended up
getting more."
Singing The Budget's Praises
By the time lawmakers left Washington this month for their
election-campaign recess, Congress had passed and sent to the
White House for Clinton's signature eight fiscal 1995
appropriations bills, including money for research.
NSF got a substantial boost, raising its total budget to $3.396
billion for the 1995 fiscal year, which began on October 1. This
includes $250 million for modernizing or building new academic
research facilities--more than double this year's allocation of
$105 million.
Jack Crowley, head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's
Washington office, calls this expanded university infrastructure
program "the most encouraging step in research-facilities
financing in more than 15 years."
By contrast, Senate and House appropriators approved only a 3.6
percent increase for the National Institutes of Health, setting
its total FY 1995 appropriation at $11.334 billion--$138 million
less than the administration's budget request. In recent years,
Congress generally has added to the White House's budget for NIH
funding.
Despite the tight budget for NIH overall, Congress voted a 20.4
percent increase for the National Center for Human Genome
Research, the agency's component of the Human Genome Project
(HGP), boosting the center's 1995 funding level to $153 million.
Francis Collins, director of the genome center, notes that most of
the additional monies will go to a new intramural research program
at NIH. "I am enormously pleased with that vote of confidence,
from the administration and the Congress, that allowed that to
happen," he says.
But Collins adds that HGP, generally, remains underfunded. "People
think the genome is the place to go if they need money, and that's
not the case," he says. "We are seriously strapped. We are living
with a budget that's about 60 percent of what the original
planners of the project proposed five years ago. And yet we're
being held to a standard of achieving those same goals that we
thought we would need a much larger budget for. So we are
managing, as one does, in a difficult time."
Another conspicuous winner on Capitol Hill was the Commerce
Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology.
NIST's Advanced Technology Program--which focuses on
government-industry cooperative R&D efforts--received a 116
percent increase, up to $431 million, while the agency's overall
budget grew by 64 percent, up to $855 million.
Officials of several scientific societies and associations
interviewed for this article maintain that both the administration
and Congress are doing as much as they can for research funding,
given the overall tight budget climate.
"I think the research budgets fared relatively well," says
Cornelius J. Pings, president of the Association of American
Universities, which represents major U.S. research universities.
He calls the 3.6 percent increase for NIH a reflection of "fiscal
reality," adding, "I don't detect any necessary waning of
commitment to the importance of biomedical research."
Looking to the future, Pings foresees "an ongoing sound commitment
to investment in science and engineering, in basic research, from
both the administration and the Congress."
Clifford J. Gabriel, executive director of the American Institute
of Biological Sciences, says he is also basically content with the
fiscal 1995 funding levels, given the situation. "I'm just pleased
that we can keep our head above water," he says.
Gabriel comments that he "would have liked to have seen more of
the increase at NSF go towards the research budget, rather than
the facilities budget. Overall, that's probably my biggest
concern. . . . It doesn't do much good to have nice new buildings
without any scientists working in them."
He rates the Clinton administration's performance in living up to
its espoused commitments to strengthening U.S. civilian research
as satisfactory. "I think it's doing as well as it can do under
the current budgetary circumstances," Gabriel says.
Sour Notes
But not everyone--in and outside of government--feels the same
way. Rep. John Porter (R-Ill.), the ranking Republican on the
House Appropriations Committee subcommittee for labor, health and
human services, and education, complains about NIH's allocation in
the current budget: "In this appropriations bill, I'm very
disappointed with the numbers." Noting that he is "very concerned"
that such small increases could become a trend for the future,
Porter says, "Last year we managed to have a 6 percent increase,
which I think is the minimal level."
Samuel C. Silverstein, president of the Federation of American
Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), based in Bethesda,
Md., and a faculty member at Columbia University's College of
Physicians and Surgeons, echoes Porter's discouraging assessment
of the modest increment for NIH.
"The [Senate-House] conference level [of 3.6 percent added
funding] was all that we could get," Silverstein says. "However,
FASEB had recommended an 8.9 percent increase, because we believed
that this was the funding level NIH needed to keep pace with the
rapid growth in biomedical research opportunities."
Pentagon financing of basic research at universities emerged as a
heated issue in congressional wrangling over a defense
appropriations bill providing about $35 billion for research,
development, testing, and evaluation, the majority of which is
dedicated to weapons development and defense-related research.
Contending that academic research shouldn't be increasing at a
time when military programs overall are being pared down, Rep.
John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Appropriations
Committee's defense subcommittee, pushed through an amendment that
would have sliced $900 million from the proposed $1.5 billion
Pentagon allocation for university research. In conference
committee, lawmakers reduced the cut to $200 million, funding the
appropriation at $1.3 billion.
Murtha's move was widely viewed as a rejoinder to Rep. Brown,
Congress' leading expert on science, who has campaigned to curb
so-called earmarks--channeling funds to particular pet
proj-ects--inserted by lawmakers into defense and other
appropriations bills. Earmarks are generally blamed, especially by
scientists, for reductions in basic research funding, such as the
defense allocations for universities.
Also taking a somewhat more gloomy view of the budget outcome than
many of his science society colleagues is Robert Park, public
affairs director of the American Physical Society (APS).
High-energy physicists, who represent a substantial APS
constituency, are still striving to recuperate following last
year's congressional vote to kill the superconducting
supercollider (SSC).
"Well, I guess they could have been worse," Park comments about
the 1995 appropriations. "It is by no stretch a good year. But it
is not as disastrous a year as some people had anticipated."
The Department of Energy's allocation for general science and
research was sliced from $1.615 billion in 1994 to $984 million
for the new fiscal year--reflecting mainly reduced costs
associated with shutting down the SSC, along with other program
cuts.
Park says his organization remains opposed to the space
station--generally perceived to be the "big-science" initiative
retained by Congress at the expense of the SSC--but has largely
given up hope of stopping the megaproject in view of continuing
support for it on Capitol Hill.
"It's hard to maintain opposition to something year to year when
each year it keeps winning," he observes. "I think the feeling in
the scientific community is that we took our best shot--and at
this point there's not much point in opposing it any further."
Congress voted a total of $14.397 billion for NASA in fiscal 1995,
down by $110 million from the previous year. Spending for space
station R&D was set at $1.890 billion, a 2.6 percent decrease,
while overall funding for human space flight was trimmed by 7.9
percent, down to $5.574 billion. NASA science, aeronautics, and
technology programs got a 2 percent increase, up to $5.901
billion.
Rep. Brown, a longtime proponent of the space station, said at the
September 26 news conference that the project's success in winning
renewed funding despite the budget crunch was "very heartening to
me." However, the California Democrat expressed concern over what
he depicted as adverse trends in research funding.
In a technology white paper issued last year and a White House
report on science policy released in August (B. Reppert, The
Scientist, April 5, 1993, page 1; B. Reppert, The Scientist, Aug.
22, 1994, page 1), the Clinton administration set ambitious
goals--including commitments to shift toward a 50-50 balance
between military and civilian R&D funding, as well as to boost
U.S. civilian R&D up to the levels of Japan, Germany, and other
competitors on the world market.
But Brown contended at the conference that "the goals set forth
[in the administration policy papers], which are very noble and I
commend them highly, we're retreating from. We are no closer to,
for example, equal military vs. civilian research and development.
We are retreating from the goal ... of equaling the investments of
our major international competitors of somewhere around 3 percent
of GNP."
Another disturbing aspect of this year's budget process, according
to many observers, was that Congress, following a pattern that has
prevailed over the past several years, again failed to adopt new
authorizing legislation for NSF. Other authorization bills that
died in congressional gridlock included measures to specifically
reauthorize programs for NASA, the Environmental Protection
Agency, the Department of Energy's national laboratories, and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Administrative Perspective
The White House view of how its budget fared in Congress was
similar to that expressed by some scientific society leaders--one
of cautious optimism. A senior official of the administration's
Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) says that "on the
whole, we're very pleased with how the appropriations process
turned out this year. That doesn't mean that we got all we
wanted--not by a long shot. But ... in the end, there was very
strong funding for R&D across a number of areas."
However, the official, speaking on condition of anonymity,
cautions that because of the overall budget squeeze, the climate
for R&D funding will be increasingly difficult for fiscal 1996.
"The caps [on discretionary spending] are tough--and they aren't
going to get any easier next year," he says.
The OSTP staffer adds: "The most important lesson out of this is
that, yes, we can maintain science and technology funding in this
time of budget austerity. But it is going to take an increasingly
better communications job"--by the White House and federal R&D
agencies--to reach both Congress and the voters, the
"stockholders" in the U.S. research enterprise.
In addition, he says, "It is going to take a lot better
communication from the science and technology community--again, to
the stockholders of the enterprise--about why these investments
are worthwhile investments in terms of real issues that matter to
people."
Barton Reppert is a freelance science writer based in
Gaithersburg, Md.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.1, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
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--------
NXT:
------------------------------------------------------------
TI : FEDERAL RESEARCH FUNDING (Millions of Dollars)
TY : NEWS
PG : 8
FY 1994 FY 1995 FY 1995
Request Approp.
National Science Foundation
2,983 3,200 3,396
National Institutes of Health
10,938 11,472 11,334
Department of Energy
-Energy supply R&D 3,224 3,424 3,315
--Gen. Sci & Res. 1,615 1,074 984
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
--Space station R&D 1,940 1,890 1,890
--Science, aeronautics, 5,788 5,901 5,901
and technology
National Institute of Standards and Technology
520 935 855
Environmental Protection Agency (R&D)
338 364 350
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
227 238 259
Department of Agriculture
--Agri. Res. Service 728 743 696
--Coop. State 495 419 433
Research Service
Defense Department Total research, development, test, and
evaluation
34,721 36,255 34,870
--Basic research (colleges and universities)
1,470 1,460 1,300
Source: Various government agencies and science associations
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.8, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
WE WELCOME YOUR OPINION. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT
ON THIS STORY, PLEASE WRITE TO US AT EITHER ONE OF THE
FOLLOWING ADDRESSES:
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71764.2561@compuserve.com
The Scientist,
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U.S.A.
--------
NXT:
--------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Optimistic Report Predicts Rebound For Biotechnology
AU : Franklin Hoke
TY : NEWS
PG : 1
The biotechnology industry's prospects for the coming year are
strong, despite a harsh financing climate and continuing
difficulties in shepherding drugs through clinical trials,
according to a new report.
The report's two authors, from the accounting and
management-consulting firm of Ernst and Young, San Francisco,
acknowledge that novel alliances and other creative business
strategies will be required for companies to survive. But,
sounding a note of optimism notably missing from other recent
assessments, the two analysts predict the industry will prosper in
1995, largely because, in their view, biotechnology researchers
are proving to be the most reliable source of innovative
pharmacological agents.
Biotech company executives also expect the industry to grow as a
whole. At the same time, however, they say that something close to
a shakeout in their industry is imminent. They assert that only a
fraction of the current 1,300-plus biotechnology companies will
persist as independent firms past the next few years. Many will be
partially or totally merged into other biotechs or much-larger
pharmaceutical corporations, or will be forced to limit their
goals and cut their work forces substantially in order to survive.
Some, they say, will fail entirely.
The biotech officials do agree with the analysts that basic
scientists are the core resource of the industry and will be
somewhat protected in the expected restructuring. They add that
the most promising ideas from academia will continue to be able to
create a place for themselves within biotech, either through
venture-capital-supported startups or licensing deals with
existing companies.
"Conventional wisdom is that we're going to take the 1,300
companies and shrink them down very dramatically because the
capital markets are going to cause that to happen, and that we're
going to go down to a list of 100 or 200 companies," says G.
Stephen Burrill, one of the report's authors and a senior adviser
for international life sciences and high-technology industry
services at Ernst and Young. "We don't believe that's going to
happen."
"The biotechnology industry raised more capital in the last 12
months than in the 12 months previous, more capital by a
substantial margin," contends Kenneth B. Lee, Jr., the second
report author and Ernst and Young's national director of life
sciences industry services. "The industry is doing quite
well--albeit that there are some clinical [trials] difficulties.
Public company product sales were $5.2 billion, which is a 20
percent increase in product sales over the previous year," in
which sales totaled $4.3 billion.
In the report, "Biotech '95: Reform, Restructure, Renewal,"
released in September, the analysts also note that discovery and
development of new technologies continue to be well supported by
the industry. They point to a 27 percent increase in spending for
research and development by public companies from 1993 to 1994,
from $3 billion to $3.8 billion, and predict further increases in
the coming year.
This rise in R&D spending, however, outpaced revenue growth
significantly in 1994, leading to a 40 percent increase in net
losses for public companies, from $1.5 billion to $2.1 billion.
"This tremendous increase in the investment in R&D continues to
drive overall industry losses," Lee says.
By comparing companies' cash on hand to their spending rates, Lee
and Burrill present a so-called survival index in the report--the
number of months that companies have to spend themselves out of
cash. For the median company, the average survival index dropped
from 34 months in 1993 to 25 months this year.
Still, the analysts say the industry is undervalued in the
financial markets, and they expect investors to gain greater
confidence in biotechnology this year. They base their assessment
on a number of positive indicators, including the fact that more
than 300 biotechnology products are now in some stage of clinical
trials, with a number of them nearing Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) approval.
The biotechnology executives also see a relatively bright future
for the industry overall, based largely on the continuing high
productivity of industry researchers, reflected in the number of
product candidates. They are less sanguine than the analysts,
however, about how many firms will be able to negotiate the path
to success.
"I am personally extremely bullish on the future of biotechnology,
but I am not saying 1,300 to 1,400 companies will be around as
independent companies in five years," says Gabriel Schmergel,
president and chief executive officer of Genetics Institute in
Cambridge, Mass. "The industry is overpopulated. There are a lot
of interesting and lucrative areas to work on, but there isn't
room for 1,400 companies."
The Virtual Company
Most observers of biotechnology agree that, however many companies
may survive in the next few years, the industry is currently
undergoing a major reorganization in response to financial
pressures of different kinds. A key concept in this process is a
business tactic-- referred to variously as the "virtual company"
or "virtual integration" strategy--being adopted by an increasing
number of biotechnology companies.
In the virtual company, one or more of the stages in discovering,
developing, producing, marketing, and distributing a drug may be
performed by different firms. Each partner in this process may
work for a fee or for a stake in the overall value of the product
or its sponsoring company, or combinations of these. Complex
hybrid businesses result as companies invest in each other's
strengths. New types of industries are being created as the
concept evolves. Clinical research organizations (CROs), for
example, specialize in managing clinical trials for biotech
and pharmaceutical companies (F. Hoke, The Scientist, Sept. 19,
1994, page 1).
The virtual company approach is contrasted with the concept of a
fully integrated pharmaceutical company, or FIPCO, approach. A
company pursuing the FIPCO strategy seeks to own and control all
aspects of the process of creating and selling a drug.
According to Schmergel, the biotechnology companies that will
succeed in the next few years fall at one end or the other of the
business spectrum defined by these two strategies. At one end are
perhaps a relative handful of companies with products on the
market and sufficient capital in the bank to successfully pursue a
FIPCO approach, although most of them also selectively engage
other companies for distribution or other kinds of help. His own
Genetics Institute is among these, Schmergel observes--although a
measure of that financial security stems from the 60 percent
acquisition in 1992 of the company by American Home Products, the
pharmaceutical giant based in New York City.
"At the other end of the spectrum, you have the high-quality,
small research boutiques, usually concentrating on only one, very
often specialized, technology platform," Schmergel says. "Of these
companies, the ones that are, in fact, occupying a leading-edge
position with a particular project or in a particular technology
niche and that resist the temptation to add unnecessary
infrastructure--to do that, they have to, at the appropriate time,
arrange partnerships to aid them with clinical development or
marketing--will be able to provide an excellent return for the
shareholders."
Between these extremes are companies that have built up an
infrastructure that may prove to be a liability in the current
economic environment, according to Schmergel.
"It's in the middle that you get squeezed most brutally," he says.
"These are companies that had a strategy to be broad-based, built
up the infrastructure, and then one thing or another went
wrong--whether it's a patent issue, a delay of a clinical trial,
or a negative FDA reaction."
A classic case study of the risk such a company runs is Centocor
Inc., headquartered in Malvern, Pa. The widely publicized failure
of the company's Centoxin product to gain FDA approval in 1993
nearly destroyed Centocor. The company saved itself through a
combination of sharp spending cuts and a return to the firm's core
scientific strengths. Today, with several products doing well in
clinical trials or nearing FDA approval, Centocor is once again
among the leaders in its industry (see accompanying story).
Seeking Partnerships
Some biotechnology companies with existing infrastructure
investments that may not be fully occupied in manufacturing their
own products increasingly are turning to the virtual-company
approach as a way to maximize their assets.
"Companies that may have already invested in infrastructure, in
the bricks and mortar of a manufacturing plant and so on, are
going to be looking for more active collaborations in the
industry," says David L. Urdal, president of Immunex Manufacturing
Corp., a division of Immunex Corp. in Seattle.
Urdal notes that, in addition to the more commonly discussed
difficulties for biotechnology companies in getting a product
approved by FDA--such as demonstrating a compound's safety and
efficacy through successful clinical trials--a company must also
have an agency-licensed manufacturing facility ready to produce
the drug.
"In our industry, that means you have to make that investment
before you know you have a product," Urdal says. "While we have
products in our pipeline that are in clinical development, from
the manufacturing and process development point of view, we have
excess capacity that we could potentially sell to younger
companies that could then hold off making a larger investment for
a longer period of time."
Such arrangements would, in turn, also help Immunex defray
operating costs, Urdal says.
Like other industry observers, Urdal predicts that the next
several years of financial constraint may be difficult ones for
some biotechnology companies. He notes, however, that the
pharmaceutical industry is in the process of scaling back its
research and development efforts and sees possible benefits to
biotechnology in this situation.
"The large pharmaceutical companies are cutting back, investing
less in research," Urdal says. "That may be a boon to
biotechnology, because many of these companies will be looking to
biotechnology as the source of greater innovation than, perhaps,
they have represented within their own groups."
Biotechnology executives also say that, despite the difficult
financing market, good ideas remain at a premium and can find
support.
"The interesting thing is that new startups are still being
financed by venture capital--although less than before," says
Schmergel. "Venture capitalists have become a lot more
discriminating, but the best ideas still get funded."
Tim Cost, senior vice president of investor relations and
strategic operations at Centocor, notes that ReoPro, a drug that
his company hopes will be approved before the end of the year, was
originally developed by Barry Coller, a professor of medicine at
Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.
"We didn't discover that," Cost says. "Coller's a brilliant guy
with a brilliant idea, and we'll be out looking for more. The
value of [scientists'] ideas, their innovation, their ability to
create technology, is going to be as highly valued as ever, if not
more so."
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.1, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
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--------
NXT:
------------------------------------------------------------
TI : RETRENCHING FOR REJUVENATION
AU : FRANKLIN HOKE
TY : NEWS
PG : 11
In 1993, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declined to
approve Malvern, Pa.-based Centocor Inc.'s lead compound,
Centoxin, sending the company into a near-fatal financial
tailspin. Today, after a drastic retrenching, Centocor has
recovered to be listed as one of the top 10 biotechnology firms by
market valuation in the Ernst and Young report "Biotech '95:
Reform, Restruc- ture, Renewal." A new angioplasty therapeutic
called ReoPro will likely receive FDA approval later this year,
and another product called Panorex is proving significantly
effective against colorectal cancer in Phase III clinical trials.
Looking back, company officials say, Centocor wagered too heavily
on the fully integrated pharmaceutical company, or FIPCO,
strategy. Rather than form alliances with other companies to
provide costly business capacities it did not possess, it moved
instead to develop these in-house.
"As it was preparing to launch Centoxin worldwide, the company
decided to go with the FIPCO strategy," says Tim Cost, senior vice
president of investor relations and strategic operations at
Centocor. "It hired a full sales force, put in
information-management systems to support them, built up the
finance organization, created regional sales offices around the
world--all without a product to sell yet, but getting itself
ready. It got that infrastructure in place, took the employment
levels up to 1,600 people, and took the negative cash flow up to
in excess of $50 million a quarter. And then Centoxin did not get
approved."
Centocor's stock collapsed from $60 to $5, Cost says, and managers
began a complete overhaul of the company in an effort to save it
from bankruptcy. The burn rate was trimmed from $50 million a
quarter to less than $50 million a year. The work force was scaled
back from 1,600 to 500--but managers worked hard to protect the
company's basic researchers.
"We dismantled the entire sales and marketing organization," Cost
says. "What we did was go back to what the company was founded on
in 1979, which is that it's a discovery and development company
that has good partnering strategies. While the Centoxin bombs were
going off, we preserved the R&D and scientific core around ReoPro
and pursued it. Now, we're coming to the end of this year with
this drug that we are hopeful will be approved."
Cost says that pursuing the FIPCO approach was a "very hopeful"
strategy that nearly cost the company its existence.
"You have to crawl, then you have to walk, and then you can run,"
Cost says. "The company found its way back to its original roots,
which is discovery and development. That's what we do well--we
find innovative products."
--F.H.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.11, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
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--------
NXT:
-------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Supercomputer Center Fosters Cooperation
Scientists say launching Of the Hawaiian facilityis also a major
step in restructuring of U.S.defense research efforts
AU : Karen Young Kreeger
TY : NEWS
PG : 1
Scientists and government officials expect a recently launched
United States Air Force supercomputer center in Hawaii--equipped
with one of the world's most powerful parallel-processing
computers, one of only two of its kind anywhere--to forge
far-reaching collaborations among academic, industry, and
government scientists, many of whom have contributed to its
creation.
They say the $21 million Maui High-Performance Computing Center
(MHPCC), which officially became operational in August, represents
a major step in retooling Department of Defense (DoD) research to
foster increased U.S. global economic competitiveness. In addition
to aiding advances in biomedicine, education, environmental
science, geoscience, and other areas, the new center is expected
to become a vital communications link between researchers in the
U.S. and other parts of the world--especially in Asia.
"The Air Force's role is changing and the new role is to help U.S.
business become stronger," says computer scientist Ronald Comeau,
an Air Force captain and program manager at the Maui Center. "The
partnership really is a simplistic idea, and we're running this
experiment to see how well it works. In the long run we think it
will benefit the country."
The center--a 24,500-square-foot facility with 25 employees--is
located in Kihei on the Hawaiian island of Maui. MHPCC's primary
function is to support DoD research for the Air Force Maui Optical
Station--telescopes atop Mount Haleakala on Maui. Its secondary,
but highly significant, aim is the development of related
computing technology for the benefit of other government agencies,
educational institutes, and industry. This month, it was made more
widely available to researchers, mostly through expanded Internet
access. Currently, more than 500 investigators from around the
world are tapping into the center's computing and image-processing
capabilities.
MHPCC was established through a special nationwide call for
proposals to U.S. universities from DoD. In September 1993, the
University of New Mexico (UNM), Albuquerque, was awarded a
contract from DoD's Phillips Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force
Base, N.Mex., to set up and manage the facility. In addition to
DoD and UNM, a team of "partners" from business and academia with
expertise in scientific and engineering research, administration,
and software development are collaborating on center projects.
Somers, N.Y.-based IBM POWER Parallel Systems is one of the main
partners, outfitting the center with its latest
parallel-processing supercomputer (see accompanying story). Other
major partners include the Carnegie Mellon University Imaging
Group, Pittsburgh, and SETS Technology Inc. of Mililani, Hawaii, a
company specializing in remote sensing and data processing.
Computing Collaborations
Current and potential applications for the center's resources span
an array of disciplines, say the Maui center collaborators.
Biomedicine is one realm in which the center will facilitate joint
ventures between industry and academia, according to Irving
Wladawsky-Berger, general manager at IBM POWER Parallel Systems.
As yet, no formal arrangements have been established with
biomedical companies; however, several projects are in discussion.
"One of the main uses of parallel supercomputing has been
computational chemistry, which means doing lots and lots of
computing to look at the properties of different molecules," says
Wladawsky-Berger. "The pharmaceutical industry has been very
interested in using supercomputers so they can understand the
properties of different drugs."
Another application Wladaw-sky-Berger thinks pharmaceutical firms
will jump at is using supercomputers to efficiently store and
access the massive amount of data that is generated in the
research phase of drug development. "For every drug that gets to
market," he notes, "typically pharmaceutical companies have tested
hundreds, if not thousands, of drugs that didn't make it." He says
scientists would like to access information from previous
experiments rather than having to repeat tests.
"So having gigantic databases available and then having various
efficient searching mechanisms is something they're very
interested in," Wladawsky-Berger maintains. "Parallel computers
are excellent for that both because of their ability to store
gigantic amounts of data and their ability to search that data
very fast."
Scientists need a powerful computer to pick up the subtle
interactions of the drugs they're testing, he says: "Think of it
as having a powerful pair of glasses. The more powerful the
glasses, the more you can see faint things."
An exchange of technology between DoD and the biomedical community
would be mutually beneficial, Comeau contends. "The same
technology that we use to process images that come off [DoD]
telescopes can be used in medical imaging," he explains. And if by
using the facilities of the center, the medical community can
develop faster ways of processing images, he says, "then we can
also use those faster ways to process images from our telescopes."
One of the first researchers to go online at the center was Brad
Smith, an Air Force captain and space warfare simulation officer
who is trained in computer engineering.
"We're interested in how the space-debris environment affects our
spacecraft," he reports. "There's a lot of junk floating around up
there." Smith explains that the Phillips Laboratory has a
cooperative agreement with Teladesic Corp., a Kirkland,
Wash.-based telecommunications company, to help plan the
deployment of 840 low-Earth-orbit satellites as part of
improvements to the U.S. telecommunications infrastructure.
"We're very concerned about what will happen when they put up
these satellites in essentially the same orbit" as other
satellites and spacecraft, he notes. The main focus of his
research, he says, is to simulate what will happen if these
orbiting bodies collide.
This work entails running data-intensive simulations of a
satellite breakup, for example. "We then take the output in the
form of various dump files and view it on graphics workstations,"
Smith ex-plains.
Building Bridges
Researchers as-sociated with the center say that its location is
paramount to achieving some of its goals. "I like to think of it
as the center of the world information superhighway in the
Pacific. It [will be] a key link in bridging the Far East
high-tech centers to the technology centers on the mainland U.S.,"
declares Frank Gilfeather, a professor of mathematics at New
Mexico who, along with UNM colleagues Brian Smith, a professor of
computer science, and John S. Sobolewski, a professor of
electrical engineering, are co-principal investigators at the Maui
Center.
Half of that link with the world information network is made
through an advanced fiber-optic connection from the Hawaiian
island of Oahu to the Internet backbone in Los Angeles. The
transmission capacity of this link--45 million bits per second--is
greater than any current connection between the U.S. and Europe.
Researchers who need to solve computational problems or work with
images that require great computing speed and memory are able to
tap directly into the resources of the center through this
high-speed link.
Smith explains that, currently, for the center to connect to users
in Asia, "we have to go from Maui back to the mainland and then
back to the Far East" via standard telephone lines, not fiber
optics. "So what we're very much trying to encourage and create is
a conductivity [telecommunications link] that is direct and more
reliable, robust, and faster than what we're currently working
with."
Smith says the center's collaborators are hoping to parlay the
high-speed, fiber-optic link already in place into an additional
direct, fiber-optic connection between Hawaii and the Far East to
be built by one or more Pacific Rim countries in the near future.
"As we create more and more demand for it by having more and more
organizations use the center, that will come along," he predicts.
The center is currently negotiating with IBM Asia Pacific Inc. to
become one of its major users in the Far East. "IBM Asia
Pacific--as one of the users of the center--would go around and
say to whoever's funding it from their side: 'Wouldn't it be great
if we had this conductivity?' And we at the center are going to
create more and more of those subtle pressures to get that
created."
Smith explains that one of the reasons that the second leg of the
entire U.S.-Far East connection is so necessary is that not all
access to the Internet is equal. "Internet is everywhere in the
U.S. and in some sense around the world, but its qualities are
very, very different, depending on where you are," he says. The
center is also proposing to upgrade the technology of its link to
the Maui Optical Station telescopes from its current microwave
transmission to high-speed fiber optics.
Through these same telecommunication networks the center will also
help bring novel science-education experiences to U.S. schools.
"We will establish links to many schools so they will have
high-speed data links directly to an off-ramp of the information
highway," says Gilfeather. The center's high-capacity, fiber-optic
connection will allow students in the continental U.S., as well as
on the Hawaiian islands, to take advantage of the capabilities of
Maui's supercomputer. Using this technology, the center is also
working with the Navajo Nation to bring supercomputing experiences
to native Americans.
"We are bringing to the state of Hawaii a node of the Jason
Project," says Gilfeather. Jason is the name of a
remote-controlled submarine used in deep-sea exploration, and the
Jason Project is an annual deep-sea expedition televised live to
hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren in North America and
Europe (F. Golden, The Scientist, May 15, 1989, page 1). The Jason
Project will soon be exploring an underground volcano that is in
the process of forming a new island in the Hawaiian chain, and,
via the Maui Center link, Hawaiian students will be able to see
the volcanic activity firsthand, Gilfeather says.
Mutually Beneficial
DoD investigators anticipate that, by combining resources and
talent with academic and industry researchers in the private
sector, the center will improve the computing capabilities of all
parties involved. Comeau sums up the payoff for DoD and the
research community: "Hopefully, what businesses will contribute is
that they'll help develop software that DoD [and others] can use
with their own research. We're hoping that we'll get a lot of
public domain software out of this."
Another distinctive feature of the center, according to officials,
is its arrangement for information sharing. Software companies and
other firms that use the center will be allowed to retain rights
to their developments.
"To our knowledge this is the first center where the government
and a university--as the manager of the center--have both agreed
to waive all intellectual rights to work brought to the center by
a third party," says Gilfeather.
For more information, contact the Maui High-Performance Computing
Center, 550 Lipoa Pkwy., Kihei, Hawaii 96753; (808) 879-5077. Fax:
(808) 879-5018. E-mail: info@mail.mhpcc.edu.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.1, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
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--------
NXT:
------------------------------------------------------------
TI : A SUPERLATIVE SUPERCOMPUTER
AU : KAREN KREEGER YOUNG
TY : NEWS
PG : 6
At the heart of the United States Air Force's Maui
High-Performance Computing Center (MHPCC) in Hawaii lies a
supercomputer called the IBM POWERparallel System, also known as
the SP2. This is a scalable parallel-processing computer--a
machine that, to solve a computational problem, divides it among
many processors that run simultaneously. The Maui center's
computer has 400 nodes, or processors, in place, making it one of
the most powerful supercomputers in the world, according to MHPCC
researchers.
"We're at the moment only one of two supercomputer centers with an
IBM POWERparallel System installed," says Margaret Williams,
associate director of the center. The Cornell Theory Center, a
National Supercomputing Center at Cornell University in Ithaca,
N.Y., is the other; Cornell scientists soon expect to bring its
capacity up to 512 processors.
"What parallel systems let you do is essentially put all the
[processors] together and manage them effectively as one system,"
explains Irving Wladawsky-Berger, general manager for IBM POWER
Parallel Systems in Somers, N.Y., IBM's parallel computer branch.
"By being able to put it together, you have N times the processing
or storage capability, where N is the number of processors."
It's the speed at which computing can be accomplished that makes
IBM's SP2 a giant among supercomputers. The SP2 "has a
microprocessor that's about twice as fast as the previous one,"
says Wladawsky-Berger of SP2's predecessor--the SP1.
"I've worked on the SP1 since last January, and the SP2 is almost
twice as fast, even when many users are on it," notes Brad Smith,
an Air Force captain and one of the first to test the center's
computing power. "We did some very large simulations, and it took
us a few days to run them at the Maui site. It felt like a lot of
time, but it took us a few weeks to do similar things on some of
the older supercomputers."
Computer scientists use a unit called the flop, or floating-point
(arithmetic) operation per second, to compare the rate at which
computers solve problems. A personal computer with a 486
microprocessor, for example, typically runs at 2 million to 4
million flops, or 2 to 4 megaflops. SP2's capacity, on the other
hand, is 50,000 times that of some 486s.
"We will have a machine with 100 billion [flops]. I would say
there are currently a half-dozen or fewer such machines in
existence," notes Frank Gilfeather, a professor of mathematics at
the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and a co-principal
investigator at the center. "The national goal is that the United
States will reach the teraflop level by the turn of the century. A
teraflop is a trillion flops, and we're one-tenth of the way with
this machine.
"You need a machine that has that size to do things like weather
prediction, molecular modeling to develop new drugs, and
computational fluid dynamics to model a whole airplane in flight.
Currently we can only do pieces at a time, and fairly slowly."
--K.Y.K.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.6, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
WE WELCOME YOUR OPINION. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT
ON THIS STORY, PLEASE WRITE TO US AT EITHER ONE OF THE
FOLLOWING ADDRESSES:
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U.S.A.
--------
NXT:
-------------------------------------------------------
TI : A SUPERLATIVE SUPERCOMPUTER
AU : KAREN KREEGER YOUNG
TY : NEWS
PG : 6
At the heart of the United States Air Force's Maui
High-Performance Computing Center (MHPCC) in Hawaii lies a
supercomputer called the IBM POWERparallel System, also known as
the SP2. This is a scalable parallel-processing computer--a
machine that, to solve a computational problem, divides it among
many processors that run simultaneously. The Maui center's
computer has 400 nodes, or processors, in place, making it one of
the most powerful supercomputers in the world, according to MHPCC
researchers.
"We're at the moment only one of two supercomputer centers with an
IBM POWERparallel System installed," says Margaret Williams,
associate director of the center. The Cornell Theory Center, a
National Supercomputing Center at Cornell University in Ithaca,
N.Y., is the other; Cornell scientists soon expect to bring its
capacity up to 512 processors.
"What parallel systems let you do is essentially put all the
[processors] together and manage them effectively as one system,"
explains Irving Wladawsky-Berger, general manager for IBM POWER
Parallel Systems in Somers, N.Y., IBM's parallel computer branch.
"By being able to put it together, you have N times the processing
or storage capability, where N is the number of processors."
It's the speed at which computing can be accomplished that makes
IBM's SP2 a giant among supercomputers. The SP2 "has a
microprocessor that's about twice as fast as the previous one,"
says Wladawsky-Berger of SP2's predecessor--the SP1.
"I've worked on the SP1 since last January, and the SP2 is almost
twice as fast, even when many users are on it," notes Brad Smith,
an Air Force captain and one of the first to test the center's
computing power. "We did some very large simulations, and it took
us a few days to run them at the Maui site. It felt like a lot of
time, but it took us a few weeks to do similar things on some of
the older supercomputers."
Computer scientists use a unit called the flop, or floating-point
(arithmetic) operation per second, to compare the rate at which
computers solve problems. A personal computer with a 486
microprocessor, for example, typically runs at 2 million to 4
million flops, or 2 to 4 megaflops. SP2's capacity, on the other
hand, is 50,000 times that of some 486s.
"We will have a machine with 100 billion [flops]. I would say
there are currently a half-dozen or fewer such machines in
existence," notes Frank Gilfeather, a professor of mathematics at
the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and a co-principal
investigator at the center. "The national goal is that the United
States will reach the teraflop level by the turn of the century. A
teraflop is a trillion flops, and we're one-tenth of the way with
this machine.
"You need a machine that has that size to do things like weather
prediction, molecular modeling to develop new drugs, and
computational fluid dynamics to model a whole airplane in flight.
Currently we can only do pieces at a time, and fairly slowly."
--K.Y.K.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.6, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
WE WELCOME YOUR OPINION. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT
ON THIS STORY, PLEASE WRITE TO US AT EITHER ONE OF THE
FOLLOWING ADDRESSES:
garfield@aurora.cis.upenn.edu
71764.2561@compuserve.com
The Scientist,
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U.S.A.
--------
NXT:
------------------------------------------------------------------
TI : United Nations Moving Ahead On Consolidation Of AIDS
Programs
AU : Neeraja Sankaran
TY : NEWS
PG : 3
United Nations officials expect a unification of AIDS study
programs sponsored by six international organizations to
significantly enhance laboratory research and other efforts to
combat the disease worldwide.
The program, called the Joint and Co-Sponsored U.N. Program on
HIV/AIDS, was first proposed by the World Health Organization's
(WHO) executive board of directors in January of this year. It was
given final approval by the U.N. Economic and Social Council last
month. Expected to be fully functional by January 1996, the
program would link AIDS-related activities of six participating
organizations: WHO; the World Bank; the U.N. Educational,
Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); the U.N.
Development Program (UNDP); the U.N. International Children's
Emergency Fund (UNICEF); and the U.N. Fund for Population (UNFP).
Researchers and others involved in the consolidation envision the
program as a central resource to which members of the six
participating organizations can turn for funding and guidance in
both policy and scientific research.
"What this [program] means is that the results from the research
can be more readily and immediately applied where they are
urgently needed," says Susan Holck, an epidemiologist at WHO
headquarters in Geneva and one of the program's planners. "For
example, the World Health Organization traditionally has its
strengths in technical expertise and research, while UNICEF is a
valuable human resource--with people already working in the
developing countries where AIDS is spreading." The proposed
program would enable the two groups--researchers and development
workers--to remain in constant dialogue, Holck observes.
Aims And Agendas
With the various agencies still moving toward a consolidated
program, WHO's Holck points out that it is too early to have a set
agenda. The overall objective of the program will be to work at
global and national levels in checking the spread of AIDS. To this
end, the U.N. hopes to achieve worldwide consensus on AIDS
policies and then help implement these policies, mobilizing funds
for AIDS-related prevention and education activities in different
countries, while also supporting research. The projected budget is
about $100 million to support efforts at the global level and
"much more than that at the country level," she says.
According to Holck, current research efforts, mostly sponsored by
WHO's Global Program on AIDS, are ongoing, both in "prevention,
[including] vaccine development, and care," the latter mainly
including treatment of AIDS-related illnesses. "We [are also]
focusing on the needs of developing countries, particularly with
respect to public-health issues."
"We have to come up with pragmatic approaches to dealing with
AIDS, not set mandates," says Jean-Louis Lamboray, senior public
health specialist in the population, health, and nutrition
department of the World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C.
"There is a need for balance between the biomedical, behavioral,
and policy aspects."
In defining AIDS, WHO follows the same guidelines as the
Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whereby
an adult or adolescent older than 12 years is considered to have
AIDS if he or she is infected with HIV, and displays one or more
of the diseases on a list that includes Kaposi's sarcoma,
cryptococcal meningitis, and pneumonia.
Because the virus is primarily transmitted sexually, many
scientists consider studies on social and sexual behaviors to be a
central component of AIDS research. However, some researchers not
affiliated with the U.N. programs have expressed concern that
investigation into the social and sexual behaviors of different
populations at risk may not be receiving sufficient attention from
the international organization.
"Overall, [the merger] is a good idea, but I'm not convinced that
the WHO is doing all it can to properly implement behavioral
research programs," says Chris Tsoukas, an associate professor of
medicine at McGill University in Montreal, and the associate
director of the AIDS center affiliated with the university. An
immunologist who does vaccine research, Tsoukas nevertheless feels
that behavioral research is "really the key" to checking the
spread of the disease.
"We have to work on where the epicenters of infection are," he
adds, referring to the different parts of the world--Thailand, and
in African countries, for example--where the AIDS epidemic poses
an especially serious threat. Because these locales include
populations with very diverse cultural backgrounds, methods of
addressing such issues as the risk of transmission through
different sexual and other practices also need to be tailored to
suit different social contexts, Tsoukas explains.
"The idea that we can apply the same safe-sex guidelines
[everywhere] is wrong," he stresses.
U.N. scientists also insist that understanding the societal
factors linked to the spread of HIV is an important consideration
in the joint program. In fact, they point out, agencies like
UNESCO and UNDP work specifically on projects dealing with social
and community development and education, and hence directly
address behavioral issues. Claude Rosenfeld, program specialist in
the basic sciences division at UNESCO headquarters in Paris,
program coordinator of the group's AIDS program, and one of its
representatives in the merger, affirms that "in the U.N. system we
are very aware of the importance of behavioral research."
Lamboray agrees: "There is absolutely no question that societal
factors are important. We need to make sure that AIDS is
considered as an issue of development and not just confined to
health care."
The advantage of a U.N. joint program, according to Lamboray, is
that "it forces us to have interactions with people working under
different paradigms, [which] in turn forces us to get a common
framework to deal with the pandemic."
"HIV is universal in impact, and we cannot, as U.N. bodies, go
about giving different advice and information," says Solomon
Hailu, the coordinator for UNESCO's role in the joint program.
"Our collective impact would be greater" with a unified voice, he
adds.
On the biomedical research front, Rosenfeld sees a need to look
for possible factors in addition to HIV that may contribute to the
onset of AIDS. Drawing on his experience as a cancer immunologist,
he sees parallels between the contraction of cancer--which has
multiple causes, including retroviruses in some cases--and AIDS.
"Clearly, new ways--based on premises other than the classical
tracks--need to be investigated," he maintains.
Regardless of their expectations about this program, researchers,
public-health specialists, policy officials, and others inside and
outside the U.N. concur on one point: the urgency with which the
world needs to deal with the AIDS pandemic. Tsoukas visited Japan
in 1988 as part of a WHO team to assess the AIDS situation there
and recently revisited the country during the 10th International
Conference on AIDS, held in Yoko- hama August 7-12. He
notes "how slowly things move--even in an advanced country like
Japan--with respect to implementing programs dealing with
behavioral change."
As such, he warns that even if appropriate programs were
instituted in various countries around the world now, "we are not
going to see the benefits for many years to come."
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.3, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
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--------
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-----------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Physicist And Geneticist Are Named Winners Of Enrico Fermi
Award
AU : Neeraja Sankaran
TY : NEWS
PG : 4
President Clinton's choices for the winners of the 1994-95 Enrico
Fermi Award--Freeman Dyson, a professor, emeritus, of physics at
the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and Liane B.
Russell, a geneticist who is a senior corporate fellow at the Oak
Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee--reflect a changing
attitude on the part of the United States government about the
benefits of nuclear power, say some scientists.
The award, the U.S.'s oldest in science and technology, was
established in 1956 to honor the memory of Enrico Fermi, the
leader of the group of scientists that achieved the first
self-sustained, controlled nuclear reaction on December 2, 1942.
The honor was originally intended to recognize the development of
applications in the field of nuclear energy and technology. Among
the early winners, for example, was nuclear physicist J. Robert
Oppenheimer, who played a central role in developing the first
atomic bomb. But in the past several years, observers note, the
prize has gone to scientists with theoretical interests--for
instance, 1988 physics Nobelist Leon Lederman, who was a recipient
in 1993.
"I believe the prize has gone more towards the theoretical side in
recent years," affirms A. David Rossin, who served as assistant
secretary of energy in 1986-87, and was president of the American
Nuclear Society, Lagrange Park, Ill., in 1992-93. Rossin, a
metallurgist and nuclear engineer, is now an independent
consultant based in Los Altos Hills, Calif.
"The recipients this year are both exceptional people with
exceptional accomplishments," he adds, "[but] the award should
swing back to recognizing the practical and engineering
applications of nuclear sciences. Fermi himself had the greatest
ability to translate fundamental physics to practical
applications."
Dyson recognizes a degree of irony in his being honored with the
award. "The joke is that the Fermi Award was originally
established for the glorification of nuclear physics and
technology, and now I am being honored for being a critic," he
observes.
Dyson is cited, in part, for his questioning of the risks and
benefits of science and technology, including the use of nuclear
energy. His book Weapons and Hope (New York, Harper and Row,
1984), in which he addressed various scientific military
questions, won the National Books Critics Circle Award for
Nonfiction in 1984.
"I would have to agree with Professor Dyson," says Rossin about
the change in the nature of the Fermi Award's focus, adding,
however, his view that "Dyson's entries into policy issues were
not convincing," and did not ultimately prove to be correct.
Although not an aggressive critic of nuclear energy or policies,
the other winner, Russell, is being recognized for her studies on
mutagenesis and teratogenesis--investigations that led to
discovery of the risks of nuclear energy, rather than its
glorification. She was one of the first scientists to establish
the relationship between various abnormalities of newborns who had
been exposed prenatally to radiation.
Both individuals will receive their awards--a gold medal and
$100,000 each--from Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary at a
ceremony to be held in Washington D.C., early next year. The
prize--awarded intermittently but not more than once a year--is
administered by the Department of Energy, with the president
making the final selection from a list of recommendations from the
energy secretary.
Accidental Glory
Dyson's citation for the Fermi award also recognized his
contributions to the realms of theoretical physics and his
achievements in communicating science to the general public. The
70-year-old physicist's interests have included quantum
electrodynamics, scattering theory, and statistical physics. "I
jump around from one thing to another," he says. "Nowadays my work
is more mathematical." He is well known for his early association
with the renowned Richard Feynman, who went on to win the 1965
physics Nobel.
Dyson's articles for lay audiences have appeared frequently in
such popular magazines as the New Yorker and Scientific American.
Among his well-known books are Disturbing the Universe (New York,
Harper and Row, 1979), an autobiographical work; Origins of Life
(Cambridge University Press, 1986); Infinite in All Directions
(Harper and Row, 1988), for which he received the Phi Beta Kappa
Award in Science in 1988; and, most recently, an anthology of
essays titled From Eros to Gaia (New York, Pantheon Books, 1992).
Last year, he also appeared in the public television science
series "The Glorious Accident."
Having earned his B.A. in mathematics from Cambridge University,
England, Dyson did graduate studies at Cambridge's Trinity College
and Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., for one year each. He does
not have a formal doctoral degree but has received honorary
Ph.D.'s from several notable universities around the world,
including Princeton University; the University of Glasgow,
Scotland; and the City University of London. He has been at the
Institute for Advanced Study since 1953 and is currently visiting
at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., as a Montgomery Fellow. He
was elected as a fellow to England's Royal Society in 1952, and as
a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1964.
Radiation Biologist
Only the second woman to receive the Fermi Award, Russell, 71, is
being honored for her contributions in basic genetics, radiation
mutagenesis, and teratogenesis--which refers to the development of
congenital defects owing to mutations induced in different stages
of the embryo. In the early 1950s, Russell conducted extensive
studies on the effects of prenatal radiation exposure in mice, and
made specific recommendations for avoiding exposure to X-rays. In
addition, she pioneered a number of mammalian mutagenesis tests
currently used in various diagnostic as-says worldwide. An
example is the "spot test," which Russell says uses the appearance
of colored spots on the skin as an indicator of a mutation
introduced in the gene of the animal.
Among her most cited papers are: L.B. Russell, "X-ray-induced
developmental abnormalities in the mouse and their use in the
analysis of embryological patterns," Journal of Experimental
Zoology, 114:545-602, 1950; and L.B. Russell, "Genetics of
mammalian sex chromosomes," Science, 133: 1795- 1803, 1961. Each
paper has received more than 200 citations.
Over the years Russell has worked on characterizing various
mutations induced by radiation. "Instead of throwing away
[destroying] the mice, we held on to them, and today they are a
very valuable mutational resource for studying various disorders,"
she explains.
Currently, she is studying a variety of mutations that cause such
genetic disorders as polycystic kidney disease, diabetes, and
congenital cleft palates in mice.
Born in Vienna, Russell attended Hunter College in New York City,
where she obtained a bachelor of arts degree, summa cum laude, in
1945, and then went on to receive a Ph.D. in genetics from the
University of Chicago in 1949. She has been a member of the
National Academy of Sciences since 1986.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.4, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
WE WELCOME YOUR OPINION. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT
ON THIS STORY, PLEASE WRITE TO US AT EITHER ONE OF THE
FOLLOWING ADDRESSES:
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U.S.A.
--------
NXT:
NOTEBOOK
------------------------------------------------------------
TI : HIV Vaccines Get Second Chance
TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)
PG : 4
The World Health Organization (WHO), based in Geneva, will back
large-scale clinical trials of two experimental HIV vaccines that
failed earlier this year to win similar approval in the United
States. In June, Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), chose not to
support the complex and costly trials because "the science wasn't
there to justify it." Each vaccine relies on stimulating an immune
response to the surface protein gp120 on the virus thought to
cause AIDS. Apparently, the international health organization
looked at the same data Fauci did, from smaller trials in humans,
and saw sufficient immune system improvement demonstrated to
warrant further studies. "The World Health Organization, in
contrast to the NIAID, has decided to go ahead and test these
vaccines in efficacy trials and put their blessing on that," says
Don Francis, the clinical scientist managing the trials for
Genentech. According to WHO, the trials probably will not get
under way until 1996 and data from them will not be available
until seven years after that.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.4, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
NXT:
------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Take Deux Aspirines
TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)
PG : 4
Raven Press, a medical and scientific publishing house based in
New York, is about to release its Medical Dictionary in Six
Languages, a compilation of more than 7,500 commonly used words
and phrases from medical and clinical trials literature translated
from English into French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Japanese.
Included are terms relating to clinical trials, statistics, and
drug development, as well as obscure medical phrases. For more
information, contact Raven Press at (212) 930-9500. Fax: (212)
869-3495.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.4, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
NXT:
--------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Momentous Challenge
TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)
PG : 4
Over the years, the national laboratories have wrought nearly
miraculous research and innovations in numerous areas. But a team
of investigators from Upton, N.Y.-based Brookhaven National
Laboratory (BNL) along with scientists from Polytechnic University
in Brooklyn may be tackling their toughest assignment yet--trying
to unsnarl rush-hour traffic on Long Island's highways. Using a
computer software package called Advanced Traffic Occupancy
Prediction, the researchers feel they can produce up-to-the-minute
forecasts of traffic volume and advise motorists accordingly. The
computer modeling system takes into account such elements as
historical traffic-flow patterns and data about the current state
of the highway. The investigators are combining their efforts with
the New York Department of Transportation's INFORM system, an
advanced traffic-management system that collects and evaluates
roadway data. INFORM already has computerized signs in place on
Long Island highways to inform motorists about current conditions.
With the two systems combined, BNL scientists believe they will be
able to warn motorists of what to expect--and, possibly, avoid--at
certain destinations.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.4, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
NXT:
------------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Weighty Matter
TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)
PG : 4
Researchers who study environmental pollutants have a new and
unusual measuring tool--or standard reference material
(SRM)--available to them, thanks to the National Institute of
Standards and Technology. NIST has recently announced that
scientists can order 15-gram samples of Whale Blubber SRM 1945,
which can be used by investigators analyzing the tissue of marine
mammals and fish for the presence of organic pollutants. The whale
SRM comes with a certificate verifying the concentration of the 42
pollutants it contains; the blubber can thus be used as a control.
(In general, fatty tissue--of which whale blubber is a prime
example --accumulates toxins, especially chlorine-containing
pesticides like PCBs.) NIST scientists say researchers prefer
naturally derived standards over synthetic ones because the
natural standards more closely match the composition of samples
they are usually trying to analyze. The source of the blubber is a
pilot whale that was stranded on a Massachusetts beach in 1991. To
order the whale SRM, contact the NIST Standard Reference Materials
Program, 204 Engineering Mechanics Building, Gaithersburg, Md.
20899-0001; (301) 975-6776. Fax: (301) 948-3730.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.4, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
NXT:
------------------------------------------------------------------
TI : SURF's Up In Gaithersburg
TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)
PG : 4
The 1995 SURF, or Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships,
program in physics at the National Institute of Standards and
Technology is seeking applicants. Undergraduates and graduating
college seniors in science and engineering who are interested in a
career in physics are eligible. For 10 to 12 weeks each summer,
about 20 students conduct research alongside mentor-scientists at
the NIST Physics Laboratory in Gaithersburg, Md. Each fellowship
includes a $3,600 stipend, housing, and transportation.
Applications are due on February 1. For more information, contact
David King, B266 Physics Building, Gaithersburg, Md. 20899-0001;
(301) 975-2369. Fax: (301) 975-3038. E-mail:king@enh.nist.gov.
Jean Research
Hate the idea of tossing those well-worn, comfortable old jeans
into the trash, even though they are falling apart? So do
environmentalists and the textile industry. To that end,
researchers from North Carolina State University's College of
Textiles and Burlington Industries Denim Division in Greensboro,
N.C., are collaborating on a process to salvage some of the
estimated 70 million pounds of denim scrap dumped each year into
U.S. landfills. The NCSU's College of Textiles' Applied Research
Program team developed a method for spinning together short fiber
ends to form a yarn suitable for weaving into denim fabric that
will perform efficiently on looms. The result was Burlington's
"Reused Denim," which contains 50 percent reclaimed denim and 50
percent virgin cotton yarn. The material has already been sold to
a number of jeans manufacturers.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.4, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
NXT:
------------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Peaceful Coexistence
TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)
PG : 4
The Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest Laboratories in
Richland, Wash., has finally begun work on a $230 million
Environmental and Molecular Sciences Laboratory. Construction of
the 200,000-square-foot lab was suspended last spring after the
discovery of a Native American burial ground on the original site.
The facility, which is expected to be completed in 1997 and house
nearly 270 permanent researchers, is now being built on a new
location one mile away from the burial ground. Research there will
focus on developing technologies to clean up environmental hazards
at government and industrial sites and is expected to lead to
advances in such disciplines as energy, material, biomedical, and
agricultural sciences.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.4, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
NXT:
------------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Engineering Collaborations
TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)
PG : 4
The National Science Foundation recently announced that it will
establish or renew six interdisciplinary research centers to
advance knowledge of state-of-the-art engineering systems,
processes, and devices. The new Engineering Research Centers will
join 18 already-established centers. These research institutions
will be involved in, among other areas of study, biotechnology and
bioengineering as well as materials and energy science. The
centers are supported by and collaborate on research with
academia, government, and industry, including, thus far, some 720
small- to medium-sized firms. Of the six, three are new and three
are reestablishments of centers started in 1985. The new
facilities are located at the California Institute of Technology
in Pasadena, the University of Florida in Gainesville, and the
Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. The reestablished
centers are on the campuses of the University of Maryland in
College Park, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
Cambridge, and Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.4, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
WE WELCOME YOUR OPINION. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT
ON THIS STORY, PLEASE WRITE TO US AT EITHER ONE OF THE
FOLLOWING ADDRESSES:
garfield@aurora.cis.upenn.edu
71764.2561@compuserve.com
The Scientist,
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U.S.A.
--------
NXT:
------------------------------------------------------------
TI : HIGH IMPACT PAPERS
(INFORMATION)
TY : PRODUCT INFORMATION
PG : 7
The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) announces...
High Impact Papers published from 1981 through 1993 ...
a bibliographic and citation database for your PC of the
300 most-cited papers of each year
For the first time ever, ISI is able to offer a diskette database
of the most influential papers in specific fields of the sciences
and social sciences, as reflected by citation counts tabulated
through 1993. For High Impact Papers, 1981-93,ISI has identified,
for the three fields listed below, the 300 most-cited reports of
each year from 1981 to 1993. Each file contains the bibliographic
information for 3,900 papers (including all author names, up to a
maximum of 16; all author addresses, up to 15; journal name; title
of paper; volume; initial page number; year of publication) plus
year-by-year and total citation counts for each paper. What's
more, this database comes with a graphical user interface that
allows users to search the set and create rankings of authors,
institutions, journals, nations, etc.
The database requires an IBM-compatible PC running Windows 3.1 (a
version without the user interface is available in dBase for DOS).
Are your papers listed? What about your colleagues' papers? How
many has your institution fielded each year? Has the nation's
share of most cited papers changed much during the period? Who
published the largest number of high impact papers? These and many
other questions can now be answered easily.
Three editions are now available:
* Molecular Biology & Genetics
* Neurosciences
* Immunology
For more information, contact David A. Pendlebury
(215-386-0100, x1411; or, fax 215-387-1266; or,
Internet: dpendle@isinet.com)
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.7, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
WE WELCOME YOUR OPINION. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT
ON THIS STORY, PLEASE WRITE TO US AT EITHER ONE OF THE
FOLLOWING ADDRESSES:
garfield@aurora.cis.upenn.edu
71764.2561@compuserve.com
The Scientist,
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U.S.A.
--------
NXT:
-------------------------------------------------------------
TI : THE LEADERS OF SCIENCE
THE READERS OF SCIENCE
PG : 10
BRITTON CHANCE,
Eldridge Reeves Johnson University Professor of Biochemistry and
Biophysics and Physical Biochemistry and Radiologic Physics,
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia
"My work ranges from human disease to biological structures, and
encompasses many disciplines .... THE SCIENTIST provides much of
the information I need in convenient, capsule form."
Britton Chance has been called the father of rapid, quantitative
spectrophotometry. He developed radar technology at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, during World War
II, and studied rapid enzyme ractions in the early 1950s.
Inventing the double-beam or dual-wavelength spectrophotometer,
Chance made it possible to measure the dynamics of enzyme action
in isolated organelles and tissues with reliability and precision,
which led to many key developments in biochemistry and biophysics.
Since then, Chance's research on metabolic changes in the muscle,
liver, brain, heart, adrenal glands, and corneal tissue in vivo
has ranked among the leaders in the Science Citation Index. He now
applies his spectroscopic techniques to imaging tumors in the
brain and breast with rapidly varying "deep red" light. This new,
noninvasive imaging has stimulated widespread interest in
developing a safe, economical, and efficient technique for imaging
diseases of the brain, breast, and muscles.
In addition to his scientific accomplishments, Chance is
especially proud of the close relationships he has developed with
students and colleagues over the years. He continues to maintain
active correspondence with former students, most of whom have
themselves become leaders in scientific research. Chance
attributes the respect he has earned from his peers to "doing good
science and doing it well."
Chance says: "The hallmarks of good science are veracity,
morality, and longevity. My work ranges from human disease to
biological structures, and it encompasses many disciplines. With
this holistic view, I read everything. THE SCIENTIST provides much
of the information I need in convenient, capsule form."
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg. 10, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
WE WELCOME YOUR OPINION. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT
ON THIS STORY, PLEASE WRITE TO US AT EITHER ONE OF THE
FOLLOWING ADDRESSES:
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U.S.A.
--------
NXT:
OPINION
-----------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Bitter Ironies Confound Career Hopes Of Today's Young
Researchers
AU : Mark H. Paalman
TY : OPINION
PG : 12
Young scientific researchers are coming to a major crossroads, a
"best of times, worst of times" of tremendous proportions. From
one standpoint, being a part of the numerous revolutions occurring
in nearly all scientific disciplines is as exciting for us as it
is promising. There is much for us to anticipate as fresh thinking
and new technological innovations bring once diverse disciplines
together, creating avenues of exploration not even imagined a
decade ago.
Confidence and ambition, however, are ceding to worry and
resignation. We see increasing numbers of our comrades getting
stuck in perpetual postdoctoral appointments while they apply over
and over for rare faculty jobs. Even if one attains a cherished
tenure-track position, the chances of earning a competitive
research grant have seldom been worse. The situation is clearly
discouraging, since fewer and fewer biomedical faculty under age
37 are applying for life-blood National Institutes of Health
research grants. And on the industrial side, layoffs and forced
retirements by the likes of IBM and Dow Chemical parallel those in
the defense industry and lead young scientists to wonder if there
are any stable career choices left.
Whether doctoral candidates or postdoctoral fellows, with designs
on industry or academe, we--the fledgling researchers of the
wealthiest country on Earth--are now struggling with grim
prospects for gainful employment in the near future. We must look
carefully at the issues that have created this bitterly ironic
situation, and we must take a stand for bringing about change.
Illiteracy Breeds Mistrust
The ostensible cause of the situation has been tightened federal
purse strings mixed with a peer-review process that tends to favor
established investigators over nov-ices. In my opinion, two oddly
coexisting factors also impinge heavily on the future of young
scientists in America: science illiteracy in American society and
the unchecked flow of young researchers through the so-called
academic pipe-line.
Scientist/educator Carl Sagan noted in a Washington Post article
early this year that, while we as a society "profoundly depend on
science and technology," virtually no Americans really understand
them ("Book World" section, Jan. 9, 1994, page 1). Developing
countries view science as the path out of poverty, as demonstrated
by the huge numbers of international science graduate students in
United States institutions. Yet Americans--taught as children that
"science is hard"--too often fall down the slope of superstition
and ignorance. Statistics abound decrying the state of science and
math education in the U.S. as an embarrassment compared to that
in, for example, Japan and Germany. However, in underscoring this
problem, Sagan directed a good portion of the blame at the bulk of
scientists who, given all of their grant-writing and their general
"ivory-tower" reclusiveness, do not have the time, the energy, or
the desire to do something to correct it.
Why should we, as young scientists, care whether nonscientists
truly understand basic scientific concepts? Simply because our
careers will depend on it. Without an appreciation of both math
and basic scientific principles, people tend to become frightened,
mistrustful, and less supportive of scientific progress. Given
such recently publicized improprieties as the breast cancer
research debacle at the University of Pittsburgh and
government-sponsored radiation experiments, good scientists are
finding this negative impression increasingly harder to debunk.
Today's science policymakers warn that the future of our
scientific enterprise may be jeopardized as public skepticism
translates into voter retaliation and reduced research funding
support. Therefore, all scientists must come to see the importance
of open, informative dialogue with a public capable of
understanding even the most difficult concepts if they are
presented clearly and conscientiously.
Saturated Job Market
Given the degree to which the American public, through its science
illiteracy and mistrust, are alienated from science, there is a
growing class of Americans who, owing to their dedication to this
field, are in a professional quandry. I am speaking of the
thousands of college students in the last decade who loved science
enough (and were encouraged by erroneous predictions of imminent
shortages in the scientific work force) to pursue the noble career
path of academic research despite the limited income potential
that the field offers. We students, having invested more than five
years and much personal and federal money into our hard-earned
Ph.D.'s, now find upon graduation a saturated scientific job
market and little hope for future advancement.
What seems most inconsistent--and unfair--is that the number of
doctoral candidates in the sciences grows despite the lack of a
well-defined need: Graduate training is encouraged under the
assumption that jobs will eventually appear. One reason for this
might simply be that very few studies have focused on supply and
demand for employment in the sciences. In one that did--a 1989
study sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation--the authors
suggested that, given reasonable projections of both the nation's
economic growth and the attrition rate of existing faculty, there
could well be a 100 percent surplus of professorial candidates in
the biological and psychological sciences through 1997 (W.G.
Bowden, J.A. Sosa, Pros-pects for Faculty in the Arts and
Sciences: A Study of Factors Affecting Demand and Supply,
Princeton University Press, 1989).
Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows in the biomedical sciences
today are seeing abundant evidence of the projected oversupply in
their ranks. (Just ask even exceptionally talented postdocs about
the number of academic job offers they've received for every 100
job letters sent.) This problem is not unique to bioscientists,
either, as all indications are that basic chemistry and physics
postdocs in the pipeline fare no better, and perhaps worse, in the
job market.
Given current trends, it is easy to imagine that some scary
scenarios are just around the corner. In one, a disappearing job
market, exacerbated by funding cutbacks from lawmakers with
skeptical constituencies, creates a class of scientists that is
simply forced to "adjust" in a free-market sense, with only the
strong and lucky few able to survive. This phenomenon is certainly
familiar; witness the fall of the superconducting supercollider
and the resultant layoffs of physicists. Another, perhaps even
more demoralizing, scenario: The bulk of young science Ph.D.'s
within the glutted pipeline serve merely as "McScientists,"
struggling at pathetic hourly wages as the virtual hands and
brains of their masters, the laboratory franchise owners. The
growing number of postdocs unable to secure treasured faculty
positions year after year has already led to rising
underemployment rates in most academic science fields; yet year
after year, the number of Ph.D. candidates steadily increases. A
cynic might even propose that it is academia's thirst for cheap
labor that keeps the pipeline flowing at all.
A Serious Matter
It seems ridiculous that the two social crises of science
illiteracy and scientist oversupply coexist. Both problems will
continue to fester without a major overhaul of our national
science and education policy. Fortunately, demands for science
education reform are indeed spreading across the U.S., and with
much support from the scientific societies and industry. As for
the oversupply of Ph.D.'s, further studies are needed to fully
define the problem--but the studies that have already been
undertaken must, at some point, be taken seriously.
Granted, the truly exceptional and ambitious among the ranks of
young scientists must be encouraged to go as far as their
aspirations will allow. This nation will always need superior
researchers and so must foster excellence. However, with job
prospects for Ph.D.'s in many cases worse than for B.S. or M.S.
recipients, it seems irresponsible for doctoral programs to
encourage more and more college graduates to matriculate as basic
scientists. If new data argue that graduate research institutions
must curb admissions in the short run to better serve the
long-term interests of prospective students, granting agencies,
and an unsure economy, then policymakers must act accordingly.
A time of reckoning has come for the youth of science. No more can
we afford to hide in academia and allow others to decide our fate.
All young researchers in the pipeline must realize that
unemployment and servitude will be real-life career possibilities
unless we learn to adapt to today's spartan economic environment.
But how can we adapt? One thing we must learn is to speak out--to
our university administrators, scientific society leaders, and
congressional representatives. A concerted, government-led effort
could address shortcomings in U.S. science education at all levels
and at the same time provide alternative careers, such as
teaching, for young scientists who want to leave the academic
pipeline from a different outlet.
Survival
Fortunately, some people in power do care about the
Ph.D.-oversupply issue. At last April's Science and Technology
Policy Colloquium sponsored by the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, for example, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV
(D-W.Va.) intoned that academic mentors in science must "break
away from the tendency of creating Ph.D. students in the image of
the professor," and that the tenure track "should not be viewed as
the only [career] path" but one of many, including education,
industry, and government. Rockefeller went on to urge faculty to
"foster [alternative career] areas, not look down on them." During
the same meeting, NIH director Harold Varmus also commented on the
need to "open up the pipeline" that seems so fixed on ushering
forth professorial clones.
Given that bureaucratic change is a particularly slow process,
however, we cannot rely exclusively on policymakers for a remedy.
We must also adapt by making ourselves more marketable. In a
Darwinian sense, "more" often means "better" for survival
purposes. Careers that mix science with business, law, and
government policy are currently in a growth phase, so the more
diversified one's rsum, the less likely one is to get stuck in
the pipeline with no place else to go.
Since the behind-the-scenes consensus in Washington is that the
funding of scientific research--especially for independent
investigators--isn't going to improve in the near future, perhaps
young researchers should also reconsider carefully their true
motives for entering the pipeline in the first place.
Mark H. Paalman is a graduate student in the department of
biological chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine, Baltimore. E-mail: mhunter@welchlink.welch.jhu.edu.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.12, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
WE WELCOME YOUR OPINION. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT
ON THIS STORY, PLEASE WRITE TO US AT EITHER ONE OF THE
FOLLOWING ADDRESSES:
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71764.2561@compuserve.com
The Scientist,
3600 Market Street, Suite 450, Philadelphia, PA 19104
U.S.A.
--------
NXT:
COMMENTARY
----------------------------------------------------------------
TI : The Science Education Paralysis:Let's Fix What Needs To Be
Fixed
AU : Shirley Malcom
TY : OPINION
PG : 13
I joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science
in 1975 as a research assistant for a National Science
Foundation-supported project designed to identify and analyze
programs that had been successful in increasing the number of
minorities in science, engineering, and biomedical careers.
Although I had no special credentials for this work at the time, I
was intensely curious about it, since during my undergraduate and
graduate days I had been troubled by the fact that, as an African
American woman, I had often been the only minority student in my
science and mathematics classes.
The project unearthed a vast array of successful efforts
throughout the United States to connect African American, Latino,
and American Indian students with science and engineering. A
subsequent project concentrated on successful efforts to do the
same for girls and women. In general, my colleagues and I
discovered, these efforts--or "interventions"--had been developed
to ensure that at least a few people from underrepresented groups
could survive the inhospitable educational system to become
scientists, engineers, and health professionals.
For K-12 students, the interventions often took the form of
measures created specifically to help them fit into and negotiate
the existing educational system, no matter how flawed it might be.
At no educational level, however, did these efforts challenge the
institutions themselves to change.
Over the years, those of us interested in reform programs have
become convinced that we can no longer afford to select only a few
students to guide through a faulty educational system, while
leaving their colleagues to founder. It is time for a revised
approach to education reform that focuses on fixing the system
rather than the students. The nation's systems for teaching
mathematics and the sciences are under stress overall; they are
not doing an adequate job of preparing students to participate in
an increasingly technology-driven, scientifically advanced
economy. It is now time to fix what needs fixing, rather than that
which is easy to fix.
We are convinced that the lessons learned during the years of
intervention on behalf of underrepresented students will be
valuable to us as we move forward on behalf of the system at
large. From the earlier efforts, we learned much about the
necessary elements of systemic reform that, sooner or later, must
be addressed: teacher education, curriculum development,
assessment methods, and so forth. What is novel about the current
reform is that all of the necessary elements, such as the
following, must be addressed simultaneously:
y We must adequately educate our future science teachers so that
they do not emerge from our colleges and universities in immediate
need of additional professional training. We cannot achieve this
by precept alone; we must also provide practical examples in the
context of the science and mathematics classes as models that they
take into their teaching.
y We must devise science curricula that will hold students'
attention and make science connect to their daily lives.
y We must provide students the time they need to achieve higher
standards of competence in science and mathematics.
y We must budget appropriately to provide the physical tools for
learning science, as well as the classrooms and labs in which to
do so.
y We must make parents, communities, and businesses significant
partners in our educational efforts.
y We must maintain high expectations for all our students.
y We must learn to gauge students' progress by measuring not only
the information they have acquired, but also the valuable work
habits and attitudes toward learning they have gained.
We don't know exactly what it would take to effect change in all
cases, but we believe it will involve policymakers at local,
state, and federal levels as well as a community convinced that
reform is necessary to its well-being as a whole and to the future
of its children.
Shirley Malcom, an ecologist and former high school teacher, is
director of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science's Education and Human Resources Directorate. She has been
a member of the National Research Council's National Committee on
Science Education and Assessment, and is a recent appointee to the
President's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology
(PCAST).
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.13, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
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--------
NXT:
LETTERS
------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Research's Future
AU : SUZANNE NESS
TY : OPINION (LETTERS)
PG : 13
As president of the California Biomedical Research Association, I
read with great interest and appreciation the Commentary of July
11, 1994 [E. Garfield, The Scientist, page 13] and its support for
the recent consensus statement urging federal funding increases
for biomedical research. Equally appealing is the suggestion for
developing arguments for research support based upon scientists'
own case histories of research experience.
It is not only reduced funding, however, that threatens the future
of biomedical research, but also the chilling effect of continued
negative public relations, legal and regulatory actions, and
physical harassment by the radical animal rights community that
deters postdocs from following in the footsteps of senior research
faculty. The resulting level of anxiety reduces constructive
collegial exchange about research questions and the appropriate
use of animal models, which can encourage curiosity and new
investigation. The cost and regulatory hurdles associated with the
use of animals affect even the choice of research topics, with
resulting negative effects on human health.
Perhaps we can encourage people to once again trace the entire
history of research proj-ects, including the research animals
involved, describing why the particular animal models used are
necessary, and why certain research results are so totally
dependent on the use of animals. Perhaps scientists who share
their experiences could also speak to the reasons why they care
about their animals, why they reduce the use of them wherever
possible, and why they develop attachments to animals used in
long-term studies.
Part of the reason why the animal rights activists are ableto
portray research scientists as cold and sadistic is because we
don't say often--or publicly--enough just how important those
animals are to the research that benefits both humans and animals.
"Curiosity-driven" forays into the scientific wilderness that
reveal breakthrough advances benefiting public health should
include the role of animals if we are to dispel myths and increase
public understanding and support.
Suzanne Ness
President
California Biomedical Research Association
1008 10th St., Suite 328
Sacramento, Calif. 95814
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.13, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
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ON THIS STORY, PLEASE WRITE TO US AT EITHER ONE OF THE
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--------
NXT:
------------------------------------------------------------
TI : WHAT DEBATE?
AU : MARTIN L. STEPHENS
TY : OPINION (LETTERS)
PG : 13
Your point/counterpoint on "The Use Of Animals In Laboratory
Research" (K.P. Stoller, S.E. Paris, The Scientist, Sept. 5, 1994,
page 12) was subtitled "Debate Presses Forward," but "Debate Fails
to Materialize" would have been more appropriate. Susan Paris
("Animal Rights Advocates' Actions Pose Big Threat To Public
Health") ignores Kenneth Stoller's ethical and technical critique
of animal modeling ("Experimentation On Animals Retards Progress
Of Science") and, instead, recycles the animal activists-as-menace
theme that she and other defenders of the status quo have been
advancing for nearly 10 years.
Small wonder that a recent analysis of the animal research
controversy (A.N. Rowan, F.M. Loew, J.C. Weer, The Animal Research
Controversy: Protest, Process and Public Policy, North Grafton,
Mass., Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, 1994, page
141) concluded that "[the] current debate over the use of animals
in research may be intense, but it is largely unproductive."
I say let the real debate begin. Let's debate not only the issue
of whether or not animals should be exploited in laboratories, but
also the pragmatic issue of what can and should be done to
minimize the suffering and killing of animals so long as they are
being used. It is the latter issue that the Humane Society of the
United States pursues.
Martin L. Stephens
Vice President
Laboratory Animal Issues
Humane Society of theUnited States
2100 L St., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20037
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.13, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
WE WELCOME YOUR OPINION. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT
ON THIS STORY, PLEASE WRITE TO US AT EITHER ONE OF THE
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--------
NXT:
RESEARCH
------------------------------------------------------------------
TI : So Far, Fullerene Studies Dominate Chemical Citations In
The 1990s
TY : RESEARCH
PG : 14
-----
Editor's Note: According to a comprehensive citation analysis of
chemistry papers published from 1991 to 1993 and reported in the
July/August 1994 issue of the newsletter Science Watch, articles
on fullerenes and related molecules still are among the most cited
in the field. The dominance of fullerenes aside, several other
areas of chemistry are also on the move: asymmetric synthesis,
surface chemistry, computational chemistry, macromolecular
structures, and new reagents. This analysis was conducted using
the Science Citation Index of the Philadelphia-based Institute for
Scientific Information (ISI).
Following is Science Watch's report, written for the newsletter by
John Emsley, science writer in residence at the department of
chemistry, Imperial College, London. The article is reprinted with
the permission of Science Watch and ISI, its publisher.
------
Government agencies need an objective assessment of the scientists
and research that they are expected to fund. So do independent or
charity-based research institutes, whose trustees must also
closely monitor what their staff is achieving. And so does
industry--although people there are often better placed to
understand what is going on, whom to sponsor, and what the return
on the investment will be.
The Science Citation Index (SCI) provides one means of objective
assessment. SCI logs every new paper as it appears and
subsequently records its citations by other researchers. In
general, the more a paper is cited, the more important that piece
of work is.
It is part of my role as science writer in residence at Imperial
College, London, to keep in touch with the active areas of my
subject--chemistry. If I were asked to indicate the most
interesting areas at the moment I would say asymmetric synthesis,
surface chemistry, new materials, molecular recognition,
self-replication, catalysis, analysis, and molecular modeling. I
would also include fullerenes (sometimes called
buckminsterfullerenes, after architect R. Buckminster Fuller), the
best example of which is the C60 carbon soccerball-shaped
molecule. But I would not give them undue emphasis.
When I spoke to the editors of Science Watch and asked if there
was any way of confirming my intuitive choices, they offered to
carry out a three-year analysis of chemistry papers and their
citations. There duly arrived a complete printout of all chemistry
papers published for the years 1991-93 that had collected 10 or
more citations.
What was I to make of these raw data? There were thousands of
papers, but relatively few that were highly cited. The top-cited
papers for 1991-93 are shown in the table on page 15. Of these, 29
had attracted more than 100 citations. All of these papers were
published in 1991, as we might expect. Most are about fullerene
chemistry. Discovered in the mid-1980s, fullerenes immediately
seized the imagination of chemists in all branches of the field:
organic, inorganic, physical, and theoretical.
A more detailed analysis of the papers of each year is needed to
eliminate the distorting presence of fullerenes. I chose a
progressively less demanding cut-off point for each year: 50
citations or more for 1991 papers; 25 or more for 1992 papers; and
10 for 1993 papers. I then grouped them under several subject
headings (see table on this page).
1991: Proteins And Fullerenes
In 1991's crop of papers, 29 were cited more than 100 times, with
21 of these devoted to fullerenes. The nonfullerene papers fall
into the following categories: computational chemistry, protein
structure, molecular recognition, substituent constants, mass
spectra of biopolymers, and the immunosuppressant FK-506.
The most-cited paper of 1991--cited 280 times (attracting 227 of
these in 1993)--is about protein structure and was published in
the Journal of Applied Crystallography. It was by Per Kraulis,
then of Cambridge University, United Kingdom, and describes a
program to produce schematic plots of protein structures. Although
this paper appeared in what is essentially a structural chemistry
journal, it has naturally also been cited by molecular biologists.
It might have been expected that many of these highly cited papers
would be review articles, which tend to attract more citations
than individual papers, but this appears not to be the case. Of
the top 10 for 1991, only two papers fall into this category (one
in Chemical Reviews and one in Angewandte Chemie International
Edition). Of the others, two are in Nature, two in Science, and
one in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Nature and
Science, of course, publish across all branches of science and are
eagerly read by all kinds of scientists. Clearly, if you want to
be highly cited in chemistry, it pays to be published where there
are the most readers.
Another surprising feature of the top 29 papers is the high
proportion that originate from industrial laboratories. AT&T Bell
Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., has four on fullerenes; IBM
Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., has three, again all
on fullerenes; and Dupont Co., Wilmington, Del., has one, also on
fullerenes.
The papers published in 1991 with between 50 and 100 citations
give a better picture of the year. There were 102 that fell into
this group. Although fullerenes still account for 39 of them,
other areas were clearly represented, including surface chemistry
(12 papers); asymmetric synthesis (12 papers); theoretical or
computational chemistry (nine papers); biologically active
molecules and natural products (nine papers);
organometallics/clusters (seven papers); and analytical techniques
(six papers).
Surface chemistry has received a boost with the introduction of
such new techniques as scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), which
now allow surfaces to be examined atom by atom. Asymmetric
synthesis and its importance in the preparation of biologically
active molecules both have commanding positions on the list.
1992: More Fullerenes
Again in 1992 it is possible to impose the more demanding test of
50 or more citations, but only 16 papers that were published in
1992 fall into this category. The most-cited paper of 1992
collected 95 citations and is about fullerenes--and so is the
second-most-cited paper. Paper No. 3, however, is about an organic
process--asymmetric dihydroxylation--which is catalyzed by osmium.
This work was done by K. Barry Sharpless's group at the Scripps
Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. Of the remaining papers, 11
are devoted to fullerenes, and three involve organometallic
compounds.
Clearly, imposing a higher number of citations does not reveal
other key areas, so I fell back on a more reasonable limit of
25-50 citations. This produced a further 109 papers, and these
were grouped in general classes that reflect those of 1991. The
most significant change between 1991 and 1992 was the emergence of
protein chemistry as an active area.
1993: Even More Fullerenes
No paper in 1993 collected 50 citations, which would be a truly
remarkable feat. Indeed, only one paper collected more than 25
citations, whereas 16 papers collected 10 or more citations. Ten
of these 16 are about fullerenes or the related carbon tubules.
The remaining six papers deal with subjects previously mentioned:
spectroscopic analytical techniques (two papers); biologically
important systems--specifically the enzyme nitrogenase and
porphyrins (two papers); the immunosuppressant FK-506 (one paper);
and luminescent silicon colloids (one paper). This last paper on
colloids comes from the AT&T Bell Labs.
Closer inspection also reveals a noticeable change in the
direction of fullerene research in 1993. Several papers are about
ways of making more stable derivatives. This is a worthwhile goal
to aim for because C60 itself decomposes in air. One paper from
1993--authored by C.C. Henderson and P.A. Cahill of the Sandia
National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M.--claims the first C60
hydrocarbon of formula C60 H2.
Fullerenes Aside
So what do citations tell us about chemistry in the 1990s? They
reveal that fullerenes are of great interest and that those in the
fullerene field tend to cite a few papers disproportionately
often.
Pulling aside the veil of fullerenes reveals other active areas in
chemistry:
y asymmetric synthesis and the objects of this--such as new
drugs and natural products;
y surface chemistry, which impinges on semiconductors,
catalysts, and the techniques for monitoring matter at the atomic
level, such as STM;
y computational chemistry, which has been brought to the
desktop level, making molecular modeling a powerful technique in
designing and understanding molecules and their behavior;
y macromolecular structures such as polymers and biopolymers,
in particular proteins; and
y new reagents, such as organometallic compounds that can act
as templates for molecular synthesis and self-assembly systems
that can direct the construction of other molecules.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.14,October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
WE WELCOME YOUR OPINION. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT
ON THIS STORY, PLEASE WRITE TO US AT EITHER ONE OF THE
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--------
NXT:
------------------------------------------------------------
TI : MOST CITED PAPERS IN CHEMISTRY 1991-93, BY SUBJECT
TY : RESEARCH
PG : 14
MOST CITED PAPERS IN CHEMISTRY 1991-93, BY SUBJECT
(percent of total)
Subject 1991* 1992** 1993***
Fullerenes and carbon tubules 46 42 63
Surface chemistry and semiconductors 9 12 0
Organic and asymmetric synthesis 9 11 6
Theory (includes computational) 9 9 0
Natural and biologically 8 6 13
active products
Organometallic chemistry 5 4 0
Analytical techniques 5 3 13
Molecular recognition 4 3 0
and self-assembly
Polymers 3 0 0
Proteins 2 5 0
Others 1 4 6
* Papers attracting 50 or more citations; n = 131
** Papers attracting 25 or more citations; n = 125
*** Papers attracting 10 or more citations; n = 16
Source: ISI's Science Indicators Database, 1991-93
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.14, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
WE WELCOME YOUR OPINION. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT
ON THIS STORY, PLEASE WRITE TO US AT EITHER ONE OF THE
FOLLOWING ADDRESSES:
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--------
NXT:
------------------------------------------------------------
TI : THE MOST-CITED CHEMISTRY PAPERS OF 1991-1993
TY : RESEARCH
PG : 15
Rank 1991 Total Number
of Citations
1 P.J. Kraulis, "Molscript: a program to produce 280
both detailed and schematic plots of protein
structures," Journal of Applied Crystallography,
24:946-50, 1991. [Uppsala University, Sweden]
2 R.C. Haddon, A.F. Hebard, M.J. Rosseinsky,
D.W. Murphy, S.J. Duclos, K.B. Lyons, B. Miller,
J.M. Rosamilia, R.M. Fleming, A.R. Kortan, 280
S.H. Glarum, A.V. Makhija, A.J. Muller, R.H. Eick,
S.M. Zahurak, R. Tycko, G. Dabbagh, F.A. Theil,
"Conducting films of C60 and C70 by alkali-metal
doping," Nature, 350:320-2, 1991. [AT&T Bell
Laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J.]
3 K. Holczer, O. Klein, S.M. Huang, R.B. Kaner, 279
K.J. Fu, R.L. Whetton, F. Diederich,
"Alkali-fulleride superconductors: Synthesis, composition,
and diamagmentic shielding," Science, 252:1154-7, 1991.
[University of California, Los Angeles]
4 J.M. Hawkins, A. Meyer, T.A. Lewis, S. Loren, 229
F.J. Hollander, "Crystal structure of osmylated
C60: Confirmation of the soccer ball framework," Science,
252:312-3, 1991. [University of California, Berkeley]
5 H.W. Kroto, A.W. Allaf, S.P. Balm, "C60: 222
Buckminsterfullerene," Chemical Reviews,
91:1213-35, 1991. [University of Sussex, Brighton, U.K.]
------------------------------------------------------------
1992
1 K.M. Creegan, J.L. Robbins, W.K. Robbins, 95
J.M. Millar, R.D. Sherwood, P.J. Tindall,
D.M. Cox, A.B. Smith, J.P. McCauley, D.R. Jones,
R.T. Gallagher, "Synthesis and characterization of
C60O, the first fullerene epoxide," Journal of the
American Chemical Society, 114:1103-5, 1992.
[Exxon Corp., Annandale, N.J.; University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia]
2 F. Wudl, "The chemical properties of
buckminsterfullerene C60 and the birth and
infancy of fulleroids," Accounts of Chemical Research, 74
25:157-61, 1992. [University of California, Santa Barbara]
3 K.B. Sharpless, W. Amberg, Y.L. Bennani, 72
G.A. Crispino, J. Hartung, K.S. Jeong, H.L. Kwong,
K. Morikawa, Z.M. Wang, D.Q. Xu, X.L. Zhang, "The osmium-
catalyzed asymmetric dihydroxylation: a new ligand class
and process improvement," Journal of Organic Chemistry,
57:2768-71, 1992. [Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla,
Calif.]
4 T.W. Ebbesen, P.M. Ajayan, "Large-scale synthesis 71
of carbon nanotubes," Nature, 358:220-2, 1992.
[NEC Corp., Tsukuba, Japan]
5 K. Kikuchi, N. Nakahara, T. Wakabayashi, S. Suzuki, 70
H. Shiromaru, Y. Miyake, K. Saito, I. Ikemoto,
M. Kainosho, Y. Achiba, "NMR characterization of
isomers of C78, C82, and C84 fullerenes," Nature,
357:142-5, 1992. [Tokyo Metropolitan University]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1993
1 Y. Rubin, S. Khan, D.I. Freedberg, C.Yeretzian, 30
"Synthesis and x-ray structure of a Diels-Alder adduct
of C60," JACS, 115:344-5, 1993.
[University of California, Los Angeles]
2 R.S. Ruoff, D.C. Lorents, B. Chan, R. Malhotra, S. 20
Subramoney, "Single-crystal metals encapsulated
in carbon nanoparticles," Science, 259:346-8, 1993. [SRI
International, Menlo Park, Calif.; Dupont Co.,
Wilmington, Del.]
3 P. Belik, A. Gugel, J. Spickermann, K. Mullen, 18
"Reaction of buckminsterfullerene with ortho-
quinodimethane: a new access to stable C60 derivatives,
"Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 32:78-80, 1993.
[Max Planck Institute, Mainz, Germany]
4 M. Prato, T. Suzuki, H. Foroudian, Q. Li, 18
K. Khemani, F. Wudl, J. Leonetti, R.D. Little,
T. White, G. Rickborn, S. Yamago, E. Nakamura,
"[3+2] and [4+2] Cycloaddition of C60," JACS,
115:1594-5, 1993. [University of California, Santa Barbara]
5 Y. Saito, T. Yoshikawa, M. Inagaki, M. Tomita, 15
T. Hayashi, "Growth and structure of graphitic
tubules and polyhedral particles in arc discharge,"
Chemical Physics Letters, 204:277-82, 1993. [Mie University,
Japan; NTT Interdisciplinary Research Laboratories, Musashino,
Japan]
6 C.C. Henderson, P.A. Cahill, "C60H2: Synthesis 15
of the simplest C60 hydrocarbon derivative,"
Science, 259:1885-7, 1993. [Sandia National Laboratories,
Albuquerque, N.Mex.]
Note: Because two papers shared fifth place with 15 citations
each, six papers are listed for 1993.
Source: ISI's Science Indicators Database, 1991-93
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.15, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
WE WELCOME YOUR OPINION. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT
ON THIS STORY, PLEASE WRITE TO US AT EITHER ONE OF THE
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--------
NXT:
HOT PAPERS
-----------------------------------------------------------------
TI : CELL BIOLOGY
TY : RESEARCH (HOT PAPERS)
PG : 16
K. Burridge, C.E. Turner, L.H. Romer, "Tyrosine phos-phorylation
of paxillin and pp125fak accompanies cell adhesion to
extracellular matrix: A role in cytoskeletal assembly," Journal of
Cell Biology, 119:893-903, 1992.
Keith Burridge (Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, University
of North Carolina, Chapel Hill): "The extracellular matrix (ECM)
influences the growth, differentiation, motility, and morphology
of cells. In culture, most cells develop sites of adhesive
interaction--known as focal adhesions--with ECM molecules that are
adsorbed to the underlying plastic or glass surface. At their
cytoplasmic face, focal adhesions serve to anchor bundles of actin
filaments to the plasma membrane.
"It has been apparent for some time that signals must be generated
in focal adhesions, but until recently the nature of the signals
has been obscure. Our study examined the signaling of the tyrosine
phosphorylation triggered by cell adhesion to ECM. Previous work
by Lori Kornberg in Rudy Juliano's lab (L. Kornberg et al.,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 88:8392-6, 1991),
and by Jun-Lin Guan in Richard Hynes's lab (J.L. Guan et al., Cell
Regulation, 2:951-64, 1991) had demonstrated that tyrosine
phosphorylation of a 125-kilodalton protein accompanied both the
clustering of receptors--b1 integrins--for ECM proteins and
integrin-dependent cell-ECM adhesion.
"We extended these observations and further demonstrated that cell
adhesion to several ECM proteins led to elevated tyrosine
phosphorylation in a number of proteins. We identified two of
these as the focal proteins paxillin and pp125fak (the focal
adhesion kinase). The identification of pp125 fak in this
context was performed in parallel by several other groups,
including those of Guan and of Kornberg and Juliano. It was made
possible by the cloning, sequencing, and description of this novel
tyrosine kinase by Mike Schaller and Tom Parsons (M.D. Schaller et
al., PNAS, 89:5192-6, 1992).
"Our study further examined the role of tyrosine phosphorylation
in adhesion-associated cytoskeletal organization. When this
pathway was blocked with tyrosine kinase inhibitors, cells were
unable to assemble focal adhesions or their associated bundles of
actin filaments. Our more recent work has included the
identification of tensin as another focal-adhesion protein that
becomes tyrosine phosphorylated in response to adhesion (S.M.
Bockholt, K. Burridge, Journal of Biological Chemistry,
268[14]:565-7, 1993). Since tensin is an actin-binding protein,
this may have a critical role in nucleating the assembly of the
cytoskeleton in focal adhesions.
"In studying endothelial cells, we have also found an association
of tyrosine phosphorylation, pp125fak activation, and cell
migration (L.H. Romer et al., Mo-lecular Biology of the Cell,
5:349-61, 1994). The cloning and sequen-cing of paxillin have
revealed protein motifs typical of many signaling proteins, such
as several LIM do-mains--sites that may be involved in binding SH2
and SH3 domains in other proteins, as well as a binding site for
pp125fak(C.E. Turner, J.T. Miller, Journal of Cell Science,
107:1583-91, 1994). The role of paxillin and its tyrosine
phosphorylation remains to be determined, as do many of the
consequences and downstream events triggered by the activation of
pp125fak in response to cell adhesion."
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.16, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
WE WELCOME YOUR OPINION. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT
ON THIS STORY, PLEASE WRITE TO US AT EITHER ONE OF THE
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--------
NXT:
------------------------------------------------------------
TI : STATISTICS
TY : RESEARCH (HOT PAPERS)
PG : 16
A.F.M. Smith, G.O. Roberts, "Bayesian computation via the Gibbs
sampler and related Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo methods," Journal of
the Royal Statistical Society Series B, 55:3-23, 1993.
Gareth Roberts (Statistical Laboratory, University of Cambridge,
England): "The Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo (MCMC) methodology has
been around for more than 40 years. However, until recently, its
applications have been largely confined to statistical physics and
image analysis.
"A very natural area of application of these techniques,
especially the Gibbs sampler and the Hastings-Metropolis
algorithm, is in numerical calculations for larger-dimensional
posterior distributions in Bayesian statistical analyses. Our
paper brings together the MCMC methodology with its natural
application in Bayesian statistics. We describe the basic
technique and discuss some of the important implementational and
convergence issues associated with the algorithms--which
necessarily produce correlated output, even after
'convergence'--from both a theoretical and a practical point of
view. Key areas of application are highlighted, including problems
with constrained parameters, hierarchical models, problems with
incomplete data sets, and finite mixture models. Throughout, we
emphasize the ease of implementation and flexibility of MCMC
methods and their suitability for commonly occurring types of
posterior distributions, such as those from generalized linear
models and time-series models.
"Our paper is published as part of a collection of three papers
appearing in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society on
Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo algorithms in statistics, with extensive
discussion from more than 50 contributors. The other two
papers--'Spatial statistics and Bayesian computation' (J. Besa, P.
Green, 55:25-37, 1993) and 'Modelling complexity: Applications of
Gibbs sampling in medicine' (W.R. Gilks et al., 55:39-52,
1993)--are closely related to our work and complement our
article effectively.
"The papers and discussion describe the state-of-the-art of MCMC
methodology in statistics. Since the publication of these papers,
MCMC has become an indispensable tool in statistical computation.
"Moreover, it has strongly influenced statistical modeling itself,
now that the analysis of increasingly complex models is becoming
computationally feasible."
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.16, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
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--------
NXT:
------------------------------------------------------------
TI : COMPUTATIONAL CHEMISTRY
TY : RESEARCH (HOT PAPERS)
PG : 16
J. Gao, X. Xia, "A priori evaluation of aqueouspolarization
effects through Monte-Carlo QM-MMsimulations," Science, 258:631-5,
1992.
Jiali Gao (Department of Chemistry, State University of New York,
Buffalo): "Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulations of such
biological macromolecules as proteins and nucleic acids in aqueous
solution can provide a detailed understanding of their structure,
function, and dynamics. One of the critical factors that underlies
the success of computer simulations is the accuracy of the force
field used to determine the energy of the system and the forces on
its constituent atoms.
"Empirical potential functions are traditionally used to describe
intermolecular interactions in solution, which can provide
valuable insights into equilibrium properties. However, they are
inappropriate for modeling chemical reactions, electron transfers,
and other processes in which electronic reorganizations occur.
Furthermore, a great challenge in these simulations is to
explicitly incorporate the solvent polarization effect into the
potential surface.
"This article highlighted the utility of a combined,
quantum-mechanical and molecular-mechanical (QM/MM) potential in
condensed-phase simulations and formulated an energy-decomposition
method for determining the aqueous polarization effect on organic
compounds. In this combined QM/MM approach, the solute molecule is
treated according to the principles of quantum mechanics, while
the surrounding solvent is represented by an MM force field.
Taking advantage of the accuracy of QM methods and the
computational efficiency of MM, the combined QM/MM method has
demonstrated its suitability to study chemical reactions in
solutions and in enzymes (J. Gao, X. Xia, Journal of the American
Chemical Society, 115:9667-75, 1993).
"The other key feature of this work was the determination of the
solvent polarization effect. Molecules are polarized in polar
solvents owing to a change in their surrounding environment;
however, quantitative contributions to the total energy are not
clear, particularly for proteins and DNA in aqueous solution. The
study revealed that the polarization effect is significant
(ranging from 10 percent to 20 percent in total energy) for
biomolecules in aqueous solution. The results suggest that it is
important to consider the effect of electronic polarization in
discussing protein allosteric mechanisms, molecular recognition,
and ligand-substrate binding in which functional groups are often
transferred from aqueous exposure into the hydrophobic protein
core. The quantitative results from this study may be used to
calibrate empirical, yet computationally fast, potentials by
incorporating polarizability terms into our algorithms."
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.16, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
WE WELCOME YOUR OPINION. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT
ON THIS STORY, PLEASE WRITE TO US AT EITHER ONE OF THE
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--------
NXT:
TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY
------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Latest Stat And Math Software Taps Windows For Ease Of Use
AU : Caren D. Potter
TY : TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY
PG : 17
Recent advances in mathematical and statistical software have
little to do with math or stat and a lot to do with Microsoft's
Windows user interface. Ease of use is what people have always
wanted from these packages, and ease of use is what they are
finally getting, thanks to the nearly wholesale adoption of
Windows by software developers.
"We are trying to make a statistics program that everyone can use,
and Windows, in particular, is helping us do that," says Paul
Portrey, assistant manager of technical support at Stat-Soft Inc.
in Tulsa, Okla. "If developers take advantage of the features of
Windows, they can make a package that's very easy to work with."
Windows is not an operating system but an add-on to the DOS
operating system that drives IBM and compatible PCs. With Windows,
these computers take on a more graphical look, similar to that of
the Apple Macintosh computer. Upgrading a PC to Windows involves
buying the Windows software; for most people, it also means adding
more memory to the computer.
Math and stat software for Windows made its appearance a few years
ago, soon after the release of Windows itself in 1990. However,
most early releases didn't take much advantage of Windows. In
fact, they looked and functioned like the vendor's old DOS
software. That has changed. Most current versions of stat and math
software now incorporate the graphical user interface of Windows,
and support most of its advanced functions, as well.
For scientists, there are definite benefits to upgrading to
Windows and taking advantage of these new releases. They are
easier to operate in every way, from importing data to producing
publication-quality output.
"When I show people this software [Statistica/Windows from
Stat-Soft], their eyes get huge," says Tim Denton, associate
cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. "Most
of these programs have been extremely difficult to use, but I can
download some data into Statistica, click on a button--for
logistic regression, for instance--then enter a few settings, and
off it goes. And I have never looked at the documentation--never."
Like so many things in life, however, there is another side to
this coin. While software users may see Windows as a positive
development that brings easy-to-use programs in its wake, software
developers see it as an enormous challenge. They have become so
busy just keeping up with Microsoft and scrambling to support each
new wrinkle of Windows that there's hardly time left for
development of richer stat and math functionality. It's difficult
to predict how this situation will affect scientists in the long
run, so it's probably best at this time to appreciate the good
side of Windows--stat and math software that's actually easy to
use.
Taking The Sting Out
Until recently, most statistical and mathematical programs would
have taken top honors in any competition for user-unfriendly
software. Statistics and mathematics by nature are complicated
endeavors, and these programs tended to be large and intimidating.
Their documentation hogged a good portion of a bookshelf. How the
user was required to interact with the software also contributed
to its unfriendliness. Giving a command involved typing long,
nonintuitive strings of keystrokes, programming knowledge was
often required, and getting data into and out of the program was
time-consuming and inefficient.
"The old way it was done with SAS- and SPSS [Statistical for
Social Sciences]-type programs was that you typed out commands and
worked with lists of data," says Portrey of Stat-Soft.
"You had to learn a programming language such as the classic SAS
or some other programming language to use those packages," adds
Denton.
With Windows, the way a user interacts with software--any
software--has changed dramatically. Long strings of perfectly
typed, arcane commands have been replaced by the simple action of
pointing at an object on the screen and clicking the mouse.
Elizabeth Nugent, director of product marketing at MathSoft Inc.
in Cambridge, Mass., offers a comparison between the older
DOS-based version of her company's Mathcad software and the newer
Windows version: "To enter a symbol such as an integral sign in
the DOS version, users had to memorize a series of keystrokes or
look them up from a reference card kept nearby. With the Windows
version, they just go to the palette on the screen and click on
whatever symbol they want."
Another benefit of Windows is that it has forced software
developers to follow certain conventions in the way they design a
user interface, so that all Windows-based programs now work
similarly. The commands to print a file and save a file are at
basically the same location in every package. Since users no
longer waste time struggling to perform simple tasks, they can
concentrate more on what they bought the software for in the first
place--math or statistics.
"Windows packages are becoming more alike, so once users learn one
approach, they can apply it to other programs," says Portrey.
"That's the real advantage I see for users. Once they get the hang
of one program, they can use any other Windows program that comes
along, as long as the developer has kept compatible with the
standards of Windows."
Sharing Information
Ease of operation and cross-program compatibility are two of the
obvious ways that Windows makes stat and math software more
attractive. They free scientists from investing a great deal of
time learning to operate a piece of software when what they really
want to do is analyze data or solve equations. Windows-based
programs let them do that very quickly.
There are a number other capabilities built into Windows that
developers have tapped to make their software easier to use. Some
of these capabilities are obvious to researchers, while others
work behind the scenes, with users rarely if ever aware of their
presence. But these innovations go a long way toward easing the
tedium formerly associated with analyzing data or solving
mathematical equations.
"The ability to exchange information with other programs is a big
factor in making a statistics package easy to use," says C.P.
Yang, president of MicroCal Software Inc. in Northhampton, Mass.
"This can be done very easily between Windows-based packages."
Thanks to Windows, the act of writing a report and leaving a big
space in the text and then coming along later and manually taping
in a graph is a thing of the past. Any graphics produced in a
Windows-based stat or math package can be placed directly into a
Windows-based word processor through the software's cut-and-paste
function.
Windows goes quite a bit further, however, in providing ways to
transfer information between software packages. Dynamic Data
Exchange (DDE) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE), for
example, are features of Windows that developers can tap to permit
their programs to exchange information with other programs in real
time.
Explains Portrey, "DDE, which we support and I assume most other
applications support, also, allows you to do things like connect
your spreadsheet work to your stat data block. The stat data block
is automatically updated when the spreadsheet is updated. Or you
can create a graph and cut and paste it to a word-processing
document, then link it using DDE, so that any time you edit the
graph in the stat software, the changes are automatically
reflected in the word processor document."
OLE takes information sharing between applications even further,
so that not only data but also "objects"--which might represent an
entire analysis routine, for example--can be shared between
programs. Like DDE, this is something the developer must
incorporate into the software; it doesn't come automatically with
the Windows environment. According to Portrey, his company's
Statistica/Windows supports most functions of OLE, with expanded
support to come in the next release. "There are several components
of OLE version 2 that only Microsoft products support right now,"
he says.
Easy Input, Good Output
One of the nicest features of Windows-based stat and math programs
is how they simplify the process of getting data into the program
in the first place. With these packages, it is no longer necessary
to supply the computer with a list of data arranged in some rigid
format. Most of the Windows-based packages can take data directly
from a spreadsheet or database, and some of them have strong
spreadsheet capabilities of their own. One stat package even has
an intelligent data input function that can look at a string of
numbers and figure out the format with no help from the user.
"I haven't found anything that Statistica can't import," says
Cedars-Sinai's Denton, who uses three or four databases as well as
the Excel spreadsheet. However, Statistica is one of the programs
that includes a spreadsheet editor of its own. "We think it is
nicer for people to be able to do all their work in the stats
program, rather than in a spreadsheet or database," says Portrey.
"For our next release, we are trying to think of anything that
Excel does that one would possibly want to do with stat data."
"We support most of the standard spreadsheet packages," says
MicroCal's Yang, who feels that compatibility with other programs
is an important component of ease of use. But Origin, the
company's stat package, also includes an intelligent ASCII import
routine. "This routine imports almost any style of ASCII file with
minimal input from the user," Yang says.
"The ability to deal with an ASCII file is one of the things I
needed in a stat package," declares Mark Wensnahan, a graduate
student in the department of atmospheric Sciences at the
University of Washington, Seattle. "I'm reading satellite data off
a CD and doing various things to it, then writing it out to the
hard disk as an ASCII file. I import it to the Origin stat package
from there. Origin will go through the format of the file I'm
trying to import and more or less figure it out without any
problem. Occasionally I'll either have to modify the file or tell
the software a few more things about it, but it eventually figures
it out on its own."
No matter how well a stat or math program imports data, it
eventually must manipulate the data in some way and then present
it to the user in a form that makes sense. For most scientists,
this means tables at the very least and preferably graphs. Most
DOS-based packages can produce rudimentary graphs and plots, but
Windows-based packages deliver publication-quality graphics. Now
it is not necessary to do what many scientists have traditionally
done--produce rough graphs with a stat package and then re-create
them in other software designed specifically for graphics.
As usual, Windows is at the base of this improvement, at least in
part. Windows includes something called TrueType fonts. As long as
the software developer designs the application to take advantage
of the fonts, the quality of graphs is greatly improved because
users can select from many type styles and sizes.
"Our DOS software only supports the Courier font," explains Nugent
of MathSoft. "Our Windows version supports the TrueType fonts so
the output is much nicer."
High-quality three-dimensional graphics are relatively new to stat
and math packages, and many of the Windows-based packages support
3-D output. "This is almost a requirement now," says Yang. "Some
people don't need 3-D, but most vendors are trying very hard to
come up with it because that is what everybody expects."
"Three-dimensional graphs remind me of the line from the movie
[Field of Dreams]: 'If you build it, they will come,' " says
Denton, the cardiologist. "If vendors add a tool to a package, it
will get used. I'm interested in the assessment of quality of
life, and when I plot quality-of-life measurements on a 3-D graph,
I actually see some interesting outcomes that I wouldn't be able
to see in 2-D. 3-D looks a little flashy, but there are times when
it does add to your understanding."
Software For The Future
Windows has made such an improvement in stat and math software
that developers see no turning back. Many have announced that they
will no longer be upgrading the DOS versions of their programs.
"To my understanding, all the major vendors have already moved
their DOS packages to Windows, with the exception of one or two,"
says Yang. "And there are claims from some of our competitors that
they are not going to support a DOS version any longer. All future
versions will be for Windows."
Indeed, the latest challenge for the software developers is to get
their programs ready to support the upcoming release of Windows
4.0, also called Chicago. Microsoft is expected to release Chicago
in the first quarter of 1995. "We are now developing a new version
of Statistica that we have been working on for some time, and
we'll release that in a few months," says Portrey. "But at the
same time, we're already working toward the Chicago version of
Windows that is coming."
Does this focus on keeping up with Windows detract from other
aspects of software development? "Like a lot of other companies,
we're trying to keep up with Windows," says Mark Anderson, vice
president and general manager of Minneapolis-based Stat-Ease Inc.
"It requires a very intensive effort. A large amount of attention
is being diverted from adding more [statistics] applications to
adapting the interface to the standards set by Windows. For
smaller software manufacturers like ourselves, it has a bigger
impact, but for nearly everyone it is a consuming problem."
Scientists needing to produce good-looking plots quickly will
probably see Windows-based software as a godsend. For
statisticians pushing the edge of their field and hoping to see
new releases incorporating Bayesian statistics or neural networks,
the current focus on Windows may turn out to be a hindrance, at
least temporarily. This is because development efforts are
currently directed at Windows-based presentation rather than the
math or stat applications themselves. But there is no question
that Windows-based stat and math software is easier to use than
its predecessors, and for many scientists, that's reason enough to
love it.
Caren D. Potter is a freelance science writer based in
McKinleyville, Calif.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.17, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
WE WELCOME YOUR OPINION. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT
ON THIS STORY, PLEASE WRITE TO US AT EITHER ONE OF THE
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--------------------------
NXT:
---------------------------------------------------------
TI : STATISTICAL AND MATHEMATICAL SOFTWARE SUPPLIERS
TY : TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY
PG : 19
Abacus Concepts
Berkeley,CA
Circle No. 151 on Reader Service Card
Advanced Graphics Software Inc.
Carlsbad, CA
Circle No. 152 on Reader Service Card
Beckman Instruments Inc.
Fullerton, CA
Circle No. 153 on Reader Service Card
Bimillennium
Los Gatos, CA
Circle No. 154 on Reader Service Card
BioSoft
Ferguson, MO
Circle No. 155 on Reader Service Card
Brendan Scientific
Grosse Pointe, MI
Circle No. 156 on Reader Service Card
DataTranslation
Marlboro, MA
Circle No. 157 on Reader Service Card
DeltaGraph
Monterey, CA
Circle No. 158 on Reader Service Card
DSP Development Corp.
Cambridge, MA
Circle No. 159 on Reader Service Card
Galactic Industries Corp.
Salem, NH
Circle No. 160 on Reader Service Card
GraphPad
San Diego, CA
Circle No. 161 on Reader Service Card
Hanson Research Corp.
San Jose, CA
Circle No. 162 on Reader Service Card
Horstmann Software
San Jose, CA
Circle No. 163 on Reader Service Card
Intelligenetics Inc.
Mountain View, CA
Circle No. 164 on Reader Service Card
Jandel Scientific
San Raphael, CA
Circle No. 165 on Reader Service Card
Logical Devices
Deerfield Beach, FL
Circle No. 166 on Reader Service Card
Manugistics Inc.
Rockville, MD
Circle No. 167 on Reader Service Card
MathSoft
Cambridge, MA
Circle No. 168 on Reader Service Card
The Math Works
Natick, MA 01760
Circle No. 169 on Reader Service Card
MicroCal Software Inc.
Cambridge, MA 01060
Circle No. 170 on Reader Service Card
Molecular Devices Corp.
Sunnyvale, CA
Circle No. 171 on Reader Service Card
National Instruments
Austin, TX
Circle No. 172 on Reader Service Card
Perkin-Elmer Corp., Applied Biosystems Div.
Norwalk, CT
Circle No. 173 on Reader Service Card
Scanalytics
Billercia, MA
Circle No. 174 on Reader Service Card
Scientech Inc.
Boulder, CO 80303
Circle No. 175 on Reader Service Card
Softshell
Grand Junction, CO
Circle No. 176 on Reader Service Card
Soft Warehouse
Honolului, HI
Circle No. 177 on Reader Service Card
Stat-Ease Inc.
Minneapolis, MN
Circle No. 178 on Reader Service Card
Statistical Programs
Houston, TX
Circle No. 179 on Reader Service Card
Statistical Science
Seattle, WA
Circle No. 180 on Reader Service Card
Stat-Soft Inc.
Tulsa, OK
Circle No. 181 on Reader Service Card
Strawberry Tree
Sunnyvale, CA
Circle No. 182 on Reader Service Card
Synergy Software
Reading, PA
Circle No. 183 on Reader Service Card
TransNetCorp.
Somerville, NJ
Circle No. 184 on Reader Service Card
TriMetrix Inc.
Seattle, WA
Circle No. 185 on Reader Service Card
Tripos
St. Louis, MO
Circle No. 186 on Reader Service Card
Visual Numerics
Houston, TX
Circle No. 187 on Reader Service Card
Waterloo Maple Software
Ontario, Canada
Circle No. 188 on Reader Service Card
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.19, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
WE WELCOME YOUR OPINION. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT
ON THIS STORY, PLEASE WRITE TO US AT EITHER ONE OF THE
FOLLOWING ADDRESSES:
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U.S.A.
--------
NXT:
NEW PRODUCTS
--------------------------------------------------------
TI : NEW PRODUCTS
PG : 22
DSP Launches New Modules For Graphical Data-Analysis Spreadsheet
Software Package
The DADiSP graphical software and engineering spreadsheet package
has been expanded with the release of three new add-on modules.
DADiSP/AdvDSP 1.0 is a digital signal-processing (DSP) program
that offers a variety of DSP algorithms, including advanced FFT
analysis, power spectral density estimation, digital
interpolation, and cepstrum analysis. DADiSP/Filters 3.0 is a
digital filtering module that provides full finite impulse
response (FIR) and infinite impulse response (IIR) filtering
capabilities and includes Kaiser Window filtering. DADiSP/Neural
Net enables users to build and train backpropagation neural
networks, which facilitate pattern-recognition tasks involving
multidimensional datasets.
DSP Development Corp., Cambridge, MA
Circle No. 190 on Reader Service Card
-------------------------
National Instruments Offers Updated Versions Of LabVIEW Graphical
Instrumentation Software
LabVIEW Version 3.1 is the latest upgrade to National Instruments'
graphical instrumentation software for Windows PCs, Macintosh
computers, Sun SPARCstations, and Hewlett-Packard 9000 Series 700
workstations. It features new configuration-management tools;
direct calls to dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) and shared
libraries; new capabilities for automated test equipment and
process-control needs; and various editing, debugging, and online
help features. LabWindows/CVI Version 3.0.1 is designed for
developers and experienced C programmers interested in using
interactive C programming to build instrumentation systems. The
software enables users to automatically create stand-alone
executable programs and distribution kits with installer programs.
National Instruments, Austin, TX
Circle No. 191 on Reader Service Card
------------------------
Molecular Dynamics' Stand-Alone Confocal Software
ImageSpace 3.1 confocal software for three-dimensional
visualization and 3-D quantitation is now available as a separate
program with import routines for images from all confocal systems.
The software, previously available only as part of the company's
Confocal laser scanning microscope systems, offers an integrated
environment for rendering, processing, analyzing, and displaying
confocal images with an intuitive graphical user interface. Its
analytical capabilities include automated object counting,
seeding, and segmentation; it also features tools for quantitative
co-localization studies.
Molecular Dynamics, Sunnyvale, CA
Circle No. 192 on Reader Service Card
--------------------------
Antigenix Provides Human VCAM Antibody Reagent
The new monoclonal antibody reagent is specific for human vascular
cell-adhesion molecule (VCAM-1). This antibody has recently been
clustered to CD106, and reacts with lymphocytes, fibroblasts,
monocytes, neural crest cells, and other cell types. The reagent
inhibits cellular adhesion and has applications in functional
studies, immunohistochemistry, and ELISA development. It is
supplied as a highly purified monoclonal antibody and is directly
conjugated to FITC or R-PE.
Antigenix America Inc., Franklin Square, NY
Circle No. 193 on Reader Service Card
----------------------------
Hamamatsu Introduces Series Of Photomultiplier Tubes
The R3809U series of microchannel plate photomultiplier tubes
(PMTs) are designed for use in molecular-structure analysis,
optical computer tomography, fast gene sequencing, semiconductor
analysis, crystal research, and other applications. They have rise
times of 150 picoseconds (ps) and transit time spread (TTS) of 25
ps. Seven standard models cover various bandwidths from 115 nm to
1,200 nm. The tubes are supported by a range of accessories,
including a thermoelectric cooling unit, PMT holder, high-speed
50-kHz-to-1.5-GHz amplifier, and high-voltage power supply.
Hamamatsu Corp., Bridgewater, NJ
Circle No. 195 on Reader Service Card
----------------------------
Protein Analysis Kits For Capillary Electrophoresis
The MicroCoat Protein Analysis Kit contains a reagent that
produces a positively charged surface by coating the capillary
wall, thereby permitting free migration of proteins through the
capillary and subsequent detection. The kit includes this
charge-reversal reagent, capillaries, a neutral marker, standards,
and a protocol. The ProSort SDS-Protein Analysis Kit is designed
to eliminate gel preparation, staining, and other labor-intensive
requirements of the standard SDS-PAGE method. Proteins ranging
from 14 to 205 kilodaltons can be separated in one run. The kit
also facilitates glycoprotein separations.
Perkin-Elmer Corp., Norwalk, CT
Circle No. 196 on Reader Service Card
------------------------------
Analtech Unveils Sample Application Device For TLC
The AUTOSPOTTER is a semiautomated device for applying samples on
thin-layer chromatography (TLC) plates. It can apply up to 18
samples at a time at variable rates, using TLC syringes with
blunt, Teflon-tipped needles. Solvent evaporation is aided by an
integral heater strip that runs beneath the TLC plate at the point
of sample delivery. Small sample zones may be obtained through
adjustment of delivery rate and heater strip temperature.
Analtech Inc., Newark, DE
Circle No. 197 on Reader Service Card
-------------------------------
Bibliographic Data Software From PBS
BiblioLink II Version 1.0.1 for Windows and Version 1.1 for
Macintosh are utility programs for ProCite reference-management
software. BiblioLink II uses configuration files to transfer
bibliographic records, downloaded from various secondary
information services, into a ProCite database. The records can
then be searched, sorted, and printed in any bibliographic style.
The software's configuration files are designed for the most
commonly used bibliographic reference databases. Researchers can
also create their own configuration files for other electronic
databases.
Personal Bibliographic Software Inc., Ann Arbor, MI
Circle No. 194 on Reader Service Card
----------------------------
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.22, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
WE WELCOME YOUR OPINION. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT
ON THIS STORY, PLEASE WRITE TO US AT EITHER ONE OF THE
FOLLOWING ADDRESSES:
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U.S.A.
--------
NXT:
PEOPLE
------------------------------------------------------------
TI : International Society Honors Two Researchers For
Breakthrough Work In Cancer Diagnostics
AU : NEERAJA SANKARAN
TY : PROFESSION (PEOPLE)
PG : 24
Two pioneers in the field of cancer imaging and monoclonal
antibody therapy--David M. Goldenberg, president of the Garden
State Cancer Center, a cancer research institution in Newark,
N.J., and Jean-Pierre Mach, a professor of biochemistry in the
faculty of medicine at Lausanne University, Switzerland--were
honored last month with the 1994 Abbott Award. The award was
presented at the 22nd meeting of the International Society for
Oncodevelopmental Biology (ISOBM), held in Groningen, the
Netherlands.
ISOBM, currently headquartered in Freiberg, Germany, is an
international scholarly society for immunologists and cancer
biologists who have an interest in tumor markers. It produces a
monthly research journal, Tumor Biology, published by S. Kargers
Publishers Inc. of Basel, Switzerland. The annual Abbott Award was
established by Abbott Park, Ill.-based Abbott Laboratories five
years ago to recognize ISOBM members for their research and
service to the society.
Goldenberg and Mach worked independently but along parallel lines
to develop a technique for detecting cancers using radioactive
antibodies specific for certain molecules--called markers--present
on the surface of tumor cells. Goldenberg published the clinical
paper that demonstrated the use of the technique (D.M. Goldenberg
et al., New England Journal of Medicine, 298:1384-8, 1978), and
Mach's group followed closely with a critical evaluation of the
technique, demonstrating the specificity of localization of the
antibodies (J.P. Mach et al., NEJM, 303:5-10, 1980).
"When we started in the 1970s it was just the two of us,"
Goldenberg recalls. "Today about 15,000 to 20,000 patients all
over the world have been exposed to this diagnostic method."
"Back then the field was not yet mature--but I've never been
pessimistic," adds Mach. Over the years, both scientists continued
to work on and improve the technique, incorporating advances in
im-munology as well as other areas.
"We are now attempting to use radiolabeled antibodies for therapy,
which are giving very nice results in the case of certain
lymphomas which are no longer responsive to chemotherapy," says
Goldenberg.
Mach was the first in the world to report the use of a monoclonal
antibody in localizing a human tumor (J.P. Mach et al., Immunology
Today, 2:239-49, 1981) and has also worked on
immunophotodetection, a related technique using photoactive
antibodies as an alternative to the more harmful radiolabeling (S.
Folli et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
89:7973-7, 1992). Currently, he says, his group is working on
"increasing the immunogenicity of tumors, to enlarge the field of
the target recognized by the antibodies."
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Goldenberg, 56, received a bachelor's
degree in science from the University of Chicago, and then went to
Germany, where he received an Sc.D. from the University of
Erlangen-Nuremberg Faculty of Natural Sciences in 1965, and an
M.D. from the University of Heidelberg School of Medicine in 1966.
Returning to the United States in 1968, he taught at several
universities in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Kentucky before
moving to his present position in Newark. He is also an adjunct
professor of microbiology and immunology at the New York Medical
College in Valhalla.
Mach, 59, a native of Switzerland, received a diploma in medicine
from the University of Geneva in 1961. He was a clinical fellow at
Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston from 1963 to 1966 and has
been at Lausanne since 1967. He served on the review committee of
the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London, in 1985-87 and is a
member of the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research.
--Neeraja Sankaran
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.24, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
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NXT:
------------------------------------------------------------
TI : Roche Institute Recognizes Scientist For Protein
Transport Studies
AU : NEERAJA SANKARAN
TY : PROFESSION (PEOPLE)
PG : 24
James E. Rothman, chairman of the cellular biochemistry and
biophysics program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and
vice chairman of the Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City,
has received the 1994 V.D. Mattia Award from the Roche Institute
of Molecular Biology of Nutley, N.J. The award, which includes a
$10,000 cash prize, was presented to Rothman on October 13 at the
Roche institute, where he also delivered a talk on his research
entitled "Mechanisms of Intracellular Protein Transport."
The Mattia award was established in 1972 by Hoffmann La-Roche Inc.
in honor of V.D. Mattia, who served as president and CEO of the
company from 1965 to 1971 and was instrumental in setting up the
molecular biology institute. Nine of the 25 winners to date have
gone on to receive the Nobel Prize, the most recent being 1989
chemistry Nobelist Thomas Cech of the University of Colorado,
Boulder, who received the Mattia award in 1987.
Rothman, whose work has led to a better understanding of
transmission of signals between brain cells and mechanisms of
hormone release into the bloodstream, has devoted most of his
career to elucidating the methods by which proteins are
transported within cells. Over the course of his investigations,
which began while he was at Stanford University in the late 1970s,
he has studied all the stages involved in the process. He proposed
a single underlying mechanism to explain the transport of proteins
via vesicles, from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and Golgi
apparatus on to their final destinations in the cell.
Rothman's laboratory was the first to develop a cell-free
experimental system, with an intact Golgi apparatus that simulated
the transport of proteins (E. Fries, J. Rothman, Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, 77:3870-4, 1980). He also
discovered the involvement of vesicles in protein transport, and
found that these vesicles have a simple protein coat that is
similar in structure across evolution from yeasts to higher
animals. He has studied various phases of vesicle transport in
detail, from the "budding" process, whereby the coat is formed on
the surface of the ER or Golgi membrane and virtually sucks out a
vesicle enclosing the protein; to "docking," which enables the
vesicles to recognize specific locations of the target organelle;
and finally the "fusion" process, in which the vesicle releases
the protein to its destination.
Rothman, 43, received his Ph.D. in biological chemistry in 1976
from Harvard Medical School, Boston. He was at Stanford from 1978
to 1988 as assistant, associate, and full professor of
biochemistry. He then moved to Princeton University in New Jersey,
where he was a professor of molecular biology until 1991, when he
came to the Sloan-Kettering Institute.
Last year, he was elected to membership in the National Academy of
Sciences.
--Neeraja Sankaran
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #21, pg.24, October 31, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
----------
WE WELCOME YOUR OPINION. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT
ON THIS STORY, PLEASE WRITE TO US AT EITHER ONE OF THE
FOLLOWING ADDRESSES:
garfield@aurora.cis.upenn.edu
71764.2561@compuserve.com
The Scientist,
3600 Market Street, Suite 450, Philadelphia, PA 19104
U.S.A.
--------
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