Request: the-scientist
Topic: the-scientist-930222
Subject: The February 22, 1993 issue of THE SCIENTIST Newspaper
Date: 22 February 1993
THE SCIENTIST
VOLUME 7, No:4 February 22, 1993
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
===============================================================
Articles published in THE SCIENTIST reflect the views of their
authors and not the official views of the publication,
its editorial staff, or its ownership.
================================================================
*** THE NEXT ISSUE OF THE SCIENTIST WILL APPEAR ON ***
*** MARCH 8, 1993 ***
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THE SCIENTIST
CONTENTS PAGE
(Page numbers correspond to printed edition of THE SCIENTIST)
BIOTECH GET-TOGETHER: The impending merger of the Industrial
Biotechnology Association and the Association of Biotechnology
Companies into a new group, the Biotechnology Industry
Organization, will provide biotech with a unified voice in
Washington and expanded networking opportunities for researchers
in the field, supporters of the new group and its new president
say; but others are skeptical that the consolidated organization,
and its new leader, will be able to bring together the often-
warring constituencies of the industry
Page 1 of newspaper
BIO's new president
Page 6 of newspaper
PCAST IN TRANSITION: Science journalists who brought suit to make
public more meetings and documents of the President's Council of
Advisers on Science and Technology say their action has resulted
in more openness in the council, and their hope is that it will
send a warning message to similar executive panels to conform
with sunshine laws. Meanwhile, the value of PCAST itself, and
whether it will continue under the Clinton administration, are
open questions
Page 1 of newspaper
PROGRESS AT PICOWER: A year after its inception, the Picower
Institute for Medical Research, created through the near-total
transplantation of Anthony Cerami's biomedical research group
from Rockefeller University to North Shore University Hospital on
Long Island, is gathering momentum in its goal of applying both
basic and clinical research toward new approaches in preventing
disease, its scientists say
Page 1 of newspaper
WOMEN ON THE MOVE: The onset of a new presidential administration
has focused renewed attention on efforts to rectify the
disproportionately high unemployment rates and low salaries of
women in science, most notably through the reintroduction of
federal legislation to create a 17-member Commission on the
Advancement of Women in Science and Engineering
Page 3 of newspaper
ADVISING THE ADVISER: National Academy of Sciences president
Frank Press, who was White House science adviser under Jimmy
Carter, says that John Gibbons--Bill Clinton's choice to play
that role--is the right man for the job, but points out the
numerous and burdensome challenges that the new adviser must face
Page 9 of newspaper
COMMENTARY: Contrary to popular perception, undergraduate
teaching and laboratory research do not have to be mutually
exclusive endeavors and, in fact, should complement each other,
providing benefits to both students and professors, according to
Occidental College biology professor and associate dean Laura
Mays Hoopes, past president of the Council on Undergraduate
Research
Page 10 of newspaper
A BUDDING FIELD: Emerging from the shadows of the Human Genome
Project, molecular biologists mapping a plant genome are on the
brink of understanding the mechanisms of disease resistance and
of creating plants that produce novel substances
Page 13 of newspaper
HOT PAPERS: A medical researcher discusses a study of AZT
Page 15 of newspaper
NUMBER CRUNCHING MADE EASIER: New statistical software is helping
researchers with varying degrees of skill to analyze data from
their work, but software manufacturers say the key advantage of
these programs is that they empower scientists to make decisions
on applying the information
Page 16 of newspaper
PRODUCTIVE CHATS: Many veteran researchers feel that more can be
gained at scientific meetings by networking with colleagues and
other prominent researchers than by attending every presentation;
but effective networking takes careful planning and execution
Page 19 of newspaper
SEEDING COLLABORATIONS: The National Cancer Institute's
Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) grants
support collaborative ventures--or "translational research
efforts"--between laboratory and clinical scientists, with the
intent of accelerating the flow of findings from the lab to
patients' bedsides
Page 21 of newspaper
AHMED H. ZEWAIL, a chemical physics professor at the California
Institute of Technology, has been awarded the 1993 Wolf Prize in
Chemistry
Page 22 of newspaper
NOTEBOOK
Page 4 of newspaper
CARTOON
Page 4 of newspaper
LETTERS
Page 10 of newspaper
CROSSWORD
Page 11 of newspaper
OBITUARY
Page 22 of newspaper
DIRECTORY: STATISTICAL SOFTWARE
Page 30 of newspaper
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
Cerami's New Lab Aims For Bountiful Blend Of Basic Research And
Product Development
Investigations on aging lead the Long Island institute's efforts
to combine the best traits of `pure' and `applied' research
(Page 1 of newspaper)
BY FRANKLIN HOKE
Just over a year after launch, the Picower Institute for Medical
Research in Manhasset, N.Y., is gathering momentum, and
confidence among institute researchers is growing. The institute
came into being Oct. 1, 1991--although it was created on paper
July 31--with the near-total transplantation of top researcher
Anthony Cerami's group from the Laboratory of Medical
Biochemistry at Rockefeller University, Manhattan, to quarters in
the Boas-Marks Biomedical Research Center at North Shore
University Hospital, Long Island.
The goal of the Picower is to "apply the insights gained through
basic laboratory and clinical research to the discovery of new
approaches to curing and preventing disease and improving human
health," according to its mission statement. This aim will best
be accomplished, say Cerami and the researchers who have joined
him, by channeling the institute's efforts toward both basic and
applied goals, and by consciously positioning its operating
procedures between those of traditional nonprofit and profit
research settings.
Picower researchers coming from university and industry labs say
the new institute's structure frees them to focus their science
with a unique mix of fundamental investigation and medical
purpose.
"One of my main interests is in having a flow of scientific
advances from the academic to the commercial world," says Cerami,
the institute's founding president, "because that's the only way
it'll ever get applied to use. You can keep working in academic
labs and publishing libraries, but it never gets anywhere until
somebody is interested in making a product.
"I would like to see us somewhere between an academic and an
industry kind of lab," he adds. "I think industry has some very
good attributes that are not necessarily taken into academic labs
and vice versa."
An initial gift of $10 million from Florida-based investor
Jeffry M. Picower and his wife, Barbara, founded the institute.
Cerami says that additional funds will come from grants, further
contributions from the Picower family, and various agreements
with companies. The goal is an endowment of $100 million. For
1993, Cerami says, the institute will have an operating budget of
approximately $6 million.
About 20 researchers came to the Picower from Rockefeller
University, most of the original lab group; now, the total is
more than 50 and climbing. Cerami anticipates the research group
will grow to about 75 by mid-year and then level off.
The move from New York City went smoothly, Picower researchers
say, and the group got back on track quickly, resuming longtime
research aimed at problems of aging, metabolism, and infectious
diseases.
Cerami estimates that 80 percent of the institute's activities
deal with problems of aging, such as atherosclerosis,
hypertension, and kidney disease. The primary goal of the
institute is to do basic research to discover new approaches to
disease therapies, but a secondary aim of the institute, he says,
is to raise the prestige of research into aging.
"If you ask scientists in general," says Cerami, "aging research
has an almost pejorative connotation to it. And yet it's one of
the major problems that we face, as a society. One of our main
objectives is to apply modern science to the complications of
aging."
The motives for creating the Picower were a combination of push
and pull, according to Cerami. Increasingly, he felt, Rockefeller
did not provide the ideal environment for his research
enterprise. And philanthropist Picower's offer of support
presented an irresistible opportunity for resource security and
research independence, he says.
"The Rockefeller had a unique character, which was the reason I
stayed there for 30 years," Cerami says. "There was always an
excitement about trying to do things that no one else would do
and about not having the economic difficulties that you would
have at other institutions. And, when I first went there, it was
a very cooperative place."
But that unique character was changing, Cerami says, toward the
end of his time there. Rockefeller, from its inception, had been
divided into laboratories largely under the control of
individuals. These labs were, in some cases, quite powerful.
According to Cerami, there were efforts to change that structure
to be more like "any other institution."
"Some people felt that the heads of the labs were taking
advantage of the situation," Cerami says. "But I felt that the
reason the Rockefeller was successful was because of its
structure and because of the independence of the laboratories."
Joshua Lederberg, president of Rockefeller from 1978 until mid-
1990, declines to comment on Cerami's move and views on research
priorities at the university.
But Rodney W. Nichols, executive vice president at Rockefeller
until October 1990 and now CEO of the New York Academy of
Sciences, says there was no policy aimed at breaking up the
larger labs. He acknowledges, however, that there were changes
taking place.
"We were deliberately selecting some young investigators who
would have the title of assistant professor and who would be the
head of their own small laboratories," Nichols says. "[Those
labs] would be outside the existing framework of established labs
and superstars of the sort that Rockefeller, for better or worse,
has been famous for."
Nichols says that David Baltimore, Rockefeller president in 1990
and 1991, made a number of statements that were perceived as
threatening to the independence of the larger labs, of which
Cerami's was one.
"It would be a strange argument, however, to attribute to David
Baltimore the idea that large labs are bad," says Nichols,
"because, in many ways, the Whitehead Institute [in Cambridge,
Mass.] was a big Baltimore lab." Baltimore was director of the
Whitehead in the 1980s.
Cerami was one of 15 professors at Rockefeller who opposed
Baltimore's presidency, in part because of Baltimore's
controversial defense of Thereza Imanishi Kari against charges
that she falsified data published in a paper on which Baltimore
was a coauthor. Press spec- ulations that continuing tensions
between the two men contributed to Cerami's decision to move were
downplayed by both at the time. Today, Cerami continues to
minimize problems at Rockefeller and to focus on his new
position.
"I would have taken this job even if nothing were happening at
the Rockefeller," he says, "because it's an opportunity to take
the best aspects of the Rockefeller and capitalize on them."
Bridging Gaps
Researchers at the Picower see the institute as bringing together
positive attributes of both academic and industry research
settings. In addition, Cerami says, he has worked to bring
together an interdisciplinary, cooperative group of
investigators--free of "prima donnas"--that will have the
necessary intellectual and financial resources to solve "the hard
problems."
Richard Bucala, for example, is an M.D.-Ph.D., with training in
rheumatology and molecular genetics. His group is advancing long-
standing research into advanced glycosylation products (AGEs),
research originally based on studies of diabetics.
These compounds have been implicated in a number of age-related
pathologies, including cataracts, kidney disease, hypertension,
and atherosclerosis, as well as diabetes. AGEs also may be
responsible for certain genetic transpositions in DNA.
Apparently, long-lived proteins in the body undergo a series of
nonenzymatic changes in the presence of glucose that lead,
eventually, to unwanted cross-linking between the proteins to
form AGEs. A compound that inhibits AGE formation,
aminoguanidine, developed by the group now at the Picower, is
currently in efficacy testing.
"People are excited to be here because there's a lot of
interaction," Bucala says. "Everyone is working on more than one
thing, and people are teaching each other. For young
investigators, it's a very stimulating, very eclectic place."
Helen Vlassara, an M.D. with a subspecialty in endocrinology and
metabolism, has also worked for many years to extend
understanding of AGEs, particularly their role in normal aging.
The body's ability to clear the potentially harmful AGEs has been
a focus of hers.
She feels fortunate that she was able to move to the Picower with
a familiar, trusted group of people.
"A number of individuals made the same decision, which maintained
the cohesiveness of the place," Vlassara says. "The strengths
were there, and also our acquaintance with each other and with
the leader. It was basically a transplantation of an existing,
very well-functioning, extremely productive unit."
Picower researcher Kevin J. Tracey is also a neurosurgeon on
staff at North Shore University Hospital. "My responsibility in
coming here was to do research in a clinical setting," Tracey
says, "and to restrict my neurosurgical practice to keep 80
percent time committed to research. In essence, I'm setting up
one of the laboratories at the institute, but it's also a
laboratory of the department of surgery [at North Shore]. So it
really bridges the gap."
For most of the past decade, Tracey's research focus has been on
a cytokine called tumor necrosis factor (TNF), or cachectin. TNF
mediates many of the immune system's responses to infection or
invasion. But TNF is also implicated in septic shock and in the
wasting syndromes that accompany many chronic illnesses, such as
AIDS, cancer, and parasitic diseases. An antibody that blocks TNF
is currently in clinical trials for patients with septic shock,
Tracey says.
He is now looking at how the brain and cytokines "talk" back and
forth to control metabolism and plans to branch into studies of
stroke.
Biochemist Andrew Slater last year announced new findings about
how the malaria parasite metabolizes hemoglobin and the mechanism
by which traditional quinine-based drugs combat malaria (A.F.G.
Slater, A. Cerami, Nature, 355:167-9, 1992). The drug's action
had not been fully understood, despite centuries of use. Quinine-
resistant malaria is on the rise in the world, and Slater's
discoveries may lead to more effective therapies.
Another biochemist, Barbara Sherry, is studying cytokines at the
Picower, too. TNF is one of these, but she has also worked to
identify, clone, and characterize a series of macrophage
inflammatory proteins. Cyclophilin, a protein that binds the
immunosuppressive drug cyclo-sporin, has been a recent research
target.
Richard Currie, a biochemist and molecular biologist who has
worked with transcription factors and gene regulation, recently
joined the Picower from the University of Colorado. He will
continue work with lipoprotein lipase, an enzyme important in
energy metabolism, and expects to help in cytokine studies.
A new lab in formation under molecular virologist Michael Bukrin-
sky will study HIV pathogenesis.
This past September, molecular biologist Michael Vitek was
recruited from Lederle Laboratories, Pearl River, N.Y., to
establish another new program, this one to study Alzheimer's
disease. His work has targeted the 42-amino-acid beta-amyloid
peptide associated with lesions in the brains of Alzheimer's
patients.
In industry, he says, he ran into "road blocks" that hampered his
research. In particular, company lawyers made it difficult to
freely exchange ideas with outside scientists.
"It got to where my hands were getting tied," Vitek says.
"Science just doesn't work that way."
At the Picower, he sees the opportunity to do the basic research
needed to understand the underlying mechanisms of Alzheimer's
disease, while keeping drug development firmly in view.
"I wanted to go to an institute that would allow me to be between
industry and academia," Vitek says. "I didn't want either one."
Therapy As Product
One distinguishing feature of Cerami's research effort, at
Rockefeller and now at the Picower, is his close attention to
pushing research advances through to the clinical market. The
focus on useful products derived from well-supported basic
research is one way in which the Picower is moving to straddle
the ground between academia and industry.
Kirk Manogue, a neurobiologist and vice president of the
institute, is crucial to the institute's goals in this area. His
primary role is to oversee intellectual property protection for
the institute's research. Manogue's efforts will likely lead to
increased income for the Picower, he acknowledges. But, like
Cerami, he insists that additional income is not the main reason
to closely track the licensing and patenting of research.
"Hopefully, the development of commercial products will bring in
a stream of dollars that can be plowed back into the discovery
enterprises," he says. "But there are several reasons why, even
in traditional academic settings, people are paying more
attention to patenting early and patenting often. Most
importantly, it's nave to think that [research] will ever lead to
anything that's put into service unless it's properly protected."
The stance that Cerami has taken on commercializing research
results from his labs was, perhaps, a source of some tension at
Rockefeller.
"In a certain sense, there's always been a high tolerance for
applied science [at Rockefeller]," says Rodney Nichols, "for very
disease-oriented work, but looking into fundamentals."
But he adds: "I think it would be fair to say that Rockefeller
has been a little more standoffish, when it comes to
commercialization [of research], than some of the more
buccaneering campuses."
The group of researchers that came to the Picower from
Rockefeller had many reasons to expect that the institute would
survive and be a success. Even so, they are glad to have new
researchers arriving and to see the work reaching full stride.
"If you were here a year ago," says Kevin Tracey, "people would
have said, `Let's wait and see what happens.' Today, I can tell
you with confidence, this place is going to work."
Barbara Sherry agrees, but doesn't think the hard work of setting
the institute on course is altogether behind them.
"We're beginning to see the vision that Tony saw all along," she
says. "But it will take another couple of years for it to really
be what it will be."
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
THE INSTITUTE AS LEGACY
The study of diabetes and the search for therapies to counter its
complications have occupied much of Anthony Cerami's life as a
scientist. So, when Jeffry Picower, whose mother died at an early
age from the disease, decided to underwrite a new biomedical
research institute, Cerami was a logical choice to head it--but
not only because of his research work.
"My mother was a diabetic, also," Cerami says. "When she was
about 55, she started having bad complications."
Cerami, now in his early 50s himself, earned his Ph.D. in
biochemistry at Rockefeller University in 1967 and became head of
one of the larger labs there in 1972. He was in a unique position
to help his mother with her medical problems.
"I started a program in diabetes to try and understand it
better," he says. "My mother was the first person that we
studied. She volunteered to come into the Rockefeller hospital,
and she lived there for about a year. We brought her into very
good control. The complications, for the most part, stabilized."
Eventually, his mother did die--but of leukemia, not of diabetes.
"The nice thing about working on this was that I felt that I gave
my mother 10 years of better life," Cerami says.
--F.H.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
IBA-ABC Merger To Gather Biotechs Under One Roof
One big, happy family of firms is the goal; but skeptics foresee
internal squabbling
(Page 1 of Newspaper)
BY BARBARA SPECTOR
An impending merger of the Industrial Biotechnology Association
and the Association of Biotechnology Companies will enable the
biotech industry to speak with one voice, say those instrumental
in forming the unified group. Observers say they expect the
combined association to send a clearer message to Congress about
what the industry hopes to accomplish, and to provide expanded
networking opportunities for its grass-roots membership.
Yet skeptics are wondering if the disparate biotech
constituencies represented by these two organizations, which have
feuded in the past, will be able to set aside their differences
to join in a truly united effort. Further fueling skepticism in
some quarters is the fact that the man appointed as president of
the merged organization, Carl B. Feldbaum, former chief of staff
to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), has no direct biotech experience--
although those responsible for hiring Feldbaum say his extensive
experience in Washington, D.C., makes him an asset to the new
group (see story on page 6).
IBA, with 150 member companies, and ABC, whose 340 members
include biotech firms as well as noncorporate entities such as
universities and research institutes, announced their plans to
merge late last month. The unified trade association, to be
called the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), will
officially come into existence July 1, pending ratification of
the action by the membership of the two groups at their
respective annual meetings. The ABC meeting will be held in
April; IBA's was scheduled for February 17-19, with ABC board
members invited to attend. At press time, the results of the IBA
ratification vote were unknown.
Says IBA chairman Stephen A. Duzan, chairman and chief executive
officer of Seattle-based Immunex Corp., "In order for the
industry to remain a world leader, we really had to have a strong
trade association. This was an important step in that process."
Some observers believe that the merger will have a positive
effect in the lab as well as in the global marketplace. Jeff
Davidson, executive director of the Pennsylvania Biotechnology
Association (PBA), says that BIO's conventions will provide "a
more effective environment for scientists in the lab. They can
[now] attend meetings and network with colleagues in the entire
industry," rather than only half of it.
BIO's new president says he intends to visit these bench
scientists at their companies. "I'm going to get to as many as I
can, to visit them in their offices and labs," Feldbaum says. "I
don't want to become Beltway-ridden. Those I can't get to, I
intend to have long, detailed, substantive conversations with."
Members of the committee that hired Feldbaum say that this
ability to converse with constituents and legislators will serve
him well in his new position. "He has great technology
assimilation and communication skills," says ABC president Thomas
G. Wiggans, chief operating officer at CytoTherapeutics Inc. of
Providence, R.I. But others doubt that Feldbaum has the proper
training for the job. "You like to see a certain kind of
background," says one industry insider, speaking on condition of
anonymity.
Those who have worked with both IBA and ABC in the past are
hailing the merger. Peter Feinstein, executive officer of the
Massachusetts Biotechnology Council (MBC) and president of
Feinstein Partners, a biotech consulting firm in Cambridge,
Mass., says the merger "eliminates confusion about who represents
the industry's interests in Washington."
This added lobbying strength would trickle down to bench
scientists, as well, Davidson notes. If legislators are more
inclined to look favorably upon a united biotech industry, and if
scientists in the field are better able to interact with each
other, he says, biotech researchers "will be more empowered to do
the things they already do."
Moreover, says MBC's Feinstein, "It has been problematic dealing
with these two separate organizations. Every time we've dealt
with one, we had to consider how that would affect our
relationship with the other."
In the past, "IBA would come out with one position on a patent
issue, and ABC would come out with another position," says
Virginia Orn-dorff, director of biotechnology programs for the
Colorado Advanced Technology Institute (CATI) in Denver. "It was
easy to not pay any attention to either one."
ABC executive director William E. Small says the merger "is like
the left hand and the right hand joining." While ABC's primary
focus has been on educational programming and networking, Small
says, IBA has concentrated more on lobbying and the legislative
arena.
But although the two groups had been discussing unification since
1989, it took a long time to bring them together. A year ago, for
example, Small told The Scientist, "We have different agendas,
and different needs" (Notebook, The Scientist, March 30, 1992,
page 4), referring to the separate missions of the associations.
IBA traditionally has focused on the concerns of larger, more
established firms, whereas ABC's mandate has been "to handle the
interests of emerging organizations, [which were] not necessarily
those the larger companies were facing," such as financial
problems, says Samuel H. Ronel, president of Interferon Sciences
Inc. of New Brunswick, N.J., who served as ABC's president in its
formative years, 1986-88.
Those instrumental in bringing about the merger say it was
finally able to happen because the differences between the two
groups have eroded. "Many of our members are `graduating' from
emerging to established company status," Ronel says, and
therefore need to pay "more attention to regulatory issues and
political issues than before. It doesn't make sense to have two
separate lobbying organizations."
"The organizations began working together off and on for several
years," says Wiggans, adding that collaborative efforts "began in
earnest this year," making a merger seem logical.
But some insiders are wondering whether the two groups will
really be able to unite. "With two different organizations, there
is a built-in tendency to worry about people not agreeing," says
one observer, speaking on condition of anonymity. "You're stuck
with some of the classic battles."
One such battle has concerned the Orphan Drug Act, which provides
market exclusivity for the first company to develop a drug
benefiting a United States patient population of 200,000 or
fewer. Amend- ments to the act proposed last year by Sens. Howard
Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) and Nancy Kassebaum (R-Kans.) would have
eliminated a company's market exclusivity when cumulative sales
hit $200 million. IBA testified before the Senate Committee on
Labor and Human Resources that the act "should not be altered
according to political whims," according to an April 1992 IBA
newsletter.
ABC, on the other hand, issued a press release last month quoting
Wiggans as saying, "In the case of drugs that are the subject of
multiple [competing] sponsorships, [the Food and Drug
Administration] should have adopted more liberal criteria to
allow the multiple sponsors access to marketing approval."
IBA's position on the Orphan Drug Act prompted several companies
to resign from the association, including Genetics Institute Inc.
(GI) of Cambridge, Mass. In December 1991, GI lost a lengthy
patent battle with Amgen Inc. of Thousand Oaks, Calif., over
erythropoietin, the protein used to stimulate the body's
production of red blood cells, a treatment for patients with
severe anemia. GI was also unsuccessful in its court battle to
rescind FDA's award of orphan drug designation to Amgen for
erythropoietin.
GI executive vice president Garen G. Bohlin says "we haven't come
to a decision" on whether GI will join BIO. "On balance, I think
it's good for the industry to try to forge a consensus on some
issues. We would like to be a part of that effort," he says, but
he adds that GI must first determine whether "the new
organization can provide a proper forum for us. We would have
some concerns on whether the merged organization would be
effective, given its sheer size and the number of [members] with
potentially differing viewpoints."
IBA's Duzan downplays the significance of such disputes. "There
[have been] two or three issues of a public policy nature that
the companies had different positions on that created more of a
perception of widespread disagreement than actually was the
case," he says.
On points of contention like the Orphan Drug Act, ABC's Wiggans
says, "a compromise will be reached so a position can be taken by
the [new] organization--or, if no compromise can be reached, no
position will be taken."
In order to alleviate start-up companies' fears that "they'd be
swallowed up," says IBA's Duzan, "what Tom Wiggans and I did was
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
BIO'S NEW PRESIDENT: BIOTECH NOVICE, BELTWAY VETERAN
Carl B. Feldbaum, who began his new job as president of the
fledgling Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) February 8,
is no stranger to Washington, D.C. Since 1988, he has been chief
of staff for Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). Prior to that
appointment, he was founder and president of Palomar Corp., an
independent national security consulting firm in Rosslyn, Va. He
has also served as an assistant to the Secretary of Energy in the
Carter administration and inspector general for defense
intelligence in the Ford and Carter administrations, and was an
assistant special prosecutor with the Watergate Special
Prosecution Force.
Feldbaum, 49, has no direct biotechnology experience, although he
did receive a B.A. in biology from Princeton University in 1966,
and was elected to Sigma Xi for his biochemistry research. And,
says Association of Biotechnology Companies president Thomas G.
Wiggans, chief operating officer of CytoTherapeutics Inc. of
Providence, R.I., "he convinced [the search committee] that he
remembered some of it--which is more than I can say for myself,
sometimes." Wiggans adds that "the search committee voted
unanimously for him," selecting him over "a dozen or more serious
candidates."
What's significant, says Feldbaum, who has a law degree from the
University of Pennsylvania, is that he's experienced at
"translating science and technology to lawmakers and
policymakers." For example, he says, while a Watergate prosceutor
he organized a "technical team of physicists and recording
engineers" to analyze an 18 1/2-minute gap in the Nixon tapes,
and he's assisted Specter with his work as a member of the Senate
appropriations committee for the Department of Health and Human
Services as well as the Senate Committee on Aging.
But Feldbaum is unknown in the biotech community. Understandably,
industry insiders who will have to work with him are loath to
voice their doubts on the record, but several, speaking on
condition of anonymity, have reservations about his ability to be
an effective leader for BIO. "I've never heard of him in my life-
-nor has anyone else I know," says one. Another, calling the
appointment "totally out of the blue," says, "I don't know
whether this guy can really make something happen."
Yet, says Jeff Davidson, executive director of the Pennsylvania
Biotechnology Association, "we didn't expect him to clone many
genes, anyway. He has the kind of experience that is probably
most important for the kinds of policy decisions coming for the
biotech industry."
Search committee member Samuel H. Ronel, president of Interferon
Sciences Inc. of New Brunswick, N.J., says that Feldbaum's lack
of biotech experience "certainly was something that was
discussed." But ultimately, Ronel says, the committee realized
that "we have a sufficient number of people who could help him on
these issues."
One industry skeptic doubts that Hillary Rodham Clinton,
appointed by President Bill Clinton to revise United States
health care policy, will look favorably upon a former aide to
Republican Specter: "It doesn't make any political sense." Yet
Feldbaum stresses that he's worked in Democratic as well as
Republican administrations. And James McCam-ant, editor of the
Berkeley, Calif.-based Medical Technology Stock Letter,
says that Feldbaum's Specter affiliation "is not necessarily a
disadvantage. A group like [BIO] has to work with both parties."
Says Ronel: "We were extremely favorably impressed by
[Feldbaum's] personality. Conviviality ... is necessary to head
our organization, with so many prominent people in it."
Adds Peter Feinstein, executive officer of the Massachusetts
Biotechnology Council, "If they've found someone whom both sides
[the Association of Biotechnology Companies and the Industrial
Biotechnology Association] are comfortable with, that's very
important."
--B.S.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
PCAST Future Is Uncertain Under Clinton
Presidential science panel may have to change its ways--if, that
is, it continues to exist
(Page 1 of newspaper)
BY BARTON REPPERT
Science journalists who brought a federal lawsuit against the
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) say
the court action has resulted in an opening up of some meetings
of the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology
(PCAST) and release of documents detailing PCAST's operations.
They say they hope the case also will serve to send a warning to
other federal science and technology advisory panels that closing
of meetings to the press and public is likely to be challenged,
unless it is done in compliance with provisions of the Federal
Advisory Committee Act (FACA).
However, several outgoing members of PCAST, which was formed by
the Bush administration in early 1990, have told The Scientist
that they believe their most important contribution was not
through open meetings or published reports--but instead, informal
"input" during closed-door sessions with the president and senior
officials.
One of these former council members, Peter Likins, president of
Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., observes that "we had an
opportunity to talk to the president, with, I think,
unprecedented frequency, until the election began to crowd
everything else off his agenda--essentially until February of
'92.... That is something that we, the members of PCAST, valued
deeply."
On the issue of open vs. closed meetings, Likins says: "I truly
believe that the process of deliberation that is necessary for
effective policy-making in most areas, not just science and
technology . . . is impeded by knowledge that every word you
speak can find its way into the public domain. I don't mean to
circumvent rules of the open society. I realize that we have to
accept a certain amount of that, just as part of the price of
doing business in an open society. But we have to be careful that
we don't get paralyzed by it."
At press time, President Clinton's science adviser, John H.
Gibbons, had not yet revealed the new administration's specific
plans concerning PCAST. Under the Bush administration, PCAST had
consisted of science adviser Allan Bromley and 12 prominent
members, drawn mainly from universities and industry.
OSTP spokesman Ralph Brescia says Gibbons "really hasn't had time
to focus on what exactly the structure will be, but he is
definitely committed to seeking and utilizing outside advice from
the private sector and the university community. He will be
examining what, exactly, the best mechanism is for that."
The court action was brought last May by the Bureau of National
Affairs Inc. (BNA), a major business publisher, along with the
newsletter Science & Government Report and the Washington bureau
of Nature (Barton Reppert, The Scientist, July 6, 1992, page 1).
The plaintiffs contended that PCAST was violating "Government in
the Sunshine" provisions of FACA in order to conduct the bulk of
its activities in closed sessions. The statute stipulates several
limited exemptions--including discussion of sensitive national
security, foreign policy, or personnel matters--that have to be
cited when federal advisory committees hold closed meetings.
In their suit filed in United States District Court for the
District of Columbia, BNA and the two science publications called
on PCAST to open all future meetings at which the council
"intends to discuss its agenda, reports, projects, and panels
regarding science and technology." Also, citing the Freedom of
Information Act, the plaintiffs sought access to minutes of, and
other records relating to, the council's meetings.
As a result of the litigation, Judge Thomas R. Hogan ordered
PCAST to open up to the press and public its sessions dealing
with a study focusing on U.S. research-intensive universities
last May, shortly after the suit was brought. These meetings led
to the preparation by the council of a major report, released in
December, which amounted to PCAST's most substantial published
product during the Bush administration, according to science
policy observers (see accompanying story).
In addition to the research universities study, PCAST late last
year released reports on the federal government's role in
furthering the bioscience revolution; high-performance computing
and communications; science education; mega- projects in the
sciences; science, technology, and national security; and
technology and the American standard of living.
Toby J. McIntosh, a BNA reporter who joined in bringing the
lawsuit, says that a "very important result" of the court
challenge was the release by OSTP of "a great deal of material
about PCAST, which otherwise, I believe, they wouldn't have
produced--minutes of the meetings, documentation, and material
that went to the members." Overall, he says, "I think we obtained
a great deal more information for the public about what PCAST has
done and how it did it."
McIntosh says that examination of PCAST closed meeting minutes,
released by OSTP in response to the legal action, reveals that in
most cases "there were no substantial reasons why the meetings
should not have been open--no evidence of discussion of much
national security or commercially sensitive information."
Noting that the government finally released the PCAST documents
with virtually no deletions, McIntosh contends that this is
"pretty good evidence that there really wasn't anything to
warrant closing the meetings in the first place."
By undertaking the court challenge of PCAST, McIntosh says,
"I hope we've sent a message to other groups that they better
look carefully at [FACA] and be prepared to have people contest
closed meetings."
Eleanor H. Smith, an attorney with the Washington firm of
Zuckerman, Spaeder, Goldstein, Taylor & Kolker, who has been
representing the science journalists in the case, says that
"until we had this litigation, no one knew anything about what
the council was doing. All their reports were secret, pretty much
all their meetings were secret, all of their working papers were
secret."
In response to the view expressed by some PCAST members that
meetings that are open to the press and public can impede candid
discussion of issues, she says: "That is precisely what the
Federal Advisory Committee Act forbids. It's exactly why we're
litigating this case."
With regard to the wider significance of the PCAST case, Smith
says: "I think we'll have to wait, to some extent, to see what
the Clinton administration does, on their own, to open up
meetings of federal advisory committees. But I have no doubt that
there will be a ripple effect from this litigation, in terms of
making federal agencies and advisory committees that either
advise them or the president think twice about blanket exemption
claims."
A Justice Department attorney handling the case, Peter S. Modlin,
says he cannot comment about the government's position because
the litigation is still ongoing.
The value of PCAST's deliberations is a question being
considered, as well. In assessing PCAST's overall role and
effectiveness, Lewis Branscomb, director of the science,
technology, and public policy program at Harvard University's
John F. Kennedy School of Government, says: "I think that PCAST,
viewed from the scientific community, is substantially less
visible to policy scholars and the scientific community than the
old PSAC [President's Science Advisory Committee, which existed
from the late 1950s to early 1970s] was--even though all the old
PSAC meetings were off the record. That was before FACA."
Branscomb explains that "PSAC did its work in many cases--in most
cases--by writing reports, which were in fact published by the
White House, and were available for broad commentary and
dissemination. Whereas PCAST has done some reports, but by and
large their advice has been given in camera, so to speak."
Branscomb, who served as a member of PSAC in 1964-68 and as
chairman of the National Science Board in 1980-84, says he views
the question of holding open meetings as "a very overrated threat
to openness of debate" because generally very few members of the
press and public actually attend.
Another science policy analyst, Bruce L.R. Smith of the
Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution, says he believes
that although PCAST's report on research-intensive universities
was "pretty punchy," the council was not in operation long
enough to rate its overall performance.
Smith says the open vs. closed meetings issue raised in the
lawsuit is of "real significance" because if the litigation were
to result in barring PCAST from holding virtually any closed
sessions, that could render the council "impotent."
"If you had to have everything totally open, and there couldn't
be an executive session, it would become totally useless. . . . I
think that with anything at that level, unless you have the
capability of going into executive session, it is not going to be
a useful tool for the president," he says.
An outgoing member of PCAST, Nobel laureate Daniel Nathans, a
molecular biologist from Johns Hopkins University, says of the
council's accomplishments: "I think only part of it, probably, is
reflected in the reports that have been made public. I would
guess the most important thing was the informal input to senior
members of the [Bush] administration. We did have access to
essentially anyone whom we wanted to talk to ... including the
president."
Nathans notes that "there are so many inputs going into an
administration at that level that it's very difficult to know
what your specific input has done in terms of influencing
policy.... But we certainly had access to the highest people in
the administration."
Nathans observes that "there are certain things that we need to
discuss in private--in fact, many things.... The only way we're
going to get the best out of a group like PCAST is to give them
the opportunity to discuss things frankly, and to express views
which they may well change--and in some cases talk about issues
and people in such a way that it makes no sense to have it in
public. On the other hand, I think there are many other things
that really ought to be open to direct public scrutiny."
Another former PCAST member, John McTague, vice president for
technical affairs at Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn, Mich., says he
believes the council's most significant accomplishment was "the
ability to have informal dialogue with the president .... It was
absolutely unfiltered information--the topics were unfiltered
ahead of time."
McTague declines to explore the substance of PCAST's meetings
with Bush, saying that "there's a general policy not to discuss
conversations with the president."
As for areas in which PCAST was less effective than he would have
liked, the Ford executive says that "we could have gotten
ourselves better organized early on"--so that the council's
reports could have been published before the November election.
McTague says he feels the restrictions on closed meetings are
often "counterproductive" because "they make it extremely
difficult to discuss things where you don't have full
information, where you're just sort of feeling things out.... It
just isn't an efficient way to proceed."
Barton Reppert is a freelance writer based in Gaithersburg, Md.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
PCAST's LEGACY
To the extent that the President's Council of Advisers on Science
and Technology (PCAST), established by the Bush administration,
leaves any substantial legacy for the years ahead, it is likely
to be identified as the major public policy questions presented
in a 46-page report that was released less than a month before
the administration left office.
The report, "Renewing the Promise: Research-Intensive
Universities and the Nation," takes a hard look at "serious signs
of stress" affecting the relationship of government, the public,
and the United States' research universities.
PCAST members David Packard, chairman of the board of Palo Alto,
Calif.-based Hewlett-Packard Co., and Harold T. Shapiro,
president of Princeton University, said in a letter accompanying
the report: "At the very least, we hope that the report will
stimulate and contribute to a healthy public debate."
During his confirmation hearing January 26 before the Senate
Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, Office of
Science and Technology Policy director John H. Gibbons was asked
about the PCAST report--including its recommendation that a
substantial federal program be undertaken to repair and renovate
aging university research facilities.
Gibbons responded that he had seen the report but "not digested
it yet."
Other findings and recommendations of the PCAST study include:
* "It is unreasonable to expect that the system of research-
intensive universities will continue to grow.... The cross-
pressure of expanding opportunities and constrained resources
poses a risk for the United States: spreading its resources too
thinly across its array of highly trained investigators and
research-intensive universities."
* For that reason, research-intensive universities should
"eliminate or downsize some departments and specialties rather
than sustain less than world-class activities in every area of
science and engineering."
* At the same time, federal agencies and other supporters of
research-intensive universities should "refrain from encouraging
universities to embark on new research or education programs or
the building of facilities when there is little or no long-term
prospect of sustaining those programs."
* "We believe that many of the complaints of parents and students
concerning the quality of undergraduate education are well-
founded. Universities should re-emphasize teaching in all its
aspects, both inside and outside the classroom. In doing so, many
institutions will have to curtail some of their research
activities."
--B.R.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
Groups Promoting Women In Science Mobilize In Washington, D.C.
(Page 3 of Newspaper)
BY RON KAUFMAN
As the Clinton administration establishes itself in Washington,
D.C., action is heating up in the United States capital to raise
the awareness of the general public--as well as lawmakers--about
the disproportionately high unemployment rates and low salaries
of women in scientific careers. Most noteworthy among these
efforts, perhaps, is last month's reintroduction of federal
legislation that would create a Commission on the Advancement of
Women in Science and Engineering.
Other efforts include a Washington conference, sponsored by
Dartmouth College and the National Zoo, focusing on government
policies affecting women; publication of a mentoring handbook by
the 3,500-member Association for Women in Science (AWIS); and
efforts by the Coalition for Women's Appointments, a group of 80
women's organizations, to persuade the Clinton administration to
hire more women to fill scientific roles in government.
According to statistics compiled by the National Science
Foundation (using 1990 rates), women with master's degrees in
science and engineering had median annual salaries $6,200 lower
than and an unemployment rate 1.2 percent higher than their male
counterparts. This same study, entitled "Women and Minorities in
Science and Engineering: An Update," showed women with science
and engineering Ph.D.'s had median salaries $4,900 lower than,
and an unemployment rate that was more than double, those of men
with the same degrees.
"There is a problem of equity for the women who are actually
holding these jobs," says Sue Kemnitzer, deputy director of the
engineering, education, and centers division at NSF. "But there's
a kind of ripple effect that can dampen the enthusiasm that young
people have for pursuing these careers. Are you going to choose a
profession where you see few people who are like you be
successful? Probably not."
Reintroduced in the House of Representatives on January 6 by Rep.
Constance Morella (R-Md.), the Advancement of Women in Science
and Engineering Act (H.R. 467) is designed to create a 17-member
commission charged with gathering statistics and information that
will examine the barriers to recruitment, retention, and
advancement of women scientists. During the 102nd Congress, the
bill passed the House but was blocked in the Senate. A Morella
spokeswoman says the congresswoman has made the legislation a
high priority and is intent on getting it passed by both houses
this year.
Upon the initial introduction of the bill in June 1992, Morella,
a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, said the purpose of the legislation is to "help women
get in, stay in, and prosper in jobs that we know pay well and
offer long-term career satisfaction and security."
Catherine Didion, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-
based AWIS, says she is concerned about the effectiveness of a
federal commission. "There is some fear that this commission will
suffer the same fate as the Task Force on Women, Minorities, and
the Handicapped in Science and Technology from a few years ago,
whose recommendations never got off the ground and were not
implemented," she says, referring to the December 1989 federal
commission report entitled "Changing America: The New Face of
Science and Engineering." The commission was chaired by NSF's
Kemnitzer.
AWIS has its own activities planned for the next few months to
raise public awareness concerning the position of women in
science. The association has recently released a 260-page
handbook, which Didion calls "a paper mentor for women
scientists." The book, entitled A Hand Up: Women Mentoring Women
in Science (Washington, D.C., AWIS, 1993), was published February
12.
The handbook includes essays written by prominent women
scientists, who describe the experiences and challenges of
working in a profession dominated by men. The writers include
Bernadine Healy, director of the National Institutes of Health;
Florence Haseltine, director of population studies at NIH; and
Linda Wilson, president of Radcliffe College. "We are hoping this
publication will be a useful tool for young women entering
science to reassure themselves that they're not alone," says
Didion.
On March 24, the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth
College and the National Zoo will sponsor the second part of a
two-part symposium on enabling more women to choose science
careers.
The program is entitled "Social and Political Issues" and will be
held at 7:30 P.M. in the National Zoological Park Auditorium
in Washington. Organizers expect a mostly local crowd of working
women scientists, congressional staffers, and the general public.
Speakers at the conference include Elizabeth Ivey, provost of
Macalester College in Minneapolis, and Rose O'Donnell, a general
manager at Hewlett-Packard Co., Palo Alto, Calif.
AWIS's Didion will moderate the session, which will focus on how
specific government policies affect the status of women in
science and what can be changed.
The event's organizers are hoping for a better turnout for this
second meeting than they had at the first. Only 100 people
attended the first part of the program, which highlighted recent
findings related to women in science, held on Oct. 13, 1992. "I
expect attendance to be much better this time," says Didion.
"With the new administration in Washington, there is a
recognition of an opportunity for real change. This empowers
people to think, `Let me get my voice in here because I know it
won't fall on deaf ears.' "
The Coalition for Women's Appointments, based in Washington,
D.C., at the National Women's Political Caucus, is also
attempting to raise the profile of women scientists. The
coalition, a group of 80 women's organizations, was formed to
promote women for Senate-confirmed positions in the Clinton
administration, including cabinet secretaries, undersecretaries,
and agency heads. A recommendation list of around 400 women, more
than 50 of whom are scientists, has been submitted to the White
House.
AWIS is part of the environmental task force, which includes
staffing proposals in the departments of Energy, Interior, and
Agriculture; the Environmental Protection Agency; and the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission. Two early successes were the appointments
of EPA administrator Carol Browner and Secretary of Energy Hazel
O'Leary, both of whom were recommended by the coalition.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NOTE BOOK
A Chemical Attraction
Among women chemists who are now college presidents, perhaps the
most prominent is Linda Wilson, president of Radcliffe College in
Cambridge, Mass. Another name to add is Jane Margaret O'Brien,
biochemist and president of Hollins College in Roanoke, Va. In
July 1991, O'Brien--who received a B.S. in biochemistry from
Vassar College in 1975 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the
University of Delaware in 1981--became the eighth president of
the small, all-women's school. She says the rigorous and
demanding schedule needed for scientific research has helped her
successfully adapt to life as an administrator over 1,000
undergraduates and 94 faculty members. "There are a lot of
chemists in administrative work in colleges and universities,"
she says, noting that her predecessor, Paula Brownlee, now
president of the Association of American Colleges, was also a
chemist. "The constant demands on you are the same. When doing
research, [the demands are] more related to the experiments
you're running. But here at a college it's what people need you
to do. As a college president, time really isn't my own, nor was
it when I was in the laboratory."
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
Immigrant Scientists: Show Us The Ropes
The Association of Engineers and Scientists for New Americans
(AES), a New York-based self-help organization of immigrant
technical professionals, is seeking volunteer mentors from
academia, industry, and government. The group, composed primarily
of refugees from the former Soviet Union, most of whom have
Ph.D.'s, wants to match immigrant participants with working
scientists, who would instruct proteges in job-hunting in the
United States and in applying their previously acquired knowledge
in their new home. The immigrants would serve as interns in the
mentor's institution for three to six months. AES is now seeking
grant support for this program. For information, contact AES, 45
E. 33rd St., Suite 3-24, New York, N.Y. 10016; (212) 447-5040.
Fax: (212) 889-9366.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
Hurrah For Teamwork
A chemistry teacher at the University of Connecticut has found,
in a pilot study of 16 undergraduates, that students' performance
improves by half a letter grade when they study in groups. Now,
thanks to a grant of more than $100,000 from the National Science
Foundation, chemistry lecturer Cecile Hurley will be expanding
her study-group format to about 200 students. She hopes
eventually to publish a paper based on her study-group
experience. "I wondered why students were not succeeding as they
should in science," Hurley says, adding that when she took a
closer look, she found "they didn't know how to study."
Participants in her small groups, which meet regularly at a set
time, "come without distractions--without TV, without pizza," she
says. Each participant is responsible for learning to do one
homework problem and teaching the others how to master it. "I'm a
firm believer in [the theory that] you don't know something until
you can teach it," Hurley says. Her students, she adds, "learn
more from listening to each other than from listening to me."
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
Bugging The Capital
Around election time, Washington, D.C.'s favorite insects will be
out and about again as the Smithsonian's National Museum of
Natural History reopens its popular insect zoo in September. The
exhibit, to be renamed the O. Orkin Insect Zoo after the founder
of Atlanta-based Orkin Pest Control, which donated $500,000 to
modernize the zoo, annually draws more than 1 million visitors.
The updated exhibit will feature a variety of live insects, from
those found in ponds, deserts, and rainforests to the familiar
household variety. Included are old favorites, such as termites,
silverfish, German cockroaches, and fireflies, as well as more
exotic species, such as tarantulas, whose feedings will take
place twice daily during museum hours. The museum is located at
10th Street and Constitution Avenue, N.W., in Washington and is
open seven days a week. Admission is free.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
Undergraduate Support
The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation has established a
research awards program directed to non-Ph.D.-granting
institutions. The Dreyfus Faculty Start-up Grants for
Undergraduate Institutions program will annually provide 10
unrestricted grants of $10,000 to newly appointed faculty to
facilitate starting their research. Institutions that grant
bachelor's or master's degrees in chemistry, chemical
engineering, or biochemistry are eligible to nominate one teacher
per year for the grants. The deadline for nominations is May 15.
For more information, contact the Camille and Henry Dreyfus
Foundation Inc., 555 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10022-3301;
(212) 753-1760.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
Making Mealtimes Easier To Swallow
For anyone who has had difficulty distinguishing the taste of
cafeteria food from the taste of the utensils it's served with,
an Iowa State University researcher has now made the distinction
even less obvious. Jay-Lin Jane, an associate professor of food
science and human nutrition, has developed edible dinnerware,
made from such vegetable material as corn and soybeans. Actually,
the plastics, made of starch and protein, were originally
conceived for human consumption, but the material Jane has come
up with so far is much too hard to chew. "Nutritionally, it is
okay, but you would need a good dental plan if you wanted to eat
it," she says. As envisioned, used containers and utensils could
be ground into pellets and mixed into livestock feed. But as it
degrades completely in water after a time, the material is also
being looked at as safe disposables for ships at sea. The U.S.
Navy has expressed interest in it.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
OPINION
Great Challenges Await New White House Science Adviser
NAS chief Frank Press says that John Gibbons will have to cope
with a host of extremely burdensome social and economic issues
Editor's Note: Members of the United States science establishment
were generally pleased to hear that John H. Gibbons, former
director of the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), had been
chosen to succeed D. Allan Bromley as White House science
adviser. Among those who warmly endorsed the president's
selection of Gibbons--whose appointment was confirmed on January
28 by the U.S. Senate--was Frank Press, president of the National
Academy of Sciences. In the following message, exclusive to The
Scientist, Press expresses his confidence that Gibbons is the
right man for the job, and that his appointment can be taken as a
hopeful sign that the new administration will follow a wise path
on matters of science and technology policy. However, Press --who
served as White House science adviser under Jimmy Carter from
1977 to 1981--notes that Gibbons assumes his new role at a time
when national and global issues require him to extend his scope
of consideration beyond science and technology to include weighty
economic and social concerns.
(Page 9 of Newspaper)
BY FRANK PRESS
Bill Clinton's early appointment of John Gibbons as his science
adviser is a major boost to the new administration's chances of
dealing effectively with the economy, health care reform, the
environment, the AIDS epidemic, education, and many other issues.
These challenges demand not only political leadership, but also
an effective use of science and technology. With more than a
decade of experience as an outstanding director of the OTA--and
his previous leadership position at Oak Ridge, one of the best
national laboratories--Gibbons is poised to contribute to wise
policy-making from his first day on the job.
That the position was filled so early suggests the Clinton team
understands the importance of using science to draft solutions
that are future-oriented and innovative. This has not always been
the case. Many new presidents have been surprised to find that
they inherited a position for a science adviser--a high "Level
II" post mandated by Congress. They and their senior aides viewed
their resident scientist as a narrow specialist who could provide
advice on allocating funds to the science agencies but not on
much else.
A few presidents--John Kennedy, among others--involved the
science adviser in a broader range of policies, such as national
security and space exploration. But Kennedy's precedent generally
was not adopted by his successors. More influential White House
aides limited the adviser's access to the inner circle. They
failed to appreciate the importance of science and technology in
modern life, or simply did not wish to share power.
The worst situations occurred when presidents regarded their
science adviser as a captive representative of the scientific
community rather than as a member of the presidential team. I was
told of one case in which a White House chief of staff, presiding
over the daily senior staff meeting, asked those representing the
black community, the Jewish community, the elderly, and the
scientists to leave because a sensitive political issue was on
the agenda.
When this view prevails, the science adviser is excluded from the
decision-making process. He or she is used mainly to round up
support from the scientific community on specific issues--and,
perhaps, blamed if that community fails to act as desired. One
science adviser was dismissed because too many scientists opposed
the Vietnam war, supersonic transport, and other administration
policies. Another spent a good deal of his time as a salesman for
the Strategic Defense Initiative.
President Bush's adviser, D. Allan Bromley, deserves great credit
for enlarging the role of his office, broadening its scope of
concerns to include technology policy, education, environment,
and other important areas. Like many of his predecessors, he also
knows what it means to deal with more powerful, and less wise,
presidential assistants.
As one who held the science adviser post under President Carter
and served on President Kennedy's scientific advisory committee,
I have experienced many of these pressures first-hand. Initially,
the White House senior staff viewed our office as representing a
narrow specialty and constituency. Early assignments mainly
involved science budgets and highly specialized issues.
Eventually, however, by providing useful information and an
excellent staff, sensitive to political realities, the office
became involved in White House consideration of industrial
policy, the MX missile decision, space policy, clean air
regulations, health care, and other issues.
President Carter and his staff came to view our Office of Science
and Technology Policy as expert and balanced, and scientists and
engineers are hopeful that the new White House team will make
even more effective use of technical advice. Representing as they
do a generational change, President Clinton and Vice President Al
Gore can be expected to look beyond the experiences of the Great
Depression, World War II, and postwar prosperity in drafting
solutions to current problems.
They know that the U.S. can create jobs and compete
internationally only by having a better-educated work force.
Managers in the private sector must have the skills to use new
technology and incentives to invest in it. The federal government
must become more of a partner than a passive observer in
developing several critical technologies essential to our future.
So favorable changes are likely in the allocation of resources to
civilian science and technology, as well as on issues involving
industrial development, the environment, defense policy, health
care, and energy.
All of these issues rank high on the new presidential agenda. To
resolve them successfully, science and technology considerations
must be integrated fully with economic and political ones. The
science adviser needs to play a key role in this process.
One of Dr. Gibbons's first tasks will be to help the new
president select the top 60 science and technology positions in
the federal government. These appointees will control an R&D
budget of more than $75 billion annually, of which about 40
percent goes to the civilian sector.
Given the concerns facing the Clinton administration, Gibbons
actually will have to go well beyond the realm of science and
technology, in their narrowest definitions, and address matters
as far reaching as the economy and broad social issues. He should
be involved as a principal player within the new Economic
Security Council, the National Security Council, and counterpart
groups that deal with productivity, environment, health, energy,
and trade policies.
If history holds, others on the White House staff may try to
prevent this, seeking to restrict the participation of the
science adviser to purely scientific matters. This would be
unfortunate because whether the topic under consideration is
economic growth, drug abuse, the space program, fetal tissue
research, urban poverty, global warming, or dozens of other
issues, the administration will need the best advice possible.
President Clinton's passion for new ideas and Vice President
Gore's deep interest in science and the environment suggest they
understand this. They seem to know that the world of tomorrow
confronts the White House with issues requiring the insights not
only of politics and economics but also of science and
technology. Advisers in all of these fields must work together
for the good of the nation.
The U.S. is the world's leader in science and the creation of new
technologies. Campaign and transition materials indicate that the
new administration will not view science and technology in the
same restricted manner as many of its predecessors have done.
Instead, we should expect Bill Clinton's team to recognize and
use science and technology as a comparative American advantage
and a powerful resource to help our nation tackle the many
problems ahead.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
COMMENTARY
(Page 10 of the Newspaper)
COMMENTARY
by Laura L. Mays Hoopes
For Undergraduates, Hands-On ResearchAnd Book Learning Go Hand
In Hand
A wide range of observers are concerned that science instructors
at United States universities are inadequately stimulating,
encouraging, and equipping their students--the potential future
generation of researchers--to pursue their interests beyond the
undergraduate level.
Many of those concerned assert that the problem lies in an
improper balance between what they consider mutually exclusive
activities for professors: classroom instruction and research in
the laboratory.
On one hand, some contend, science professors should be spending
more time teaching in the classroom and less time in the lab;
others urge them to put classroom instruction on the back burner
and spend more time in the lab, to increase the prestige of their
universities as well as national competitiveness.
In my view, however, the commonly held dichotomy between
"teaching" and "research" is false and misguiding. There are many
institutions where the two approaches to science education do not
war with each other. At these schools, they go hand in hand:
Indeed, research is regarded as the finest form of teaching.
Some think of this process as an apprenticeship, but I see it
more as an option to buy. A student tries out directing a
project, to find out something nobody has known previously. For
some, the loneliness of the laboratory or the frustration with
the delayed reward system of science may be insufferable; but for
many, the result is ample reward.
Take, for instance, Christine Hodge, a student researcher funded
by Monsanto Co. in 1992--through the Academic Industrial
Partnerships program, sponsored by the Council on Undergraduate
Research (CUR)--for summer study at the University of Wisconsin,
Eau Claire. Christine subsequently reported that her project
"gave me confidence in my ability to perform as a chemist. . . .
[I] decided that I would indeed be happiest in a field where I
would constantly be finding answers and more questions to ask."
As Heinz Koch of Ithaca College--a faculty mentor for another
student in the program--has noted: "You learn to become a
scientist by doing science, not by studying science."
An undergraduate needs a lot of guidance by a caring professor--a
lot, but not too much. Each student needs to own a project.
Professors who see this as a valuable learning experience are
everywhere. But the mother lode of such people is in the
primarily undergraduate institutions where CUR is focused--the
liberal arts colleges (like Occidental College, my own
institution) and the comprehensive universities. We believe that
our appreciation of research as an integral component of science
education explains why we produce more than our share of future
scientists, as amply documented by the Oberlin Reports of the
1980s and the Project Kaleidoscope analysis of 1991.
But what's in it for the professor, the ambitious researcher who
expected academia to provide an environment primarily for
personal scientific pursuits? Well, the professor receives both a
teaching and a research benefit: pleasure in a student's learning
experience, and progress in solving a research problem. The main
costs to the instructor are two: The speed with which progress,
as measured by publications, is achieved must be slower with
undergraduates doing the research; and, because of this speed
differential, the professor cannot really expect to be at the
cutting edge of his or her field.
In the best cases, however, instructors can find themselves in
the scientific avant-garde--trying high-risk but low-budget
experiments that can launch whole new fields of investigation.
Since undergraduates are frequently fearless and intrigued with
the unusual, they are ready and willing to work ahead of current
ideas and try to develop the next big area of research.
My experience and that of many professors I know invalidates the
teaching/research dichotomy. I recommend research with
undergraduate students highly to anyone who is looking for a way
to increase the number of scientists of the future.
Laura L. Mays Hoopes is a professor of biology and associate dean
of the faculty, Occidental College, Los Angeles, and immediate
past president of the Council on Undergraduate Research.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
LETTERS
(Page 10 of the newspaper)
Thermodynamic Definition
The article "Plasmas Show Promise As Next Step For Accelerators"
(Tom Abate, The Scientist, Nov. 23, 1992, page 15) contained the
sentence "He knew that a laser fired into a cloud of hydrogen--
chosen for its simple atomic structure--would superheat the gas,
stripping the electrons from their nuclei and thus creating a
plasma."
The word superheat has a specific thermodynamic meaning. It means
to raise the temperature of a substance above a transition
temperature without the equilibrium phase forming. It does not
mean to "get really hot."
Superheating is similar in concept to supercooling, in which a
liquid is cooled below its freezing point without the separation
of the solid phase. Common materials can be supercooled. Very
pure water can be cooled far below 0 C without it turning into
ice. (The slightest disturbance, however, will trigger instant
ice formation.) Superheating of water or metals does not
ordinarily occur because of thermodynamic reasons.
ROBERT ERCK
Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne, Ill.
Animal Rights
In his call to arms against the animal rights movement (The
Scientist, Nov. 23, 1992, page 12), Patrick Cleveland attempts to
demonize the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) by
lumping it with organizations and individuals that oppose all
animal research, condone terrorism, and vilify scientists. As the
person in charge of HSUS's programs on animal research issues, I
would like to respond to this blatant mischaracterization.
HSUS does not oppose all animal research. Our policy advocates
reform, not abolition. Our programs are pragmatic attempts to
reduce the suffering and use of laboratory animals without
compromising biomedical science. Our work is guided by our
Scientific Advisory Council, which consists of physicians,
scientists, and veterinarians from prominent institutions.
HSUS has been very clear on our opposition to terrorism and
violence. We have expressed our views before Congress, in full-
page ads in the New York Times, and elsewhere.
HSUS has not only avoided vilifying scientists. We also have
purposely avoided targeting individual research projects out of
our concern that such targeting might inadvertently encourage
some activists to threaten the principal investigators.
The irony of Cleveland's mischaracterization is that HSUS,
perhaps more than any other animal protection organization, has
sought to distinguish itself from organizations and individuals
that fit his portrayal. For doing so, we have been criticized by
some animal rights activists.
Detractors such as Cleveland will always be able to dredge up
tidbits that prop up their threadbare arguments--a statement on
animal research from an old fund-raiser or from a staffer whose
program responsibilities do not include animal research.
Nevertheless, I invite any interested person to contact HSUS for
more information about our actual policy and programs.
MARTIN L. STEPHENS
Vice President
Laboratory Animals
Humane Society of the
United States
Washington, D.C.
Liberal Arts Colleges
Linda Marsa's article on science at liberal arts colleges (The
Scientist, Nov. 23, 1992, page 21) is quite thorough in outlining
the problems and the rewards of teaching and doing research at
smaller colleges. However, the accompanying list and comment by
Sam Carrier, provost of Oberlin College, that there have been no
major changes in the list of the best science-active liberal arts
colleges, is short-sighted. An appreciable number of other small
liberal arts colleges, besides those on the list--producing a
high proportion of science graduates, where professors do
independent research, but where good teaching is fundamental--can
be found. For example, Nobel Prize winner J. Michael Bishop is a
graduate of Gettysburg College. Science graduates of Lebanon
Valley College, Annville, Pa., have received national honors in
their fields. In addition, one graduate was recently named
president of the Mathematical Association of America, while
another is the new president-elect of the American Chemical
Society. Thus, it appears that the 1987 list needs revision.
ELIZABETH K. WEISBURGER
Chairperson
Emerita Board of Trustees
Lebanon Valley College
Bethesda, Md.
WHERE TO WRITE:
Letters to the Editor
The Scientist
3501 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Fax:(215)387-7542
E-mail:
Bitnet: garfield@aurora.cis.upenn.edu
71764.2561@compuserve.com
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
RESEARCH
Genome Mapping Progress Catapults Plant Research
(Page 13 of Newspaper)
BY SCOTT VEGGEBERG
Plant researchers appear to be catching up with the efforts of
those scientists in the better-funded and more visible Human
Genome Project. With a critical mass of information forming on
the genome of a model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, including
libraries of gene sequences and a number of important chromosome
maps, molecular biologists working with plants are at the
threshold of important breakthroughs on previously intractable
problems. They are on the brink of understanding the mechanisms
of disease resistance and of creating plants that produce novel
substances like biodegradable plastics.
Chris Somerville, a molecular biologist with the Plant Research
Laboratory at Michigan State University, is out on that leading
edge. He coauthored a recent paper in Science (V. Arondel, et
al., 258: 1353, 1992), which was something of a breakthrough
because it demonstrated the power of the currently available
genetic maps and libraries.
"We demonstrated that you could isolate a gene just on the basis
of the genetic map location of a mutation of that gene," says
Somerville. "Now anything we can mark with a mutation, you can
just go and get the gene now."
In this research, they used a mutated strain of Arabidopsis that
was unable to produce omega-3 unsaturated fatty acids. The
culprit was a gene coding an enzyme they dubbed fad3, a fatty
acid desaturase.
The discovery of fad3 is important because it demonstrates the
ability to use the genetic resources currently available to
locate and sequence genes with relatively little effort, and it
indicates, in Somerville's mind, that one of the big
breakthroughs of plant science<197>disease resistance<197>is not
far behind.
Somerville says that with about 1,000 professors in the United
States working in the area of plant disease resistance, it's
obvious that interest is keen, but not one of the genes
controlling this trait has been identified in any plant. Now,
thanks to the mapping efforts combined with other powerful tools
of molecular biology, it looks like a number of groups both in
the U.S. and abroad are very close to identifying a resistance
gene.
"It will be a first-class breakthrough when it happens," he says.
Joe Ecker, a molecular biologist at the University of
Pennsylvania, devotes half of his efforts to mapping the
Arabidopsis genome and the rest to working out the signal
transduction pathway for the plant hormone ethylene. His latest
results, published in the February 12 issue of Cell (J.J. Kieber,
et al., 72:427-41, 1993) are the culmination of work he started
in the early 1980s and give "the first feel for what a plant
signal transduction pathway looks like." It turns out it's very
much like the pathway found in humans and fruit flies.
Most of the molecular biologists now studying Arabidopsis did not
start out working on plants. Ecker got interested in plants while
investigating herpes viruses for his Ph.D. At the time, he
harbored a strong desire to get involved in hormone research.
He says that was also about the time when one of the first big
plant molecular biology reports hit the mainstream scientific
press (M.D. Chilton, et al., Cell, 11:263, 1977). The
paper<197>appearing as it did in Cell, with an accompanying photo
on the cover<197>had a big impact on Ecker.
"When you're in a medical school, you don't get a lot of plant
journals. It was basically telling you you could now introduce
genes into plants, " he says.
It was an exciting time, a time when "basically nothing was known
about how plant hormones worked," he says.
"From then until now, we've been pursuing the goal of how plant
hormones work, and now we're at the tip of the iceberg on that."
Agreeing On Arabidopsis
Arabidopsis began to emerge as the agreed-upon model for basic
plant researchers about 10 years ago because its genome is small
in size, about 100 million base pairs of DNA in five chromosomes,
compared with the 3 billion base pairs on 23 chromosomes in the
human genome, researchers say. The plant has a short life cycle
compared with crop plants such as corn or rice. In addition, the
seeds are tiny and the seedlings can easily be grown in the lab.
For instance, Pablo Scolnik, a plant geneticist for E.I. Du Pont
de Nemours & Co. Inc.'s Experimental Station Laboratory in
Wilmington, Del., says that in the basement of his building he
has as many Arabidopsis seedlings growing as there are corn
plants in Iowa. Du Pont has a large agrichemical business and an
expanding interest in agricultural biotechnology.
Why is Du Pont interested in this particular plant, a relative of
cauliflower that has a pronounced noncommercial, academic
reputation? "The ability to clone genes affects all of
agricultural research right now," explains Scolnik. "And when you
have the genome for Arabidopsis, you have the genome for all
plants. They're that homologous."
As with others in this field, Scolnik started out in another
division of life sciences<197>in his case, as a bacterial
geneticist who completed his Ph.D. 12 years ago. Explaining his
transition to Arabidopsis, he quips, "I was working with
photosynthetic bacteria, and when you grow up you move on to
plants."
One prominent researcher who also moved on to plants is Howard
Goodman, a molecular biologist at Massachusetts General
Hospital's genetics department. He was recognized by the
Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information as among
the top 1,000 cited scientists in the period 1965-78 for his work
in cloning the gene for insulin. But since he switched from
humans to the field of plant molecular biology about 10 years
ago, he says, his citation prowess has declined.
Part of the appeal of plant research was that the field was "new
and less crowded," he says. "And a lot of the techniques that had
been coming up through the animal world hadn't been applied to
plants yet."
But the study of the molecular biology of plants has been picking
up increasing momentum in the past few years. "There's been an
explosion of interest in this field," he says. "And it's been
very open and very collegial. It's a nice feeling to work in a
field where people are so open."
He sees both pros and cons to the choice of
Arabidopsis<197>achieved through international consensus<197>as
the focus of worldwide research efforts in the physiology of
plants.
While it's beneficial to have a common organism, there are a lot
of reasons not to work on Arabidopsis. "For one, it has no
commercial value," he says. "That makes it easier to work on in
an academic sense," because the plant has no value in the
marketplace and so there's less incentive to jealously guard
information. "But there's not as much money available as a
result."
The National Science Foundation, one of the major funding sources
for Arabidopsis genetics, supplied $7.7 million in fiscal year
1991 for all types of research on this organism, not just genome-
mapping efforts. By comparison, Congress in the same year
provided the National Institutes of Health $87 million for the
more saleable effort to map the human genome. And that allocation
has since grown to $106 million for FY 1993. Plant researchers
report, however, that instead of feeling overshadowed, they
benefit by being able to take advantage of the biological tools
that are developed as part of this massive effort.
Du Pont's Scolnik says the problem of funding will be around for
a while: "I believe we have a problem. It's a lot easier to
convince Congress to fund cancer research than it is to get funds
to do plant research."
Plus, in the U.S., farmers are paid enormous amounts not to grow
certain crops, he says. "We're faced with the question of: `Why
should we invest in plant research when we grow more than we
need?' "
Somerville's answer to that nettlesome question is: "Man does not
live by food alone." A lot of our needs, such as for
biodegradable plastics, could be supplied by transgenic plants,
as he demonstrated in an April paper in Science (Y. Poirier, et
al., 256:520, 1992). Corn starch, for instance, costs about 5
cents a pound to produce, while it costs about 50 cents to
produce petroleum-based plastics. If plants can be successfully
induced to produce alternative products at a similar econom-ic
advantage, they will be the factories of the future, according to
Somerville.
Thriving On Openness
Scolnik says that the openness that has been the hallmark of the
Arabidopsis genome effort is what's responsible for the fast
progress made toward identifying key genes. Despite his company's
bottom-line interest in research, he plans to continue to freely
share his laboratory's findings.
"My policy is to share all the relevant information and basic
technology we generate with the rest of the Arabidopsis
community," he says. "I think there a misconception that academic
labs are more open than industry labs." He says some companies
share, others don't, and the same is true of academic labs.
"And remember, this is pretty fundamental research. The funds a
company will invest in this type of research are limited." It's
this paucity of funding that makes it especially critical not to
hold onto information. For instance, Scolnik's group published a
paper in February 1992, summarizing their progress in chromosome
mapping (R.S. Reiter, et al., Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences, 89:1477, 1992).
An even more vital communication link than publishing papers in
journals is the electronic Arabidopsis newsgroup that was
established two years ago, just after the long-range plan for an
international plant genome effort was established (see The
Multinational Coordinated Arabidopsis thaliana Genome Research
Project<197>Progress Report: Year Two, Publication No. NSF 92-
112, National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C., 1992).
Researchers in this field report that this electronic bulletin
board is extremely useful for communicating with their colleagues
no matter where their location or time zone.
"Also, my phone rings everyday," says Scolnik. "We [Arabidopsis
researchers] talk a lot."
The continued openness of this international effort is also a
delight for Somerville, who says the gene-patenting issue that
has infected the Human Genome Project has been "very
destructive." The international collegiality is now a thing of
the past in that project.
"This is exactly the kind of thing we want to avoid with
Arabidopsis," he says. Right now, there's a tentative agreement
between most European groups and the U.S. to share information
openly.
Massive Sequencing Effort
There are Arabidopsis sequencing efforts under way in the U.S. at
Michigan State and Harvard universities, as well as in France and
the United Kingdom, says Somerville. But what he finds
potentially exciting is the proposal by former NIH researcher
Craig Venter to sequence the entire library of Arabidopsis cDNAs.
Venter is known for generating the partial cDNA sequences of
neural genes, which formed the basis of the controversial gene
patent application being pursued by NIH (Scott Veggeberg, The
Scientist, April 27, 1992, page 1). He is currently president of
the Institute for Genomic Research, a private group in
Gaithersburg, Md., devoted to gene sequencing, which has the
capacity to sequence 1,200 cDNAs per day. Arabidopsis has about
20,000 cDNAs, each of which correspond to active genes in the
plant.
"Venter has spoken to me about doing all the Arabidopsis cDNAs in
a matter of a few months. In fact, that remains a distinct
possibility," says Somerville. Venter would have the right to
hold back and patent a few potentially valuable genes, but the
rest of the effort would spill over into the public domain, he
says. In Arabidopsis, these cDNAs account for about 30 percent of
the total DNA, with the rest being primarily regulatory genes and
inactive DNA.
Somerville says this approach would close off an alternative
pathway, whereby a few big labs generate these sequences. Instead
of putting the bulk of them into the public domain, they might
play them close to the chest and distribute them to "friends" as
favors, or compete directly with the people doing the original
research on these genes. For instance, the group of researchers
working on Arabidopsis at Michigan State have a lab devoted to
sequencing, and the effort is big enough that they could afford
to sit on their own sequences. But the 10 principal investigators
there are really committed to getting the work out into the open,
he says.
He says that the large-scale sequencing techniques are out there
and that somebody is going to do it. The challenge is to make
sure that the groups doing it are regularly releasing their
results.
"If Craig Venter were to do it, even if he kept back a few dozen
very important genes, it would still be a tremendous boon to the
Arabidopsis community," says Somerville.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
HOT PAPERS
(Page 15 of newspaper)
MEDICINE
J.D. Hamilton, P.M. Hartigan, M.S. Simberkoff, P.L. Day, et al.,
"A controlled trial of early versus late treatment with
zidovudine in symptomatic human immunodeficiency virus
infection," New England Journal of Medicine, 326[7]:487, 1992.
John D. Hamilton (Department of Veteran Affairs Medical Center,
Durham, N.C.): "The results of the V.A. Cooperative Study on AZT
(zidovudine)--which compared early vs. later AZT treatment in
patients with symptomatic HIV infection and demonstrated a delay
in the onset of AIDS but no additional benefit in length of
survival--were not welcome to many. Certainly, they were a major
disappointment on a personal level to infected patients, their
families, and their private health care providers, all of whom
hoped for additional survival with early AZT. As an additional
perspective on the most important new cause of serious morbidity
and mortality in the United States and abroad, the results were
not welcome news to officials in public health or to other
scientists who had previously reported more encouraging results.
Indeed, our study was, and still is, met with considerable
consternation and skepticism.
"We, too, would have liked to demonstrate a resounding
improvement in the therapeutic options available to HIV-infected
patients. Nevertheless, the results did provide valuable new
information in that they extended the certainty that early AZT
compared with placebo delays the onset of AIDS to include the
fact that early AZT is also better than later AZT in that
respect. Our study (mean, over 24 months) confirmed the NIH
trials, which showed that drug toxicity was minimal even when
administered over a prolonged period. And our study provided the
only published data concerning the impact of early AZT on
survival, since neither of the previously reported NIH trials was
of sufficient duration to provide any data on this matter. As a
point of clarification, our study has been widely publicized as
concluding that AZT has no benefit on survival. This is not the
case. Instead, our study concludes that early AZT provides no
additional benefit in survival to that achieved with later AZT.
"Given that early AZT delays the onset of AIDS but does not
prolong survival as compared with later AZT, our group believes
that it is essential to consider at least five additional issues
before automatically instituting AZT therapy when a patient's CD4
count falls below 500 cells/mm3. These are: (1) the occurrence of
known immediate and potential delayed adverse side effects, which
may outweigh the symptoms that attend disease progression; (2)
whether early AZT can be expected to improve the quality of life
of the mildly symptomatic patient; (3) the impact, if any, of
early therapy on reducing communicability; (4) the consequent
emergence of antiviral drug resistance in patients on long-term
AZT and the subsequent impact of AZT resistance on disease
progression; and (5) the financial cost that inevitably goes
along with the early use of AZT.
"The importance of these variables in the overall scheme of
personal and public health is not clear. In the absence of
additional controlled, clinical trial data, however, we believe
that decisions to embark on a lifelong therapeutic regimen such
as AZT should be made only after considering the relative
incentives and disincentives just outlined."
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
BIOCHEMISTRY
S.J. Landry, L.M. Gierasch, "The chaperonin GroEL binds a
polypeptide in an a-helical conformation," Biochemistry, 30:7359-
7362, 1991.
Sam Landry (formerly with Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas;
currently with Tulane University School of Medicine, New
Orleans): "Biophysical chemists studying in vitro protein folding
and molecular biologists studying diverse cellular processes,
including DNA replication and the heat shock response, have
converged on a set of proteins called molecular chaperones, which
modulate interactions between protein surfaces. Both the hsp60
and hsp70 families of molecular chaperones bind a variety of non-
native proteins. This paper represents an initial effort to
answer the questions: What characteristics of a non-native
protein are recognized and bound by chaperones; and how can
chaperones accommodate diverse primary sequences in order to bind
many different proteins?
"We began our studies with the E. coli hsp60<197>called
GroEL<197> and examined its interactions with fragments of a
protein, rhodanese, whose in vitro folding is effectively
facilitated by the GroEL/ES/ATP system (J. Martin, et al.,
Nature, 352:36-42, 1991; J.A. Mendoza, et al., Journal of
Biological Chemistry, 266:13044-9, 1991). Using a nuclear
magnetic resonance method that relies on the development of
distance-dependent interprotonnuclear Overhauser effects in a
smaller molecule (in our case, the rhodanese peptide) when it
binds to a larger molecule (the chaperone), we found that the
peptide bound to GroEL was an a-helix. This peptide presents a
hydrophobic surface when folded as a helix; this is a likely
feature exploited by the chaperone for binding.
"The idea that hydrophobicity is the feature of non-native
proteins that is recognized by chaperones was suggested by H.R.B
Pelham in 1986 (Cell, 46:959-61). However, the hydrophobic
binding mode was not the only possible result. We recently found
that an hsp70 chaperone binds a substrate in an extended
conformation (S.J. Landry, et al., Nature, 355:455-7, 1992).
Here, the interaction with chaperone appears to involve the
polypeptide backbone, perhaps through hydrogen bonds. Thus, the
two chaperone families may have solved the non-native protein
binding problem in different ways: by inducing the polypeptide to
coalesce its hydrophobic side chains into a binding surface, or
by building an array of polar interactions."
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
COSMOLOGY
T.P. Walker, G. Steigman, D.N. Schramm, K.A. Olive, H.S. Kang,
"Primordial nucleosynthesis redux," The Astrophysical Journal,
376:393, 1991.
Terry Walker (Ohio State University, Columbus): "The standard
model of the hot big bang assumes a homogeneous and isotropic
universe with gravity described by general relativity and strong
and electroweak interactions described by the standard model of
particle physics. The hot big bang model makes two unavoidable
predictions: (1) the presence of a low-energy background of relic
photons, and (2) the production of primordial elements about one
minute after the big bang (referred to as big bang or primordial
nucleosynthesis).
"The relic photons were first observed by Penzias and Wilson in
1965 and more recently by the COBE satellite (G.F. Smoot, et al.,
Astrophys. J., 371:1, 1991).
"Although it is difficult to disentangle the primordial
abundances of deuterium, 3He, 4He, and 7Li from observations made
today, our paper shows that there is beautiful concordance
between the big bang predictions and these primordial abundances
for a very narrow range of the baryon-to-photon ratio h (the one
free parameter of the theory): 2.8 x 10-10 aha 4.0 x 10-10. This
bound corresponds to a baryon density of about 5 percent of the
density expected in a flat universe and suggests that the bulk of
the baryons in the universe are dark. Measurements of the amount
of gravitating material in the universe suggest that there is
more there than just baryons: not only is most of the universe
dark, but also it is primarily composed of something besides
baryons!
"Of course, the agreement between prediction and observation can
be turned around to examine alterations to the standard model of
particle physics. In this way, we show that the equivalent number
of light neutrino species must be less than 3.3, in excellent
agreement with the measurements of high-energy collider
experiments. This bound admits a myriad of constraints on
particle physics beyond the standard model.
"Any extension of the standard model must conform to our
constraint, and that is the primary source of citations to our
paper. In addition, the baryon content of the universe plays an
important role in the formation of large-scale structure as well
as experimental searchers for dark matter<197>so our paper is
often cited for the bound it places on the baryon density.
"The `state of the art' in primordial nucleosynthesis research
consists of making the most accurate predictions of the
primordial abundances (for example, by updating the nuclear
reaction network with new measurements) and in extracting the
primordial abundances of deuterium, 3He, 4He, and 7Li from
existing observational data (for example, 4He is processed by
stellar nucleosynthesis and so the primordial 4He abundance must
be estimated from a sufficiently uncontaminated subset of the
data). This is what we lay out in our paper.
"The tremendous predictive power of big bang nucleosynthesis
requires that we constantly hunt for chinks in its armor. The
simplicity and inevitability of primordial nucleosynthesis means
that a true disagreement between prediction and observation would
signal a fundamental flaw in our understanding of particle
physics and cosmology.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY
New Help For Researchers With `Rusty' Statistical Skills
(Page 16 of newspaper)
BY CAREN D. POTTER
One-way ANOVA or chi-square test? Two-sample t test or Wilcoxon
matched pairs?
Statisticians have no trouble with questions like these.
Determining the appropriate analysis for a given set of data is
what they are trained to do. Research scientists, on the other
hand, typically have had only a course or two in statistics and
lack a thorough understanding of the subtleties of the different
statistical analyses.
"Since [researchers] are trying to generalize something about an
entire population based on a small sample, it's very important to
use the correct test," says Mary Newman, a toxicologist with
Liposome Technology Inc. in Menlo Park, Calif. "But statistics is
kind of a black box, something we aren't really trained in.
This casual acquaintance with statistics is only part of the
problem for researchers when it comes to analyzing data. An
abundance of statistics software, available now on every type of
computer from mainframe to Macintosh, makes the task even more
difficult because many stat packages resemble a Thanksgiving
dinner--too much of a good thing.
"Powerful packages such as SPSS, SAS, SYSTAT, BMDP, and others
provide an embarrassment of riches to the user in the possible
forms of statistical analysis, says Edward Brent, president of
The Idea Works Inc., Columbia, Mo. "There are literally hundreds
of forms of analysis available today.
Today's crop of statistics software springs from two sources:
mainframe-based programs (most have migrated "down to personal
computers and workstations, as well) and newer packages written
specifically for personal computers. Packages in the former group
were originally created for statisticians and assume a
familiarity with both statistics and computing that many research
scientists do not have. Also, in terms of the analyses they
offer, these packages are extremely comprehensive. One
pharmacological researcher, who asks not to be identified, likens
them to a car with 43 gears. "Either you just don't drive it
because it's too hard to figure out, or you putter along, never
taking it out of first gear, he says.
Software written specifically for personal computers, on the
other hand, often provides less functionality than mainframe
packages (fewer forms of analysis, for example, or the ability to
handle fewer cases and variables), but the trade-off is easier
use. These programs--StatView from Abacus Concepts, Berkeley,
Calif., and Statistica from StatSoft, Tulsa, Okla., for instance-
-make good use of icons, on-line help, and mouse manipulation to
greatly simplify data analysis for scientists.
Two other packages, InStat from San Diego-based GraphPad Software
Inc. and Statistical Navigator from The Idea Works, go even
further, to the point of acting like a combination of a favorite
stat book and a patient consultant, helping scientists understand
the different analysis options so that they choose the
appropriate ones. (Statistical Navigator does not perform actual
statistical analyses; see accompanying story.)
This second group of software packages represents an approach to
statistics that has been a long time in coming, according to
Harvey Motulsky, president of GraphPad. "I'm surprised the
personal computer had been out so long before people made more
usable statistics programs, he says.
Part of their charm is that most of these newer packages were
written not for statisticians, but for scientists. "My experience
with mainframe stat software was back in graduate school, says
John May, a pharmacologist at Whitby Research in Richmond, Va.
"Now, I try to avoid those programs at all costs. Even then, if I
could, I used my programmable calculator instead of the mainframe
stat package.
InStat, in particular, was designed to meet the needs of
scientists who are infrequent users of statistics software and
somewhat unfamiliar with statistics in general. Two attributes
enable it to do this. First, InStat was deliberately designed to
lead a user logically through each step of the data analysis
process, from entering data to viewing (and understanding) the
results. In fact, although most statistics packages do not give
users any guidance about entering data, getting data into the
computer in the correct format goes a long way toward simplifying
the analysis process to follow.
InStat uses dialog screens to ask users questions, then builds on
their answers to lead them to the next step. For example, an
early screen asks which general type of analysis is needed
(column comparisons, linear regression, or chi-square and related
analyses of contingency tables). InStat uses the answer to create
a custom spreadsheet into which data are entered.
Once the data are in, the program presents the user with its
choices for analysis. With two columns of data, for instance,
InStat defaults to the unpaired t test, reporting the two-tailed
P value. If this is satisfactory, the user hits a button marked
"Do It, and those calculations are made. If other analyses are
preferred, the user selects them from a menu.
The second feature that makes InStat a blessing to the nonexpert
in statistics is its use of plain English--a distressingly rare
occurrence in both software and statistics. At most points in the
data-analysis process, if a user is confused about a particular
term or analysis, he or she can call up a help screen that
clarifies it in easy-to-understand language. Here is an example
of such a help screen:
"Recommendation: Select Fisher's test. The corrected chi-square
test is more popular, but only because the calculations are much
simpler to perform by hand. Fisher's test yields the exact P
value; the chi-square calculations yield an estimate...
InStat doesn't try to be all statistical analyses to all
researchers, which accounts in part for its user-friendliness. It
provides the more commonly needed tests in the realm of
biostatistics. Concerns that, in their effort to pare down and
simplify InStat, the program's developers might have omitted a
number of important analyses appear to be groundless. Diana
Gabaldon, writing in Laboratory Microcomputer (10:2[30-33],
1991), was "entirely charmed by the simple thoroughness of this
package. She adds that the program includes about 85 percent of
the statistical tests normally needed. Pharmacologist May uses
InStat and says it lacks only one post hoc test he uses. The
company promises this test in the next release.
Although InStat is very good at making statistics understandable,
it does have limitations. It cannot read most spreadsheet files
directly, for example. Its graphs are very simple, and the user
is not able to modify or enhance the graphs. Still, at $110,
InStat seems well worth its price.
Many scientists, although experts in one field, have to venture
into the very different, very complex field of statistics to
communicate their research to others. User-friendly statistical
software helps structure their selection of the appropriate
statistical tests and ease the burden of running those tests.
Caren D. Potter is a freelance writer based in McKinleyville, Calif.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
STATISTICIAN IN A BOX
(Page 16 of newspaper)
Statistical Navigator from The Idea Works Inc., Columbia, Mo.,
was designed not to perform analyses but to work as a supplement
to existing statistical packages. It uses a type of artificial
intelligence called expert systems to determine, from users'
input, which statistical analyses are most appropriate for their
data. (Statistica from StatSoft, Tulsa, Okla., uses similar
technology in its module "Statistical Advisor.)
"Expert systems are so named, explains Edward Brent, president of
The Idea Works, "because they are designed to help a user with a
specific, complex task in much the same way an expert consultant
would work, if one were available.
Actually, Brent prefers the term "decision support system over
"expert systems to describe Statistical Navigator. The latter
phrase might convey the wrong impression, he fears--that users
answer a few questions, then blindly accept answers that the
program spits out.
"In each case, Statistical Navigator explains what each analysis
does and how it does, or does not, fit the user's research
objectives and assumptions. The researcher makes the final
decision about which one to use, Brent says. "We believe that the
appropriate role for Statistical Navigator is to help researchers
think through their analysis problems, not to help them avoid
thinking.
Statistical Navigator resembles a human consultant in the way it
interacts with a user. It starts out with general questions, then
moves to ones that are more specific. For example, if the user is
knowledgeable enough to select a broad category of analysis from
a list (causal analysis, measures of association, scaling and
classification, and so forth), the package works at that level.
If researchers are less sure of what they are doing, the program
gets more specific. The next step is a list of common research
questions, asking the user to select the one that best describes
his or her own objective. If this doesn't work, the list of
questions becomes more detailed and comprehensive. Finally, users
have the option of using Statistical Navigator's natural language
interface to enter a brief phrase describing their research.
Unlike a human, Statistical Navigator doesn't grow tired or
impatient, no matter how long this process takes.
Once Statistical Navigator has the information it needs, it pre-
sents the four analysis techniques that best fit the user's
objectives and assumptions. A final report gives a detailed
description of each of the four analyses, a numerical score
representing how well each matches the user's requirements, a
discussion of possible significance tests where appropriate,
references to statistical literature in which the user can find
out more about the techniques, and, whenever possible, a list of
the commonly available statistics packages that perform the
analyses. Like InStat, Statistical Navigator makes on-screen help
available throughout the process. Also like InStat, Statistical
Navigator's help screens are written for an audience that is not
expert in statistics.
Trevor Hastie, chairman-elect of the American Statistical
Association's Statistical Computing section and a scientist at
AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., cautions that
programs like these "can be useful for someone who really doesn't
know what they're doing, but you only get out what has been put
in to the package. Software based on expert systems assumes that
whoever made the rules made the right decisions, he says.
"It would seem that these packages would be the ones to recommend
to nonexperts, Hastie adds. "But they might be giving a wrong
answer, and a nonexpert might not realize it.
"We do not intend Statistical Navigator to replace advice from a
competent statistician, says Brent. "The program may suggest the
researcher consider some form of analysis which is quite new to
them. They may be well advised to seek out competent statistical
advice.
--C.D.P.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
PROFESSION
Networking At Meetings Is Vital For Career Advancement
BY BILLY GOODMAN
At large scientific meetings, it's easy to tell the novices from
the cognoscenti. While graduate students and other young
scientists often rush between meeting rooms to hear consecutive
short talks, their more experienced colleagues set foot in
lecture halls only to hear a few presentations of special
interest. These meeting pros prefer to work the corridors, the
poster halls, and the deep sofas of the lobby, where they meet
old friends, make new contacts, and discuss experiments,
theories, and funding possibilities.
Paleoecologist Taber Allison, a research associate at the Harvard
Forest, a Harvard University facility in central Massachusetts,
goes to a limited number of talks when he attends meetings now.
But, he says, "as a graduate student, I felt I had to do
something every minute. Now, I pick out a few of the most
relevant talks to go to and spend half my time talking to
people."
Networking is a skill often overlooked by young researchers, yet
one that is frequently important for professional advancement in
science, according to Mary Powelson, a professor of botany and
plant pathology at Oregon State University who has written and
lectured on how to get more out of scientific conferences.
"In the long run, [networking] is how you begin to identify the
leaders in your profession," Powelson says.
In the short run, there are a number of advantages to using
conferences to develop and extend a professional network, veteran
meeting attendees say. To start with, putting faces with names
and developing name recognition helps a young researcher begin to
fit in with established scientists. Later, as a relationship
develops, Powelson notes, new colleagues might well be willing to
review a manuscript before submission to a journal. As
relationships progress further, colleagues borrow slides from
each other, share data, and discuss experimental results, all of
which helps them keep abreast of their science and visible within
their community.
And although there is a widespread view of science as a
meritocracy, it's undeniable that whom you know is frequently
instrumental in advancing a scientific career. Mary Funke,
manager of professional services for the American Chemical
Society (ACS), says that, according to ACS's 1988 salary survey,
more than 65 percent of chemists found their jobs through
professional networks.
Indeed, for the professionals who manage scientific meetings,
facilitating networking is a primary goal. Louise Salmon is
meetings manager for the American Institute of Biological
Sciences (AIBS), a consortium of about 40 scientific societies
and other groups. The main purpose of the large AIBS annual
meeting is to "provide networking between disciplines," she says.
"A lot of scientists never get the chance to meet people in
related disciplines."
During a meeting, as she makes her rounds, Salmon says, "It's
wonderful when you hear the buzz of talk in the hallways and you
realize that's what the meeting is all about."
Many scientists interviewed for this article agree that the most
effective networking at conferences begins long before the
meetings start. People are so busy at meetings, notes Powelson,
that it's important to arrange a rendezvous ahead of time with
those you want to see. Explain your reason for wanting to get
together and suggest a time. Dinners are usually taken up with
banquets or old friends, but many attendees keep breakfast and
lunch open for meeting new colleagues.
Powelson warns against a tendency to spend all free time with old
friends or with the colleagues you traveled to the meeting with,
a particular inclination for graduate students. "You need to
branch out early" in your career, she says.
Young researchers frequently express trepidation about
approaching well-known scientists at meetings, assuming that
luminaries will be busy or have no interest in meeting them.
Sometimes this is indeed the case. But more often, prominent
scientists are happy to talk with someone who is well-informed
about his or her work. Speakers and poster presenters,
especially, expect to be approached for questions and discussion.
The welfare of younger scientists at conferences has been the
subject of several essays by Eugene Garfield, publisher of The
Scientist (E. Garfield, "Information Encounter Groups," Essays of
an Information Scientist, 2:498-9, 1977; "Making Contacts at
Conferences--A Problem for the Young Scientist," Essays of an
Information Scientist, 3:668-72, 1980; and "Making Contacts At
Conferences," The Scientist, April 4, 1988, page 7). He has
suggested that the first day of the conference be devoted to
"information encounter groups." About 30 attendees, including
both established and new scientists, would meet and exchange
biographical information about each other and outline
professional and intellectual problems each faces. Such a meeting
would expand the circle of contacts of each scientist and provide
the incentive to talk further.
Although information encounter groups are not a regular part of
scientific meetings, many societies have recognized the need for
greater contact between younger and established researchers. For
example, at its 1993 meeting in May, the American
Crystallographic Association and its Young Scientists Interest
Group will match senior members of the association with young
members for dinner.
Despite such efforts, networking still frequently involves the
awkward or intimidating prospect of approaching someone, eminent
or not, out of the blue. For this reason, several young
researchers stress the value of attending conferences with a
thesis adviser or boss who'll take the time to introduce you to
colleagues.
When Peggy Vanderhoff-Hanaver attended the last meeting of the
American Crystallographic Association, friends took her aside,
she recalls, and asked, " `Why are you hanging around with your
boss? Dump him and hang around with us.' " Vanderhoff-
Hanaver, a post-doc at the University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge
Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, says that "what they
didn't realize is my boss knows a lot of people." Among the
people he introduced her to were friends from his graduate school
days who were able to give her advice on growing protein
crystals.
Most scientific meetings have abundant social events designed for
relaxation and to encourage informal networking (see accompanying
story). Nearly all the young scientists interviewed for this
article agree that mixers and other events are ideal places to
approach someone whose talk was thought-provoking or whose work
is of interest. Most social events are better for making
introductions than for serious discussion, which can always be
scheduled for a quiet time later in the meeting.
While much of the important work at a conference takes place
outside the meeting halls, most people who attend conferences
want to hear at least a few talks and are always on the lookout
for those that promise to be especially interesting or relevant
to their research. Yet, it's a daunting task to pick out the
handful of talks worth attending at large meetings with 5,000 or
10,000 presentations in four or five days.
Just as with other forms of networking, the key is to plan ahead.
"Read the abstracts before the meeting," advises Ann Brodie, a
research associate in biochemistry at Oregon State University.
Brodie is active in the local chapter of the Association for
Women in Science and, with her colleague Mary Powelson, has
advised students on how to optimize their time at scientific
conferences.
Acknowledging that picking out a good talk is sometimes a shot in
the dark, Brodie emphasizes that one of the advantages of
networking is the added information you get on who's a good
speaker--and who isn't. Scientists with a network of colleagues
frequently call them up before meetings to discuss what
presentations or events are worth attending.
Presentations at many scientific conferences take the form of
very brief seminars and longer keynote speeches. "The problem
with the very short papers," says Brodie, "is that if you are not
familiar with the research, it's hard to keep up, and if you are
familiar, then there's not very much new" in the talk.
Computerized help is available for some meetings to help
scientists put together an itinerary. Research Information
Systems Inc. of Carlsbad, Calif., recently acquired by the
Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information, has
adapted its Reference Update software to allow keyword searches
of meeting programs, greatly simplifying the problem of putting
together an itinerary from thousands of abstracts. The Society
for Neuroscience, among others, has used the system. The
Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, which
once used the California company's software, now offers a similar
service in-house.
Whether you select presentations with computer help or via the
primitive method of paging through the program, planning an
itinerary ahead is essential to organize time efficiently. Pam
Tucker, a senior engineer at 3M Co. in Austin, Texas, who often
attends meetings of the American Chemical Society, advises
writing out a schedule for where you need to be when, and keeping
a map handy.
Brodie and others feel that poster sessions are often more
worthwhile than talks (Robert Finn, The Scientist, Jan. 25, 1993,
page 20). There is more time to study and digest the contents of
a poster, Brodie says. And the people presenting posters are
eager to get into discussions about their work, often leading to
exchanges of ideas for experiments and even initiating
collaborations.
One of the constraints of a short talk is that there is usually
time enough only for the results, with little time for discussion
of the many false starts typical of experimental science. That's
one reason Vanderhoff-Hanaver prefers poster sessions.
"I'm trying to grow crystals," she says. "At talks, people show
pictures of the final solution. They don't tell you all the work
they had to do to grow the crystal." She finds that by talking
with researchers at their posters, she is more likely to get the
information she wants on systematic methods for growing crystals.
This anecdote illuminates one aspect of networking that several
younger scientists emphasize: Networking is not simply
ingratiating yourself with senior scientists in the hopes of
landing a job or getting recognition. It is a way to improve your
science by making personal contact with people who can provide
advice, criticism, materials, or anything of value to your
research.
Billy Goodman is a freelance science writer based in Upper
Montclair, N.J.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
A FIELD GUIDE TO SOCIAL EVENTS AT SCIENTIFIC MEETINGS
Almost without exception, social events at scientific conferences
are fertile ground for networking, veteran conference attendees
say. Those who go to such activities are usually eager to meet
people and are often more relaxed than during the tightly
scheduled scientific sessions. Nevertheless, not all social
events are created equal. Here is a guide to some of them.
Mixers: Many societies hold a mixer or reception on the first
night of a conference; others schedule a mixer later in the
meeting. One drawback of an opening mixer is that you can't use
something from the meeting itself to break the ice in
conversation. In addition, names may not yet have been linked
with faces. Opening mixers are a great place, however, for old
friends to meet. A mixer later in the meeting is a good place to
approach someone whose talk you liked but whom you couldn't get a
chance to talk to earlier.
Among the more unusual mixers is the American Chemical Society's
"SciMix," which is part poster session, part mixer. Paula Groves
of the ACS meetings office emphasizes that SciMix is mainly a
poster session "jazzed up" with refreshments. Each division
within ACS presents posters.
The American Institute of Biological Sciences brings several
societies, such as the Ecological Society of America and the
Botanical Society of America, together for its meetings. It holds
an All-Society Mixer that is very popular, according to AIBS
meetings manager Louise Salmon. "It's supposed to last an hour,
but usually goes two or three."
If the society is footing the bill for a reception, it's called a
mixer. But if the event has a corporate or hospital sponsor
behind it, then it's likely to be called a cocktail party. When
the American Federation for Clinical Research meets, the major
medical centers, by long tradition, each host a party, according
to Andrew Hoffman, the federation's current president. The
parties are "where I've gotten to know a lot of people," says
Hoffman, "and are a reason why a lot of people go" to the
meetings.
Banquets: Many societies have a formal banquet during their
annual meeting. There is frequently a separate, hefty charge for
these dinners, which often include an awards ceremony or a
speaker. If the speaker is boring, the banquet may be the low
point of the meeting.
Robert Sterner, an associate professor of biology at the
University of Texas at Arlington agrees. "Banquets may be the
worst place to network," he says, "because you're imprisoned at a
table."
Oregon State University botany and plant pathology professor Mary
Powelson has a contrary view. "My philosophy," she says, "is that
it is almost mandatory to go to awards ceremonies to be
supportive of your colleagues."
Field Trips: Some societies sponsor trips to cultural attractions
in the city where the meeting is held; for a few, such as the
Ecological Society of America, field trips are more closely
related to the professional interests of the members. Such
outings are fun and often good places to network. At the 1992
American Institute of Biological Sciences meeting in Honolulu,
there were 50 field trips. "You get pretty close to people going
up cliffs, along ridge tops, or snorkeling," says Salmon.
Just for Fun: The high point of the annual meeting of the
American Society of Mammalogists is usually the auction, on the
night before the final day of the meeting. Everyone is encouraged
to bring in anything that can be auctioned off. Especially
popular are personal belongings of someone who has retired, such
as field notebooks or, in one case, baby shoes. Other items often
auctioned include university T-shirts and books from publishers
in attendance; one year, members from Washington brought ash from
Mount St. Helens. The money goes to fund the opening beer bash at
the next meeting as well as for research support for students.
--B.G.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
Networking Tips
(Page 20 of newspaper)
The following tips are a distillation of the advice of numerous
scientists and the writings of Ann Brodie and Mary Powelson of
Oregon State University.
* Ask contacts for business cards and note the circumstances of
your meeting on the back. Graduate students should consider
getting business cards.
* Business meetings of societies are overlooked as places for
networking. Attend committee meetings, volunteer to serve on
committees, and play an active role on them. If you assume
responsibility, get the job done.
* When you give a paper or poster, note the names of people who
ask questions or talk to you about your work.
* Graduate students and others often save money by choosing
outlying hotels. Avoid this, if possible, since being centrally
located opens up numerous opportunities for informal discussion.
* Make it a habit of arranging to have meals with scientists you
don't already know.
* After a conference is over, follow up with people you've met or
heard give a presentation.
--B.G.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
Grant Program Encourages Collaboration
(Page 21 of newspaper)
BY JEFF SEIKEN
Traditionally, basic scientists have kept to their lab
experiments, clinical scientists have kept to their patient
studies, and neither has much traffic with the other. But the
National Cancer Institute (NCI) is seeking to turn this tradition
around. Last year it handed out more than $17 million to the
first recipients of its Specialized Programs of Research
Excellence (SPORE) grants. These grants are expressly designed to
support collaborative ventures--or what NCI officials like to
call "translational research efforts"--between laboratory and
clinical scientists.
"When we talk about translational research, what we're really
talking about is how we move our basic [research], whether it's
done in cell lines or mice or rats, into research that will have
more of a direct impact on incidence and mortality in humans,"
explains Brian Kimes, associate director of NCI's Centers
Training and Resources Program.
The aim of the SPORE program is to accelerate the flow of
findings from the lab to patients' bedsides by forging an
alliance between the two types of researchers. "The unique part
of the grant mechanism is that we're merging the thinking of
basic and clinical scientists [and getting them] to design
research projects together," Kimes says.
In the first round of the SPORE grants, some 50 institutions
submitted applications. Out of this pool, NCI selected eight to
receive three-year awards ranging from $1.7 million to $2.3
million annually. Four of the grants went to breast cancer
researchers, and two apiece to scientists working in the areas of
lung and prostate cancer.
"Almost all of the grant applications had a lot of high-quality
science in them," Kimes says. But the determining factor really
came down to which "were the ones that had the translational
issues addressed most thoroughly."
A recipient whose study characterizes the cooperative nature of
the SPORE program is Helene Smith, director of the Geraldine
Brush Cancer Research Institute at California Pacific Medical
Center in San Francisco. For the project, Smith teamed up with
Craig Henderson, chief medical oncologist at what might normally
be considered a rival institution, the University of California,
San Francisco. But instead of competing, Smith and Henderson are
collaborating on a four-pronged study of breast cancer that will
draw on the expertise of researchers and clinicians from all over
the Bay area.
Their enterprise developed out of a series of interrelated
studies initiated about seven years ago. "I was working in breast
cancer research," Smith says, "and I realized that in order to
move ahead in trying to apply basic research on model systems to
breast cancer, I really needed to have clinical colleagues."
Smith's conclusion prompted her to start an informal journal club
for like-minded scientists. These discussions laid the groundwork
for a program project funded by NCI on developing new molecular
markers for predicting prognosis.
When it came time to apply for the SPORE grants, Smith says, the
success of the program project gave her a big leg up on the
process because she already had a group of scientists in place
who had actively demonstrated their commitment to the SPORE
ideal. With a collaborative framework already established, Smith
says, "it was relatively easy for us to expand into additional
scientists and new directions. The SPOREs were tailor-made for
us, in a way."
In addition to the eight major awards, NCI issued 12 smaller,
three-year grants for feasibility studies. Varying between
$70,000 and $200,000 annually, these grants went to investigators
whose proposals had some weaknesses but were still judged to be
fundable. Kimes characterizes the awards not as consolation
prizes, but rather as a form of encouragement. "It was the desire
of the cancer institute to maintain momentum at these
institutions so that they can continue with their translational
objectives and be competitive in the next round. The grants give
them some kind of impetus to keep going."
Maintaining momentum is exactly what Pittsburgh Cancer Institute
director Ronald Herberman intends to do. Although his failure to
land one of the major awards will force him to scale back
considerably, Herberman still plans to apply the money he did
receive to at least the first phase of his project and begin
recruiting patients into his study. "It's a foot in the door," is
how Herberman sees the grant. "Our challenge is to do as much as
we can combining what NCI is making available together with what
we can muster from institutional resources to show feasibility
and promise [in the next round]," he says.
Herberman and other cancer researchers have a bit of time before
they have to start preparing for round two. In order to get the
program up and running quickly, NCI decided to issue the initial
SPORE grants all at once, rather than stagger them over several
years. As a result, the second cycle of breast, lung, and
prostate SPOREs isn't slated to take place until 1995, when the
current awards are due to expire. In the meantime, NCI intends to
expand the scope of the program. The institute is currently
accepting applications for studies in gastrointestinal cancer
(deadline: April 23), and by 1995 it expects to add brain tumors
to the SPORE lineup.
For more information, contact National Cancer Institute, Division
of Cancer Biology, Diagnosis and Centers, 6130 Executive Blvd.,
Executive Plaza North, Suite 512, Bethesda, Md. 20892;
(301) 496-8528.
Jeff Seiken is a freelance writer based in Pittsburgh.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
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PEOPLE
(Page 22 of newspaper)
Femtochemistry Researcher Is Chosen To Receive $100,000 Israeli
Wolf Prize in Chemistry
Ahmed H. Zewail, a chemical physics professor at the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena, has received the 1993 Wolf
Prize in Chemistry from the Israel-based Wolf Foundation.
Since 1978, the Wolf Foundation has been granting $100,000 prizes
for individual achievements in the fields of agriculture,
chemistry, mathematics, medicine, physics, and the arts. This
year, the prizes will be presented on May 16 by Israeli President
Chaim Herzog at the Knesset building in Jerusalem.
Zewail is being honored for his contributions to the ultrafast
study of chemical dynamics on femtosecond timescales (Kathryn
Phillips, The Scientist, May 29, 1989, page 17). One femtosecond
is equivalent to one thousandth-mil- lionth-millionth of a
second. In femtochemistry, he says, "basically, you're
photographing snapshots of the atoms and molecules in the
intercourse of a chemical reaction in real time. This has to be
done in femtoseconds using ultrafast, pulsating lasers and
molecular beams." A summary of his work can be found in Science
(A.H. Zewail, "Laser femtochemistry," 242[4885]: 1645-53, 1988).
The Caltech laboratory, staffed by about 20 graduate students and
postdocs, has five laser facilities--each working on the same
research but from a different perspective. Operating expenses for
the high-tech equipment are close to $1 million a year.
Zewail characterizes femto-chemistry as a "field of study that is
exploding." His lab's most cited paper (M. Dantus, et al., "Real-
time femtosecond probing of transition states in chemical
reactions," Journal of Chemical Physics, 87[4]: 2395-7, 1987) has
been cited in more than 100 subsequent papers to date.
The next step for Zewail's lab is to advance photoimaging
techniques. Currently, he is using spectroscopy, which reveals
the atomic "fingerprints" of a molecule's motion. Zewail says he
now is trying to use electron diffraction to create direct
imaging of the molecules. "With electron imaging, it is like
taking an X-ray image of the molecule itself. You are seeing the
individual arrangements and structures ... just like you would
take a picture," he says.
Born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1946, Zewail started work at
Caltech in 1976 as an assistant professor. He received his
bachelor's degree in 1967 from Alexandria University and his
Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1974 in the laboratory
of Robin M. Hochstrasser, another pioneer in the field.
Zewail says that, as a native of an Arab country, he feels no
uneasiness about receiving an Israeli prize. "This is an
important international prize that honors work for the betterment
of science and the humanities in the world," he says. "There is a
conflict right now between the two countries regarding the rights
of the Palestinians and regarding peaceful coexistence between
Arabs and Israelis. But I don't feel that politics and science
have to be mixed."
He says winning the Wolf Prize has made two important
impressions. First, he says, "there is nothing more satisfying
for a scientist than seeing that the work that we have spent 20
years of our lives on is being recognized internationally. And
second, it's just so wonderful to see that [my] own colleagues
can appreciate the work that's done by my students, postdocs, and
myself."
--Ron Kaufman
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
(Page 22 of newspaper)
Former Astronaut, NASA Head Appointed Director Of Georgia Tech
Research Institute
Richard H. Truly, former astronaut and ex-administrator of the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), has been
appointed director of the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI).
He began in the position on December 1.
Located on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology in
Atlanta, GTRI conducts research and development programs in 13
different areas of science, including aerospace science, infrared
and electro-optics technology, radar, and environmental sciences.
The institute's main customer is the United States Department of
Defense.
Truly stepped into his new position with the idea that some bold
avenues should be explored in order to strengthen the institute's
current programs and effectively compete in the 1990s.
"There are clearly three major thrusts that become quite
obvious," he says. "One is to keep the defense-related
reputation. Second, to expand our reputation in civilian
technologies and applications. This means to make sure GTRI's
research can have value not only to the defense-related work that
the organization has been known for in the past, but also
civilian technologies and applications.
"For example, GTRI is extremely well-known for its support of
defense electronics, like radar. But we can easily move into
civilian technologies with the work being done in environmental
sciences and advanced transportation control systems for air and
ground traffic."
Truly says his third area of focus will be to establish closer
links between GTRI and the surrounding colleges within Georgia
Tech, as well as "centers of excellence," also located on the
Georgia Tech campus.
For example, GTRI and these facilities could share joint faculty
appointments and work together on specific projects, he says.
Truly joined the U.S. Navy in 1959 and retired as a vice admiral
in 1963. He worked on the U.S. Air Force's Manned Orbital
Laboratory Program before joining NASA in 1969. His major
achievements as an astronaut include working as the capsule
communicator to Skylab and the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission, as well
as serving as commander of the space shuttle Columbia's second
flight in 1981 and Challenger's third flight in 1983.
Following the destruction of the Challenger in 1986, Truly served
as associate administrator of NASA's Office of Space Flight until
1989. He was NASA administrator from April 1989 to March 1992.
Truly graduated from Georgia Tech in 1959 with a degree in
aeronautical engineering. He says returning to a college campus
provides some unique personal challenges. "I've spent most of my
career in federal government organizations, specifically the U.S.
Navy and NASA, and these cultures and that of a college campus
are quite different," he says.
"I'm finding this very free and open, and a bit more unstructured
than I'm used to. So there is an adjustment for me to learn about
this culture and make sure I fit into it. It's a good challenge."
--Ron Kaufman
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
OBITUARY
(Page 22 of newspaper)
Clinton N. Woolsey, a neuroscientist at the University of
Wisconsin, Madison, died January 14 in Madison. He was 88 years
old.
Woolsey was the school's Charles Sumner Slichter Professor of
Neurophysiology, a position he held from 1948 to 1975; he became
an emeritus professor in 1975. His research focused on the
sensory perception of the brain in both humans and lower animals.
Woolsey was a cofounder of the school's Waisman Center on Mental
Retardation and Human Development.
He received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in
1933 and then joined the faculty there. He moved to Wisconsin in
1948.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #4, February 22, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
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