THE SCIENTIST
VOLUME 8, No:2 JANUARY 24, 1994
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
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TI : CONTENTS
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NEWS
GOVERNMENT FUNDING: With the new proposed federal budget
less than a month away from release, researchers, society
officers, and federal agency officials reviewing the final
1994 science appropriations say they are guardedly
optimistic about future support and the direction the
current administration is taking in its approach to science
PG : 1
ON THE DEFENSIVE: Investigators involved in NIH's Women's
Health Initiative are fending off criticism of the $625
million study of women's health issues, including a recent
Institute of Medicine report stating that the main
hypothesis of the investigation is scientifically weak and
that its planners have underestimated the costs of the
project
PG : 1
RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS: The International Science Foundation for
the former Soviet Union, with help from several United
States scientific societies as well as individual
researchers, is reviewing thousands of grant proposals from
Russian scientists in an effort that will culminate in the
funding of some 900 proposals worth a total of more than $45
million
PG : 3
PITTCON AT 45: In addition to displays of state-of-the-art
tools in analytical chemistry and spectroscopy, as well as
numerous symposia and workshops on the subject, attendees at
the 1994 Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and
Applied Spectroscopy will be taking time to look back on the
evolution of their discipline over the past 45 years that
the conference has been held
PG : 4
OPINION
BIOSPHERIAN: In an interview with The Scientist, UCLA
researcher and professor of pathology Roy Walford discusses
the two years he spentin Biosphere 2; he reflects not only
on the advances he made in studying human dietary needs, but
also on the day-to-day life shared by him and his colleagues
inside what has been described as "a planet in a bottle"
PG : 11
COMMENTARY: New National Science Foundation director Neal
Lane notes recent advancements that have made a difference
in remedying the underrepresentation of women in science,
but also stresses that much more needs to be done to solve
what he calls "one of the most important and debated issues
facing the science community today"
PG : 12
RESEARCH
RU 486 RESEARCH: Caught amid the political controversies
surrounding its use as an abortion pill, research into
therapeutic properties of RU 486 has nonetheless proceeded
at a steady pace, despite irregular funding and a
stigmatized public image
PG : 14
HOT PAPERS: A molecular geneticist discusses his paper on a
genetic disorder that causes myotonic dystrophy
PG : 16
TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY
CHROMATOGRAPHY SOFTWARE KEEPS PACE: For the various
chemistry disciplines that depend on chromatographs for
sample analysis, the chromatography data-handling software
that supports this process has become more sophisticated
over the past decade
PG : 17
PROFESSION
PAY DISPARITY AMONG DOCTORS: A Boston University study has
found that female researchers in three areas of academic
medicine--cardiology, rheumatology, and general internal
medicine--receive lower salaries and fewer promotions than
their male counterparts do
PG : 21
WILLIAM H. PICKERING AND ARVID CARLSSON, an astrophysicist
and a neuropsychopharmacologist, respectively, have each won
the 1994 Japan Prize, one of the richest scientific awards
in the world
PG : 22
SHORT TAKES
NOTEBOOK PG : 4
CARTOON PG : 4
LETTERS PG : 12
CROSSWORD PG : 13
CHROMATOGRAPHY SOFTWARE DIRECTORY
PG : 19
OBITUARIES PG : 22
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
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TI : NIH Women's Health Researchers Rebut Criticisms Of
Their Study
Project scientists reject Institute of Medicine claims that
their ambitious initiative is scientifically and financially
deficient
AU : FRANKLIN HOKE
TY : NEWS
PG : 1
Recent criticisms that the Women's Health Initiative (WHI)
at the National Institutes of Health is poor science and
likely to run over budget are drawing sharp rebuttal from
project investigators.
An Institute of Medicine (IOM) report released late last
year said that one of the study's primary hypotheses--that a
low-fat diet will reduce the occurrence of breast cancer in
women over 50 years of age--is scientifically weak, given
the existing data. The IOM group suggested instead that the
investigation of a secondary hypothesis, that a low-fat
dietary pattern reduces the risk of coronary heart disease,
be emphasized. The panel also found that the WHI
underestimated the per-participant, per-year costs at about
$1,000--far lower than the $2,000 to $3,000 required in
other NIH studies--a fact that might endanger the study's
successful completion.
The women's health project ranked as one of former NIH
director Bernadine Healy's highest priorities. As early as
her 1991 confirmation hearings, she announced her intent to
launch such a program as a corrective device for years of
health research that excluded women as subjects. Healy
pressed the project forward aggressively throughout her
directorship, which ended in June 1993. The resulting WHI is
the largest research study ever conducted by NIH, involving
more than 160,000 women over the age of 50 at 45 clinical
centers across the United States. The women are to be
tracked for 14 years at a cost of more than $625 million.
The study has been widely viewed as one of the foremost
achievements of Healy's tenure at NIH.
Partly because of the history of women's health research,
however, or perhaps because of Healy's confrontational style
as director, the WHI has attracted more political interest
than do most NIH research efforts. Some women's health
advocates suspect that, even now, the criticisms of the WHI
may be, at least in part, politically based.
"I believe, with all my heart, that some of this is
political," says Nancy Brinker, founding director of the
Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation in Dallas and
chairwoman of the President's Cancer Panel Special
Commission on Breast Cancer. "Politics does enter medicine
and science."
Brinker is among those who praise Healy's efforts to make
the WHI a reality.
"It was a major accomplishment," says Brinker. "Maybe the
study was designed, in some people's eyes, a little too
rapidly; maybe it wasn't perfectly designed. But what people
forget is that Bernadine Healy had the guts to stand up and
talk about [women's health] issues."
WHI officials answer the IOM critique by saying that WHI
hypotheses and the report's suggestions simply represent
differing assessments of the existing epidemiological data.
In fact, they say, this is why the WHI's clinical trial is
so important--it will provide hard data against which to
check these differences (see accompanying story).
"The disagreement really came about as an honest scientific
disagreement among people collecting data and interpreting
them in various ways," says William Harlan, codirector of
the WHI and associate director of NIH's Office of Disease
Prevention. "It's not resolvable by further
[epidemiological] studies of the same type."
Estimates of study costs also were carefully done, WHI
investigators say, and the study can be completed as
budgeted.
"We budgeted it tightly, but, we think, realistically," says
Robert Wallace, principal investigator of the Vanguard
Clinical Center at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. "But
it's very hard to know. Obviously, budgeting for that long a
period is an exercise in guesswork."
So far, 16 of an eventual total of 45 WHI clinical centers
have been funded; these first 16 are known as the Vanguard
Clinical Centers. One coordinating center, at the Fred
Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, has also been
funded.
"We looked at our budget six ways from Sunday to be sure
that we could do it," says Richard A. Carleton, co-principal
investigator of the WHI Vanguard Clinical Center at Memorial
Hospital, Pawtucket, R.I. "We can do what we have said we
will do for the amount that they told us we could have,"
says Carleton, who is also physician-in-chief at Memorial
Hospital.
In addition to challenging the WHI design and budget, the
IOM panel was openly angry about delays at NIH that resulted
in the panel's reviewing a project that was already awarding
multiyear contracts and scheduled to begin participant
recruitment during the review period. The House
Appropriations Committee asked for the IOM review of the WHI
in July of 1992; NIH did not approach IOM about the review
until February 1993, and a contract was not signed until
April 1993. There were limits, as a result, to what the
committee felt it could responsibly recommend.
"There is a tension evident in this report," wrote committee
chairwoman Marion J. Finkel, a vice president at Sandoz
Pharmaceuticals Corp., East Hanover, N.J. "Had the committee
been asked to design a plan for women's health research, it
would not have designed this WHI."
Meanwhile, advocates for improved women's health research
and care say the time has come to move beyond arguments over
which scientific questions should be asked by the WHI. The
project--as designed--is important, they say, and should go
forward.
"I'm so frustrated at the length of time that this has
taken, at the exclusion of women from important trials and
so on, so that, at this point in 1994, we're still asking
questions that should have been answered--or at least asked-
-20 years ago," says Brinker. "I would hate to see this
trial abandoned. I've always thought it was an ambitious,
appropriate thing to do."
Costing Questioned
In its report, the IOM panel said that the per-participant,
per-year costs might be twice or even three times the $1,000
estimated by NIH and that the total costs for the WHI
clinical trial probably would be greater than the $625
million allotted. This assessment, they said, was based on
comparisons to other recent, similar NIH studies of women's
health. The additional costs, they said, would have to be
borne by the 45 clinical centers, a fact they felt might
threaten the overall WHI.
"NIH and Vanguard Clinical Center representatives have
indicated that the additional funds necessary for successful
completion of the trial will be covered by the institutions
in which the Clinical Centers are based," the report said.
"This reliance on institutional support may be reasonable in
the case of the [16] Vanguard Clinical Centers, but the
committee felt it is unlikely that an additional 29
institutions can be identified that have both the experience
to carry out the tasks of high-quality research and the
ability to provide additional resources."
WHI officials take strong exception to the IOM cost
assessment, including disagreements on some points of fact.
They say, for instance, that individual clinical centers
will not be asked to take on additional expenses at any
time.
"Our contracts are very clear on that," says Carleton. "The
IOM had an erroneous understanding, somehow, on that one."
Carleton adds that the costs were carefully and
conservatively analyzed, including adjustments for factors
that have skewed the results of several previous studies.
Such factors include, for instance, the "healthy volunteer
effect." People who volunteer for clinical health studies
such as the WHI tend to be in better health than the average
person, it has been shown.
WHI director Harlan defends the per-participant calculations
that support the overall project estimate of $625 million
and says IOM was not comparing "apples with apples" in its
critique.
"The comparisons that were made are really inappropriate,"
says WHI codirector Harlan. "The comparisons they made were
with relatively small studies of 1,000 or fewer
participants, lasting two to three years. A good part of the
cost in a large clinical trial is recruitment and the early
initiation of people into the treatment and measuring of the
adverse effects. If you take those costs, which may be a
third or 40 percent of the total cost, and amortize them
over the 14-year period, the costs per participant, per
year become much smaller."
Harlan adds: "They didn't carry out a very careful cost
analysis--in fact, they didn't provide an independent cost
analysis to buttress their argument."
Panel chairwoman Marion Finkel acknowledges that the panel
had difficulty assessing WHI costs, but with good reason.
"We didn't get sufficient detailed information from NIH to
be able to make those calculations," Finkel says. "Our
calculations were based upon some of the information that
was supplied by the Vanguard Centers, and we just costed it
up."
One IOM recommendation--based on its assessment that the
costs would exceed the $625 million budgeted--was that the
study end sooner, in 2002 instead of 2005. This suggestion
was partly a reflection of their hoped-for changes in
hypotheses, also. The shortened project would allow time to
test the heart disease hypothesis, for instance, but not
enough time to test the effects of dietary modification on
breast cancer risk. But, most important, according to
Finkel, the shorter study would begin to address concerns
over the budget.
"It would save money," Finkel says. "The committee
recommended that the NIH look at the study several years
before its scheduled completion, to see if any trends were
emerging that would require that the study continue, and, if
there were no such trends emerging, to terminate it."
In another area, the panel said that women in the study
should be better informed about the potentially higher risk
of breast cancer that may result from hormone replacement
therapy, important in one part of the study.
Here, WHI officials agree with the recommendation and plan
changes in consent forms and other materials so that
participants in the huge project will be more fully informed
about these health risks.
Dodging IOM
The report noted that the House Appropriations Committee
directed NIH in July 1992 to contract with IOM "to complete
a review of the design and estimated costs of the WHI by
February 1, 1993, in time to make adjustments, if necessary,
before major study activities began." Yet NIH did not
formally discuss the project with IOM until February 1993,
the report says. A contract was not agreed upon until late
April 1993, well after the due date requested by Congress.
"Whether the delay was due to a slow-moving bureaucracy or
to other causes is unknown to the IOM committee," they
wrote. "As a result, however, the committee was faced with
the task of critiquing a study in progress. In the interim,
NIH had requested, received, and evaluated proposals, and
entered into contracts with 17 research institutions to
serve as the Clinical Coordinating Center and Vanguard
Clinical Centers."
Harlan says that the delay can be explained, at least in
part, by a closer look at the necessary legislative process.
While the House Appropriations Committee may have asked for
the review in July 1992, he says, the appropriations bill
containing the request did not become law until October.
"We didn't have a bill and a mandate to carry out a study
until October of 1992," Harlan says.
He acknowledges, however, that NIH's delay between October
1992 and February 1993 in engaging IOM for the then
congressionally mandated study cannot be entirely blamed on
bureaucratic process.
"Dr. Healy, who was then the director, didn't move quickly
on it," Harlan says. "I don't know how else to say it. I
think that probably led to some of the irate response that
you sense in the report."
In response to the IOM panel's complaints about being asked
to review an ongoing project, Harlan says that there was
never a time when the panel could have looked at a project
that was still under development.
"Had they started in October, which was the original
presumption on the part of the House Appropriations
Committee," Harlan says, "the project would still have been
under way at that point, in that we had, at that juncture,
funded a coordinating center and were negotiating the
funding of the first 16 Vanguard Clinical Centers."
Harlan does say that, with the help of new NIH director
Harold Varmus, there is a "movement toward resolution" under
way. WHI officials, IOM panel members, and, perhaps, others
will be invited to discuss relevant scientific and other
issues and to make a recommendation to the director, Harlan
says.
Despite the sharp nature of the IOM critique, there is
general agreement on the value of the WHI and reason to
believe that an accommodation can be reached.
"If the committee really felt very strongly that the study
had serious problems, we could have recommended that it be
terminated," says Finkel. "But we didn't. We thought there
were a lot of strengths in this study."
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
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TI : A HOBBLED HYPOTHESIS?
AU : FRANKLIN HOKE
TY : NEWS
PG : 9
One of the main questions that Women's Health Initiative
(WHI) investigators hope to answer, and one specifically
challenged by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), is whether a
low-fat diet will reduce breast cancer risk. This hypothesis
arises from comparisons of epidemiological data from
countries with different fat-consumption patterns and of
data tracking the change in breast cancer occurrence among
migrants moving between some of these countries.
Japanese women, for example, have much lower breast cancer
rates than do women in the United States, and the
traditional Japanese diet contains much less fat than is the
norm in the U.S. Women whose parents moved from Japan to the
U.S. have breast cancer rates comparable with those of other
women in the U.S.
The IOM report, however, suggested that these comparisons
are based on the amount of fat produced and sold, not
necessarily on the amount actually consumed by women. It
also noted that many epidemiologists believe the amount of
fat consumed by women during adolescence, when breast
tissues are developing, may be more important to overall
breast cancer risk than that consumed as adults. Hence,
lowering dietary fat levels in the WHI study population of
women, all over 50 years of age, may have little effect on
their cancer rates.
Several studies also have failed to show a link between
dietary fat and breast cancer rates, according to Walter C.
Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the
Harvard School of Public Health, Boston. Willett is a
coinvestigator in the 120,000-participant, 17-year-long
Nurses Health Study at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and
Women's Hospital, also in Boston. In 1989, 110,000 younger
women were added, with Willett as principal investigator for
that part of the study.
"When investigators like ourselves started to do more
detailed studies," Willett says, "where you look at fat and
control for other factors, the relationship between fat
intake and breast cancer hasn't shown up. As the evidence
has come in, the hypothesis, which was a reasonable one--
that's why we spent a lot of time looking at it--just hasn't
been supported."
William Harlan, codirector of the WHI and associate director
of NIH's Office of Disease Prevention, counters that these
studies, many conducted within single countries, are not a
fair test of the low-fat hypothesis.
"The range of fat intake within the U.S. and within most
industrialized countries tends to be quite high and quite
narrow," Harlan says. "It does not encompass the low fat
levels of some of the countries where the breast cancer
rates are low--for example, in Japan."
He adds: "You won't find many people [in the U.S.] down at
the 20 percent level, which is a level that some people feel
is the important level for total fat intake."
The suggestion by IOM that the WHI switch its primary focus
to the link between dietary fat and coronary heart disease
is unwarranted, WHI researchers say. That link already has
been demonstrated by other studies, they say, and is a less
compelling goal for this landmark women's health research
effort than breast cancer.
"On that panel, there were assembled a group of very capable
people, some of whom have experience in this particular
area, some of whom do not," says Richard A. Carleton, co-
principal investigator of the WHI Vanguard Clinical Center
at Memorial Hospital, Pawtucket, R.I. "They looked at this
and said that, in their view, the dietary modification was
more likely to change coronary disease. That is not
scintillating new information."
Several clinical studies already provide strong evidence
that dietary changes can affect heart disease outcomes, says
Carleton.
"You can argue a lot of those data come from men," Carleton
says, "but, in this area, I don't have terribly good reasons
to hypothesize that women are going to be radically
different from men. If you ask yourself where is the biggest
public health issue for which there are imperfect--very
imperfect--data, it is breast cancer."
Some critics, however, go beyond the IOM suggestion that the
WHI emphasize different questions. Willett, for example,
says that the WHI not only is asking the wrong questions,
but also will not, in any case, be able to answer them as
currently designed.
"There's a fundamental problem with the design of the
women's health study," Willett says, "and that's that
they're changing many factors simultaneously. They're not
just lowering fat intake, they're increasing fruit and
vegetable and vitamin intake. So, even if you do see
something, you can't say that it's due to fat. If that's an
interesting question, they're doing the wrong study."
Willett says the WHI may be important politically, but not
scientifically. He adds that the high cost of the study
amplifies the significance of the problems.
"The scientific world largely believes it's a disaster,"
Willett says. "It's a huge investment of money--it's going
to be a billion dollars or more in the end--and it can't
answer the questions that it was set out to answer. No one
would be disturbed about it if it were a few tens of
millions of dollars, but it's definitely taking money out of
lots of other laboratories."
WHI investigators reject such statements and say the study
questions are not only important, but that the WHI, as
designed, can answer them.
"The important thing about the WHI is that it will test in
experimental fashion some hypotheses that have not been
tested in humans any other way," says Robert Wallace,
principal investigator of the Vanguard Clinical Center at
the University of Iowa, Iowa City, "the fundamental one
being the effect of low-fat diet on a variety of cancers.
That's never been done."
Echoing other WHI researchers, Wallace characterizes
challenges to the dietary fat-breast cancer link hypothesis
as legitimate differences of epidemiological data
interpretation.
"It's an honest scientific disagreement," Wallace says.
"Various investigators--as we all do--lean more heavily on
their own data than on others. Some studies show an effect
and others don't. But low-fat diet has the potential for
improving health in so many areas that it is very much worth
testing."
"To most of us who believe that one needs to test this, the
clinical trial seems the only way to do it," Harlan says.
"It's a matter of deciding whether you believe that the
hypothesis merits a test."
Carleton suggests that the debate over the WHI's scientific
goals, in itself, shows the need for the study.
"Where there are differences of opinion, the facts, usually,
are not known," he says.
--F.H.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
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TI : Reviewing Congress' Final Appropriations For 1994,
Scientists Eye Future Funding With Cautious Optimism
Despite dramatic cuts in several programs, observers
perceive Congress as generally supportive of research
AU : BARTON REPPERT
TY : NEWS
PG : 1
Despite severe reduction in United States government support
of large-scale science proj-ects and a number of general
research areas for 1994, officials at scientific
associations and major research universities say they are
optimistic--although "cautiously" or "guardedly" so--about
the prospects for fiscal 1995.
At the same time, some science budget-watchers warn that the
research community will face a tough fight--in view of
government-wide spending constraints--to maintain even the
modest funding increases in the FY94 budget and to stave off
further major-program cutbacks at the National Science
Foundation and other agencies. They cite, for example, the
continued downsizing of the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration's space station and the total elimination of
funding for the Department of Energy's superconducting
supercollider (SSC) as examples of big-science projects that
fell victim to these economic forces in the 1994 budget.
"The simple fact is that the budget crunch is intense and
it's going to continue," says Roland W. Schmitt, chairman of
the American Institute of Physics, an umbrella organization
of 10 physics-related scientific societies based in College
Park, Md. Schmitt is also a member of the National Science
Board, which oversees NSF.
With the United States research community, he says, this
means that "you're going to have to be in there scrambling,
showing that you are relevant, you are going to be serving
the national interest.... I think it's going to be a very
hard sell that you've got to put forth. But I think there
are ways of doing it."
Schmitt, former president of Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, says the budget for fiscal year 1995, to be
proposed by President Clinton early next month, pre-sents a
"mixed picture." It will be "really tough because of the
total budgetary pressures," he says, while on the other hand
"I don't think the science is going to be singled out--
people coming after it harder than anything else."
For the 1994 fiscal year, final appropriations for which
were approved late last fall, Congress provided NSF with a
total appropriation of $3.028 billion--$152 million less
than the Clinton administration's budget request, but an
increase of 10.7 percent over the preceding year's figure.
The research portion of NSF's funding went up 7.5 percent to
$1.998 billion, while money for education programs increased
by 16.8 percent, up to $570 million, and funds for
laboratories and instrumentation jumped by 120 percent, up
to $110 million.
In providing for the National Institutes of Health, the
legislators voted a total of $10.956 billion--$288 million
more than the Clinton administration had requested, and an
increase of 6.1 percent from fiscal 1993. Funding for NIH's
National Center for Human Genome Research climbed by 21.3
percent to $129 million.
Receiving the biggest increase for fiscal 1994 was the
National Institute of Standards and Technology, for which
Congress appropriated $520 million--up by 35.4 percent from
the year before. This move reflected strong support from the
White House and on Capitol Hill for expanding applied
research to help enhance the global competitiveness of
American industry.
On the big-science front, Congress sent shock waves rippling
through U.S. high-energy physics by voting to kill the
multibillion-dollar SSC under construction in Texas. Also,
it chopped back fiscal 1994 funding for the space station by
8.3 percent, to a level of $1.946 billion.
After the dust had settled from the congressional actions
last summer and fall, the Council of Scientific Society
Presidents (CSSP) drew up a "statement on science
priorities," which it has submitted to the White House
Office of Science and Technology Policy and other agencies.
The council is an umbrella group bringing together the heads
of about 60 scientific societies, with a combined membership
of some 1.3 million.
The CSSP consensus statement said federal policy should
emphasize the importance of "foundational" research by
"continuing to devote a large part of the NSF and NIH
budgets to the pursuit of foundational knowledge in the
sciences and a substantial part of R&D budgets of the
mission-oriented agencies to similar pursuits in areas
relevant to them."
Among other steps, the statement called for efforts to
"increase international cooperation and multinational
funding for major, costly, large science projects." Lack of
more substantial international cost-sharing was one factor
cited by opponents of the SSC.
Schmitt, who helped to draft the CSSP statement, says that
while cancellation of the supercollider was a "devastating
blow" to the high-energy physics community, the project's
fate "had become a political issue more than anything else,
anyway. I don't know that [the SSC vote] has any great
significance for the future support of pioneering or
fundamental science."
Robert Park, Washington, D.C.-based public affairs director
for the American Physical Society, says about the research
funding situation: "We seemed to do well, I think, in the
NSF budget--as well as could be expected in these hard
times."
He observes that "we would have preferred to see the space
station program canceled, instead of the supercollider.
But ... the NSF came out of the year fairly healthy, though
we remain concerned about the Senate report language that
accompanied that appropriation."
Park is referring to a Senate appropriations subcommittee's
report that--in blunt language that has rankled some in the
academic research community--calls on the foundation to make
sure that more of its resources go to fund "strategic
research" targeted at high-priority national needs (see
story on page 7).
Park, who is also a professor of physics at the University
of Maryland, College Park, says in looking ahead to the next
budget year: "I'm cautiously optimistic."
Clifford Gabriel, executive director of the Washington,
D.C.-based American Institute of Biological Sciences, also
looks on the bright side when commenting about the past
year's action on Capitol Hill: "It could have been a lot
worse. I think NIH did well. With [the U.S. Department of
Agriculture], their grant program received a modest
increase--that's something that I think needs continued
growth. NSF did reasonably well. They got a lot of support
in their instrumentation and facilities programs."
Overall, Gabriel says, "I'm generally pleased with how
things came out last year. And if we could see something
even close this year [for fiscal 1995 appropriations], that
would be an accomplishment."
Gar Kaganowich, public affairs director for the Federation
of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB),
headquartered in Bethesda, Md., notes that his organization
had recommended $11.75 billion for NIH in fiscal 1994--a
boost of 13.6 percent.
"It was helpful to see the 6.1 percent increase that we did
get.... We are pleased that we did that well in the current
budget environment. But obviously we were a little
disappointed that we couldn't move further--closer to the
number that we had recommended," he says.
According to Kaganowich, FASEB's consensus recommendation
for NIH in fiscal 1995 is a total of $11.934 billion, which
would amount to an increase of about 8.9 percent.
Cornelius J. Pings, president of the Washington, D.C.-based
Association of American Universities, which represents major
U.S. research universities, gives a qualified yes to the
question of whether he is satisfied with the fiscal 1994
appropriations: "overall--and given the context." Pings
adds: "There is the capacity to do a lot of good research
in this country. And there will be some of my colleagues who
say we could have used more [federal funding]. I'm sure
that's true. But it's a time of choice, and I think we came
out remarkably well."
Regarding prospects for NSF and NIH to receive fiscal 1995
increases comparable to this year's, Pings says: "I haven't
thought about increments. I think it's a time of great
anxiety with that budget for '95--and the next four years,
assuming that Congress and the administration stick to the
discipline they've imposed upon themselves. There's a
severely constrained resource ... if anything increases,
something else has to decrease."
The fiscal 1994 appropriations for NSF and NIH were a
pleasant surprise, says Judith Argon, director of the office
of research support at Duke University in Durham, N.C.: "I
think we were much more encouraged than we thought we were
going to be, particularly with NIH, where the increases were
larger ... than we were led to expect." Also, she calls the
move to more than double NSF funding for academic research
facilities and instrumentation "an enormously positive
step.... We'd love to see that kind of program at NIH."
Looking ahead to the 1995 budget, Argon says, "I would say
we're guardedly optimistic."
However, the Duke official adds that "there are certainly
movements--within both NIH and NSF--to see more of the funds
directed toward specific initiatives.... We worry that there
will be programs that will be underfunded that we've
traditionally drawn support from. We'll need to watch that
and try to work with those two agencies and with the
Congress."
The NSF budget's boost to $110 million for academic
research infrastructure is "an extremely good start" toward
a multiyear effort to fund badly needed facilities and
instrumentation, says Norman Scott, vice president for
research at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "Cornell is
anxiously putting proposals together at this time to compete
for those funds," he says.
Alvin Kwiran, vice provost for research at the University of
Washington in Seattle, says he believes that with the fiscal
1994 funding levels, "the research enterprise in the
universities did remarkably well, given all the constraints
on the federal budget."
According to Kwiran, the University of Washington last year
had a research budget totaling approximately $430 million--
with about 80 percent of the funds coming from federal
sources.
Kwiran says he expects to see continuing debate about the
overall direction and longer-term goals of research in the
United States. But he observes that "assuming no serious
downturns in the economy, or no untoward events, I'm
optimistic that science will continue to be funded
respectably."
The research administrator adds that "the big factor, of
course, in recent years has been the explosive growth in the
big-science projects. The decision on the SSC in some ways
is extremely painful to those directly engaged in it--but
probably inevitable, given the spiraling costs of that
project and the budget constraints that the country faces."
Fred W. Weingarten, executive director of the Washington,
D.C.-based Computing Research Association, notes that
Congress trimmed back fiscal 1994 funding for high-
performance computing and communications programs--by $12
million at NSF and by about $40 million at the
Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency. These cuts
came even though the Clinton administration has strongly
endorsed efforts to develop the "national information
infrastructure."
Looking to the next budget go-round, Weingarten says: "We've
got a tough fight. We're going to have to make our case.
We've got some heavyweights on our side, and we think we've
got good arguments. But we've got to be realistic, too....
There's only a limited number of times in which politicians
will stick their necks out and defend you."
Peter Boyce, executive officer of the American Astronomical
Society, also based in Washington, has some reservations
about the fiscal 1994 appropriations. "The money for NSF was
very heartening," he says, but in the final budget for NASA-
-in which, aside from the space station cutback, R&D funds
increased by 4.9 percent, up to $9.284 billion--"there are a
couple of things which really give us pause."
One particular area of concern, he says, was the scrapping
by Congress of NASA's High-Resolution Microwave Survey, the
radio astronomy program that had previously been known as
the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
"They canceled it and they saved $12 million," Boyce says.
"And it was done with a lot of demagoguery--no consideration
of where the program was, how well it had met its goals ...
and the fact that after planning and work for 10 years, the
search was just starting."
Boyce adds that he doubts any funding can be restored for
the program in fiscal 1995. "It's just too much of a fight,"
he says. "It's too tempting a target for people to use to
grab headlines."
Barton Reppert is a freelance science writer based in
Gaithersburg, Md.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
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NEXT:
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TI : SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COME WITH STRONG ADVICE
AU : BARTON REPPERT
TY : NEWS
PG : 7
For the second year in a row, policy-making officials at the
National Science Foundation are faced with toughly worded
guidance from a Senate subcommittee that wants to see
concrete progress soon in shifting NSF toward greater
emphasis on supporting "strategic research."
Some in the academic research community view the Senate
panel's language as a highly unwelcome attempt to
"micromanage" NSF and dictate specific areas of scientific
inquiry. Other observers, however, say that--semantic
differences aside--they share many of the subcommittee's
espoused aims for research and can learn to live with the
policy guidelines.
The language at issue was crafted by a Senate appropriations
subcommittee chaired by Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) and
published in a report accompanying the appropriations bill
that included fiscal 1994 funding for the NSF.
Overall, the report said, NSF "is at a crossroads in its
future.... In short, the foundation can be at the heart of
helping to shape the administration's science and technology
policy in pursuit of specific national goals, or it can
diminish into becoming nothing more than a national
endowment for science."
The subcommittee contends that NSF and the National Science
Board have given "mixed signals" as to whether they intend
to actually work toward implementing the "bold vision" that
was sketched out in the November 1992 report of the
Commission on the Future of the NSF.
"It is time for the foundation to move beyond rhetorical
statements about the value of strategic research or the
importance of using science for the transfer of knowledge
and technology," the Senate report stated. "That, in the
committee's view, is a fact of life and political
reality.... The agency must spell out how much of its
mission should clearly be strategic and applied in nature,
and then implement these parameters through its budget
process."
The Mikulski subcommittee warns that if NSF fails to do
that, "future federal R&D budgets should instead be
allocated more generously to agencies such as the National
Institute of Standards and Technology, NASA, the national
energy labs, or the National Institutes of Health, all of
whom seem poised to pursue critical technologies with
entrepreneurial vigor and enthusiasm."
In its report issued last September, the Senate panel calls
on NSF officials to revise the foundation's strategic plan
for the 1995 fiscal year to incorporate various specific
changes. They need to take steps, the subcommittee says, to
ensure that "not less than 60 percent of the agency's annual
program research activities should be strategic in nature."
Robert Park, public affairs director for the American
Physical Society, asserts that "the Senate report language
attempts to micromanage the foundation." He calls the
latest Mikulski subcommittee report, compared with one
issued the year before, "much more aggressively worded."
Kathleen Ream, head of the department of government
relations and science policy at the American Chemical
Society, comments that "there is a concern about the
ultimate direction in which the Senate appropriations
[subcommittee report] seemed to be pushing the foundation."
She says the issue over strategic research poses the
question of whether that involves just "categorizing basic
research," or instead "dictating what can be done."
Cornelius J. Pings, president of the Association of American
Universities (AAU), says he also is somewhat concerned about
the Mikulski subcommittee report, but doesn't want to see
the academic research community get overly worried about it.
"I'm concerned about the language," he says. "And many of us
were left trying to understand what really the rationale and
the intent is, and what the follow-on implications would be.
One fear might be that it portends micromanagement"--
although Pings adds that he himself doesn't see in the
subcommittee report such micromanaging of NSF.
"I hope that we all don't get too stirred up here on
something that may, after the fact, appear only to
have been a semantic difference," says the AAU president.
Pings notes that "much of our work in basic research in this
country is directed in the sense that it is concentrated in
certain areas. That's been a political decision" by Congress
and federal funding agencies, and that "furthermore, we know
that that work supports outcomes in technology and
applications. What we want to make sure of is that we let it
be an outcome--not that we overdirect it going in."
NSF officials point out that a substantial portion of the
agency's research funding already goes to areas that are
considered strategic--such as high-performance computing and
communications, advanced materials, and biotechnology.
One NSF official, speaking on condition of anonymity, calls
Mikulski an "activist" subcommittee chairwoman who, with her
staff, "wrote that language to get [the academic research
community's] attention, and she sure as heck did."
Within the agency, this official says, NSF policymakers view
the latest Mikulski report as "telling us to continue to do
the difficult job of setting priorities.... It doesn't mean
abandon anthropology. It does mean, though, that high-
performance computing ought to have high priority."
--B.R.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
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TI : FEDERAL RESEARCH FUNDING (In millions of dollars)
TY : NEWS
PG : 6
FY 1994 FY 1994
FY 1993 Request Approp.
National Science Foundation 2,734 3,180 3,028
National Institutes of Health 10,326 10,668 10,956
Department of Energy
-- Superconducting supercollider 517 640 ---
-- Other civilian research 2,626 2,730 2,765
National Aeronautics
and Space Administration
-- Space station 2,122 1,946 1,946
-- Other R&D 8,847 9,529 9,284
National Institute of 384 533 520
Standards and Technology
Environmental Protection 323 354 339
Agency (R&D)
National Oceanic 202 214 226
and Atmospheric Administration
Department of Agriculture
-- National Research Initiative 97 130 112
Source: Various federal agencies listed
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
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NEXT:
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TI : Societies Aid In Large-Scale Effort To Support Russian
Science
AU : TRACEY D. WEBB
TY : NEWS
PG : 3
The International Science Foundation for the Former Soviet
Union (ISF), with the help of discipline-specific panels
composed of representatives of United States scientific
organizations and more than 200 American and European
scientists, is conducting what participants are calling an
unprecedented peer-review process. The effort is scheduled
to culminate this month with the funding of about 900
research proposals from scientists in Russia and other
Baltic states.
The grants will total $45 million to $50 million and will
fund 10 percent to 20 percent of the proposals under
consideration, according to Chris Williams, an executive
assistant at ISF who is involved in the grant-review
process. Williams says that, in all, 11,000 proposals were
submitted to ISF; of these, he notes, 9,000 passed a formal
screening of minimum requirements.
"The criteria [were] rather strict, but even though the
scientists in the former Soviet Union are confined by a
crumbling technical and equipment structure, the human
capital is quite incredible," Williams says.
Criteria for scientists and their proposals included:
* a degree equivalent to a Ph.D.;
* at least five articles published in science publications
from inside or outside Russia since 1988;
* employment in scientific and/or educational institutions
in the former Soviet Union;
* proposed research to be conducted in the natural sciences;
and
* citizenship or at least six months' residence in the
former Soviet Union.
The Process
Each proposal author was asked to provide the names of six
reviewers familiar with his or her work from the relevant
research community in the former Soviet Union, according to
Irving Lerch, director of international scientific affairs
at the American Physical Society (APS). While the comments
of the reviewers were treated as referees' comments, "the
panelists have the responsibility for making the final
judgment," Lerch says.
Each panel had a secretary from the former Soviet Union who
was responsible for collecting the proposals, ensuring that
they were submitted in the proper format, and submitting
them to the appropriate panel in Washington, D.C., for peer
review.
The panelists are 220 scientists representing the U.S.,
Western Europe, Russia, the Ukraine, and other Baltic
states. The meetings, held over the past two months, have
been coordinated by staff members from the National Academy
of Sciences, APS, the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the
American Astronomical Society, the American Mathematical
Society, and the American Chemical Society (ACS). Panelists
were selected by the scientific societies, ISF's executive
council, and an advisory committee in Moscow.
"The professional organizations have been tremendously
helpful in providing administrative assistance," says
Williams. "While ISF is responsible for funding the selected
proposals, the scientific societies have overseen the
organization of panel meetings, maintained day-to-day
contact with panel members, and helped administer the review
process of proposals in specific disciplines."
Eugene Bierly, director for education and research at AGU,
says that the peer-review process did have some snags.
"The process didn't work that well in terms of timeliness,
and I suspect the reason was that our colleagues in Moscow
did not have experience in getting so many proposals out in
a timely manner," Bierly says. "Peer review is a new way of
doing things to scientists in the former Soviet Union. I
suspect at the next opportunity, things will go much
smoother and faster."
John Malin, administrator of ACS international activities,
notes that the joint peer-review process is the largest ever
undertaken by ACS or any scientific organization.
"This [review process] means the ACS's Office of
International Activities is handling a proposal load equal
to that administered each year by the entire chemistry
division of the National Science Foundation--a very tough
job," Malin says. "Never before in grants administration has
such an intense effort been organized and completed in so
short a time."
Lerch says his organization was eager to participate in the
process because it will help preserve important scientific
work in the former Soviet Union.
"We believe there is a need to try and preserve at least the
most important research grants there," he says. "Our view is
that whatever we can salvage will be extremely important to
science internationally."
Scientists in Russia and neighboring Baltic states have long
been hindered by a bloated science bureaucracy and a
struggling economy. One year ago, Hungarian-born tycoon and
philanthropist George Soros established ISF with the
objective of providing scientists in the former Soviet Union
with the opportunity to conduct research based on individual
merit (B. Goodman, The Scientist, Jan. 11, 1993, page 3).
Under the current structure, senior scientists were given
money to distribute among junior colleagues.
Malin, who recently returned to the U.S. from a visit to
Russia, says that country's struggle to change to a market-
oriented economy poses a major challenge to scientists.
"Their scientific establishment was probably overbuilt," he
says. "Now that they are learning about peer review, they
are probably going to have to look at science in a more
competitive way."
Funds received by scientists will help defray costs for
equipment, travel related to research, and salaries,
Williams says. "Scientists in Russia and neighboring states
report that the highest annual salaries are at about 45,000
rubles a month, the equivalent of about $500 a year," he
notes.
Malin adds that the work of researchers in the former Soviet
Union has also been limited by an information blackout.
"A serious problem we found in many of the proposals was a
grave lack of contact with the latest scientific
information," he says. "Because of the monetary problem with
the devaluation of the ruble, they just don't have the
buying power to purchase the latest science publications."
To help solve that problem, U.S. science organizations are
donating journals to libraries and other institutions around
the former Soviet Union. ACS, for example, is donating up to
500 recent and current ACS journals, with a market value of
about $500,000, to several Russian libraries across the
former Soviet Union.
Malin says the Fisher Chemical Co. of Pittsburgh has pledged
to donate about $600,000 worth of chemicals to ACS, which in
turn will give them to the N.D. Zelinski Institute of
Organic Chemistry in Moscow.
"We're excited about this process," Malin says. "There are
some fine chemists in Russia and the other former Soviet
countries, and ACS and ISF want to do all we can to help
them."
Williams says the combined efforts of ISF, the scientific
societies, and individual scientists should help researchers
in Russia and other newly independent states reach their
full potential.
"We think these grants and other programs will break the
mold because they are opening up opportunities to more
scientists based on merit rather than bureaucracy," Williams
says.
Tracey D. Webb is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
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TI : PITTCON '94 `Greatest Show Ever' For Analytical
Chemists
AU : NEERAJA SANKARAN
TY : NEWS
PG : 4
"From a Handful of Scientists to the Greatest Science Show
Ever!" is the slogan for the 1994 Pittsburgh Conference on
Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy (PITTCON '94),
to be held February 27 to March 4 in Chicago. Indeed, the
annual meeting where companies and scientists meet to
exchange information on the latest in analytical
instrumentation and technique has expanded dramatically in
45 years. The first meeting, held in Pittsburgh in 1950, had
20 technical papers, three exhibits, and perhaps 100
conferees. This year's attendance is expected to top 30,000.
Almost 1,000 companies will be displaying their newest
products in about 3,100 booths at the exposition. Among
these are companies like Danvers, Mass.-based Fisons
Instruments Inc. and Perkin-Elmer Corp. of Norwalk, Conn.,
which exhibited their products at the very first Pittsburgh
Conference, as well. Some of the original equipment shown by
these and other companies will be on display at the
"Antiquities Museum," a special exhibition of
instrumentation that has played a significant role in the
advancement of analytical chemistry.
"The museum will give today's scientists the chance to
review the advances in their fields and get back to their
roots," says W. Richard Howe, president of PITTCON '94.
"There has been a conversion from the earlier `wet'
chemistry to modern analytical techniques. Imaging
techniques are becoming more important now, as are computers
and network systems," says Howe, who trained as a chemist
and is currently an associate dean at the University of
Pittsburgh.
Old And New
One of the items on display at the museum will be an
original gas chromatograph, the GC Fractovap, Model GI,
manufactured by Fisons Instruments and shipped over from the
company's manufacturing site in Italy. "It [the Fractovap]
is the size of a huge refrigerator," says Cathy Schaub,
marketing communications manager of the company. "A modern
GC sits on a bench top." Fisons will also have parts from
its early mass spectrometers (manufactured in the United
Kingdom) on display in the Antiquities Museum.
A visit to Fisons' 4,400-square-foot booth--one of the
largest exhibit booths at the exposition--will give
conferees an idea of how technologies have evolved over the
past 45 years. On display will be new instruments such as
the VG Platform-II mass spectrometer for benchtop analysis,
and the Quattro-II line of mass spectrometers, which has
applications in areas of pharmaceutical and biopolymer
analysis.
In addition to the exposition, PITTCON '94 will feature more
than 35 symposia with 1,800 papers and posters from
specialists in various fields of analytical chemistry and
spectroscopy.
Organizers of this year's PITTCON created three
miniconferences on the special subdisciplines of
bioanalytical chemistry, quality management, and process
analytical chemistry, "to personalize it for those who feel
it [PITTCON] is becoming too big," says Vincent Conrad, the
1994 programs chairman, a research chemist at Pittsburgh-
based CONSOL Inc. Research and Development, a member of the
CONSOL Coal Group. Each of these miniconferences will
contain all the elements of a full-fledged conference,
including symposia, invited talks, posters, workshops, and
panel discussions.
Though it has long outgrown its original home of Pittsburgh,
PITTCON retains its name because of its sponsors: the
Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh and the
Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh. All the members of the
organizing committee are volunteers who hold regular full-
time positions elsewhere.
AT A GLANCE
PITTCON '94, the 45th annual Pittsburgh Conference on
Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy, is being held
at the McCormick Place-on-the-Lake in Chicago from February
27 to March 4. The program will consist of 40 different
symposia, with more than 200 invited speakers. In addition
to these presentations, the technical program features more
than 1,700 contributed papers and in excess of 40 short
courses. Almost 1,000 companies dealing with analytical and
spectroscopic instrumentation will be exhibiting their
products in about 3,100 booths at the exposition, which will
run from February 28 to March 3. New this year are three
miniconferences on special issues, each including the
components of a regular conference.
MINICONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS
Bioanalytical Chemistry
Symposia
Monday, Feb. 28
* 8:30 A.M.: Techniques for Food Safety and Environmental
Monitoring
* 1:30 P.M.: Chemical Sensors: A Tribute to Wilhelm Simon
(Simon is best known for his pioneering work toward
developing ion-selective electrodes. He was a professor at
the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich until
his death in November 1992.)
Tuesday, March 1
* 8:30 A.M.: On-line Process Analysis on the Micron Scale
* 1:30 P.M.: Pharmaceutical Analysts
Poster Session
Monday, Feb. 28 to Tuesday, March 1
Managing Quality
Symposia
Tuesday, March 1
* 1:30 P.M.: The ISO 9000 Series and Global Harmonization of
Standards (The ISO 9000 is a series of standards established
by the National Institute of Standards and Technology for
addressing quality standards within organizations
worldwide.)
Wednesday, March 2
* 1:30 P.M.: Laboratory Accreditation, Atomic Absorption,
and Atomic Fluorescence
Panel Discussion
Wednesday, March 2
* 8:30 A.M.: Quality Systems
Poster Session
Wednesday, March 2
Process Analytical Chemistry
Symposia
Wednesday, March 2
* 8:30 A.M.: The Role of the Analytical Laboratory in
Process Analysis
Thursday, March 3
* 8:30 A.M.: Transferring Analytical Technology from the
Laboratory to the Plant
Poster Session
Wednesday, March 2
User-Manufacturer Information Exchange
Sunday, Feb. 27
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
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TI : PITTCON '94 TACKLES THE ENVIRONMENT
TY : NEWS
PG : 5
PITTCON '94 features several sessions focusing on the
practical applications of spectroscopy and analytical
techniques in environmental remediation and monitoring.
Listed are some of the major symposia, workshops, and short
courses offered at the conference.
Monday, Feb. 28
8:30 A.M.
Symposia
* Techniques for Food Safety and Environmental Monitoring
(bioanalytical miniconference)
* Surface Mass Spectroscopy: Probing Real-World Samples
Tuesday, March 1
8:30 A.M.
Short Course
* 234: Supercritical Space Extraction: Practical
Considerations and Applications in Environmental Analysis
Wednesday, March 2
1:30 P.M.
Short Course
* 209: Introduction to Environmental Mass Spectroscopy
Thursday, March 3
8:30 A.M.
Symposia
* Advances in Purge and Trapping Gas Chromatography
* Analysis of Environmental Biohazards
* Environmental Mass Spectroscopy
1:30 P.M.
Symposium
* Indoor Air Measurements
Workshop
* Lead Laboratory Accreditation
Friday, March 4
8:30 A.M.
Symposium
* Advances in Environmental Remediation
Workshops
* Detection and Quantitation Definitions and Issues
* Field Water Sampling Using In Situ Solid Phase Extraction
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
NOTEBOOK
----------------------------------------------------------
TI : Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On
TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)
PG : 4
Seismologists for the New York State Geological Survey, a
research arm of the State Museum in Albany, are searching
for personal accounts, photos of damage, and other
information related to four earthquakes that struck the
state earlier in this century. The events occurred in the
counties of Attica on Aug. 12, 1929; Warrensburg on April
30, 1931; Massena on Sept. 5, 1944; and Essex and Hamilton
on Oct. 7, 1983. The data and documentation the scientists
obtain will be compiled in an education package to be used
by teachers around the state in their earth sciences
classes. The museum already has an extensive collection of
data on earthquakes in the region, dating back more than two
centuries. In addition to educating students and teachers
about these seismic events, the museum is trying to educate
the public about earthquake risks in a region of the United
States where that might not be a foremost topic. Anybody
with information on the four quakes is requested to contact
Gary Nottis of the survey at (518) 474-5816.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
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TI : Bioscience Hotspots
TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)
PG : 4
The University of California, Davis, is fertile ground for
the biosciences, according to a report by the National
Research Council. Using 1991-92 academic year figures, the
Summary Report 1992: Doctorate Recipients from United States
Universities (Washington, D.C., National Academy Press,
1993) declared UC-Davis the national leader in awarding
doctoral degrees in the biological sciences, with 126.
Rounding out the top five in this category were the
University of Wisconsin, Madison (120); the University of
California, Berkeley (94); Yale University (82); and the
University of Minnesota (79).
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
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TI : Chaos In The Works
TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)
PG : 4
The Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life
Sciences is calling for abstracts of papers, posters, and
session proposals for its next annual conference, to be held
June 24-27 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The
society brings together researchers and practitioners
interested in applying dynamical systems theory, self-
organization theory, neural nets, fractals, and other forms
of chaos and complexity theory to the study of nonlinear
independent systems. Conference topics--around which the
meeting will be organized, rather than disciplines--include
chaos theory, methods, research, and application to all
types of clinical practice; organization psychology;
anthropology; neuropsychology; sociology; economics;
education; and the humanities. Abstracts of 800 words or
fewer should be submitted by March 15 to: Jeffrey Goldstein,
29 Hayes Rd., Amityville, N.Y. 11701. E-mail:
goldstein@adlibv.adelphi.edu. For information about the
society, contact Katherine E. Robertson, Society for Chaos
Theory, P.O. Box 7226, Alhambra, Calif. 91802-7226. E-mail:
0005699249@mcimail.com.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
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NEXT:
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TI : A Closer Look At Inner Space
TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)
PG : 4
Researchers at AT&T Bell Laboratories have developed a
technique for detecting and identifying single molecules
with more than 100 times the sensitivity of previous
methods, the company announced. Their discovery has
potential applications in numerous areas, including
molecular engineering, analytical chemistry, cell biology,
and genetics. Eric Betzig and Rob Chichester of the Murray
Hill, N.J., firm's Physical Research Laboratory used a
"near-field" scanning optical microscope to funnel a
lightbeam, used to detect molecules, through a tapered
optical fiber with an opening 100 billionths-of-a-meter
wide, reducing the volume of a sample to the point at which
single molecules can be detected repeatedly with improved
sensitivity. The technique eliminates a long-standing
problem of "background haze" from the rest of the sample by
its ability to focus the probe beam to a dimension smaller
than the order of the wavelength of the probe light, which
is a billion times larger than the volume of the molecule
itself. Betzig and Chichester's technique allows researchers
to generate a precise map of the location of individual
molecules at the surface of specimens. "As a bonus," Betzig
notes, they can use the technique to determine the
orientation of each molecule.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
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TI : Funding For Minority Doctors
TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)
PG : 4
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Minority Medical
Faculty Development Program is a four-year, postdoctoral
research fellowship for outstanding minority physicians who
are committed to careers in academic medicine. The fellows
chosen will receive a $50,000 yearly stipend and a $25,000
annual research grant to conduct research in areas of
interest to them. The postdocs are open to minority
physicians who are U.S. citizens and who have completed
their clinical training. Applicants' materials will be
reviewed and semifinalists will be chosen for interviews.
The deadline for requests of application materials is March
22; the deadline for the receipt of the completed
applications is April 15. For information, contact James R.
Gavin III, Program Director, Minority Medical Faculty
Development Program, 4733 Bethesda Ave., Suite 350,
Bethesda, Md. 20814; (301) 913-0210. Fax: (202) 913-9022.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
----------------------------------------------------------
TI : Networking For Human Rights
TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)
PG : 4
The AAAS Program on Science and Human Rights is calling on
individuals concerned about persecution of scientists,
engineers, health professionals, and science students to
join the AAAS Human Rights Action Network, an electronic
network accessible through Internet. The purpose of the
network is to facilitate letter-writing and information
campaigns directed at U.S. and international officials to
help persecuted scientists around the world. There is no
charge to join the network. Send the message "SUBSCRIBE
AAASHRAN[first name, last name]" to the E-mail address
listerv@gwuvm.gwu.edu. For information, contact AAAS, 1333 H
St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
----------------------------------------------------------
TI : Brainstorm Awards
TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)
PG : 4
A Washington, D.C.-based organization, Intellectual Property
Owners, is calling for nominations for its 1994 National
Inventor of the Year award. The winners of the award, whose
purpose is to increase awareness of current inventors and
their benefit to society, will receive a $5,000 cash grant
and a plaque. Winners will be honored, along with
Distinguished Inventor runnersup, during a ceremony on
Capitol Hill. An inventor is eligible for an award if the
invention is covered by a U.S. patent, either was patented
or first became available commercially in 1993, and was made
in the U.S. Last year's award went to Gary H. Rasmusson and
Glenn F. Reynolds of Rahway, N.J.-based Merck & Co. Inc. for
Proscar, the first drug for treatment of prostate
enlargement. The deadline for nominations is March 4. For
information, contact National Inventor of the Year,
Intellectual Property Owners, 1255 22rd St., N.W., Suite
850, Washington, D.C. 20037; (202) 466-2396. Fax: (202) 833-
3636.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
OPINION
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TI : A Scientist Reflects On His `21st-Century Odyssey'
Within Biosphere 2
TY : OPINION
PG : 11
Editor's Note: On Sept. 26, 1993, four men and four women
emerged from two years inside a giant Arizona greenhouse
described by the New York Times as "the world's largest and
strangest test-tube experiment, a planet-in-a-bottle called
Biosphere 2."
Among those emerging was 69-year-old University of
California, Los Angeles, researcher and professor of
pathology Roy L. Walford, who for more than 20 years has
studied the effects of low-calorie, nutrient-dense diets in
animals. Walford continued this research in Biosphere 2, a
glass-sealed, 3.15-acre space, replete with an ocean, grassy
savanna, and 3,800 species of plants and animals. The
difference was that this time, Walford's subjects were
humans, rather than mice and rats.
According to Walford and the other so-called biospherians,
their two-year mission within the "closed ecological support
system and research facility" was a resounding success. They
count among their most significant accomplishments growing
approximately 80 percent of their own food, recycling 100
percent of all human and domestic wastes as well as all
water in their environment, and setting a new rec-ord for
living in a closed system by surpassing the previous record
(six months) set by Russian researchers in 1984.
The mainstream scientific community, however, has been less
congratulatory. A number of scientists have criticized the
venture for setting aside rigorous scientific methods in its
attempt to meet its goals of finding new ways to sustain
human life in outer space and to combat pollution. Some
scientists also have criticized the circus-like atmosphere
surrounding the project. A number of attractions including a
bookstore and espresso bar, a "Biosphere Cafe" and a
"Biosphere 2 Postal Center--are near the experimental
facility, which is located in the foothills of the Catalina
Mountains north of Tucson in Oracle, Ariz.
In a recent interview with Ridley Park, Pa.-based freelance
writer Julia King, Walford described what it was like--as a
scientist and as a human being--to leave Biosphere 1, the
Earth, for two years and to live and work in the closed
atmosphere of Biosphere 2. Following is an edited version of
the interview.
Q What were your scientific research goals in the biosphere?
A First of all, I didn't plan a great deal of research when
I went in. I figured I was just going to be a country
doctor inside. However, a lot of strange things happened,
and because of my background in research, I was able to
seize upon these and make them into what you might call an
experiment of nature. For example, we had projected that we
would have 2,500 calories per day per person. But there we
had only about 1,800 for the first six months [because of]
low light, insects, pests, and so forth. The diet turned out
to be a low-calorie, low-fat, and nutrient-dense diet. This
is like the diet I've been studying for years in my research
in animals, which extends life span, retards the rate of
aging, and induces a number of physiologic changes. This is
a big area in gerontology, and yet it happened just by a
freak of chance that I would be positioned inside, taking
care of these people, when the same kind of diet was forced
upon them. So this, then, was an experiment of nature.
Q Have you published any results of your studies?
A My report on the first six months of work in the
biosphere was published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences [89:11533, December 1992]. That
became quite a famous paper because it was the first
rigorous human study of this kind of nutrition.
Q What did the diet consist of?
A It was largely vegetarian--beans, grains, some fruits,
mainly bananas. There was meat once a week, an egg about
every two weeks, starches, potatoes, sweet potatoes, white
potatoes, vegetables. There was a moderate amount of
variety, but not a great variety, so the biospherians had to
learn how to make a cuisine out of a limited amount of food,
and that turned out quite well.
Q I've read several articles in which other biospherians
report being obsessed with food, having constant
cravings, and so forth. I also understand that everyone
inside lost quite a bit of weight. Did you experience any
particular cravings? What kind of weight loss did you
experience?
A I maintain a fairly vegetarian diet generally, so I
didn't go around craving food. Nothing in the area of oral
consumption was a big problem for me. The average weight
loss was 18 percent of body weight for men and about 10 or
12 percent for women. My personal weight was about 145 going
in. The lowest point I reached was 119. When I came out I
was 124. [Walford's height is 5 feet, 7 inches.]
Q There have been rumors that you and the other
biospherians were forced to secretly import food into the
biosphere as a result of the poor growing conditions and low
food supply. Was food imported?
A None was imported. There was some stored food already
inside--about two or three months' worth. Also, there were a
lot of beans and so forth that were stock for planting,
which, instead of planting, we ate.
Q So, you could say that the planting beans were, in a
sense, intended for consumption anyway?
A Only if we could not make the grade agriculturally. I
think we grew about 80 to 85 percent of the food we
consumed.
Q What was the focus of your dietary research?
A What I measured in the biospherians were different
physiologic changes, such as blood pressure and cholesterol.
There was an enormous drop in cholesterol, low blood sugar,
a low white blood cell count--all hallmarks of the same
changes that occur in animals on such a diet.
Q If these hallmarks are the same for humans as they are
for animals, do you think other effects of the low-fat, low-
calorie, nutrient-dense diet that you have observed in
animals may also manifest themselves in humans?
A One can infer that humans are acting in the same way. And
if you wish to make that inference for the other things
found in such a diet, you would also obtain in humans
retardation of aging, health enhancement, and resistance to
tumor development. That research has been continuing. I got
a great deal more data on it during the next year and one-
half [following the PNAS paper], and still more now that
I've come out. In collaboration with the metabolic people at
the National Institutes of Health, I'll be doing further
work with frozen plasma serum that I drew inside.
Q What were some of your other research pursuits inside the
biosphere?
A I've also done a fair amount of work on oxygen depletion
because there was a period when the oxygen level in the
biosphere declined to about 14 percent, as opposed to the
outside atmosphere of 21 percent. Fourteen percent is the
equivalent of being at about 13,500 feet up a mountain. In
this way of thinking, our ascent up the mountain was about
700 feet per month, and this induced a long-term gradual
hypoxia in the biospherians. I've done quite a few studies
on that, which are not yet written up. They were interesting
because the biospherians did not acclimatize in the usual
way to that kind of oxygen depletion. Their hemoglobin
levels didn't rise very much, and they did not experience
the kinds of changes in blood chemistry that one might
expect. I might say that I'm in the process of founding a
new medical specialty, which you can call biospheric
medicine.
Q What is biospheric medicine?
A Biospheric medicine is not just a kind of extension of
space medicine, but will be a subspecialty in its own right
and will deal with the practice of medicine or other
sciences when you're in a situation where things go off in
unpredictable directions. I predicted upon going into the
biosphere that the main problems would be infection, trauma,
and toxicity. In fact, none of these happened to any great
degree. What happened was calorie depletion and oxygen
depletion, and these were unpredicted. I think in the
future, as we develop more biospheres, that other things
will be happening that are not very well predicted. The
biospheric physician has to have the kind of mind or kind of
training that allows him to handle or adapt to the
unpredictable.
Q How do you respond to critics of biosphere research,
which is regarded by much of the mainstream scientific
community as less than rigorous?
A That's not the case for my work. I don't think people
have criticized my work. The [PNAS] paper is very
respectable, of course, and people expect me to come out
with more on that category. I think the criticism is
directed toward the major focus of the biosphere, which is
as an ecological laboratory doing scientific investigations
into ecology. I think the criticism is premature. I think
it's very clear-cut what needs to be done is to justify the
project scientifically. It is a long-term project, so I
think the other biospherians deserve an other year or two
or three. But, then, if they don't come out with substantial
papers in major journals, the criticism is correct.
Q Did you know the other seven researchers prior to living
with them for two years in Biosphere 2?
A Sure. Everybody who went in had periods of training.
Space Biospheres Ventures [the company that built and
sponsored Biosphere 2] has a cattle ranch in western
Australia where everybody goes to spend a season. That's a
strenuous deal. I was stringing barbed wire across the
landscape, pounding fence posts, and riding horses herding
cattle all day for six weeks. I suppose you could call it a
stamina test.
Q What were your relationships like inside the biosphere?
A Well, I think we had a community with four people and the
other four were like some separate group. There was a fair
amount of factionalism inside. I feel fairly close to three
other people that I was in with and not so close with four.
[The factionalism] caused a lot of problems, but I think
everybody was so devoted to making the biosphere work that
everything held together despite personal conflicts. There
weren't any fights or heated arguments, but there were
people who got on each others' nerves. But we overlooked
that because we had a job to do.
Q What was a typical day like in the biosphere?
A Usually you get up at 6:00 or 6:30 A.M.; breakfast is at
8:00. You may have various things to do between when you get
up and breakfast--milking goats or watering something or, in
my case, drawing blood. I wanted pre-breakfast blood on the
biospherians. After breakfast there was about two hours of
heavy-duty agricultural work--weeding, trenching, carrying
buckets, gathering animal fodder, and so forth. Then there
might be another hour of crew work of some kind. One of the
things I did quite a bit was repair and take care of the
sensors. It was electrical work. There are more than 100
sensors for temperature, humidity, and so forth. In the
afternoon I usually worked on medical or computer work.
Other people would have agricultural work. One person would
work in the rain forest, another in the terrestrial
wilderness--doing research or propping up plants or
planting. That would be it. Then dinner would be at 6:30
P.M., and the evenings were pretty much free time.
Q What would you do for entertainment?
A Well I should tell you everybody had to cook. Every
eighth day you had to cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner for
all eight people, and that was about a 10-hour job.
Entertainment? Well, I'd read, watch television, talk to
other people, something like that. I did a lot of video
inside and I'm getting together an art exhibit with an
outside performance artist that I interacted with while I
was in the biosphere. We're doing an art piece that we're
working up for a gallery exhibit called "The 21st Century
Odyssey."
Q And how would you communicate with the outside world?
A E-mail, telephone, telecommunications, picturetel,
videophone, fax . . . telepathy. All of the methods of
communication.
Q What was it like when you came out?
A Re-entry was easy, but kind of confusing. When you
settled into two years of pretty much of a routine, you knew
where everything was, in a sense. So when we came out,
everybody got kind of confused and forgot where they put
this or that. For a few days or a week, everybody was losing
their papers, their books. They couldn't remember where they
put their keys and so forth.
It was also funny to deal with money again. I felt like
going to a restaurant, pulling out $20, and saying, "Bring
me that much food." This is what a savage would do. We felt
kind of like that, like you had come in from the jungle and
all of a sudden you were in civilization. I think everybody
had the experience that when they drove first in the car,
the landscape went by so fast that it was kind of
psychedelic. You had to shut your eyes. You weren't
accustomed to taking in visual information and change that
rapidly.
Q Did anything change substantially in the world outside
from the time you entered the biosphere?
A I don't think anything really took me by surprise because
we had television and communications. Of course while we
were in, the Russian Empire fell, the economic scene
deteriorated--stuff like that--but I expected it.
Q What's your next adventure? Would you go back into the
biosphere?
A Not a second time. But it was worthwhile to do it once.
For my next adventure, well, I have a number of books to
write. I have a lot of work to do in getting up an art
exhibit.
I used to publish quite a bit of journalism, a moderate
number of short stories and poetry. Now I have some more
serious books I want to write.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
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TI : Women In Science: Much Has Been Accomplished, But Much
Remains To Be Done
AU : NEAL LANE
TY : OPINION (COMMENTARY)
PG : 12
One of the most important and most debated issues facing the
scientific community today is that of underrepresentation by
women of all ethnic groups. I address the topic here in the
hope that increased discourse will lead to increased
understanding.
The Nov. 15, 1993, issue of The Scientist contained a page-
one article (R. Twombly, "Congresswomen Take NIH And NSB To
Task Over Gender Bias") that correctly noted that women are
underrepresented at the top levels of national science
policy. Since that article appeared, President Bill Clinton,
in keeping with his commitment to increase the number of
women and minorities in positions of federal responsibility,
has nominated Shirley Malcom to fill the only vacancy on the
National Science Board (NSB). Malcom currently is head of
the directorate for education and human resources programs
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS). Upon her confirmation by the Senate, she will be an
outstanding addition to NSB.
Yet, as important as it is to have highly visible role
models as participants at the top levels of science and
technology policy, the task we face is much broader. We must
redouble our efforts and continually push to increase the
number of qualified women at all levels of involvement in
science, mathematics, and engineering. As a society, we must
undertake these efforts because it is the right thing to do.
For those who need a more pragmatic argument, demographic
trends indicate that, between now and the turn of the
century, nearly two-thirds of new entrants into the work
force will be women. The jobs potentially available to these
new working women will require higher skill levels in
science, engineering, and mathematics than ever before.
These statistics are quite well known; what is more
difficult to identify and change are the root causes of the
cultural attitudes that continue to limit the full potential
of women in science and engineering.
While we consider the challenges and work ahead, let us not
be blind to the progress that has already been made.
According to 1993 National Science Foundation statistics,
during the most recent 10-year period for which data are
available, the proportion of women receiving Ph.D.'s in
science, mathematics, and engineering increased from 22
percent to 27 percent. In engineering, the proportion of
women earning doctorates nearly doubled, from 4 percent in
1981 to 7.7 percent in 1991. In a few scientific disciplines
today--such as psychology and agricultural and biological
sciences--a higher percentage of undergraduate degrees are
being awarded to women than to men. This movement needs to
be encouraged and expanded. Although society is moving
beyond the simplistic stereotypes regarding women (and
members of other underrepresented groups), many of the
values and assumptions that underpin those stereotypes
remain.
In spite of some notable progress, there are still problems
at the top. Most of our scientific and technical
institutions, including NSF, are managed primarily by men.
And many men, I believe--no matter how concerned and
sensitive they may be--have great difficulty understanding
the obstacles that women have had to overcome to pursue
careers in science, mathematics, and engineering. And these
obstacles are compounded for women of color. We simply
cannot know the discouragement that girls often experience
in their homes and schools throughout their childhood, only
to be followed by similar negative experiences in colleges
or universities--and even in the workplace, provided they
can stay with it. If we did understand better, perhaps
unpleasant and even hostile learning and working
environments would be rare. Perhaps the structures of our
institutions would long ago have been changed. Perhaps the
glass ceilings would have disappeared.
Why is it so difficult to understand? Why can't we do more
to change the climate and structure of our working
environments? It's time we found out. Otherwise, women are
not likely to be attracted in greater numbers to careers in
these fields that are so important to the future of the
nation. And that would be a tragedy for all of us.
I call on all members of the science, mathematics, and
engineering community to accelerate progress to provide
women the same career opportunities as men. Let us work
together to share approaches that have been shown to be
effective and to explore new ideas. I invite readers to
share with me their ideas on this matter--to let me know
what more NSF can do.
Neal Lane is director of the National Science Foundation,
4201 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, Va. 22230.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
LETTERS
------------------------------------------------------------
TI : A Scientific Tradition
AU : WILLIAM RAINE
TY : OPINION (LETTERS)
PG : 12
The endeavors undertaken by Peyrets Goldmacher and the
Association of Engineers and Scientists for New Americans
(P. Goldmacher, "Let's Give Russian Scientists The Chance To
Succeed--And Contribute--In The U.S.," The Scientist, Oct.
4, 1993, page 12) deserve further consideration. Despite
Goldmacher's plea, the task of job hunting should be easy
for them. This can be understood by looking at the refugees'
U.S. counterparts, such as myself.
I am a product of an American academic institution imbued
with only two centuries of scientific tradition, for even
though Georgetown University is the oldest Catholic
institution of higher learning in the United States, ours is
a young country. While English is my second language, I
learned it at a young age and thus speak it without too much
difficulty. This skill was put to good use by teaching
physics at my alma mater, first as a graduate student and
subsequently as a postdoctoral fellow. Unlike the Russian
scientists with "doctorat nauk" degrees Goldmacher mentions,
I will not be able to do considerable research beyond my
Ph.D. because the number of applications for each assistant
professor or postdoctoral position at even the least
prestigious U.S. academic institutions is in the several
hundreds.
While most of my U.S. colleagues (many of whom are first-
generation Americans themselves) possess far nicer c.v.'s
than mine, some of them have found that they too will be
forced to sit on the sidelines. The truth, which U.S.
universities are only beginning to recognize, is that
scientists from Europe and the former Soviet Union survived
a grueling process of elimination, which often begins in
grammar school. Those pedagogical methods are simple and
efficient, ensuring finalists of the highest quality for a
preselected number of slots designed to prevent a glut in
their market.
The U.S. market, on the other hand, has been glutted for 30
years because, rather than hold tough examinations such as
the Tripos, the Concours des Grandes Ecoles, or the types of
examinations made famous by Lev Landau's school of physics,
we merely required comprehensive qualifying examinations at
the master's and Ph.D. levels. Two generations of younger
Americans had been aggressively encouraged to become
scientists.
In May, as a result, I shall be obliged to leave physics,
that which I love most and to which I have devoted all the
youthful years of my life. In May, I will be happy to answer
Goldmacher's call for volunteers to aid emigre scientists in
the affirmative.
WILLIAM RAINE
Department of Physics
Georgetown University
Washington, D.C. 20057
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
----------------------------------------------------------
TI : Animal Research Data
AU : DONALD J. BARNES
TY : OPINION (LETTERS)
PG : 12
Ron Kaufman's report ("Scientific Merit, Rather Than Morals,
Guides Use Of Animals In Lab Research," The Scientist, July
12, 1993, page 1) and Martin L. Stephens's letter (The
Scientist, Nov. 1, 1993, page 12) state that biomedical
researchers choose their experimental subjects on a
scientific rather than a moral standard. This is simply not
true.
There is no doubt that humans are the most scientifically
valid surrogates for other humans.
The dilemma is in the scope of one's ethical purview--that
is, nonhuman animals are simply not included in the ethical
systems of many biomedical researchers. Herein lies the crux
of the debate; when one expands one's circle of compassion
to include all animals, alternatives must be found for
entertainment, clothing, dietary needs, and even biomedical
research.
Through the National Anti-Vivisection Society's support, the
International Foundation for Ethical Research is actively
seeking means of advancing the goals of biomedicine without
causing stress, pain, suffering, and death to other
creatures.
Is it not axiomatic that moral considerations should
necessarily take precedence over scientific hypotheses?
DONALD J. BARNES
Director of Education
National Anti-Vivisection Society
53 W. Jackson Blvd.
Chicago, Ill. 60604-3795
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
RESEARCH
----------------------------------------------------------
TI : RU 486 Research Forges On, Despite Political Hurdles
AU : MYRNA E. WATANABE
TY : RESEARCH
PG : 14
It has been a year since President Bill Clinton, in one of
his first major acts, called for an import alert on the drug
RU 486, commonly called "the abortion pill," to be
reconsidered. The alert, imposed by the Bush administration
in 1991, allegedly in response to political pressure from
conservative and right-to-life groups, prohibits the
importation of the drug into the United States for personal
use.
Since then, agreements have been reached between the drug's
French manufacturer, Paris-based Roussel-Uclaf, and the New
York-based Population Council to begin clinical trials of RU
486 as an abortifacient in the U.S. Furthermore, the head of
Roussel has met with David Kessler, the chief of the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration, to discuss the drug.
Nonetheless, the ban still remains in effect, until such
trials result in FDA approval of the drug.
At the time the embargo first went into effect, biomedical
researchers in different fields had been studying the drug's
promising mechanisms and therapeutic effects in
nonabortifacient uses for several years--as a potential
treatment for cancer and immune system and neurological
disorders, and as a contraceptive. The ban, many of these
scientists feared, would have a chilling effect on their
studies, limiting availability of the drug and support for
their work. But that did not happen, according to many RU
486 researchers, with supplies of the drug and government
funding for research remaining essentially unchanged from
before the embargo.
Given the Clinton administration's supportive attitude, it
would have been reasonable to expect that an upsurge in
studies and trials might have occurred over the past year.
Yet very little new research is being done on the drug in
the U.S. and there has not been a significant increase in
the modest numbers of projects receiving federal support.
Scientists studying the drug, as well as science agency
administrators, have several theories on why this is so. A
few researchers are concerned that the stigma surrounding
the drug because of its abortifacient uses may have carried
over to non-abortion-related uses of the compound. Some even
worry that this reticence to carry out research may extend
to Roussel itself, which is the only source of the drug and
a major supplier of research funds for it. And yet still
others believe RU 486 is being neglected because it is
perceived as a "women's drug," suffering the same lack of
federal funding as studies of other women's diseases. On the
other hand, some scientists and some agency officials
believe that the main reason for the nonproliferation of
studies is that similar drugs are showing equal, if not
greater, promise.
Whatever the case, several investigations with the drug are
under way in a variety of biomedical areas.
The State Of RU 486 Research
Clinton's call for reevaluating RU 486 opened the way for
scientific comment on possible clinical uses of the drug.
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of
Sciences was commissioned by the Henry J. Kaiser Family
Foundation to write a report on the scientific status of
research with RU 486 and similar antiprogestin compounds.
The distinguished scientific panel made recommendations for
further studies in the report, which is based, in part, on a
two-day seminar held in Washington, D.C., last spring and
attended by some of the top researchers using RU 486 (M.S.
Donaldson, et al., eds., Clinical Applications of
Mifepristone (RU 486) and Other Antiprogestins: Assessing
the Science and Recommending a Research Agenda, Washington,
D.C., National Academy Press, 1983). The panel concluded
that antiprogestins have many potential applications aside
from abortion--as contraceptives, in uterine diseases, in
breast and ovarian cancers, in Cushing's disease, and
against nonmalignant menin-giomas, among others--but needed
much additional study.
Some of these studies are ongoing and others are just
beginning, but they give an indication of extensive medical
research potential for a drug that would have been consigned
to public obscurity until approval were it not for the
abortion controversy.
RU 486 (or mifepristone, as it is called generically) and
similar antiprogestins interact with progesterone receptors.
The effects of these compounds are broad, and indications
are that they may be used in treatment of numerous diseases,
many unrelated to reproductive function. RU 486 also has a
strong antiglucocorticoid effect that makes it useful in
treating diseases in which glucocorticoid receptors can be
blocked (see accompanying story).
Kathryn Horwitz, a molecular endocrinologist at the
University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver and one
of the foremost researchers on the role of hormone receptors
in breast cancer, explains that breast cancers grow in
response to estradiol and progesterone. Antiestrogens, like
tamoxifen, are used clinically to inhibit growth of the
cancer tissue.
Now, Horwitz says, it is important to study the role of
antiprogestins, such as RU 486, to complement the
suppression of the estrogenic component. She expects that in
the future, antiestrogens and antiprogestins could be
combined in a treatment regimen.
"Right now, we have very little clinical information on the
antiprogestins alone," she says. Horwitz is one of a few
researchers receiving funding from the National Cancer
Institute (NCI) for her studies on breast cancer cells and
RU 486.
Some clinical evidence of the drug's potential use with
breast cancer patients may be forthcoming. A very small test
of the drug in women with advanced breast cancer will be
conducted at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center in
California.
The one Phase III clinical trial supported by NCI is a study
of the effects of the drug on nonresectable meningioma.
Meningiomas are nonmalignant, recurring growths on the
meninges, or the covering of the brain, that lead to death.
According to Steven Grunberg, who is coordinating the trial
and is chief of the hematology and oncology unit at the
University of Vermont College of Medicine in Burlington, 70
percent of meningiomas, whether in male or female patients,
have high levels of progesterone receptors. RU 486, as an
antiprogestational agent, would be able to block the
receptors on the tumors, discouraging tumor growth. A pilot
study, begun in 1987 while Grunberg was at the University of
Southern California, showed positive results. The trial is
coordinated through the Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG) in
San Antonio, Texas, and institutions throughout the U.S. are
participating.
In a number of small clinical tests, Samuel S.C. Yen of the
University of California, San Diego, has been studying the
effects of RU 486 on two very common, nonmalignant, painful
conditions related to uterine tissue: endometriosis and
leio-myoma. Current pharmaceutical regimens have potentially
serious side effects and are therefore limited to the short
term; minimally invasive surgery also results in only
temporary relief. The only cure is hysterectomy. Thus, a
drug that can be administered on a long-term basis with
minimal side effects would become the preferred method of
treatment. Women treated in trials with RU 486 showed
greater improvement than is usually seen with other drugs,
Yen says.
One of the research projects is based on the drug's
effectiveness in promoting uterine contractions. Marilynn
Frederiksen, an obstetrician-gynecologist with Northwestern
University Medical School in Chicago, has had some success
in clinical studies stimulating labor using RU 486 in women
carrying dead fetuses. She currently is negotiating with
Roussel for a clinical study on the kinetics and efficacy of
the drug in inducing labor in cases of stillbirth.
RU 486 has several mechanisms of action. One of these is as
an antiglucocorticoid.
George Chrousos and Lynnette Kaye Nieman of NIH's National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) are
using RU 486 to treat some patients with a certain subtype
of Cushing's syndrome, a disease characterized by excess
production of adrenocorticosteroid hormones, such as
cortisol. Because glucocorticoids are important in
suppression of inflammatory response, Chrousos has used the
drug in other basic research on the action of
glucocorticoids in humans.
The antiglucocorticoid function of the drug has resulted in
another clinical study to determine if RU 486 will foster
memory improvement in Alzheimer's disease patients. This
trial, to total 40 patients, is being carried out by Nunzio
Pomara, director of the Geriatric Psychiatry Center of the
Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research in
Orangeburg, N.Y., at the New York University School of
Medicine, where he is a research associate professor of
psychiatry.
Pomara explains that in animal studies, high endogenous and
exogenous corticosteroid levels have been found to damage
the hippocampus. He says that some Alzheimer's patients have
increased cortisol levels that cannot be pharmacologically
decreased, and many Cushing's syndrome patients--who have
high cortisol levels--show signs of cognitive and memory
deficits, some even having dementia. Thus, Pomara reasons,
blocking glucocorticoid receptors with RU 486 in Alzheimer's
patients may decrease damage to the hippocampus.
Why So Little New Research?
With such fascinating and diverse projects using the drug,
the question arises as to why so few projects are being
funded by the government. Almost all the researchers
contacted for this story believe that the political fallout
because the drug's major use is in inducing abortion is, at
most, a mild undercurrent in terms of reduced federal
support for RU 486 projects. Because the drug is treated as
an unproven new drug by FDA, investigators must file an
investigational new drug application (IND) in order to
obtain supplies of it. But these scientists say that FDA
has, by and large, not inhibited their ability to get the
drug and has approved their INDs.
NCI has been funding basic research on RU 486 for several
years. The institute's total support, however, is small. For
example, in 1992 the agency disbursed $281,000 in grants; in
1993, $276,000 in grants and $157,000 for the clinical
meningioma trial. When asked why NCI is not funding more
research with the drug, Michael Friedman, associate director
for the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program at NCI, explains,
"There was an important need to evaluate this agent in
patients with meningioma and so we were happy to help
investigators perform a Phase III study. For breast cancer
and other indications, the company, that is, Roussel-Uclaf,
showed us all the data they had. Although some patients seem
to have benefited from the agent, it looked to be no
different than other hormonally active agents." Friedman
adds, "We are reevaluating this position regularly so that
if new information becomes available, our enthusiasm might
change."
Ana Murphy, director of the division of reproductive
endocrinology at Emory University School of Medicine in
Atlanta, who has been studying the drug for endometriosis
and fibroids along with UCSD's Yen, has another theory. She
believes that RU 486 is being treated as a drug for women,
and "there's no money in the budget for a lot of women's
diseases."
Although some researchers have had very productive
experiences working with and receiving funding from Roussel,
others fault the drug company. They say that political and
economic pressures within the company and from its parent
firm, Hoechst AG in Berlin, may be adversely affecting its
ability to fund these projects. They also say that other
companies, such as Berlin-Teknika in Belgium, have other
drugs that may be better than RU 486.
Thus, most projects have been funded, at least in part, by
researchers' own sources. Yen, optimistically, submitted a
grant application to NIH, but he doesn't expect funding
because of budgetary problems.
Meanwhile, the import ban on personal use that sparked the
controversy involving RU 486 will continue until it receives
FDA approval. "The FDA's position," according to spokesman
Lawrence Bachorik, "is that somebody should submit an NDA
[New Drug Application] so we can evaluate the data."
Myrna E. Watanabe is a biotechnology consultant based in Yonkers, N.Y.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
----------------------------------------------------------
TI : RU 486 AS A RECEPTOR BLOCKER
AU : Myrna E. Watanabe
TY : RESEARCH
PG : 14
RU 486, discovered more than 10 years ago, is an
antiprogestin. Antiprogestins attach to progesterone
receptors on the cell membrane in competition with the
steroid hormone progesterone. When progesterone binds with a
receptor, a cascade of biochemical events leads to DNA
transcription. An antiprogestin, once bound to the
progesterone receptor, suppresses transcription. In the
uterus, this leads to hormonal and biochemical changes that
can prevent implantation of a fertilized ovum or, if
implantation has occurred, interrupt the pregnancy. Because
the uterus is not the only site in the body that has
progesterone receptors
on its cells, other medical uses of antiprogestins are
evident. The most prominent possible uses are in breast or
ovarian cancers that may respond by growing in the presence
of estrogens and progesterones.
RU 486's other potential clinical uses result from its
ability to block glucocorticoid receptors in cells
throughout the body. They are particularly important in
illnesses like Cushing's syndrome, in which the adrenal
cortical hormone, cortisol, which affects carbohydrate and
protein metabolism, is produced in excessive amounts.
--M.E.W.
SUGGESTED READING
G.P. Chrousos, P.W. Gold, Journal of the American Medical
Association, 267:1244-1252, 1992.
G.P. Chrousos, et al., The Adrenal and Hypertension: From
Cloning to Clinic, pages 273-284, eds. F. Mantero, et al.,
Serono Symposia Series, New York, Raven Press, 1989.
M.T. Gomez, G.P. Chrousos, Cushing's Syndrome, Current
Therapy in Endocrinology and Metabolism, pages 134-137, ed.
W. Bardin, Philadelphia, B.C. Decker, Inc.
K.E. Greene, et al., Fertility and Sterility, 58:338-343,
1992.
L.M. Kettle, et al., Fertility and Sterility, 56:402-407,
1991.
A.A. Murphy, et al., Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and
Metabolism, 76:513-517, 1993.
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
HOT PAPERS
----------------------------------------------------------
TI : CELL BIOLOGY
TY : RESEARCH (HOT PAPERS)
PG : 16
H.Y. Lin, X.-F. Wang, E. Ng-Eaton, R.A. Weinberg, H.F.
Lodish, "Expression cloning of the TGF-b type II receptor, a
functional transmembrane serine/threonine kinase," Cell,
68:775-85, 1992.
Herbert Y. Lin (Netherlands Institute for Developmental
Biology, Utrecht): "Transforming growth factor-b1 (TGF-b1)
was initially identified about a decade ago as a prototypic
negative growth factor, arresting cell growth at the G1 to S
transition of the cell cycle. More than 20 other related
members of this TGF-b superfamily of ligands have now been
described. They appear to play important roles in many areas
of biology, including development, embryogenesis, and
morphogenesis, as well as in cell growth. Understanding how
TGF-bs achieve their potent effects would greatly enhance
our understanding of these processes and may provide
insights into diseases such as cancer.
"In our work we describe the expression cloning of the type
II TGF-b receptor and demonstrate that the receptor has
serine/threonine kinase activity. The cloning of the type II
receptor, which proved to be similar to the activin type II
receptor (L. Mathews and W. Vale, Cell, 65:973-82, 1991),
provided the heretofore unknown first clues to the first
steps of TGF-b signal transduction. Our results directly
implicated serine/threonine phosphorylation as the initial
event in TGF-b signal transduction and raised the following
question: What are the immediate downstream targets for the
type II receptors?
"Recently, a type I TGF-b receptor has been cloned (R.
Ebner, et al., Science, 260:1344, 1993), and it is also a
receptor serine/threonine kinase. Surprisingly, the type I
receptor appears to require the type II receptor in order to
bind TGF-b, and type I and type II receptors appear to
interact in a hetero-oligomeric complex (J. Wrana, et al.,
Cell, 71:1003, 1992; M. Inagaki, et al., Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, 90:5359, 1993). Even more
surprisingly, the TGF-b type III receptor appears to enhance
the ability of the type II receptor to bind TGF-b (F. Lopez-
Casillas, et al., Cell, 73:1435, 1993). The details of how
these receptors interact with each other remain problems for
future work.
"What makes this field particularly exciting at the moment
is that the signal transduction system used by receptor
serine/threonine kinases appears to be so different from
other known signal-transduction systems that each new
finding has turned out to be unexpected and unpredicted:
true surprises. Future discoveries will no doubt be as
surprising and exciting."
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
----------------------------------------------------------
TI : MOLECULAR GENETICS
TY : RESEARCH (HOT PAPERS)
PG : 16
J. Buxton, P. Shelbourne, J. Davies, C. Jones, T. Van
Tongeren, C. Aslanidis, P. de Jong, G. Jansen, M. Anvret, B.
Riley, R. Williamson, K. Johnson, "Detection of an unstable
fragment of DNA specific to individuals with myotonic
dystrophy," Nature, 355:547-8, 1992.
Keith Johnson (Department of Anatomy, Charing Cross and
Westminster Medical School, University of London): "Myotonic
dystrophy (DM) is the most common form of adult-onset
muscular dystrophy and is inherited as an autosomal dominant
disorder with the mutation mapping to chromosome 19. Several
features of the phenotype associated with DM were extremely
puzzling to geneticists prior to the discovery of the
mutation that causes it, given that a single gene defect was
suspected of underlying it from its Mendelian mode of
inheritance. DM has a highly variable age of onset within
families, usually with earlier onset in subsequent
generations (a phenomenon known as anticipation). In a
single family a range of symptoms can be seen in differently
affected individuals with widespread variation in the
symptoms' severity. Of note is the almost exclusively
maternal transmission of the most severe form of the
disease, congenital DM. Coupled with these observations was
the fact that there are no sporadic cases of DM, indicating
that all affected individuals inherit their disorder.
"At the end of 1991, thanks to an international
collaborative effort, the region in which the gene was
located had been narrowed down sufficiently for a detailed
search to be undertaken. This search threw up a DNA probe
from the candidate region that detected alterations in the
size of DNA fragment from DM patients compared with the
control group. This finding was similar to the reported
mutations underlying Kennedy's disease and fragile X mental
retardation, which were both due to expansions in copy
number of trinucleotide repeats. Soon after the publication
of three papers describing the instability of the region in
DM patients (this paper as well as C. Aslanidis, et al.,
Nature, 355:548-51, 1992; and H. Harley, et al., Nature,
355:545-7, 1992) came the confirmation that this was indeed
the third example of trinucleotide repeat instability. The
repeat altered in a way that correlated very well with the
phenomenon of anticipation, the repeat getting longer in
earlier-onset cases. There are now several cases of DM
reported that show the repeat can also contract on
transmission and that this almost invariably happens when
inherited through the paternal germline. Since the DM
mutation discovery two more inherited disorders,
Huntington's disease and, most recently, a form of
spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA1) have been found to have a
similar underlying mechanism. There is evidence that a
number of other diseases may have a similar etiology and
this form of mutation probably represents a large and
important class of inherited disorders. The term `dynamic
mutations' has been coined to describe this form of
mutation.
"The discovery of the DM mutation immediately led to more
informative prenatal and presymptomatic diagnoses for those
at risk, although the long-term goal of being able to
intervene in the disease pathway and call a halt to its
progression seems to be still a long way off. The reason for
this is that dynamic mutations represent a totally new and
unexpected form of mutation. Although they are inherited
from one generation to the next in a Mendelian fashion, the
way in which they rapidly expand over one or two generations
is clearly non-Mendelian. We still have a long way to go in
understanding how expansion of repeats, in the case of the
DM mutation in the 3-untranslated region of a putative
protein kinase-encoding gene, leads to the disease
phenotype. Indeed, there are contradictory reports about the
effect of the repeat on expression of the protein kinase
gene in the case of DM (C. Ezzell, Journal of NIH Research,
5:54-8, 1993)."
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
----------------------------------------------------------
TI : MEDICINE
TY : RESEARCH (HOT PAPERS)
PG : 16
W.O. Spitzer, S. Suissa, P. Ernst, R.I. Horwitz, B. Habbick,
D. Cockcroft, J.-F. Boivin, M. McNutt, A.S. Buist, A.S.
Rebuck, "The use of a-agonists and the risk of death and
near death from asthma," New England Journal of Medicine,
326:501,6, 1992.
Samy Suissa (Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics,
McGill University, Montreal): "Asthma is a common disease
that affects 5 percent to 10 percent of people. Numerous
effective medications have been developed to treat this
disease, by way of either bronchodilation or inflammation
reduction. In the 1980s, the mainstay of asthma therapy was
based on bronchodilators, which included theophyllines and
a-agonists. Extremely effective, these latter drugs were
used rather liberally, to the point at which they were
available without prescription in some countries. Unexpected
increases in asthma mortality in several parts of the world
have induced investigations of the possible role of drug
therapies in these mortality patterns.
"In 1989, a case-control study from New Zealand suggested
that one of these a-agonist bronchodilators, namely
fenoterol, was associated with a higher risk of death from
asthma, while the other popular one, salbutamol, was not. We
and other scientists were puzzled by this premise that two
drugs from the same class could show different risk
profiles. Conscious of the limitations of this type of
epidemiologic study design, we decided to conduct our own
investigation.
"Using a more rigorous population-based design, we found
that the excessive use of any or all inhaled a-agonists,
including fenoterol and salbutamol, was associated with
fatal and near-fatal asthma. A significant number of the
12,300 asthmatics studied were using inordinate amounts of
inhaled a-agonists, much more than the maximum recommended
quantity, and these formed the basis for the elevated risks
we found. It was clear that these drugs had become victims
of their remarkable effectiveness.
"Our study generated great attention primarily because it
put in question the current practice of asthma therapy.
Instantly, the uncontrolled use of inhaled a-agonists became
no longer admissible. Physicians and patients were now to
monitor the use of these drugs and, if this use increased,
indicating worsening disease, to supplement therapy with
anti-inflammatory inhaled corticosteroids. The latter
indication has since been confirmed by our subsequent
analyses of the data (P. Ernst, et al., Journal of the
American Medical Association, 268[24]:3462-4, 1992), which
suggest that the use of inhaled corticosteroids reduces the
risk of fatal or near fatal asthma 10-fold. Our study has in
essence substantiated the recent international guidelines on
the management of asthma."
(The Scientist, Vol:8, #2, January 24, 1994)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY
----------------------------------------------------------
TI : New Chromatography Software Keeps Pace With Hardware
AU : CAREN D. POTTER
TY : TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY
PG : 17
As the power of personal computers has grown, so has the
capability of chromatography data-handling software. Basic
computer-mediated functions, such as instrument control,
data acquisition and analysis, file management, and report
preparation all have become increasingly available over the
last 10 years or so to the wide array of chemistry
disciplines that depend on the chromatograph for sample
analysis.
Now, the current crop of chromatography software also offers
such up-to-the-minute enhancements as user-friendly
graphical interfaces, the ability to run a number of
different experimental programs simultaneously (called
multitasking), and the option of transferring chromatography
data to other application programs. Chromatography is an
analytical process in which gases, liquids, or solids in a
mixture or solution are separated by one of several related
techniques--by selective adsorption on a medium in a column,
for instance--in order to detect and quantify the component
substances.
Support for several relatively new analysis tools--such as
photodiode array detectors, also called diode array
detectors--is available. Another significant enhancement is
the software's ability to run on a network in what is called
a "client/server" configuration. The significance of these
recent advances varies according to the particular needs of
the laboratory using the system, but choices are expanding.
"The biggest benefit of using personal computers in
chromatography is the ability to store the actual data
points that describe the [charted] peaks," says Greg Murphy,
group manager for network products at the Waters
Chromatography Division of Millipore Corp. in Milford, Mass.
With the data points on file, rather than only the printed
or displayed chart results, researchers can later integrate
the data in different ways, even trying alternative
analyses, Murphy says.
For example, one of the most difficult analytical tasks in
chromatography is interpreting so-called noisy peaks, or
peaks that are not clearly defined, according to scientists
and instrument vendors. Today, most chromatography data
systems provide mathematical peak-fitting functions that
assist in better integrating data so peaks are more clearly
visible.
Chromatography originally required laboratory workers to
measure with a ruler the peaks of a chromatograph as printed
by strip chart recorders and to then calculate the area
under the peaks for analysis. Sometimes technicians
carefully cut these paper peaks out for weighing on an
analytical balance. In the early 1970s, devices called
computing integrators arrived and were welcomed as
replacements for strip chart recorders. Computing
integrators drew chromatographs on-screen and were able to
calculate the areas under curves for the researcher.
Then, in the 1980s, personal computers (PCs) began to take
over these chores from computing integrators and have since
steadily added capabilities. These computers are now a
routine sight in labs that perform chromatography. PC-based
chromatography data systems improved on computing
integrators by performing more functions. Today, while many
labs use sophisticated chromatography data systems provided
by the same vendor that supplies their chromatographs, there
is also the option of buying a stand-alone software system
able to support instruments from many vendors.
More Accessible Software
Perhaps the most obvious change in chromatography data
software in recent years is the way it looks on screen. This
change is due to the nearly wholesale adoption, by both
users and developers of software, of the Windows operating
system with its graphical user interface. Instead of the
sometimes forbidding text-based screens of the MS-DOS
operating system and programs written for it, there are now
colorful screens featuring pull-down menus of program
options, images called icons to denote files and
applications, and multitasking. These enhancements are more
than cosmetic, scientists say.
"It's definitely easier to work through icons and menu
boxes," says Nicholas Milner, a senior scientist at
Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. of Nutley, N.J.
However, as Milner points out, it's easier only after users
have become familiar with Windows. Many--but not all--lab
workers have used Windows previously in some other
application. If not, they are required to learn two things
at once.
"Initially, it's difficult to deal with both the complexity
of the chromatography software and the newness of Windows,"
Milner says.
Milner uses the Millennium 2020C/S chromatography data
system from Waters. In his lab, Millennium is used with
eight high-performance liquid chromatographs (HPLCs), also
from Waters. In one pharmaceutical study involving food-
producing animals, a PC running Millennium controls either
one or two instruments, as needed. Milner says that the
biggest benefit of the Windows interface for his group is
the multitasking ability to control two instruments
simultaneously by opening two windows on the screen.
Within Millennium, multitasking allows multiple-instrument
control, but this feature is not confined to one software
application. In a laboratory, for instance, multitasking
also would permit a technician to open a word processing
program and prepare a report while the same PC
simultaneously runs the chro- matography data system to
control instruments and acquire data.
Another benefit of Windows is the ability to take data from
one application and move them into another. This feature is
useful for transferring chromatography data to a
spreadsheet, for example. There is, however, a more powerful
way to move and manipulate chromatography data, through a
client/server network architecture.
In a client/server network configuration, PCs serve as the
"clients" and handle local tasks such as running
chromatographs. A larger central computer system is the
server and functions as a data repository. Data from the
clients travel by network to the server. When a
comprehensive data-handling system such as a laboratory
information management system (LIMS) is in use, for example-
-not uncommon in a networked laboratory--the LIMS will
reside on the server, taking in data from the client PCs.
Some advantages of the client/server set-up are security and
a better use of computing resources. Having a central data
repository is more secure than keeping data on individual
PCs, and PCs are less likely to be overloaded beyond their
storage or computing capacities. Also, having data from many
different instruments stored in one location makes report
preparation much easier because access to data is greatly
simplified.
"The biggest benefit [of the client/server approach] for
us," says Tom Weber, a biochemist at Synergen Inc., a
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