THE SCIENTIST
VOLUME 7, No:11 May 31, 1993
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
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NEWS
SUPER COLLISION: The superconducting supercollider will have to
survive a budget fight in Congress this summer, a battle not made
any easier for its proponents by a General Accounting Office
report criticizing the megaproject. But lobbyists from academia
and industry are marshaling their forces for the fray
PG : 1
BATTLE CRIES: Individual researchers and their laboratories
targeted by several animal rights groups for demonstrations--and,
in some cases, vandalism--during last month's World Laboratory
Animal Liberation Week say they are not intimidated by the
protests and vow to continue their efforts
PG : 1
CORPORATE RESEARCH HUBS: Historically, the biotech industry has
had close ties with the academic community, a fact that is still
strongly reflected in cultural similarities between biotechs and
university laboratories. Differences do emerge, however, over
attitudes toward publishing: When are research findings open
science and when are they proprietary secrets?
PG : 1
The top industrial research centers
PG : 7
SCIENTIFIC INFLUENCE: After acquiring support in the German
scientific community, a group of scientists and staffers at a
Berlin research institute hope their petition drive denouncing
the recent wave of neo-Nazi violence in their country will prod
the government to crack down on the racist activities
PG : 3
OPINION
CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE: In the heated debate over the use of
animals in research, those who espouse a middle ground--seeking
scientifically acceptable alternatives to animal models--are
unfairly castigated by both sides, according to Robert A. Roth, a
professor in the department of pharmacology and toxicology at
Michigan State University's Institute for Environmental
Toxicology and a member of the advisory board of the Johns
Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing
PG : 11
COMMENTARY: Publisher Eugene Garfield offers quantitative support
for the Council on Undergraduate Research's position that low-
budget, hands-on scientific investigation among undergrads at
small colleges is more valuable than many people realize
PG : 12
RESEARCH
WHAT'S IN A NAME? An examination of the titles of journals
inaugurated in 1992 reveals several trends in the goals of
research and researchers last year, according to an article in
the Institute for Scientific Information newsletter Science Watch
pg : 14
HOT PAPERS: An atmospheric scientist discusses the atmospheric
and climatological effects of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo
PG : 16
TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY
SEQUENCING SOFTWARE: DNA sequence-analysis software has evolved
from a useful tool to an absolute necessity for molecular
biologists, and the variety and versatility of these packages, as
well as the hardware to run them, have kept pace
PG : 17
PROFESSION
NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT: A survey has found that the median
stipend paid to teaching and research assistants in university
physical and biological sciences departments rose in the 1991-92
school year. But the survey also revealed that the availability
of such positions dropped during the same period
PG : 19
FRANK H. SHU, president-elect of the American Astronomical
Society, says he'll focus his administration on incorporating
astronomy into primary and secondary education when he takes
office as president in 1994
PG : 21
SHORT TAKES
NOTEBOOK
PG : 4
CARTOON
PG : 4
LETTERS
PG : 12
CROSSWORD
PG : 13
PEOPLE BRIEF
PG : 21
OBITUARY
PG : 21
SCIENTIFIC SOFTWARE DIRECTORY
PG : 30
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
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NEXT:
TI : Corporate Research: Best Labs Combine Virtues Of Both
Academia And Industry
Commercial productivity is the payoff when firms
provide scientists with a comfortably collegiate
professional environment
AU : FRANKLIN HOKE
TY : NEWS
PG : 1 & 6
Recognizing the successful tradition of the university science
environment, industry research directors are carrying over the
academic spirit in their efforts toward building harmonious and
productive labs. Their aim is to preserve the pursuit of pure
discovery and the free exchange of ideas, while at the same time
moving assertively toward the achievement of commercial goals.
In the biotechnology industry sector, this strategy--geared to,
among other things, making their companies more inviting to
talented young scientists--has paid off impressively for several
firms.
"We've seen that we're competing with academic institutions for
the kinds of scientists that we have," says Daniel Vapnek, senior
vice president for research at Amgen Inc., Thousand Oaks, Calif.
"And it turns out that the kind of environment that we maintain
is, in a lot of ways, like an academic environment."
Says Doug Williams, vice president and director of biological
sciences for Immunex Corp., Seattle: "We have kept our good young
investigators happy by enabling them to publish their findings
and go to scientific meetings and be recognized by the scientific
community at large, as opposed to just being recognized within
the organization.
"That, I think, has helped us keep some of our very good people."
However, misgivings a researcher might have about being asked to
keep results secret from scientific colleagues at other
companies, for example, or to focus only on profit-motivated
studies, do spring, after all, from the real world of industry
research: Companies have to protect their valuable intellectual
property--and the bottom line must be respected in any business.
At one biotech firm, Scios Nova in Mountain View, Calif., vice
president and director of research John Lewicki says that his
company tries to support its scientists in every way, including
encouraging them to publish the results of their investigations.
"But, most important, above all else," he says, "is protecting
the company's trade secrets. I wouldn't want to give the
impression that we rush out and publish everything, because we're
far from that. We're actually rigorous in scrutinizing things."
In this respect, however, the academic and industry research
realms have become more alike than they once were. Increasingly,
university scientists are careful to protect potentially valuable
research findings; thus, the need for secrecy is no longer a
distinguishing trait of private enterprise.
Given these developments over recent years, the question of
comparative scientific productivity remains. And by at least one
measure--the average number of citations per research paper
published--some biotechnology companies are, in fact, achieving
success comparable to that of the best academic labs.
In a recent study--conducted by the Institute for Scientific
Information, Philadelphia--of 35 leading independent, academic,
and industry institutions, four of the top 10 biotech companies
(see table on page 7) by citation impact also rank among the top
10 research producers overall, sharing honors with such
distinguished research centers as the Whitehead Institute,
Cambridge, Mass., and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Long Island,
N.Y.
Trading Places
Research in industry resembles that in academia more and more, as
research directors seeking to compete with the universities for
the top talent strive to create lab cultures more like those the
scientists are familiar with in the academic world. As
differences disappear, the flow of scientists between the two
environments has picked up, and the satisfactions and
accomplishments of researchers in for-profit settings has risen.
"In the 1960s or earlier, for an academic to go to a
pharmaceutical firm was virtually the end of their academic
career," says Hugh Niall, vice president of research discovery at
Genentech Inc., South San Francisco, Calif., "because they
disappeared into a black box and were never heard from again. And
that has changed dramatically in recent years, leading to the
situation where people do move back and forth quite a bit."
Laboratories in biotechnology companies are, in many ways,
consciously modeled on the academic labs that originally spawned
the industry, research directors say. The drive to answer
fundamental biological questions remains strong among biotech
researchers, and collegial interactions with the larger
scientific community--through publications, collaborations with
university-based scientists, and attendance at meetings--are
important to sustaining that drive, they say.
Being able to keep scientists' motivation and satisfaction levels
high translates into high lab productivity, say the directors,
and so the biotechs work hard to support research environments in
which both investigator curiosity and the free exchange of
information are nurtured.
Young investigators, many at the postdoctoral level or just past,
are often given a good deal of latitude to develop their
interests and talents, and working research alliances with
academic scientists are encouraged. In several companies,
individual scientists are given considerable freedom to choose
the projects they work on, as a way to ensure that their
commitment to their work remains high--even to the point that
different project leaders within a company may compete to woo the
best researchers into their labs.
"When scientists are recruited here, they really have a choice of
the areas they're going to work in," says Vapnek. "Often, a
research scientist makes the decision about which group he or she
wants to join, so that they're interested in the research that's
going on in that group. We tend not to assign scientists to
specific projects."
"The scientists have a great deal of leeway in terms of what they
work on," says Niall. "So, with a large project, what one can end
up with is a rather informal project team, where groups of
scientists from several departments are involved."
But research heads say that doing science in a for-profit setting
does present some important differences from university-based
investigation. Companies have a clear self-interest in protecting
their intellectual property, and this dictates restraint in
publishing, for instance. And not every idea can be pursued in a
company lab, whatever its scientific worth, unless its
contribution to the company's ultimate goals can first be
demonstrated. For the most part, of course, this means developing
a drug or other marketable product.
"We do try to discourage scientists from working on projects
that, although they may be scientifically interesting, would not
add measurably to the company if they were successful," says
Vapnek.
Far from hurting the level of science in their companies,
however, this need to create effective, marketable diagnostic and
therapeutic products gives the work a sharp focus, biotech
research captains say. This focus often serves to advance the
discovery component of the science practiced in their labs, they
say.
"We will not work on programs [without] clear-cut commercial
objectives, and commercial objectives that we think are readily
achievable," says Lewicki. "But there have to be both applied and
basic components to that science. You can't pursue [commercial
goals] solely from an applied standpoint, because in any given
project there are too many things we don't understand."
"It turns out not to be all that difficult to excite scientists
about targeted goals," says Niall. "It's really, in a way, the
Bell Labs philosophy."
Research at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J., where
staffers have won five Nobel Prizes, has long served as the model
for top-quality scientific investigations in a private setting.
"After a while, people realize that they can do just as
innovative work--the aim of which is to develop a new drug--as
they could when the aim is to publish a paper," Niall says.
While the company's goals may be products, for many scientists it
remains important that they be free to publish their research
findings--or, at least, the majority of them. For better or
worse, publication is central to the process of science and to
building a reputation in one's field of interest.
Scientific managers in the biotechs understand that their
scientists need to have the opportunity to publish their results.
But they also know that ideas themselves are the most valuable
products resulting from their efforts and that those ideas need
to be protected from appropriation.
Most have some kind of internal review process prior to allowing
publication, usually including filing preliminary patent
applications. But differences in degree of openness toward
research publication do emerge among companies.
"We do worry about [publishing proprietary information]," says
Jim Rasmussen, senior vice president of research at Genzyme
Corp., Boston. "There's a peer review within the scientific
group, a review by our legal department for proprietary purposes,
and a review by somebody from corporate development, usually the
project leader. And everybody's got to sign off before the paper
can be submitted."
"Publishing and presenting at meetings and having a presence in
the scientific community in general is an important motivating
factor for the company's scientists," says Scios Nova's Lewicki.
"And, often, these `proprietary secrets' are really not secrets.
You have a lot of other laboratories working in the same areas.
They're bright people, and proprietary information you might
possess is unlikely to be proprietary for long."
Rather than try to keep the company science secret, Lewicki says,
they strive instead to persistently advance their research, to
maintain their competitive edge through constant progress.
"We do what we can to make sure that our intellectual property
rights are protected," says Williams at Immunex. "But we also
have to recognize that for the people who are making those
contributions, the ability to get out there and talk about them
and publish on the work is also important. We're walking a fine
line, to be sure."
"We publish between 95 and 99 percent of the work that's done
here that's worth publishing," says Genentech's Niall. "We file a
patent before the paper is published to protect the company and
preserve the intellectual property of Genentech.
"But that can be done very quickly, on the basis of a draft of
the publication being circulated among the authors. Our patent
attorneys can normally turn that into a patent application within
a week or two, which really doesn't hold up a publication at
all."
Vapnek points out that academia, too, has become more aware of
patentable findings than ever before. The biotechs are not the
only ones seeking to protect their intellectual property, he
says.
"People in the universities now realize the potential value of
certain things," Vapnek says, "and, very often, will look at the
possibility of patenting before publications are done. But we do
want our scientists to participate in the academic community, and
to do that you have to encourage publication."
"The question of secrecy," says Niall, "is not, in fact, all that
different from what it is in academia, where there are scientists
who will jealously guard their results until they're ready to
publish."
The Next Generation
When very specific skills are needed or an entirely new program
is to be launched, older scientists with existing records of
achievement will be sought and recruited, say the research heads.
But, for the majority of their new hires, the top biotechs look
instead to bring in the best young researchers they can attract,
generally at the postdoctoral level. They then try to provide an
environment for these young scientists that they hope will bring
out the best efforts of the new researchers over time.
Genentech, for example, sponsors between 50 and 60 postdocs for
two- or three-year appointments. Nearly one in five of the
company's researchers is a postdoc. The proj-ects given to these
postdocs often fall into the category of curiosity-based
research, says Niall. In its attention to developing the talents
of younger scientists, the program helps further the effort to
create an academic-like atmosphere.
"The understanding is that the postdoc needs to be given a
project that is publishable," says Niall. "And for the supervisor
of that postdoc, this is an opportunity for them to have
something going on in their lab which is exploratory."
Niall says a few of the postdocs will be asked to stay on after
their appointments.
"It does provide an opportunity to identify some really
outstanding young scientists," he says, "although most of the
postdocs will go on, as they almost always do, to careers in academia or20elsewhere20in20industry."
Other biotechs also rely on hiring, and then developing in-house,
younger scientists to meet their research goals. "The majority of
the scientists that we've hired have been ones who have completed
postdoctoral work, are now looking at their first position, and
are deciding whether to go to a company or a university," says
Am-gen's Vapnek.
"I've tended to bring in people who are just coming out of a
postdoc and tried to develop them over the years," says Williams
of Immunex.
"We try to promote people within the organization," says
Genzyme's Rasmussen, "so, unless it's a major new program, the
typical hire we'd like to make is a really good young researcher
coming off of a postdoc."
One result of the effort the biotechs have made to create an
academic-style atmosphere is that researchers are more
comfortable moving between industry and the university than ever
before. This means that companies occasionally lose researchers,
often among their more valued scientists, to tenure-track jobs in
academia. But the ease of movement between the two worlds also
means that recruiting from the universities has become easier for
the biotechs than it was, say, for the pharmaceutical companies
in decades past.
"The other side of the coin in trying to create an academic
atmosphere," says Genentech's Niall, "is that, almost
automatically, it creates a situation where people feel
comfortable moving back and forth [between industry and
academia]. And I would argue that that's a tradeoff that's a very
reasonable one to make, because we can point to the fact that
they've gone to very senior jobs in academia, as many of20them
have. And that really helps us recruit new people in."
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : TOP 10 COMPANIES: BIOTECHNOLOGY
(CITATION ANALYSIS, JAN. 1981-JUNE 1992)
TY : NEWS
PG : 7
RANK COMPANY NUMBER TOTAL CITATIONS
OF PAPERS CITATIONS PER PAPER
1 Genentech Inc. 2,181 86,258 39.55
2 Genetics
Institute 553 20,759 37.54
3 Biogen Inc. 568 20,258 35.67
4 Chiron Corp. 1,691 55,493 32.82
5 Centocor Inc. 243 6,787 27.93
6 Immunex Corp. 541 14,858 27.46
7 Cambridge
Biotech 140 3,660 26.14
8 Scios Nova 553 10,190 19.12
9 Amgen Inc. 570 9,983 17.51
10 Genzyme Corp. 77 831 10.79
Source: Institute for Scientific Information, Philadelphia
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : Aggessive Promotional Blitz Aims To Shake SSC's Pork
Barrel Image
As enthusiastic support for the superconducting supercollider
cools off, advocates step up efforts to save the megaproject
AU : SCOTT VEGGEBERG
TY : NEWS
PG : 1 & 4
Proponents of the superconducting supercollider are mounting a
vigorous public relations campaign to win over Congress and the
United States public and to head off a repeat of last summer's
House vote to kill the $8.3 billion project.
Funding for the Dallas-based SSC was restored last year only
through the 11th-hour mobilization of dozens of physicists to
converge on Congress (Scott Veggeberg, The Scientist, Sept. 28,
1992, page 1).
This year, supercollider supporters from both industry and
academia are getting their campaign rolling early. And the
efforts are beginning to pay off, says Jerry Staub, executive
director of the National Association for the Superconducting
Super Collider, an SSC-promoting industry association. This
organization--with financial support from SSC contractors like
St. Louis-based General Dynamics Corp. and Pittsburgh-based
Westinghouse Electric Corp.--has "hit the floor running" with the
establishment in January of an office on Capitol Hill, Staub
says.
"I'm feeling better and better about it all the time," he says.
"We're going to win."
Staub maintains: "What we're doing, I think, is the way to go.
It's going around the Hill to see every member of Congress one on
one." This personal approach is important, he says, because the
SSC's mission and goals are difficult to sell in a broad sense
and it's also a project that is "easy to throw grenades at."
One grenade proponents have had to spend a lot of effort defusing
was a negative report, entitled "Super Collider Is Over Budget
and Behind Schedule," issued in February by the General
Accounting Office. Staub says the derogatory tone of the report
is not surprising, given that it was commissioned by two SSC
opponents, Reps. Howard Wolpe (D-Mich.) and Sherwood Boehlert (R-
N.Y.). For the report, the GAO based its trend analysis
projections on the construction of a single building and
extrapolated cost overruns for the SSC at $630 million.
But incoming Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary defended the
project in a February 24 letter to Congress. "The Superconducting
Super Collider project is being managed in a very conservative
manner," she wrote. And she refuted the GAO trend analysis by
pointing out that the project is 16 percent complete and has used
only 3.5 percent of the contingency money allocated for items
that exceed the baseline budget. "Contrary to the conclusion
drawn by the General Accounting Office, aside from the effects of
substantial underfunding in the last several years, the project
is meeting its budget and schedule goals and the cost estimate
prepared several years ago is still accurate," O'Leary's letter
said.
Staub says that Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) has ordered a new
report on SSC costs and schedule, but the damage has been done by
fueling media attacks on the project. There has been considerable
negative press this year, says Staub, including a scathing four-
minute segment on the television show "Prime Time Live," and a
particularly critical series of articles in Newsweek, which
called it a "quark barrel."
To help shake the SSC's porcine image, the association conducted
a pro-SSC news conference on April 13 that featured seven
Nobelists, including former Fermilab head Leon Lederman. The
group also met that same day with Vice President Al Gore to
receive his public endorsement of the project. In addition, the
supercollider association has hired a Washington public relations
firm, Young and Associates, which has been handling press
contacts and has been putting on events such as an April 26 news
conference with Rep. Martin Frost (D-Texas), whose district
includes the SSC, along with Will Happer, the Department of
Energy's director of energy research.
Staub says that, thanks to these efforts, the SSC has been taken
off "the pork list" at most publications.
On the academic side, Michael Barnett, a theoretical physicist at
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, is once again coordinating what he
calls an SSC "information campaign" targeted at members of
Congress. A similar effort last year was acknowledged by
opponents as playing a powerful role in ultimately restoring SSC
funding. Last month, Barnett coordinated an excursion by a group
of about 60 physicists and students who paid their own expenses
to visit congressional staffers and tout the supercollider.
During the course of this trip, Barnett says, he found that the
new members of Congress, more than 100 in number, are completely
unfamiliar with what the SSC's purpose is, and most claim they're
open-minded. Still, the word in Congress is that the new members
will vote 2-to-1 against the SSC, he says. Barnett also found the
GAO report--despite rebuttals from DOE and despite Dingell's call
for a new study--was an issue during these visits. In his own
conversations with 25 congressional staffers, Barnett says, he
found that "not one had an inkling" the report was anything but a
completely correct reflection of the situation at the SSC.
Barnett believes the supercollider faces a tough battle in
Congress this year. "If the vote were taken today, I'm told we
would lose," he says, and so he will keep the pressure up. At
press time, Barnett was organizing another group of about 60
physicists to lobby Congress.
Even SSC director Roy Schwitters has been drafted into the P.R.
effort. He says he appeared on April 29 at State University of
New York, Stony Brook, for a forum to "educate the local people
to what the SSC is about." The forum itself, including
Schwitters's travel expenses, was paid for by the Texas National
Research Laboratory Commission, created by Texas to protect and
oversee its $1 billion SSC commitment. Sponsorship of future
forums is under discussion, say commission officials.
Schwitters, as the one responsible for the alleged cost and
schedule overruns, has also found the GAO report troublesome. "It
puts me in a position instantly of having to say, `I am not a
crook,' " he says.
As for the upcoming battle over continued SSC funding, Schwitters
says, "It's going to be tough." The mood in Congress is "very
critical of funding any new project," he says.
The DOE budget that the House is expected to vote on in late June
contains only $640 million for the collider, reflecting the
Clinton administration's desire to stretch SSC construction out
over an extra three years, with completion by 2002 instead of
1999. The Bush administration was recommending $850 million for
fiscal year 1994, to make up for last year's shortfall and keep
the project on the original schedule.
Barnett says that because support in the Senate appears strong,
the House vote will be extremely important. "If we win in the
House, we've won," he predicts. "If it loses in the House by a
lot, it's all over."
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : World Laboratory Animal Liberation Week: Protests Fail
To Weaken Scientists' Resolve
Biomedical researchers vow to go on using animal
subjects in their labs, despite acts of personal intimidation
AU : RON KAUFMAN
TY : NEWS
PG : 1 & 8
Researchers targeted by a wave of protests from animal rights
supporters late last month vow that the hunger strikes, sit-ins,
candlelight vigils, and even some acts of vandalism by the
activists will not deter them from continuing their work.
The demonstrations were staged as a part of a national week of
protests against the use of animals in biomedical research called
World Laboratory Animal Liberation Week (WLALW). Animal rights
activists have sponsored the week annually for the past five
years--this year from April 24 through May 1. The 1993 WLALW
featured 36 separate demonstrations at universities and medical
centers throughout the United States.
Departing slightly from the tactics of previous years, many
activists observed the 1993 WLALW by focusing their complaints
not on an entire school or institution, but against a single
researcher or lab.
One such subject of attention was Larry Cunnick, president of
BIOCON Inc., a Rockville, Md.-based contract research laboratory
engaged in animal-related technical services. On his white garage
door "Animal Killer!" was written in red spray paint; on his
driveway was scrawled "Leave Animals Alone"; and in his front
yard was affixed a 12-inch-high cross with a purple flower and a
purple bow.
Cunnick says he is undaunted by such actions. "This is an attempt
to intimidate individuals and families, but the animal rights
people are not an intimidating lot," Cunnick asserts. "In fact,
they're quite comical. These attacks on the research community
are causing them to lose support nationwide at a fast rate....
"The attitude I've been getting from the general public is that
these folks are just plain kooks."
Cunnick was one of five scientists singled out for protest by
animal rights supporters in Montgomery County and Prince George's
County, Md., The activists covered homes with graffiti and, in
one case, broke a car windshield. A group calling itself Animal
Avengers claimed responsibility for the damage and told the
Associated Press: "We speak for those who cannot speak for
themselves. We don't think those [researchers] should be allowed
to hide behind doors at night. We want the neighbors to know who
they are."
Cunnick says he has confronted animal rights supporters many
times in the state capital as legislative committee chairman for
the Montgomery County High Technology Council, a group of
citizens supporting the area's biomedical research firms. "Well,
I've fought animal rights-sponsored legislation trying to stop
the use of research animals for seven years now," he says, "and
this is their payback."
Though no members of the Animal Avengers have been identified,
the Arlington, Va.-based Americans for Medical Progress (AMP), a
privately funded pro-animal research group, is offering a $5,000
cash reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction
of the perpetrators.
Explaining both the purpose of WLALW and the rationale for
identifying and targeting individual researchers, Michael Budkie,
a former animal health technician and now national director of
Milford, Ohio-based Last Chance for Animals, says: "The goal of
World Week is to expose vivisection as something that is
scientifically invalid and wastes our tax dollars, raise public
awareness, and, in some cities, try to shut down specific
research projects.
"And that is easier to do when you talk about specific research
proj-ects than when talking in abstract terms."
WLALW has often been a time of increased activism by animal
rightists; for the past few years, vandalism and illegal sit-ins
that block building entrances have occurred during the week.
During the 1991 WLALW, the house and car of Douglas Bowden,
director of the Regional Primate Research Center at the
University of Washington in Seattle, was spraypainted in numerous
places with "Animal Killer!" Bowden says he feels that "there's
something more insidious or threatening about [vandalism] than
just a simple protest."
Animal rights activists may not always engage in vandalism to
agitate individual researchers, but rather to attract some
additional media coverage that a news conference cannot, says
Cres Vellucci, public affairs director for Last Chance for
Animals and a former spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front
(ALF), an underground animal rights group that for the past
decade has claimed responsibility for numerous laboratory break-
ins in the United States.
"The ALF and people who act like them, such as Animal Avengers,
have always been nonviolent," he says.
"They destroy property, but it's difficult to do violence to an
inanimate object, vs. the animals who are sentient and are
tortured and killed in the labs in great numbers. What they're
trying to do is call attention to who these individuals are."
However, despite the vandalism that occurred in Maryland, most of
this year's WLALW protests ended without incident. They included
a demonstration in Lexington against University of Kentucky
researcher William R. Martin's use of beagles for studies in drug
dependence as well as a candlelight march at the University of
California, Berkeley, to protest Russell DeValois's vision
research using cats.
Another rally was held in Philadelphia against University of
Pennsylvania neuroscientist Thomas Gennarelli's use of mini-pigs
in his Head Injury Research Center. The organizer was the
American Anti-Vivisection Society from Jenkintown, Pa., which
said in a press statement that "nearly 100 mini-pigs will have
their heads placed in a head-acceleration device to produce
severe brain damage and simulate traumatic coma."
Aiming dissent at individual scientists worries Adrian Morrison,
a veterinary school professor at the University of Pennsylvania
on leave as director of the Office of Animal Research Issues at
the National Institutes of Mental Health. "It's a typical
terrorist tactic," he says. "Concentrate your efforts on one
person as an example and thereby hope to frighten many more
people. They try to intimidate and create a climate where
scientists wonder, `Well, maybe my research will be attacked
next.' "
Activists staged a candlelight vigil April 21 outside the home
of University of California, Irvine, neuroscientist Edward G.
Jones. Jones studies the mechanisms of sensory perception in the
thalamus and cerebral cortex using cats, monkeys, and rodents.
"What they did was stand outside the house and hand out leaflets
of various sorts," he explains. "What they said was a total
distortion of the truth. They said things that if I were guilty
of, I'd probably be in jail.
"I would hesitate to call them animal rights supporters," Jones
says, "because in my opinion, they're much more concerned with
stopping the conduct of legitimate biological research rather
than having any profound interest in the rights of animals."
Orange County People for Animals in Santa Ana, Calif., organized
the vigil in front of Jones's house. The pamphlets they handed
out say they are against "these cruel, wasteful, and pointless
experiments" in which, the pamphlets maintain, Jones and four
colleagues blind and then kill animals.
Ava Park, the group's director, says Jones has not responded to
their main plea, which is to hold a public debate on the validity
of his work. "We don't consider any animal experimentation to be
legitimate biological research--period," she says. "We think true
research does not depend on veterinary medicine, which is what we
think Edward Jones is practicing."
A sit-in was held May 1 at the University of Michigan in Ann
Arbor to protest the work in the laboratory of James Woods and
Gail Win-ger, who study medicines used to treat drug addiction.
Woods has a colony of more than 100 rhesus monkeys raised for
experimental purposes.
The general objection to Woods's lab, according to literature
from Last Chance for Animals, is that not only are animal models
in medical experimentation not applicable to humans, but also
"the money used in these experiments to addict primates to drugs
could treat approximately 700 human victims of substance abuse
annually."
"I don't think anyone who takes their science seriously would
even consider not using animal models," Woods says. "We're
providing a public health service for the United States and the
world. The information I gain in studying narcotics in my rhesus
monkeys is used by the World Health Organization and the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration. It's not trivial. It's not a waste
of money."
A demonstration with nearly 100 participants was conducted at
Emory University in Atlanta opposing the Yerkes Regional Primate
Research Center on April 24. The previous day, two demonstrators
staged a 24-hour hunger strike at the university's main entrance.
At a news conference prior to the hunger strike, Frederick A.
King, director of Yerkes, said he does "not feel frustrated about
being required to respond to the animal rightists... because if
we do not tell them the facts and the truth about the benefits
that occur from animal research, then perhaps no one will do it."
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : German Scientists Take Stand Against Racism And Neo-
Nazi Violence
AU : RON KAUFMAN
TY : NEWS
PG : 3
Scientists and other employees at the Science Center for Social
Research in Berlin are waiting to see if a nationwide petition
drive they've initiated denouncing the recent wave of neo-Nazi
violence in Germany will prod the country's lawmakers to crack
down on those racist activities.
Staff members at the center, called Wissenschafts-zentrum Berlin
fr Sozial- forschung (WZB)--a research institution studying
economics, labor market development, and environmental protection
policy--began composing the petition last September, following
three days of neo-Nazi rioting in the East German town of
Rostock.
Over the next three months, the institute sent fax and electronic
mail transmissions to more than 500 scientific institutions,
research universities, and political parties throughout Germany.
More than half of WZB's 300 staffers and scientists participated
in drafting the document. Though the petition's organizers say
the politicians to this point are totally ignoring them, a large
number of scientists and academicians have pledged their support.
"In the media, both in and out of Germany, these right-wing,
fascist groups received a lot of attention," says Christoph
Albrecht, the deputy director of the labor market and employment
division of WZB and a petition signer. "We distributed the
petition to our colleagues at other scientific institutions and
universities to encourage them to do the same. We were hoping for
a snowball effect.
"Though scientists have a strong voice, it is only one voice," he
says. "We are a part of the whole; only when many parts of
professional society open their mouths with the same message will
it have influence on discussions in Bonn [the German capital]."
WZB's attempt to oppose the surge of xenophobic rage against
Jews, asylum seekers from Eastern Europe, and ethnic and other
minorities in Germany received widespread notoriety in November,
when the center had the petition printed as an advertisement in
the German national daily Sddeutsche Zeitung.
The WZB document states that neo-Nazi violence is contributing to
the "erosion of basic democratic values.... During the Weimar
Republic [the pre-Nazi government in power from 1919 to 1933] too
few scientists took an active stand against rising totalitarian
thinking and action. We may not allow this to happen again.
"We protest against the widespread disregard for the pain and
fears of many people as Germany attempts to `grow together' into
a single democracy," the petition proclaims.
Hans Dolezalek, an atmospheric physicist and oceanographer who
left Germany for the United States in 1989, says it is
appropriate that scientists speak out against extremists'
violence and hatred.
Dolezalek, 81, who is nearing retirement from the Office of
Naval Research in Arlington, Va., says he believes that
scientists are natural opponents of xenophobia. "Scientists
should never be in danger of developing a hate against
foreigners," he says. "Because they are scientists, they usually
have to have very good collaborations with foreigners--especially
in the hard sciences, such as engineering, mathematics, physics,
and environmental science."
Dolezalek says the economic conditions created by reunification
have probably sparked much of the social unrest among both
skilled and unskilled Germans living in the east.
For example, he says, the chemical industry in the former German
Democratic Republic (GDR), or East Germany, was obsolete when
compared to that in the West, and was unable to comply with the
strict West German anti-pollution laws. "So they folded. And as a
consequence, thousands of chemists, sometimes with very high
scientific stature, found themselves without jobs," he says.
Until a certain amount of economic parity is reached throughout
the country, Dolezalek suspects that extremist activities will
continue.
"Considering the actions in Rostock last fall, the politicians
should have been more outspoken," says Dagmar Kollande, a staffer
at WZB and coordinator of the petition. "Chancellor Kohl should
have gone there immediately. What the politicians tried first was
to deal with questions of how many foreigners the country should
take--instead of condemning those who committed acts of violence.
There was not a strong enough reaction against it."
Kollande acknowledges that it is unlikely the WZB petition itself
will cause the violence to abate. Yet, she says, having
scientists speak out against the acts of hatred will ultimately
trigger discussions among intellectual organizations and in
university classrooms.
In addition to collecting more than $6,600 in contributions to
finance the petition drive, Kollande says, the institute received
numerous phone calls from scientists all over Germany who "had
been also outraged by the wave of violence against foreigners but
felt pretty much helpless and therefore highly welcomed our
initiative."
Other protests against the neo-Nazi acts have also taken place.
Throughout November and December 1992 and January 1993, more than
45 demonstrations against the attacks on foreigners were held in
many of Germany's major cities. According to the German
Information Center, the New York City-based public relations arm
of the German government, these anti-racism protests drew an
average of 43,000 demonstrators a day.
Since the merger of the GDR and the Federal Republic on Oct. 3,
1990, the German security agency Verfassungsschutz (Office for
the Protection of the Constitution) has reported an increase in
murders, beatings, and firebombings committed by pro-fascist
youths, often referred to as "skinheads." In 1992, the agency
reported more than 2,200 acts of right-wing violence, 17 of which
were murders; the previous year, 1,500 such acts were cited.
The attacks have been committed against Jews--even though only
around 40,000 remain in Germany--the handicapped, the homeless,
foreigners, and asylum-seekers.
Extremist political factions have been vocal in protesting
Germany's liberal asylum laws. Article 16 of the German
constitution guarantees asylum for politically persecuted
individuals. Since reunification, the number of non-Germans
seeking asylum has risen from around 190,000 in 1990 to nearly
250,000 in 1991 and a total of more than 438,000 in 1992. During
the first two months of this year, about 75,000 applied for
asylum, according to the German Information Center. The primary
countries of origin of the recent arrivals are Romania, the
former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Turkey.
Exchange programs between American and German students and
faculty, though initially affected by the rioting, have not
suffered any long-term decline in participants or applica- tions,
says Wedigo de Vivanco, director of the German Academic Exchange
Service in New York City.
The exchange service, with 11 offices worldwide, coordinates
programs of international academic and scientific exchanges with
German universities; the German-American exchange office, with a
budget of $16 million, is the service's largest. Vivanco says
immediately following the events in Rostock, there was a sharp
decline in applications. However, since then the numbers have
returned to normal, and in some programs, such as the six-month
study grants, applications have increased.
Vivanco says public statements against racism are needed in
Germany. "One has to react to [the violence]," he says. "It's not
that because [the neo-Nazis] are a minority one doesn't have to
take their actions seriously. And with Germany's history, this
has to be treated especially sensitively.
"When I was in Germany it was on everyone's mind and people felt
terribly embarrassed. Thank God the whole upsurge didn't last too
long. Let's hope it will not happen again."
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
NOTEBOOK
TI : Ear To The Grindstone
TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)
PG : 4
While hearing aid manufacturers keep trying to make a less
cumbersome and noticeable appliance, University of Virginia
graduate student Jonathan Spindel has delved into the subject a
little deeper. He has developed a device that transmits sound via
a tiny magnet permanently implanted on the "round window" of the
inner ear and an electromagnetic coil placed a short distance
from the magnet. Spindel, who expects to complete his doctoral
work in biomedical engineering this year, notes that his device
improves on conventional hearing aids and even other implantable
units for those with "nerve deafness," in which the nerve cells
that convert sound into signals to the brain are damaged or
defective. Nerve deafness is suffered by 80 percent of the more
than 22 million Americans with significant hearing loss. Spindel
says that the other implantable hearing aids for nerve deafness
require surgery that disrupts the small bones of the middle ear,
but that his device, because it is placed directly on the round
window, would not disturb these bones. For his efforts Spindel
was named one of three winners of a national collegiate
inventors' contest, sponsored by B.F. Goodrich Co., Akron, Ohio,
as part of its College Inventors Program. Spindel received
$5,000.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : A Different Way
TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)
PG : 4
Portland State University in Oregon is offering an alternative
route to science education for nonscience majors through its
"Science in the Liberal Arts Curriculum" project, funded by the
National Science Foundation. The curriculum, consisting of 24
courses being developed this summer, will incorporate "inquiry-
based" learning, cooperative educational techniques, and computer
technology, rather than relying on rote memory and lecture,
its faculty designers say. The entry-level course, "Natural
Science Inquiry," will begin this fall. Coming later will be
"Integrated Science Concepts" courses, which explore themes
common across science disciplines, and "Context of Science in
Society" courses, which examine the interface of science and
society. The curriculum authors say they have three goals in
mind: to help students become conversant with the cultural,
moral, political, and economic dimensions of science; to prepare
potential teachers for new directions in precollege science
education; and to recruit students into the study of science.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : Art For Earth's Sake
TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)
PG : 4
Fifteen aspiring elementary school artists were selected as
winners of the Department of Energy's Earth Day poster contest
last month. More than 340,000 students and 1,400 schools
participated in the competition, based on the theme "Good Planets
are Hard to Find." Regional contests were held to choose the
finalists, whose work was displayed at DOE headquarters in
Washing- ton, D.C. The finalists were divided into three grade
categories--K-2, 3-4, and 5-6--with four winners in each
category. Pictured here is the winning contribution from Idaho
Falls fifth-grader Peri Spencer.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : Magnetic Personality
TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)
PG : 4
The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Los Alamos
National Laboratory has opened up shop for researchers needing
short pulses of magnetic fields. The high-intensity magnetic
fields of up to 600,000 gauss last for one-hundredth of a second,
and the pulses are akin to harnessed bolts of lightning,
according to Laurence Campbell, program manager of the project's
pulsed facilities at Los Alamos. High-intensity magnetic fields
are of interest to scientists because they make it possible to
investigate materials and organic structures that are otherwise
difficult to study, such as high-temperature superconductors and
complex molecules like protein. Higher pulsed fields of up to 2
million gauss have been achieved at Los Alamos, with a catch--the
technique entails using conventional explosives to compress a
field into a very small volume, and samples thus far have not
survived the test.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : Antimatter Matters
TY : NEWS (NOTEBOOK)
PG : 4
In other record-breaking Los Alamos news, scientists have built
the world's largest trap for antimatter and have used it to
capture 50,000 antiprotons in a single shot. Sometime this summer
they hope to trap 1 million or more antiprotons during their
experiments, a world record. A million, according to Los Alamos
physicists, is the minimum number needed to provide a controlled
source of low-energy antiprotons for experiments such as
measuring how fast antiprotons fall in Earth's gravitational
field and for uses in medical, condensed-matter, and atomic
physics studies. Antiprotons are identical to protons in most
respects, except for having opposite electrical charges. When
they meet, they destroy each other in a flare of energy. The Los
Alamos trap consists of a copper cylinder that contains
antiprotons, surrounded by a powerful magnetic field that
confines the antiprotons along the cylinder's axis. Electric
fields at each end repel the antiprotons and keep them from
bouncing from one end of the cylinder to another, while the
cylinder is placed in an ultra-high vacuum container to keep the
antimatter from colliding with air molecules.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : In Animal Rights Debate, A `Modulating Influence' Is
Misunderstood
AU : ROBERT A. ROTH, JR.
TY : OPINION
PG : 11
As an academic toxicologist, I have participated in the
activities of the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal
Testing (CAAT) almost since the center's inception, first as a
reviewer of grant proposals and, since 1988, as a member of the
advisory board.
Given the position of CAAT, expressed clearly in its mission
statement (see accompanying item), it is not surprising that
radical animal rights activists have not embraced the center.
However, over the years, I have learned that many academicians
who are biomedical researchers also have a negative view of the
center, a view that is usually based on ignorance and/or
misconceptions about CAAT, its mission, and its activities. When
my academic colleagues learn that I am associated with CAAT, they
are usually surprised, and the news is met with a chilly
response. When I am asked by them, "Why are you involved with
CAAT?" the implication is usually "Why do you associate with an
organization working against the use of animals in research?
Further discussion often reveals one or more misconceptions. Some
colleagues are not familiar with how CAAT is supported and assume
wrongly that animal rights activists are major contributors. In
fact, the center's core activities are currently funded by a
National Institutes of Health grant in addition to corporate
contributions. Many do not know that CAAT's main focus in
developing alternatives is directed not to academic research, but
rather to industrial toxicity testing, in which the need for
economical assays for rapid and accurate assessment of human risk
remains acute.
Many members of the scientific community are aware that CAAT
offers grants of $30,000 to scientists interested in pursuing
research that could result in non-whole-animal methods. However,
few are familiar with efforts in areas of public education or
validation of alternative methods and what these entail. Over the
past decade, as the number of alternative assays has increased
rapidly (by 1992, more than 50 assays had been identified for
ocular irritation alone), assessing the relevance and reliability
of these methods has assumed tremendous importance. The
establishment of the European Center for the Validation of
Alternative Methods (ECVAM) by the Commission of European
Communities is one indication of the significance of validation;
the presence of representatives of the United States
Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug
Administration on the CAAT Advisory Board is another.
Comparatively few academic researchers understand that CAAT
provides forums in which those in the lay and scientific
communities whose major goal is reduction of animal use may
interact with those in the scientific community whose goal is
understanding biology and disease. For example, a recent
symposium commemorating CAAT's 10th anniversary provided for
recognition of and interaction among individuals with very
diverse view- points. The World Congress on Animal Use and
Alternatives, to be held in Baltimore this November, will do the
same.
Many scientists do not know CAAT as a modulating influence in the
animal rights debate, in which extreme emotionalism and lack of
rational thought are too often the major players. Few realize
that CAAT supports the use of alternatives to whole animals in
toxicity testing only when such alternatives have been validated
scientifically and are consonant with protection of public
health. Most are unaware of the center's efforts, through its own
publications and coverage in the national media, to inform the
public about the uses and limitations of alternatives in product
safety testing and why animals currently are used to answer
toxicological and scientific questions that impact on public
health.
Few academicians conduct research with the goal of identifying
replacements for animal use. Rather, their efforts focus on
understanding fundamental biological processes and mechanisms of
disease, including toxicoses, and on discovering ways to prevent
or treat disease. As a group, academicians recognize the need for
using animals in the processes of understanding and discovery.
When an in vitro biological system is used by academic
researchers, it is usually because it is deemed to be more
appropriate experimentally than a whole-animal model to address a
specific scientific question.
My academic colleagues conduct their research responsibly, with
concern about animal welfare, including appropriate use and care
of animals. Most bristle at the suggestion that responsible use
of animals in research is wrong. Because academicians do use
animals in responsible ways, many resent pressures that render
such use more difficult. Unfortunately, CAAT is viewed by some as
an organization that contributes to such pressure. But it
certainly has not.
As an academician and a research investigator, I choose to
associate with CAAT because its mission recognizes the present
need for using animals in research and toxicity testing and
because it takes a responsible approach to the development of
alternatives that are scientifically valid. I agreed to serve on
the advisory board because I think that CAAT helps, not hinders,
those of us who use animals in our studies and because CAAT
assumes a responsible position about in vitro methods in toxicity
testing.
As a board member, I have tried to promote the exploration of
cellular and molecular mechanisms of toxicity, to endorse the
incorporation of understanding of mechanisms into toxicity
evaluation, and to encourage programs to educate the public about
the need for responsible use of animals in research and testing
and about the advantages as well as limitations of alternatives.
Some of the misunderstanding surrounding alternatives may be
semantic in nature. The word "alternatives" has for some
researchers an "all-or-none" implication, that is, complete
replacement of animal testing with other means. In retrospect,
perhaps the incorporation of this word into the title of the
center may have been unfortunate, but it will likely remain. The
center's definition of "alternatives," indeed, encompasses not
just replacement, but also reduction of animal use and "refining
existing tests by minimizing animal stress." I encourage my
colleagues to read the CAAT mission statement. I suspect that
most would find little in it about which to argue and much to
support.
Scientists should continue to engage in biological research,
recognizing that there is a large public constituency concerned
that science be humane and not wasteful of animals. We as
scientists communicate too seldom and often awkwardly with this
constituency. As an organization that has credibility with many
on both sides of the animals-in-research issue, CAAT is uniquely
qualified to educate and inform the public about the rationale
and benefits of responsible animal use and to clearly define the
"three Rs" concept of alternatives: replacement, reduction, and
refinement.
The support of fellow scientists is important to the success of
this endeavor.
Robert A. Roth is a professor in the department of pharmacology
and toxicology at Michigan State University's Institute for
Environmental Toxicology, in East Lansing.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : CAAT: THE MISSION STATEMENT
TY : OPINION
PG : 11
The mission of the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing is
to:
* Foster the development of scientifically acceptable in vitro
and other alternatives for use in the development and safety
evaluation of commercial and therapeutic products.
* Catalyze the validation of alternative methods and encourage
their use, where appropriate, while continuing to ensure the
health of the public.
* Disseminate scientifically correct information about
alternatives, their uses, advantages, and limitations.
CAAT recognizes that non-whole-animal (alternative) methods act
in concert with whole animal and clinical studies to:
--advance science,
--develop new products and drugs, and
--prevent, treat, and cure disease.
Alternatives are defined as new methods that refine existing
tests by minimizing animal distress, reducing animal usage, or
replacing whole- animal tests.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : CAAT: AT A GLANCE
TY : OPINION
PG : 11
The Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing
(CAAT) was founded in 1981 with a $1 million grant from the
Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association. The funds were to
be used to develop basic scientific knowledge necessary to create
innovative non-whole-animal methods for evaluating the safety of
commercial and therapeutic products.
At present, CAAT--under the directorship of Johns Hopkins
University toxicology professor Alan M. Goldberg--sponsors a
small extramural grants program (funding 18 grants in 1993),
supports intramural research in the In Vitro Toxicology Program
at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, and
conducts information and education programs. Mainstream animal
protection organizations, such as the Humane Society of the
United States, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals, and others have been supportive of CAAT's activities;
radical groups have not.
Current CAAT grantees include investigators at such institutions
as the University of California (Berkeley and San Francisco),
Johns Hopkins, and Brown University. More than 100 articles
resulting from CAAT-funded research have appeared in peer-
reviewed publications. The center has held nine symposia and
published a nine-volume textbook series and five technical
reports. The organization's newsletter is distributed to more
than 35,000 individuals.
The CAAT advisory board is composed of 34 scientists, sponsor
liaisons, and representatives of government and regulatory
agencies who review applications for the CAAT grants program and
are responsible for overall program planning.
For more information on the center, or to receive the CAAT
newsletter, call or write:
Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, 615 N.
Wolfe St., Baltimore, Md. 21205; (410) 955-3343. Fax: (410) 955-
0258.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
COMMENTARY
TI : Top-Flight Research At Small Colleges Merits More
Recognition, More Support
AU : Eugene Garfield
TY : OPINION
PG : 12
Last month, I had the pleasure of speaking at a Bethesda, Md.,
meeting of scientists, college administrators, funding agency
officials, and others on a subject that has long been of
paramount interest to me: the value of undergraduate research at
small liberal arts colleges.
The meeting was part of a two-day program cosponsored by the
National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation,
and the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR). The council's
2,000-plus membership, for the most part, is composed of science
faculty and administrators at undergraduate schools throughout
the United States. It had organized the event with the aim of
stimulating dialogue among its own members and representatives of
NIH and NSF on the subject of funding opportunities and grant
administration policies as they pertain to the smaller colleges
and universities.
Earlier this year in The Scientist (Feb. 22, 1993, page 10),
CUR's immediate past president, Laura Mays Hoopes, offered
cogent, qualitative arguments in support of her recommendation
that undergraduates be drawn into "high-risk but low-budget
experiments that can launch whole new fields of investigation." I
agree that hands-on research is immensely important as a means of
encouraging young people to enter and remain in the science
pipeline. Moreover, in my own studies I have found that
undergraduate institution research, judging by the frequency with
which it is cited in subsequent papers, is quite often of very
high impact. Thus, it is important not only as a means to an end,
but also as an end in itself. In my talk at the meeting, I
reviewed some of my findings with the audience, and was therefore
able to provide a quantitative complement to Hoopes's views.
Several years ago, at the Institute for Scientific Information,
we did a citation analysis of the Oberlin Group--50 small
colleges that produce a significant percentage of future Ph.D.'s.
(A report on this analysis was published in the Aug. 17, 1987,
edition of Current Contents under the title "Research and
dedicated mentors nourish science careers at undergraduate
institutions.") In my talk at the recent gathering, I expanded
the analysis to include many more schools--since CUR represents
some 600 colleges. I demonstrated that many of these colleges
have also been producing research of higher impact, both short-
and long-term, than that produced in many graduate institutions.
In other words, the liberal arts schools have proved successful
not only in producing science graduates, but also in contributing
substantially to the advancement of scientific knowledge.
For example, I showed that the average impact for papers produced
at the 74 CUR institutions that were consistently productive
between 1981 and 1992 was well above the "world average"--that
is, the average impact for all papers indexed by ISI. In fact,
two schools--Haverford College and Wellesley College--doubled the
world average. Clearly, these undergraduate institutions make a
significant contribution to research. These data support the
notion that NSF, NIH, and other funding sources would do well to
increase support for undergraduate research--and that such
support isn't merely a disguised welfare program for talented
students.
Laura Mays Hoopes believes that CUR members' "appreciation of
research as an integral component of science education explains
why we produce more than our share of future scientists." Of
course, as a training ground for a substantial proportion of our
future scientists, undergraduate colleges make a critical
contribution to our research base. However, the contribution they
make to published research has not been appreciated. As indicated
by my analysis, that contribution is significant--especially
remarkable in light of the size, facilities, and funding of these
colleges compared with the more comprehensive research
universities.
Were NSF and NIH to support much larger numbers of undergraduate
projects at all undergraduate institutions, we might really be
able to see how much, as Hoopes believes, you learn to become a
scientist not by "studying" science--but by "doing" science.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
LETTERS
TI : Redundant Publication
TY : OPINION (LETTERS)
PG : 12
I enjoyed the article "Vigilant Science Journal Editors Fight
Redundancy" (Paul McCarthy, The Scientist, March 8, 1993, page
1).
The real incentive for literature pollution, or your more polite
term "literature redundancy," is the evaluation and reward system
at most universities.
Administrators and colleagues still decide tenure and promotion
cases largely on the basis of numbers of papers in "peer-
reviewed" journals. There rarely is any consideration of the
significance, the citation impact, or the redundancy of those
papers. If we simply asked all retention, promotion, and tenure
evaluators to consider redundancy as a negative factor in the
algorithm, the problem would rapidly disappear.
There should also be an incentive for members of the community to
call on the carpet colleagues who are guilty of publishing
redundant papers. Perhaps newspapers like The Scientist could
provide some PR and notoriety by, for example, selecting the
"most redundant author of the year" in each of several fields or
"hot topics." This would help alert editors to such curriculum
vitae padding and immediately send a message through the academic
community.
J.D. ANDRADE
Professor of Bioengineering
University of Utah
Salt Lake City
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : Westinghouse Contestants
TY : OPINION (LETTERS)
PG : 12
Regarding the commentary "A Pat On The Back For Westinghouse
Finalists--And For The Talent Search Sponsors, As Well" (Eugene
Garfield, The Scientist, March 8, 1993, page 12): Why does my
heart sink when I read the titles you listed of projects by two
17-year-old high school students--"Undocumented Complex Social
Relations in Captive Theropithecus gelada" and "Loop Two Amino
Acids Important for Ability of P-glycoprotein to Confer Multidrug
Resistance"? They have obviously been trapped in the ephemeral
scientific culture of their elders and channeled at an early age
into trying to make tiny contributions to vast enterprises, the
nuances of which they are probably quite unaware.
Would any 17-year-old who had not been instructed in the
acceptable minutiae of current scientific paper nomenclature have
come up with such titles? Don't the titles reek of medical and
social significance, scientific "political correctness," and the
big money of their future careers? And, if anyone takes a moment
to think about what lies behind them (if the students really were
doing something experimental), what extraordinary resources must
they have had that are not available to 99 percent of teenagers?
Yes, when I was in high school in the United Kingdom (1945-53) we
tried out for projects--we did things like "Why the Universe Is
Expanding"--and of course these efforts were quite childish. But
some of us struggled through nonetheless. And I am happy that I
did not lose my innocence at such an early age--and even happier
that I did not lose it without realizing that fact myself.
PETER NICHOLLS
Department of Biological Sciences
Brock University
St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : Muggers And Con Men
TY : OPINION (LETTERS)
PG : 12
In his letter to The Scientist (Feb. 22, 1993, page 10), Martin
L. Stephens, vice president of the Humane Society of the United
States (HSUS), took exception to my lumping his organization in
with other animal rights groups ("Animal Rights Activism: Enough
is Enough," The Scientist, Nov. 23, 1992, page 12). However,
Stephens's artful use of language does not alter the fact that
HSUS is indeed part of the same animal rights movement as People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). HSUS was converted
from animal welfare to animal rights by a membership vote at the
group's 1980 annual meeting.
Clarifying HSUS's moral values and goals is important because
many educators are unaware of its animal rights stance and
educational programs, which attempt to redefine human moral value
systems. Educators need to examine HSUS's own moral value system
and determine whether it is brainwashing our children.
Despite Stephens's protests, what separates HSUS from other
animal rights groups is not its philosophy, but merely its
tactics and longer timetable for abolishing the use of animals in
research. It's like the difference between a mugger and a con
man. They each rob you; they use different tactics, have
different timetables--but the results are the same. Since the
confrontational tactics practiced by the Animal Liberation Front
and condoned by PETA have given all animal rights organizations a
bad name, HSUS now publicly avoids the term "animal rights" and
attempts to distance itself, saying that its members are "animal
protectionists," a term that HSUS has yet to precisely define for
the public.
Recently, HSUS chief executive John Hoyt revealed his
organization's calculating approach to presenting its position to
the public. Speaking at the 1990 HSUS annual meeting, Hoyt said,
". . . there has evolved over the past few years a fairly radical
difference in the tactics employed by various groups in seeking
to achieve their goals.... Those utilized by some animal rights
groups tend to be confrontational and demonstrative, sometimes
resulting in the destruction of property, personal intimidation,
and, on rare occasions, violence. This is not to say that the
rights of animals should be either ignored or minimized as
meaningful and vital philosophy.... But what needs to be said,
and understood, is that those who seek to codify the rights of
animals ... are but a small minority. Do we then imagine, even
for one brief moment, that a government--our government-- which
declines to sign a magna carta on behalf of children . . . will
be moved to do our bidding to stop the use of animals for
research or prohibit their use for food? ... I hardly think so."
John McArdle, previous HSUS vice president for lab animals,
instructed the group in 1984 to "avoid the words `animal rights'
and `antivivisection.' They are too strange for the public. Never
appear to be opposed to animal research. Claim that your only
concern is the source of the animals."
These direct quotes clearly reveal HSUS's animal rights
philosophy and hidden abolitionist goal. In his letter, Stephens
characterizes my evidence as mere "tidbits" and "threadbare
arguments." On the contrary, there is so much material to support
my point that I could not incorporate it all in my Commentary.
PATRICK H. CLEVELAND
President
Coalition for Animals
and Animal Research
San Diego
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
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
================================
NEXT:
RESEARCH
TI : New Journals Reflect Growing Interest In Euro, Eco,
Nano, And Neuro
TY : RESEARCH
PG : 14
Editor's Note: In an effort to identify research areas that
appear to be capturing an increasingly large share of attention
among scientists worldwide, the newsletter Science Watch
undertook a detailed analysis of the titles of scientific
journals that made their publishing debuts in 1992.
The newsletter--published by the Institute for Scientific
Information in Philadelphia--discovered that approximately 30
percent of the new journals were addressed to a readership
interested in the field of clinical medicine. And, by analyzing
the terms used in the titles of the journals, Science Watch
discovered a markedly high presence of the word "international."
Does this mean that "international clinical medicine" is emerging
as the matter of greatest interest for the largest number of
scientific researchers throughout the world?. Not necessarily,
says the news-letter's editor, David Pendlebury. However, he
says, his publication's title analysis can be useful to readers
in discerning "how research fields fractionate and emerge and,
interestingly, how journal publishers are always poised to react
to these shifts."
Following is Science Watch's report, which appeared originally in
the newsletter's October 1992 edition, and is presented here with
the permission of Science Watch and ISI.
The new journals of 1992 can be likened to newly formed planets
in a vast universe. Each journal is formed from bits and pieces
that were formerly floating freely but have now accumulated into
a solid mass. Around each orbits a growing number of researchers
seeking to observe, to probe, and to describe these new worlds.
If we fly a little farther out, however, we can see that these
new planets seem to cluster into groups, and the groups into
regions, and regions into large structures, and so on. Such a
wide-angle perspective can often show structures that a more
narrow view would otherwise fail to reveal.
By analyzing the new scientific, technical, and medical (STM)
journals in 1992, Science Watch aimed to map the scope and shape
of current trends in research. There is little consensus on what
constitutes a journal, and there is no single comprehensive
source on the serial literature. So, Science Watch used its own
judgment in defining a journal and turned to several different
sources to compile a list of the new titles in 1992. The in-house
files of ISI were consulted: a listing of the journals that were
sent to ISI to be evaluated for coverage in one of its products;
the fall 1992 edition of R.R. Bowker's Ullrich's Plus CD; and the
Oct. 1, 1992, issue of Nature--the "new journals" issue--which
features abundant advertisements by journal publishers for their
new offerings. Science Watch identified a total of 364 STM
journals that published a Vol. 1 in 1992.
One of the accompanying tables lists the fields of research
represented by these 364 new titles. Since no title was counted
more than once, some difficult decisions were required to assign
a journal to one area rather than another. The most populated
areas in research are biological and medical, so it is of little
surprise to see that, among the 1992 group, clinical medicine and
biology ranked first and second, respectively. But the fields
that are ranked third, fourth, and fifth--agricultural and
environmental sciences; technology and applied sciences; and
computer sciences--provide something of a revelation. These three
seem to exhibit more growth and innovation at present than the
traditional areas of the physical sciences--in particular,
mathematics and physics--which appear ranked seventh and eighth.
This finding recalls the results of an earlier study (Science
Watch, 2[9]:1-2, October 1991), which detected a slow-to-moderate
growth in the number of articles published during the last decade
in mathematics and general physics.
To view these data in another way, Science Watch indexed the key
words and word-stems in the titles of the new journals and then
ranked these terms by their frequency within the set. Some of the
words that appeared five times or more seem to reflect
publishers' efforts at marketing or positioning their new
products ("international," "European," "Russian," for example).
Others indicate trends in the substance of scientific research
itself (such as "comput-," "eco/ecol-/environment-," "micro-
/nano-," and "-image-").
There is certainly a "green" look to the journals that were new
in 1992. Frequent key terms in their titles include "eco-/ecol-
/environment-" and "agri-/agro-/hort-." Titles represented in
this group include: Molecular Ecology, Environmental Testing and
Analysis, Ecotoxicology, Restoration Ecology, the Journal of
Aquatic Ecosystem Health, European Journal of Agronomy, and
Horttechnology.
The area of computer sciences is reflected in the frequently
appearing key terms "comput-," "system-," "intelligent-," and
"programming-." Computer modeling and simulation is clearly a hot
topic currently (for example, Computer Simulation and Modeling
and ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation).
The very small seems a subject of growing interest as well,
reflected in new journals with "micro-" or "nano-" in their
titles. These include Microlithography World, Nanobiology, the
Journal of Microelectro-mechanical Systems, and Nano- structured
Materials.
Imaging made a clear mark in 1992, as well. New titles in this
realm of research include Image Systems, Neuro-Image, the Journal
of Imaging Science and Technology, IEEE Transactions on Image
Processing, Journal of Electronic Imaging, and the Journal of
Mathematical Imaging and Vision.
Materials research figured prominently in the new group (Smart
Materials and Structures, Optical Materials, and the Journal of
Materials Engineering and Performance), and some of the new
titles exhibit more than one of the frequently occurring key
terms identified here (Computational Materials Science and
Nanostructured Materials, mentioned previously).
Medicine accounted for the greatest number of new titles in 1992.
Among the frequently occurring key terms with a medical slant are
"clinic-," "cancer/on-co-," "health," "medic-," and "surg-,"
which, taken together, represent nearly 40 journals.
Themes prominent among the medical and clinical group are health
care quality and economics, laparoscopic surgery, cancer care and
prevention, and women's health, the last reflected in such titles
as the Journal of Women's Health, Breast, and Mammary Gland.
It is worth noting the frequency of the term "applied" and the
absence of the words "basic" or "fundamental" in the accompanying
word-stem table. Perhaps this is a reflection of a new pragmatism
in research and of the demand, increasingly heard, for research
that can contribute to national needs.
Recent geopolitical events certainly seem to be reflected in the
use of the terms "European" and "Russian" (in place of "Soviet")
in so many titles. Presumably, publishers believe that the
European Community movement and the newly independent Russian
state have created new and distinct markets for their journals.
In our more global world market, "international" seems to be a
favorite designation, as well. Whether science segments itself
along geopolitical lines seems doubtful, but the market for
journals with a geographic perspective or flavor may indeed prove
viable.
Among the new journals in contention for the prize for most
unusual or amusing title are: European Spine Journal, which begs
the question of whether Asian or North American spines deserve
their own journals; the arcane Transactions of the Metal
Finishers Association of India; and the International Journal of
Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance, and Management, which
bank customers around the world will recognize as oxymoronic.
Science Watch's award, however, goes to Presence: Teleoperators
and Virtual Environments. This journal is sure to be a success,
since an overwhelming demand for this title can be simulated by
its publisher.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : FIELDS RANKED BY NUMBER OF SCIENTIFIC, TECHNICAL, AND
MEDICAL JOURNALS INTRODUCED IN 1992
TY : RESEARCH
PG : 14
RANK FIELD # JOURNALS PERCENT
1 Clinical Medicine 104 28.6
2 Biology 68 18.7
3 Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences 63 17.3
4 Technology and
Applied Sciences 39 10.7
5 Computer Sciences 33 9.1
6 Chemistry 16 4.4
6 Engineering 16 4.4
7 Mathematics 14 3.8
8 Physics 11 3.0
Science Watch / Institute for Scientific Information
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : WORD AND WORD-STEM FREQUENCIES OF KEY TERMS IN TITLES
OF SCIENTIFIC, TECHNICAL, AND MEDICAL JOURNALS
INTRODUCED IN 1992
TY : RESEARCH
PG : 14
RANK WORD OR FREQUENCY
WORD-STEM
1 international 25
2 bio-/biol- 21
3 comput- 17
4 eco-/ecol-/
environment- 16
5 European 15
6 system- 13
7 applied 12
clinic- 12
8 cancer/onco- 11
9 material- 10
micro-/nano- 10
10 agri-/agro-/hort- 9
drug-/pharm- 9
food-/nutrition 9
molecular 9
11 development- 8
health 8
-image- 8
information 8
Russian 8
12 medic- 7
13 neuro- 6
14 -electro- 5
evolution- 5
intelligen- 5
natural 5
programming 5
psycho- 5
surg- 5
toxi- 5
Source: Science Watch / Institute for Scientific Information
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
HOT PAPERS
TI : MATERIALS SCIENCE
TY : RESEARCH (HOT PAPERS)
PG : 16
E.A. Fitzgerald, Y.-H. Xie, M.L. Green, D. Brasen, A.R. Kortan,
et al., "Totally relaxed GeSi layers with low threading
dislocation densities grown on Si substrates," Applied Physics
Letters, 59:811, 1991.
Eugene Fitzgerald (AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J.):
"Nearly all the microelectronic circuitry (very-large-scale
integration [VLSI]) today is manufactured from silicon. For
decades, scientists have been trying to estimate when Si would
mature and another materials system would dominate. However, Si
circuitry continues to improve by reducing the device size--that
is, faster circuits are produced by making smaller Si transistors
so that electrons travel shorter distances. Thus, it now appears
that Si VLSI will still dominate, although certain bottlenecks
will appear. For instance, when the Si devices shrink below 0.1
micron in size, the metal interconnections among transistors,
circuits, and assemblies may become the bottleneck. Because Si
will still be an important material for much of the
microelectronic tasks, scientists are considering not the
replacement of Si VLSI with a new material, but instead combining
other semiconductor materials with Si VLSI. Therefore, the issue
of how to integrate different materials on a Si substrate is
becoming a key issue.
"This paper describes a procedure for producing a relaxed
germanium-silicon alloy film on Si with very few dislocations
threading up to the top of the deposited layer. This result
generated interest because of the possibility that field effect
transistors (FETs) based in the GeSi/Si system could be
integrated with Si, and light-emitting elements from groups III
to V may be integrated as well.
"Our work has had a large impact, since it has renewed the
possibility that ultrafast complementary field effect transistor
circuits could be made from GeSi/Si heterostructures, and these
circuits could be integrated with Si VLSI. However, the ability
to combine materials with different lattice constants also has
renewed the possibility that optoelectronic components such as
lasers and light-emitting diodes (LEDs) could be integrated with
Si as well. We were first to demonstrate that red-emitting LEDs
could be fabricated on the graded, relaxed GeSi structures (E.A.
Fitzgerald, et al., Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology, B
10:1807, 1992). The ability to integrate LEDs and lasers with Si
may be a solution to some of the interconnect problems that Si
VLSI will encounter.
"In addition, a much more speculative application of the relaxed
buffers is to create alternating layers of different compositions
of GeSi on the relaxed buffers. It has been suggested that such
structures were created on the uniform GeSi layers, and their
properties were difficult to analyze because of high threading
dislocation density. Thus, researchers interested in these
superlattice structures can now probe the properties of the
superlattice without interference from a high density of defects
if the structure is grown on graded GeSi/Si."
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE
TY : RESEARCH (HOT PAPERS)
PG : 16
M.P. McCormick, R.E. Veiga, "SAGE II measurements of early
Pinatubo aerosols," Geophysical Research Letters, 19:155-8, 1992.
M. Patrick McCormick (National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va.): "Since
1979, the global view of aerosols in the stratosphere and upper
troposphere has been provided almost exclusively by the
Stratospheric Aerosol Measurement II (SAM II) and the
Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE I and II) series
of satellite instruments. The resulting data sets have shown that
naturally occurring atmospheric aerosols (sub-micron-sized
particles composed mainly of aqueous sulfuric acid) are not
uniformly distributed, but rather undergo large changes resulting
from volcanic eruptions and in response to atmospheric dynamics,
microphysical growth, and gravitational sedimentation. A
specialized type of `aerosol' also appears in the form of polar
stratospheric clouds (PSCs) inside the Antarctic vortex during
the cold polar night. These clouds provide catalytic surfaces
upon which heterogeneous reactions free reactive chlorine atoms
that destroy ozone and create the Antarctic `ozone hole.'
"If their global abundance is great enough, as has been the case
since the June 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the
Philippines, the aerosols can cool the Earth's surface by
reflecting incoming solar radiation and heat the local
stratosphere by absorbing upwelling infrared radiation. Changes
in the atmospheric temperature structure can, in turn, affect
atmospheric dynamical processes. In addition, heterogeneous
chemistry similar to that which creates the ozone hole may occur
at all latitudes.
"Our paper describes the initial perturbation to stratospheric
aerosols caused by the eruption of Pinatubo. We show SAGE II-
derived maps of its global dispersal at various altitudes and
estimate the mass of new aerosols produced. These data show that
the Pinatubo perturbation was the largest of the century, perhaps
the largest since the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa.
"Besides producing beautiful and prolonged sunrises and sunsets,
the Pinatubo aerosols are having a significant effect on climate,
ozone chemistry, atmospheric dynamics, remote sensor performance,
and polar-route aircraft flying through the layer. The enormous
amount of aerosol produced--greater than 30 million tons--is
predicted by climate modelers to produce a global mean cooling
near the surface of about 0.5<198> C. This amount of cooling is
about three times larger than the standard deviation of global
mean temperature and, therefore, provides an `acid test' for
global climate models. Such cooling will mask for a few years the
warming caused by the greenhouse effect.
"Similarly, this amount of aerosol increases the global aerosol
surface area density by an order of magnitude or more over pre-
eruption stratospheric values and, therefore, greatly increases
the probability of perturbations to `normal' homogeneous ozone
photochemistry. Perhaps more important, it provides this enhanced
aerosol surface area not just in the polar regions, but globally,
with increased potential for widespread stratospheric ozone
depletion. The aerosol level also produces artifacts or reduced
accuracy in the data retrieved by satellite-based and ground-
based remote sensors, which must be taken into account in
interpreting the measurements.
"Finally, since the cruise altitude for aircraft flying on polar
routes is in the lower stratosphere, the surfaces of these
aircraft come in contact with this new sulfuric-acid aerosol. One
damaging effect is a phenomenon called crazing, where-by
microscopic cracks are produced in the outer layer of the
passenger windows made of acrylic, making it difficult or
impossible to view out of them.
"This paper and subsequent data since publication are providing
these important global data to researchers in each of the fields
mentioned previously and, in addition, have contributed to an
understanding of the gas-to-particle conversion processes, the
particle condensation and growth processes, and various
atmospheric dynamical processes."
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY
TI : DNA Sequencing Software Teases Meaning From Genes
AU : RICKI LEWIS
TY : TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY
PG : 17
As molecular biology becomes increasingly informational, computer
software to manipulate and analyze nucleic acid sequences has
evolved from a useful tool to an absolute necessity, researchers
say. The first generation of DNA software accelerated sequencing
by analyzing images of DNA fragments on electrophoresis gels.
Today's programs perform dozens of functions on strings of
nucleotides, including cutting, comparing, and detecting
information. There is much to choose from.
A primary consideration in selecting software is one's hardware.
IntelliGenetics Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., for example,
offers flexibility: Its GeneWorks sequence-analysis software
operates on a Macintosh, while its PC/GENE package runs on IBM-
compatible personal computers. The Genetics Computer Group Inc.
(GCG) of Madison, Wis., offers the Wisconsin Package, which
operates on a VAX/VMS system, from the Maynard, Mass.-based
Digital Equipment Corp., and several UNIX systems, from AT&T Bell
Laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J. Software from the National Center
for Biotechnology Information, a division of the National Library
of Medicine in Bethesda, Md., is also UNIX-compatible.
Identifying Need
Some DNA software packages offer an impressive list of functions
to prepare the user for nearly any research contingency, while
others are more targeted and specific in the tasks they support.
IntelliGenetics' PC/GENE and GeneWorks; MacDNASIS from Hitachi
Software Engineering America Ltd. in San Bruno, Calif.; GCG's
Wisconsin Package; and others offer an array of functions,
including basic editing; overlapping sequences to form contig
maps, a method of approaching a gene by aligning overlapping
sequences; generating restriction maps; comparing sequences and
calculating the percentage of divergence; searching databases;
transcribing DNA to RNA and displaying its secondary structure;
converting nucleic acid sequences to amino acid sequences; and
recognizing patterns, such as protein encoding regions and
repeated short sequences.
Millipore Corp. of Bedford, Mass., by contrast, offers five more
specific software packages used for genome research and mapping,
says marketing communications manager Greg Hoff. Each package
provides several related functions. The restriction fragment
length polymorphism (RFLP) databasing software, for example,
allows the user to build databases of RFLP films, and to compare
and analyze information in the databases. (An RFLP is a DNA
sequence that varies among individuals and is detectable because
it alters a restriction enzyme cutting site, changing the sizes
of fragments that result from applying the enzyme to DNA.)
Software packages targeted to a specific technique can also be
comprehensive. OLIGO 4.0 from National Biosciences Inc. of
Plymouth, Minn., selects oligonucleotide primers for use in the
polymerase chain reaction (PCR) from a researcher's DNA or RNA
sequence or from a database. In selecting primers, the program
considers such parameters as secondary structure, specificity,
and degeneracy, and calculates annealing and melting
temperatures. The program also can edit a sequence and translate
a single-stranded DNA sequence in all three reading frames
(starting with the first, second, or third base).
DNASTAR of Madison, Wis., offers " la carte" modules such as
MegAlign (for sequence alignment), MapDraw (for restriction
analysis), and GeneMan (to access databases). Additionally, the
firm offers the comprehensive software package Lasergene, which
also is available in a form that supports five simultaneous
users. Francis Barany, an associate professor of microbiology at
Cornell University Medical College, says that with Lasergene, at
the press of a button, he displays maps of the cancer genes with
which he is working, altering the maps in seconds by punching in
new DNA cutting enzymes.
Some programs are friendlier than others. Potential users often
shy away from the software available from the National Library of
Medicine's National Center for Biotechnology Information, says
Warren Gish, a researcher at the facility, because of the effort
necessary to master a UNIX workstation, which the software runs
on. The center's programs--BLASTN to compare nucleic acid
sequences and BLASTX to detect protein encoding gene regions--are
"accessed over Internet, a worldwide network that is very popular
in academia, and is growing in popularity in the commercial
sector. Using a file transfer protocol [FTP], a user can connect
to a server [computer] here at the National Center for
Biotechnology Information, and copy the software onto a local
computer," Gish says.
But a biologist who is not a computer aficionado might be better
off purchasing software from a commercial vendor, Gish says. "It
costs to use company software, but the users have a right to
expect that the system be more turnkey, that they have access to
someone to call with a problem. Companies offer more hand-
holding," Gish says, referring to the training sessions,
hotlines, and newsletters that typically accompany purchase of
DNA sequence-analysis software.
Lorenzo's Oil And GRAIL
Easily accessible is the GRAIL program from Oak Ridge National
Laboratory. "It is simple and friendly, designed for non-computer
people," says Edward C. Uberbacher, a member of the computer
sequence-analysis group in Oak Ridge's engineering physics and
math division, who describes himself as half biologist, half
computer scientist. "People send in a [DNA] sequence, and the
system sends back a message describing where in the sequence are
the coding parts of a gene," he adds, referring to a subcomponent
of GRAIL called CRM, which stands for "coding recognition
module."
Earlier this year, as moviegoers learned about the fatty acid
buildup behind adrenoleukodystrophy in the film Lorenzo's Oil, an
international team of researchers was using the GRAIL/CRM program
to identify the gene that causes this inherited neurological
deterioration of late childhood.
Following clues provided by affected boys missing genetic
material in parts of their X chromosomes, the researchers used
the software to identify a likely protein-encoding portion of the
candidate gene region. The program then compared the predicted
protein's amino acid sequence to those in standard protein
databases--and found something unexpected, yet logical (Jean
Mosser, et al., Nature, 361:726, 1993). Rather than implicate the
very long chain fatty acid CoA (VLCFA-CoA) synthetase gene
thought to be the culprit, the computer search identified a
peptide transporter protein that ferries VLCFA-CoA synthetase
into the peroxisome, the cellular site of fatty acid breakdown.
DNA sequence-analysis software must readily adapt to the unknown
genetic complexities that are certain to arise from the ongoing
genome projects, including surprises in gene structure and
function, as well as emerging mapping strategies.
Consider the recent discovery of the gene that causes
Huntington's disease (Huntington's Disease Collaborative Research
Group, Cell, 72:971, 1993). Part of the reason why a decade
passed between the discovery of a marker and the final
identification of the gene was that its protein product resembles
no other. But the gene does have one distinguishing feature--the
trinu-cleotide CAG repeated many more times in those who are
affected by this dominantly inherited, adult-onset neurological
disorder than in others. Huntington's disease joins three other
nucleotide repeat disorders recently identified--fragile X
syndrome, myotonic dystrophy, and spinal and bulbar muscular
atrophy.
Most, if not all, sequence-analysis software would not require
revamping to handle this unexpected, new form of mutation. "You
can put in a specific sequence, and search for it. [The program]
stops everywhere it locates the sequence," says Cordell Brown,
manager of sales and marketing at Hitachi, explaining how
MacDNASIS would detect a nucleotide repeat. A sensitive computer
is better at detecting short repeats than a human is.
Mapping Microsatellites
The first maps of the human genome were assembled in the 1980s
using RFLP markers. This approach was sketchy, roughly equivalent
to filling in the outlines of states on a blank map of the United
States. Newer mapping strategies are more like localizing the
cities on such a map. One faster and easier mapping route uses as
signposts short, repeated DNA sequences (one to five bases).
These are called short or simple sequence tandem repeat
polymorphisms or, more succinctly, microsatellites.
Up to half a billion microsatellite sequences are scattered
across the human genome. Mapping genes using microsatellites as
guides entails determining the exact number of bases between
repeats. This number can differ by as few as one or two bases in
different individuals, resulting in very similarly sized
electrophoresis gel bands. A computer is much better at
discriminating these bands than is the human eye.
Millipore's Bio Image Short Tandem Repeat Polymorphism Software,
which runs on the company's Bio Image gel/film reader system and
SUN Microsystems workstations, increases throughput in detecting
genes by five-fold. On a Macintosh, GENESCAN analysis software
from Applied Biosystems Inc., Foster City, Calif., eases this new
form of mapping. GENESCAN uses fluorescent labels to mark DNA
from different individuals (Janet S. Ziegle, et al., Genomics,
14:1026, 1992). The program presents the data either as a
simulated gel pattern or as an "electrophoretogram," clearly
displaying which alleles are found in which members of a family.
In clinical studies, color-coding allows "multiplexing"--looking
at more than one gene per family member at a time. "We have
determined that a single project with at least 500 individuals
would take years to analyze by radioactive methods. But with the
GENESCAN software and the ability to multiplex, we can do the
same project in a matter of three to four months," said Elizabeth
Nanthakumer, director of the DNA analysis facility at the Johns
Hopkins University School of Medicine, in an interview that
appeared in the Applied Biosystems company newsletter, Biosystems
Reporter (November 1991).
Looking Ahead
The DNA sequence-analysis software of the future, say many
molecular biologists, will concentrate on identifying more and
more motifs (common sequence regions encoding protein with a
distinctive three-dimensional structure) to decipher the meaning
of gene sequences. And genes in need of analysis are rapidly
piling up.
At the European Community Symposium on Strategies in cDNA
Programs, held in Paris Oct. 12-13, 1992, 70 researchers reported
a total of 25,000 partial complementary DNAs (cDNAs). These are
DNA sequences that are reverse-transcribed from messenger RNA
(mRNA) obtained from specific tissues. The cDNAs therefore
reflect genes that are active in a specific cell type. The 25,000
partial cDNAs are thought to represent 10,000 human genes, or
about 10 percent of the protein-encoding portion of the human
genome.
But the need for DNA sequence-analysis software will be
compelling even after the genome journey has ended. Concludes
Cornell's Francis Barany, "Once the human genome has been
sequenced, we're going to be in a position to do many interesting
experiments. There will be a time when we have the information
and can then answer fundamental questions."
Ricki Lewis is a freelance science writer based in Scotia, N.Y.
She is the author of a biology text and has just completed a
human genetics text.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : A SAMPLING OF DNA SEQUENCE-ANALYSIS SOFTWARE
TY : TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY
PG : 18
Applied Biosystems Inc.
(Division of Perkin-Elmer Corp.)
850 Lincoln Centre Dr.
Foster City, Calif. 94404
(800) 345-5ABI
Fax: (415) 572-2743
Products: GENESCAN 672 for microsatellite markers on Macintosh:
call for price.
DNASTAR Inc.
1228 S. Park St.
Madison, Wis. 53715
(608) 258-7420
Fax: (608) 258-7439
Products: Lasergene comprehensive package: $3,995; Lasergene
options, including BIO-CORE 1, Map-Draw, and GeneFont (basic
molecular analysis system) and MegAlign, Protean, GeneMan, or
SeqMan: $945.
Genetics Computer Group Inc. (GCG)
University Research Park
575 Science Dr., Suite B
Madison, Wis. 53711
(608) 231-5200
Fax: (608) 231-5202
Product: GCG Sequence Analysis Software Package: $4,000
(nonprofit organizations) or $12,000 (for-profit organizations)
Hitachi Software Engineering America Ltd.
1111 Bayhill Dr., Suite 395
San Bruno, Calif. 94066
(800) 624-6176
Fax: (415) 615-7699
Products: DNASIS 7.0 for PC: $1,700; Hitachi MacDNASIS 2.0 for
Macintosh: $1,950
IntelliGenetics Inc.
700 E. El Camino Real
Mountain View, Calif. 94040
(415) 962-7300
Fax: (415) 962-7302
Products: GeneWorks sequence-analysis software (Macintosh):
$2,000-$3,000, depending on customization; PC/GENE: $2,700-$3,800
Millipore Corp.
80 Ashby Rd.
Bedford, Mass. 01730-9125
(617) 275-9200
Fax: (617) 275-5550
Products: Bio Image Short Tandem Repeat Polymorphism Software for
microsatellite mapping: call for price; DNA Sequence Assembly
Manager Software, assembles contigs: call for price.
National Biosciences Inc.
3650 Annapolis La.
Plymouth, Minn. 55447-5434
(800) 747-4362
Fax: (800) 369-5118
Products: OLIGO 4.1 Primer Analysis Software for PC or Macintosh:
$800
National Center for Biotechnology Information
National Library of Medicine
8600 Rockville Pike
Building 38A, Room 8N806
Bethesda, Md. 20894-0001
(301) 496-2475
Fax: (301) 480-9241
Products: BLASTX, BLASTN: free; call for information.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Computer Sequence Analysis Group
Engineering, Physics and Math Division
Oak Ridge, Tenn. 37831
(615) 574-6134
Products: GRAIL/CRM: free; call for information.
(See also Scientific Software directory on page 30.)
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : Survey: Grad Student Stipends Rising, New Appointments Dropping
AU : EDWARD R. SILVERMAN
TY : PROFESSION
PG : 19
Prospective graduate students eagerly awaiting word from schools
about the size of their stipends for the next academic year will
undoubtedly be pleased to learn that the median stipend paid to
teaching and research assistants in university biological and
physical sciences departments rose during the 1991-92 school year
as compared with 1989-90, according to a recent study. The survey
was conducted by the Office of Research and Graduate Studies at
the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
The good news, however, is tempered by another finding of the
study--that the number of first-year teaching and research
appointments declined in physical and biological sciences
departments, as did these departments' share of the overall
number of assistantships.
A total of 80 United States universities provided assistantship
stipend data for first-year grad students in 2,892 science and
nonscience departments. The study was conducted in cooperation
with, and was partially supported by, the Council of Graduate
Schools.
The data were compared with figures from a previous study
conducted by the University of Nebraska for the 1989-90 academic
year. Fifty of the institutions participating in the 1991-92
study also took part in the earlier survey.
Among the findings was that the median stipend for graduate
teaching assistants rose 10.3 percent, to $8,712, during the
1991-92 school year. In the physical sciences, the median stipend
increased 10.7 percent, to $8,753, making this the highest-paid
category.
However, the survey found that there were fewer first-year
appointments in 1991-92 than in 1989-90. Biological sciences
departments named only 1,359 teaching assistants, compared with
1,449 in 1989-90, a 6.2 percent drop. In physical sciences
departments, first-year teaching assistant appointments fell 25.5
percent, to 2,978.
"It would be a reasonable hypothesis to state that the poor
economic conditions led to a decrease in teaching assistants
being hired," says Merlin Lawson, dean of graduate studies at the
University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
"Often, the teaching assistant budget is the first to go," he
says. "But departments still need to be competitive on a national
basis and protect their stipend levels." So although the stipend
allocation may be a discretionary item in a de-partment's budget,
"if you get any increase in money at all, you put it back into
stipends."
Looking toward the future, others caution that the uncertain
economy will continue to dampen the outlook for increased funding
and new positions. "Graduate enrollment nationwide is rising
about 2 percent a year," says Harvey Knull, dean of the graduate
school at the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks. "And over
the last two to three years, the number of graduate applications
is increasing across the country.
"But many institutions of higher education, especially state
institutions, are having some difficulties because they're not
being supported by their legislators.
"Over time, if this continues, I do expect there to be an erosion
of teaching assistant dollars. We're in a state of flux at the
moment," he adds. "The physical and life science departments are
jealously guarding their positions."
On a weighted average basis, which takes into account differing
numbers of stipends at various levels of pay, the median stipend
paid by biological sciences departments to teaching assistants
rose $932, or 12.17 percent, to $8,592, in the 1991-92 school
year from two years earlier. Physical sciences departments paid
an extra 9.67 percent, to $8,706.
Among biological sciences departments, 55.37 percent of those
responding said that stipend levels are determined by the
student's academic rank--such as whether he or she has a
bachelor's or master's degree--during the appointment. Such
rankings mattered in only 38.1 percent of the physical sciences
departments.
The survey also found that first-year teaching assistants in
agriculture departments put in the highest mean number of hours
per week, at 19. Both biological and physical sciences first-year
teaching assistants logged 18 hours per week.
The median value of net stipends--which factor out paid tuition
for a graduate teaching assistant--was up 10.75 percent, or $801,
to $8,251 in biological sciences departments. Net median stipends
were up 11.5 percent, or $840, to $8,137 in physical sciences
departments.
Among research assistants, the median stipend was $9,279, up 10
percent, in biological sciences departments, while the stipends
rose 12.5 percent, to $9,000, in physical sciences departments.
Again, though, the number of first-year appointments in
biological sciences departments was down 33.3 percent, to 797,
while in physical sciences departments, first-year appointments
declined 40.3 percent, to 694.
As with teaching assistantships, research positions were limited
by economic variables, which also constrained the availability of
funding from outside organizations, such as grants from
foundations, a source of stipend financing at some schools.
"Most graduate students are supported by assistantships," notes
Gordhan Patel, dean of the graduate school at the University of
Georgia, Athens, and a zoology and biochemistry professor. "The
kind we have are where students get money from outside funding."
Patel, however, is more optimistic than some other academics
about future prospects for grad students. "Fortunately, my
administration has been supportive," he says. "We have a good
chance of being stable, with some increase in the level of
stipends--maybe 2 percent in the 1993-94 year."
The median value of net stipends, subtracting such items as
tuition, was $8,649 in biological sciences, a 14.57 percent
increase. In physical sciences, the median net stipend was up
16.05 percent, to $8,400.
The survey also found that research assistants in biological
sciences departments logged 19 hours per week, while their
counterparts in physical sciences departments put in 18 hours per
week.
Edward R. Silverman is a freelance writer based in Millburn, N.J.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : GRADUATE TEACHING ASSISTANTSHIPS:
STIPEND LEVELS BY AREA OF INTEREST, 1991-92
TY : PROFESSION
PG : 19
Area of Interest Minimum Median Maximum
Value Value Value
Agriculture $1,643 $8,712 $16,500
Arts & Humanities 1,000 6,606 14,406
Biological Sciences 2,200 8,712 14,406
Business & Management 1,600 6,500 14,406
Education 639 6,552 14,406
Engineering 849 8,100 16,050
Health Sciences 1,000 6,552 23,130
Physical Sciences 894 8,753 15,000
Social Sciences 1,000 7,000 14,406
Source: Office of Research and Graduate Studies, University of
Nebraska, Lincoln
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : GRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANTSHIPS: STIPEND LEVELS BY
AREA OF INTEREST, 1991-92
TY : PROFESSION
PG : 19
Area of Interest Minimum Median Maximum
Value Value Value
Agriculture $1,200 $8,712 $16,854
Arts & Humanities 300 6,000 16,854
Biological Sciences 1,200 9,279 22,000
Business & Management 792 5,500 16,854
Education 639 6,660 20,000
Engineering 1,200 8,400 20,103
Health Sciences 1,000 7,568 23,026
Physical Sciences 1,500 9,000 16,854
Social Sciences 1,350 6,750 16,854
Source: Office of Research and Graduate Studies, University of
Nebraska, Lincoln
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
PEOPLE
TI : President-Elect Of Astronomical Society Pledges To
Focus On Science Education
AU : Ron Kaufman
TY : PROFESSION (PEOPLE)
PG : 21
Concerning the role of astronomy in early science education,
Frank H. Shu, a professor of astronomy at the University of
California, Berkeley, and president-elect of the American
Astronomical Society (AAS), says his field does not get enough
respect. Shu, who will take over the 6,000-member AAS in June
1994, says astronomy can be a useful tool in capturing the
interest of students in science at the elementary and secondary
levels.
"Many teachers have the wrong perception that astronomy is a
fairly esoteric subject because it doesn't lead to the
development of a better toaster," says Shu, who officially
becomes president-elect on June 9. "I would argue that . . . this
field has something valuable to offer the nation."
Shu says that, unlike many other scientific disciplines,
astronomy's facts and concepts can be explained in easily
understood ways. "I cannot name a better subject than astronomy
to inspire young people to become interested in science," he
says.
As president of AAS, Shu says, he hopes to inspire teachers to
use astronomy in the classrooms. "I don't think professional
astronomers would best use their time to teach at the elementary
levels," he states, "but we can have a strong influence in the
way teachers of science and engineering are trained. And to start
that, we have to change our own attitudes."
He says part of this change will involve astronomers demanding a
higher quality in their own teaching, so that those who will end
up as elementary science teachers will be better suited to convey
their discipline.
Shu says astronomers need to be encouraged to focus on teaching
through "a better balance of awards and motivations between
excellent teaching and research."
He hopes that, along with promoting science education, AAS will
begin to have more of an influence on setting national research
priorities in the field.
"In the past, the American Astronomical Society has primarily
regarded its function as running the meetings, publishing the
journals, and establishing committees that look into various
specialized problems," he says. "It has not attempted to define
priorities."
Currently, decisions about which research projects get funded are
made by panels at the National Academy of Sciences or a similar
agency in government. Though he says he has made no specific
plans, Shu hopes to enable astronomers to air their views on
research priorities through the voice of AAS.
Shu, 49, was born in Kunming, China. He received his B.S. in
physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963
and his Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University in 1968. He
has been a member of the faculty of UC-Berkeley since 1973.
His interest in science education is evidenced by the authorship
of an undergraduate textbook, The Physical Universe: An
Introduction to Astronomy (University Science Books, Mill Valley,
Calif., 1982) and a two-volume graduate textbook, The Physics of
Astrophysics (University Science Books, 1992). He also recently
finished writing the "Cosmos" section of the 1994 Encyclopaedia
Britannica.
In addition to his work in the United States astronomical
community, Shu is spearheading the formation of a national
Institute of Astron- omy and Astrophysics in Taiwan.
Three years ago, the Academia Sinica of Taiwan invited Shu to
give advice in starting an institute to both fund and house
researchers in the field. Shu says he travels to Taiwan three or
four times a year and is anticipating the launch of the institute
next year.
"This effort," he says, "has attracted support from overseas
Chinese astronomers, who all feel this desire to help and push in
this direction so Taiwan and China can enter the community of
modern nations in a subject that has tremendous cultural and
historical importance."
--Ron Kaufman
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : Scientist-Turned-Congressman Pushes For Increased
Support Of Basic Research
AU : Ron Kaufman
TY : PROFESSION (PEOPLE)
PG : 21
Scientists engaged in basic research have a strong ally in
Congress: Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-Md.). As one of the 124
freshmen in the 103rd Congress, Bartlett, a former researcher in
respiratory physiology, says he hopes to be able to increase the
funding for undirected basic research.
"If Clinton and Gore really respected science and technology,
they'd stop trying to direct basic research," he says. "I keep
trying to make the point that if it's directed, it's not basic.
They want to direct basic research to areas where we're going to
have a societal payoff. I understand a layman doing that, but
it's not going to work from a scientific viewpoint."
As a scientist, "you look for knowledge and go wherever truth
leads you," Bartlett says. "You never can tell where the next
great idea will come from. And I think that's very true in basic
research and early R&D.
"We need less government manipulation and control, less
bureaucracy, and more money going directly towards basic
research."
Throughout his career, Bartlett, 66, has been involved in
respiratory, metabolic, and stress physiology studies.
He received his B.S. in biology with a minor in chemistry from
Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, Md., in 1947 and his Ph.D.
in physiology with a minor in biochemistry from the University of
Maryland in 1952.
>From 1962 to 1967, he headed the space life sciences group at the
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, where he
helped develop an automated anesthesia machine and a breathing
metabolic stimulator. From 1967 to 1974 he worked at IBM Corp.'s
scientific division in Bethesda, Md. From 1974 until his
retirement in 1986, Bartlett taught at Frederick Community
College in Frederick, Md.
Bartlett is a member of the Armed Services and Science, Space,
and Technology committees, yet has not sponsored any legislation
specifically concerning science and technology. He says the half-
dozen bills he has personally submitted have all related to
reforming Congress or the economy, two issues he feels are most
important to the average voter.
He was one of only four House freshmen to sign a pledge to cut
the federal budget deficit in half by 1996 or not seek
reelection.
"I signed the pledge. If they can find any vote I made which was
not focused on reducing the deficit and balancing the budget, I
will not run again," Bartlett says. "It's got to be possible to
cut it. If it's not possible, we're doomed."
In the November election, Bartlett, who represents Maryland's 6th
District, on the western border of the state, won 54 percent of
the vote, beating the 46 percent garnered by Democrat Thomas H.
Hattery.
--Ron Kaufman
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : OBITUARY
TY : PROFESSION (PEOPLE)
PG : 21
Michael E. Stanley, a Columbia University neuroscientist who
studied the biochemistry of suicide and other self-injurious
behavior, died of a heart attack April 26 in Short Hills, N.J. He
was 49 years old. Stanley, who came to Columbia in 1989, held
two positions there: one as clinical professor of
psychopharmacology in the departments of psychiatry and
pharmacology in the university's College of Physicians and
Surgeons, and the other as director of the department of
neuroscience at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, part of
the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.
Stanley received his B.S. in psychology from Montclair State
College in New Jersey in 1972 and his Ph.D. in pharmacology from
Mount Sinai School of Medicine, City University of New York, in
1979. Before arriving at Columbia, Stanley was a professor at
Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #11, May 31, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
