
                          THE SCIENTIST

VOLUME 7, No:8                                  April 19, 1993
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)

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ASSESSING HEALY'S TENURE: As the end of her relatively brief 
tenure as head of the National Institutes of Health draws near, 
scientists, policy advocates, and former NIH officials reflect on 
the lasting impact of Bernadine Healy's often-tumultuous 
stewardship  
PG   1


STAYING POWER: The ability of Food and Drug Administration 
commissioner David Kessler to stay on in the Clinton 
administration is a major feat, one his supporters in science and 
industry chalk up to his vigorous management and refocusing of 
the agency. Others, however, credit his retention more to 
superior political skills  
PG 1


ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT: Researchers and officials in academia, 
industry, government, and private institutions report employment 
prospects for investigators in environmental science 
outdistancing those in more traditional disciplines  
PG 1


STARTUP SURVIVAL: The second part of a two-part series on new 
biotechnology firms examines the fundamental as well as day-to-
day challenges faced by these nascent businesses--both 
scientifically and commercially--and how these firms are facing 
up to them  
PG 1


RETURN TO UNESCO: Indications from the White House and other 
sources point to the United States' return to the United Nations 
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization after a decade 
of absence, due largely to political disagreements with the 
organization. The move would allow the organization to hire 
American scientists once again for its various programs  
PG 3


IGOR SHAFAREVICH VS. NAS: Russian migr writer and historian 
Semyon Reznik says the National Academy of Sciences was right in 
asking Russian mathematician Igor Shafarevich to resign his 
foreign associate membership, even though the specifics of the 
NAS letter to Shafarevich were problematic  
PG 11


COMMENTARY: The problem of redundant publishing of research 
findings has plagued the science community for a long time, but, 
as Eugene Garfield points out, resources such as the Institute 
for Scientific Information's Science Citation Index have been 
available to root out offenders and should be used  
PG 12


HOTTEST OF THE HOT: Of all the research published in 1992, papers 
addressing the role of beta-agonist bronchodilators in the 
treatment of asthma drew the greatest number of citations, 
according to data from the Institute for Scientific Information 
reported in Science Watch, which examined last year's hottest 
fields  
PG 14



HOT PAPERS: A microbiologist discusses his study of a key process 
in the conversion of wood pulp  
PG 16


REDUCING THE HAZARDS: With research dollars in short supply, 
scientists must minimize the cost and time expended in 
controlling and disposing of hazardous waste. Several techniques, 
services, and new products are available to help. (See also 
Hazardous Waste Disposal Products and Services Directory on page 
31)  
PG 17



YOUNG SCIENTISTS: Are high school students who garner top honors 
in such prestigious competitions as the Westinghouse Science 
Talent Search marked for future scientific success, or do the 
competitions motivate youngsters to pursue greatness in research? 
Scientists, teachers, and the students themselves contend that 
it's a little bit of both  
PG 21



CHARLES CHAMBERS, executive director of the American Institute of 
Biological Sciences, has been named president of Lawrence 
Technological University in Houghton, Mich.  
PG 23



NOTEBOOK  
PG  4


CARTOON  
PG 4


LETTERS  
PG 12


CROSSWORD  
PG 13


HAZARDOUS WASTE DISPOSAL PRODUCTS AND SERVICES DIRECTORY  
PG  31



(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:



TI   :    Environmental Science Job Prospects Healthier Than In 
          Other Disciplines

Growing awareness of environmental challenges keeps employment 
outlook relatively bright in this diverse research area


AU   :    BY MARCIA CLEMMITT

TY   :    News
PG   :    1


Despite the current economic uncertainty in the United States, 
career opportunities seem to be proliferating for environmental 
scientists, far outpacing those for researchers in many other 
disciplines.



According to experts in this professional market, there is reason 
for optimism based on a combination of factors--mostly a 
heightened public concern about environmental threats along with 
stepped-up vigilance by environment-monitoring governmental 
agencies.



Robert Baillod, professor and head of the department of civil and 
environmental engineering at Michigan Technological University in 
Houghton, says that while environmental jobs have suffered from a 
slow economy, the environmental engineers his department trains 
continue to have an easier time finding positions than do most 
other engineers and scientists.



"A couple of years ago, 100 percent of our graduates found jobs 
immediately, while other disciplines may have had 90 percent 
success at best," Baillod says. "Today, we still have 70 to 80 
percent placed right away, while most other disciplines seem to 
have dropped to around 60 to 70 percent. There's a pretty big 
demand for those with environmental training."



The demand is a byproduct of the unusual diversity of job 
opportunities outside of academia for researchers with 
environmental training, scientists say. Federal and state 
research and regulatory agencies, such as state fish and wildlife 
agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National 
Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Department of 
Defense, all employ environmental researchers, as do 
environmental consulting firms and fuel, chemical, and other 
manufacturing companies. A host of other organizations, including 
nonprofit environmental groups and international bodies, such as 
the World Bank, also hire these scientists.



But many observers caution that though the market for 
environmental researchers will probably stay healthier than most, 
it, too, is subject to economic and political constraints, which 
may cause companies and government agencies to redirect the 
research focus of current staff rather than taking on new hires. 
These observers also point out that the diversity of employers 
means a diversity of job requirements, which young scientists 
would do well to consider before they leap into the field.



A Growing Field
Investigators from a variety of disciplines have long pursued 
environmental topics, such as the physics and chemistry of 
atmosphere and oceans, the biology of rare plant and animal 
species, and technologies for cleaning up radioactive and 
chemical wastes. And while the number of scientists pursuing such 
research is impossible to determine precisely, it clearly is in 
the many thousands, with environmental researchers making up all 
or part of the membership of many scientific societies. Among 
those are the 6,000-plus-member Ecological Society of America, 
the 3,000-member Society for Conservation Biology, a large 
portion of the 12,000-member Soil and Water Conservation Society 
of America, up to a quarter of the 12,000-member American 
Meteorological Society, and varying fractions of many other 
chemical, physical, biological, engineering, and even medical 
science organizations.



Over the past two decades, expanding knowledge in all areas of 
environmental research and the advent of computer modeling to 
study environment systems have fostered heightened awareness of 
the interconnections among the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere. 
Researchers have learned that even an engineer focused on 
cleaning up a particular chemical at a specific waste site needs 
an understanding of the large-scale air, soil, water, plant, and 
animal systems in the area.



This growing recognition of the need for interdisciplinary work 
in environmental research plus mounting public interest in 
questions of species extinction; air, soil, and water pollution; 
and global climate changes are causing a highly diverse group of 
researchers to enter environmental science.



"It's a new field that's now moving from a hodgepodge to a very 
professional and unique training," says Orie Loucks, a researcher 
in applied ecosystems studies at Miami University in Ohio. 
"Environmental science isn't so much a single research discipline 
as an approach to knowledge."



Central to that approach, say Loucks and others, is "a ravenous 
appetite for synthesizing knowledge from your own and related 
disciplines."



But most of the employment possibilities lie outside academia, 
scientists say. "A large number of students have an image of 
being professors at research universities," says Ronald Pulliam, 
professor and director of the University of Georgia's Institute 
of Ecology in Athens. Pulliam says these expectations are not 
realistic for most, since university staffs are not expanding.



However, Pulliam says, "the field does have a large number of 
jobs for those who have broad interests in more applied science 
areas and have done solid work." According to Pulliam, most of 
those jobs are in federal and state agencies, international 
agencies, and private environmental organizations, with a modest 
but escalating number in environmental consulting companies.




Industry Consultants
Chemical, fuel, and manufacturing corporations also employ 
environmental scientists and engineers to develop technologies to 
treat wastes and emissions and, increasingly, to create new 
products and production processes that are environmentally safe 
during manufacture and use. 



But while interest in environmental research is intensifying 
throughout these industries, observers of the field say that 
focus is unlikely to translate into a great number of industry 
environmental research jobs in the near future. Many industry 
officials say their R&D divisions will grow slowly or not at all 
in the near future, but John Carberry, director of research and 
development for Wilmington, Del.-based E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & 
Co., points out that some aspects of corporate restructuring may 
provide new opportunities for environmental scientists outside 
corporate labs.



Companies do need to do more environmental research, industry 
officials say, and many companies are redirecting some of their 
traditional environmental tasks, such as waste treatment and 
cleanup, to environmental consulting and engineering firms. That 
move, says Carberry, is designed to free up internal scientists 
to concentrate on the environmental aspects of product 
development and process improvement.



University scientists across the U.S. report that environmental 
science and engineering consulting firms are hiring more of their 
Ph.D. graduates. Consulting companies are providing "a continuing 
rapid expansion in opportunities" for those with environmental 
training, says Miami University's Loucks. And, to the surprise of 
some, Loucks says, consulting firm jobs often provide scientists 
with excellent opportunities to build their research reputations.



"These people have to publish three or four [peer-review-quality] 
papers a year," Loucks says. Companies that hire environmental 
consultants are usually seeking to change or clarify a government 
regulation that covers a broad question and for which scant or no 
previous data exist, Loucks explains. 



"Getting something reviewed [by a regulatory agency] is a 
function of the credibility of research the consultant can bring 
to bear. So highly specialized consulting companies are 
recruiting the best young environmental researchers," Loucks 
says.




Private Research Groups
Not only consulting firms but also many private environmental 
organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, 
D.C., and the Arlington, Va.-based Nature Conservancy are 
expanding their research staffs, scientists say.



Such groups are looking for scientists "with real-world problem-
solving skills, field experience, communication skills, 
leadership, and cross-disciplinary interests," says Susan 
Jacobson, director of the conservation education and resource 
management program at the University of Florida in Gainesville, 
who polled environmental organizations on their hiring needs on 
behalf of a university consortium developing environmental 
programs.



The Nature Conservancy's director of biological management, 
Robert Unnasch, says his organization is "definitely still in a 
growth phase. We do expect to bring in new Ph.D.-level staff."



The Nature Conservancy is an environmental organization whose 
objective is to locate key areas of land where plant and animal 
species need protection, acquire that land, and then protect and 
maintain it.



Unnasch points out that his team of researchers pursues the basic 
work of managing the conservancy's lands. But his interest 
extends to potential hires with practical problem-solving 
interests, field experience, and detailed knowledge of one 
traditional scientific field along with an interdisciplinary 
approach, similar to that of other environmental organizations.



"We receive applications from people who got their Ph.D.'s in 
problem-based research. But when we ask them, `What do you know 
about plants, about insects?' the answer is often, `Nothing,'" 
Unnasch says. "Their training is in identifying interesting 
research questions, and that's inappropriate for us. We're on our 
hands and knees getting our fingernails dirty. We have insect 
questions, not general forest questions like `What are the 
fractal dimensions of forest fragments?'"




Government Agencies
Federal and state governments as well as international 
organizations have employed environmental researchers in 
increasing numbers over the past two decades. And university 
environmental science departments report that state environmental 
agencies are currently stepping up recruitment on their campuses.



Many federal officials say that interest in environmental 
questions is on the rise in their agencies, though current budget 
concerns and the uncertainties of life under a new presidential 
administration make them reluctant to predict how many 
researchers the government will hire over the next few years.



A spokesman for the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in 
Washington, D.C., for example, says that environmental questions 
are "a significant and increasingly important component" of that 
organization's research and cites examples such as studying the 
physics and chemistry of droplets to minimize environmental 
damage from fuel spills and developing remote sensors to detect 
changes in the ozone layer.



He adds that it's likely that "significant opportunities for new 
environmental researchers will continue to arise" at NRL.



Robert Van Hooks, director of the environmental sciences division 
at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 
Oak Ridge, Tenn., says research agendas currently being put 
forward at his and other government laboratories "could 
definitely translate into new opportunities for ecologists and 
others with environmental training."



In particular, van Hooks sees bright prospects for researchers in 
environmental risk assessment and for environmental engineers, of 
whom he says "there are simply not enough coming out of schools."



But, says van Hooks, the government job market for environmental 
researchers is unpredictable at present since "like every other 
program in this economy, ours have to stand in line for funding 
and hope to be seen as a priority."



Uncertain Future
Environmental researchers say their field will continue to grow 
in prominence and significance. But there's disagreement about 
the extent to which that growth will translate into jobs overall.



To some, like Garry Brewer, dean of the school of natural 
resources and environment at the University of Michigan, an 
influx of new jobs and money into environmental research seems 
imminent. Brewer, whose school is forming research and 
educational partnerships with the university's business and 
engineering schools, says corporations are now showing a real 
commitment to putting money and action into environmental 
questions. There's "a new understanding that these questions are 
important and they aren't going to go away," Brewer says.



But others worry that government and industry concern with 
getting answers to environmental questions may not be strong 
enough to withstand budget pressures and the stubbornness of 
researchers who want to protect their established turf.



"It's not that government and business aren't interested. But a 
lot of businesses have a wait-and-see attitude because there's 
been erratic enforcement [of environmental regulations]," says 
Carl White, senior research associate in biology at the 
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.



"And while the national labs are picking up the words 
`environment,' `ecology'... it seems to me they're mostly 
restructuring with regard to [job] titles. In the end, you may 
find out that people are less concerned with real change than 
with their own employability."



AU   :    Marcia Clemmitt is a freelance science writer based in 
          Washington, D.C.


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:



TI    :     NIH's Healy: Although Her Impact Has  Been  Powerful, 
            Questions Remain About Her Long-Term Influence


            Praise for some of her achievements is tempered by 
            ongoing concern over future NIH strategies


AU   :    BY FRANKLIN HOKE

TY   :    News
PG   :    1


What will be the long-term impact of Bernadine Healy's brief  two 
years  as the first woman director of the National Institutes  of 
Health?  With her recently announced resignation, effective  June 
30,  the  fate  of projects and issues she  has  pressed  for  or 
influenced becomes less clear. Among these are her creation of  a 
women's  health  office at the institutes, her development  of  a 
strategic  plan  for NIH research, and her impact  on  scientific 
integrity investigations in the biomedical community.



According to scientists, former NIH officials, and policy 
advocates, Healy's lasting influence will be significant--
impressively so, in light of the relatively short duration of her 
tenure--although it may not be exactly what she might have hoped 
for in every case.



In a statement released at the time of her resignation, Healy 
herself cites her strategic plan, promotion of women's health 
issues, and efforts to extend the Human Genome Project as among 
her top achievements. At press time, she had not responded to an 
interview request for this story.



According to some observers, besides the specific events and 
efforts that have defined her time as director, there are 
political or cultural ramifications of Healy's leadership tthat 
may persist.



For example, Cynthia Pearson, program director of the National 
Women's Health Network in Washington, D.C., is "cautiously 
optimistic" that, with the vigilance of groups like hers, the 
Women's Health Initiative will remain in place after Healy's 
departure.



Also, Pearson says, there have been other, more subtle changes at 
NIH of importance to women.



"There's talk on the researcher grapevine," Pearson says, "about 
this proposal and that proposal, which would have been funded 
three years ago, but got turned down [because the proposals] 
needlessly left women out."



But one former NIH official who was involved in the institutes' 
scientific integrity investigations and who requests anonymity 
says that Healy's most lasting legacy will be an "arrogance of 
power and disdain for coalition building" that will linger on 
after her departure.



"That legacy is inspired by the people she's going to leave at 
NIH," the ex-official says. "She has surrounded herself with a 
sort of inner sanctum of princes. Interestingly, they're all 
male. And they remain."



Healy's characteristic candor, focus, and energy on behalf of her 
programs has encouraged strong reactions at times, both pro and 
con. But as to whether her efforts will outlast her in specific 
areas, policy advocates and scientists offer differing views.



"Her launching of the health initiative is particularly important 
to older women [and] is probably one of her greatest legacies 
from our perspective," says Joan Kuriansky, executive director of 
the Older Women's League, a Washington group that lobbies for 
improved health care access and other issues important to mid-
life and older women. "On the other hand, we do not have yet the 
mandated structure of the Office of [Research on] Women's Health 
because that was to be put into law through the NIH 
reauthorization act [in 1992]--and Dr. Healy was not an advocate 
of the act. Right now, the office is there at the discretion of 
an individual director."



The Business Of Science
Several sources, while satisfied with the increased overall 
attention to women's health during Healy's tenure, also say that 
women's health was an issue whose time had come, whoever was in 
the director's job. Some use a business image to describe Healy's 
contribution to the process, crediting her with having "packaged 
and sold" the Women's Health Initiative well.



Like her "packaging" of the Women's Health Initiative, Healy's 
effort to create a strategic plan for NIH research also is often 
described--whether positively or negatively--in a vocabulary more 
common in the corporate world than in the laboratory. Many 
sources--but not all--do not expect the strategic plan to last 
under Clinton's choice for the next NIH director.



"I probably am on the other side of the angels on this one, but I 
thought her strategic plan concept was very important," says Dani 
Bolognesi, director of the Center for AIDS Research at Duke 
University Medical Center, Durham, N.C. "We are, in many ways, 
like a business. The NIH is the steward of a lot of funds that go 
to support basic and clinical research. In order to maintain that 
stewardship, there has to be a plan to ensure that Congress and 
everyone connected with providing those funds is excited enough 
about the progress being made to continue funding. She was trying 
to package what NIH is doing [so Congress] could really 
understand the importance of it. I think that strategy is 
essential, and I hope to see it go on in spite of the fact that 
she's not there."



William Brinkley, dean of the graduate school at Baylor College 
of Medicine in Houston, however, sees problems for scientists in 
Healy's version of a strategic plan and does not see it 
surviving, as is, under the next director.



"The strategic plan was, in most basic scientists' opinion, a 
top-down type of management, a corporate-type plan," Brinkley 
says. "[But] it was the individual investigator's ability to do 
untargeted research that made American science great. I felt [the 
plan] was a master plan to make a corporate structure for 
research in America, and that's just not what we want."



Brinkley adds: "It's good for every organization to have a 
strategic plan, but I hope that it will be salvaged and revised 
to the point that it focuses on the individual scientist, and not 
on what we can do for one disease group or another disease 
group."



Healy's role in at least one high-profile investigation, that of 
top NIH AIDS researcher Robert Gallo, also concerns some 
scientists because of its potential lingering impact on the 
scientific integrity investigations apparatus.



After a preliminary report from the NIH Office of Scientific 
Integrity (OSI) found Gallo guilty of scientific misconduct, 
then-OSI investigator Suzanne Hadley charged that Healy had asked 
for the report to be rewritten. In the end, Hadley withdrew from 
the case, and the findings of the final report were softened. 



A National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel under chairman Fred 
Richards of Yale University reviewed the OSI investigation, 
finding errors in some aspects of the investigation, but also 
finding, according to one report (John Crewdson, Chicago Tribune, 
Dec. 6, 1992, page 1), that Gallo's actions amounted to 
"intellectual recklessness" and more. Healy chose to "ignore" the 
NAS panel's view, according to this account. 



OSI has since been disbanded, and the Office of Research 
Integrity (ORI) in the Department of Health and Human Services 
(HHS) created to take over NIH misconduct investigations. On Dec. 
30, 1992, ORI released its findings that Gallo had indeed engaged 
in scientific misconduct.



"The way she handled the Gallo case worried me a good deal," says 
John Edsall, an emeritus professor of biochemistry at Harvard 
University in Cambridge, Mass. "It's pretty clear that [Richards] 
and members of his panel feel that they were very much pushed 
aside by the NIH, and that Bernadine Healy simply overruled them 
and backed them into a corner, which essentially came close to 
suppressing their report."



Richards would not comment on the case for this story because, he 
says, he expects to be called to testify during Gallo's appeal of 
the ORI findings.



Mary Jane Osborn is a professor of microbiology at the University 
of Connecticut School of Medicine in Farmington and was a member 
of the Richards panel. She calls some of Healy's criticisms of 
the OSI investigation "absolutely justified," but was displeased 
with Healy's rejection of the panel's review efforts.



"Eventually, the ORI, I think, issued a good final report," 
Osborn says. "As a member of the Richards group, I felt to a 
degree vindicated by that report."



Osborn adds: "The fundamental problem, which has shown up in many 
cases, is the difficulty in investigating oneself. So, from that 
point of view, I think it's probably better having [the 
investigative office] out of the NIH."



"In the long run, perhaps it is just as  well  that [the 
investigative office] left NIH and went downtown [to HHS]," says 
Donald Fredrickson,  NIH director from1975 to 1981  under  
President  Jimmy Carter.



"At the time, I didn't think so, but it may be much simpler if it 
remains down in that department and outside NIH."



Scientist Politician
Viewed alternately as either bold and assertive or unnecessarily 
combative, Healy touched strongly held beliefs in the biomedical 
community, engendering passionate interactions that tended to 
polarize the community, several observers say. 



"It's hard to find people who don't feel strongly, one way or the 
other, about her," says the former NIH investigations official.



Healy also managed to bring politics and the Congress into the 
NIH director's office to a greater degree than any of its 
previous occupants, some scientists say. 



"I would characterize her tenure as being, to a degree we'd not 
seen before, involved with political process," says Connecticut's 
Osborn. "What that does, in the long run, is make NIH even more 
vulnerable to congressional micromanagement, the Disease-of-the-
Month Club, and so on."



"Because of her vigorous stances and visibility, the NIH may have 
been politicized unnecessarily," agrees Arthur Kornberg, a 
professor of biochemistry at Stanford University School of 
Medicine, Palo Alto, Calif., and the 1959 Nobel Prize winner in 
physiology or medicine.



(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:



TI   :    At FDA: A Study In Staying Power

AU   :    Ron Kaufman

TY   :    News

PG   :    1


The ability of David Kessler, the 41-year-old commissioner of the 
Food and Drug Administration, to survive the purge of Bush 
appointees by the Clinton administration is an achievement being 
greeted with praise by some in the pharmaceutical, food, and 
biotechnology industries; and measured disappointment by some 
manufacturers of medical devices.



Kessler was asked to retain his position by the Clinton 
administration in February. He took the reins of the agency in 
December 1990, and at that time announced he would engage in 
major reorganizing efforts to revitalize and reinvigorate the 
agency. Previously, FDA had been criticized for its slow 
enforcement of laws and regulations. But whether or not those 
efforts, which included appointing new section heads and 
reorganizing major departments, are perceived as successful 
depends on one's industry segment, says John Villforth, director 
of the Food and Drug Law Institute, a nonprofit organization 
based in Washington, D.C., that monitors FDA.



According to Villforth, the passage of user-fee legislation in 
the 102nd Congress, with the strong support of Kessler, is giving 
these industries hope that in the future, FDA approval times will 
considerably lessen. User fees amount to a payment of $100,000 
this year, increasing to $233,000 in five years, to accompany 
each approval application, enabling FDA to hire 600 additional 
staffers to speed up the process (Susan L-J Dickinson, "FDA User 
Fees To Speed Drug Review," The Scientist, Dec. 7, 1992, page 3).



"For biotechnology," says Richard Godown, president of the 
Washington, D.C.-based Industrial Biotechnology Association, "we 
are pleased David Kessler remains on the job . . . we're 
especially glad he's going to be around to see the fruition of 
the directive that is encapsulated in the user-fee legislation."



In a public statement issued in response to the Kessler 
reappointment, Gerald Mossinghoff, president of the 
Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, also in Washington, 
D.C., expressed his gratitude for Kessler's support of the user-
fee bill. He said Kessler "provided the quid pro quo for the 
industry's willingness to pay substantial user fees to FDA."


Conversely, some say Kessler's retention by the Clinton 
administration was due not to FDA's progress in some areas, but 
to his political savvy. "David Kessler is the single most 
politically astute FDA commissioner in history," asserts Howard 
Palefsky, president of Collagen Corp. in Palo Alto, Calif., which 
makes injectable collagens for the treatment of cosmetic defects.



Palefsky says Kessler has teamed up with Rep. John Dingell (D-
Mich.) to openly attack the medical device industry. The approval 
rate for medical devices, he says, has steadily declined from 56 
approvals in 1989 to only 12 last year. "I know of many people in 
the biotechnology industry that are big fans of David Kessler 
because he's been good to the biotech world. But in the medical 
device arena, there is no question that he has declared war. . . 



Palefsky suggests that Kessler, who in the early 1980s worked 
with conservative Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, switched 
his political orientation soon after assuming the job at FDA and 
"forgot who appointed him."



Villforth agrees, adding that the support Kessler got from 
Dingell and many consumer advocacy groups created the feeling 
among those closely watching the agency that his attitudes and 
philosophies were more in tune with the Democrats in Congress 
than with the Republican president who appointed him. "Prior to 
the election," Villforth says, "there was a joke running around 
FDA that `If you want to keep Dr. Kessler on as commissioner, you 
better vote Democratic.'"



Kessler declines all comment on his reappointment.



Kessler received an M.D. from Harvard Medical School (1979) and a 
law degree from the University of Chicago (1978). From 1981 to 
1984 he was a consultant to the health staff of the Senate 
Committee on Labor and Human Resources. From 1984 to 1990 he was 
medical director of the Hospital of the Albert Einstein College 
of Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y.

AU   :  --Ron Kaufman



(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:



Editor's Note: In this second part of a two-part series on 
biotechnology startups, entrepreneurs discuss a variety of 
factors challenging the scientist-entrepreneur of today. The 
first part, focusing on the financing of new biotech firms, 
appeared in the April 5, 1993, issue of The Scientist.


TI   :    Biotech Startups' Business And Science Missions Must Be 
          Crystal Clear From Day One, Experts Say


A  smarter  consumership and rigid demands from  investors  leave 
little room for fuzzy thinking in entrepreneurial plans


AU   :    BY RICKI LEWIS

PG   :    1


Despite recent setbacks in drug approvals, the mounting campaign 
for cost-cutting in the health care industry, and ongoing 
tribulations in the United States and global financial markets, 
the domestic biotechnology startup world is apparently holding 
its own.


As the industry at large matures, analysts say, new entrants are 
learning from the highly publicized mistakes of their 
predecessors, with an outlook on the future that requires their 
being more versatile, yet more goal-oriented, than were 
startups in the past.


This means that a company can't afford to focus on one project, 
they say, but must support several research projects, which 
ideally will follow a trajectory toward development of a product 
or device that a scientist or clinician can use--and pay for.


These and other qualities are not only desirable, but also 
necessary now, analysts and entrepreneurs say, because 
competition is stiff.


William Timberlake, vice president for research at Myco 
Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., sums up the 
requirements for today's successful biotech startup: "a high 
level of creativity, novel ideas, solid initial investment, and 
careful organization and planning for the long term."


Biotech companies have come and gone with a considerable amount 
of clangor in the decade since Genentech Inc.'s highly successful  
product debut. When the South San Francisco, Calif., firm's human 
insulin came on the market in 1982, the startup floodgates 
opened--with a second wave of more than 30 companies forming in 
1982-83. And despite research and product-approval setbacks, net 
growth has been impressive over the years.


Currently, firms basing their product plans on recombinant DNA 
technology alone number 1,231, according to the New York-based 
accounting firm of Ernst & Young Inc., with the biotech industry 
overall employing 79,000 scientists at all levels. The 
pharmaceutical market tops $4 billion in the U.S., with 13 
therapeutic products approved to date, but with hundreds of 
others in development. The number of agricultural biotech 
companies more than doubled in 1992 to 140, according to Ernst & 
Young. It's upon this foundation that the latest startups are 
building.


Smarter Consumers
Among the factors having considerable impact on new firms, some 
entrepreneurs contend, is that investors are much better informed 
than in times past. Telling a potential backer that Project A 
targets Disease B isn't good enough--now, the investor is likely 
to know all about existing therapies for Disease B, and how a new 
entrant will compete.


"It used to be that a good idea and a name scientist were all 
that was needed to start a company," says Mimi Hancock, one of 
four cofounders of Avigen Inc. in Alameda, Calif. Today, she 
says, an idea has to be closer to the "D" of R&D than previously, 
and scientists have to convince potential investors that their 
invention or insight will translate into a saleable product or 
process. "Investors and venture capitalists are now commonly 
hiring people with scientific backgrounds who are better able to 
evaluate potential technology and ask a lot more questions," adds 
Hancock.


A new biotech firm needs to have its science and business bases 
covered right from the beginning, according to Keith Brownlie, 
regional director of life sciences industry services in Ernst & 
Young's Princeton, N.J., office. "You have to have a great 
management team, so people with the funding know they're not 
dealing with a scientist who has no experience in getting a 
product to market," he says. "In addition to investors and 
scientists, having business personnel who have done this before 
is almost a prerequisite these days." 


Origins
Biotech startups are conceived and gestated in several ways now, 
involving different alliances of academic and industrial 
scientists, says William Sharp, vice president of ESCAgenetics 
Corp. of San Carlos, Calif. A generation ago, a group of 
university biologists getting together to turn their research 
into a commercial enterprise was most unusual; today it is 
commonplace, he says. "Or, a new biotech company can be sloughed 
off of an existing company," adds Sharp, who has extensive 
experience with the evolution of biotech companies. From a 
position as director of pioneer research at the Campbell Soup Co. 
in Camden, N.J., from 1979 to 1981, he cofounded the spin-off 
cell culture company DNA Plant Technologies Corp. of Cinnaminson, 
N.J., in 1981, and was executive vice president at Branford, 
Conn.-based DNA Pharmaceuticals Inc. He moved to ESCAgenetics in 
1992.


Today there are many firms spun from established ones. For 
example, Genentech gave rise to Genencor Inc. of Rochester, N.Y., 
which targets industrial applications of biotechnology. Genencor 
then spawned Mountain View, Calif.-based Gen-Pharm Inc., to 
develop transgenic animals for the health care industry, and 
GlycoGen Inc., which was recently bought by Cytel Inc. of San 
Diego. Spinning out new companies helps the parent company focus, 
and gives the new venture a jump start.


Another trend proliferating in the biotech arena is the creation 
of new business entities through mergers. The one between Perkin-
Elmer Corp. of Norwalk, Conn., and Applied Biosystems Inc. of 
Foster City, Calif., put the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and 
the ligase chain reaction (LCR), the two most popular gene 
amplification systems, under one roof, although Hoffmann-La Roche 
Inc. in Nutley, N.J., retains PCR rights in health care 
applications. Similarly, Genzyme Corp. of Cambridge, Mass., is 
absorbing many of its smaller competitors in genetic testing, 
such as Vivigen Inc. of Albuquerque, N.Mex. 



Positioning
Whatever its origin, according to Avigen's Hancock, a biotech 
startup "must look for a niche and show that what they plan to do 
is well thoughtout." 


A perusal of classified advertisements from bio-tech startups 
recruiting staff in scientific newspapers and journals reveals 
that companies now tend to advertise and focus on areas that are 
currently hot in biological research, rather than describe their 
interests in such broad terms as "cancer," "infection," or 
"autoimmunity." The acronym in Durham, N.C.-based ICAgen Inc., 
for example, stands for ion channel advances, an important area 
of cell biology, but not necessarily directed toward a particular 
disorder--yet. Other new biotech companies are targeting the 
blood-brain barrier, the extracellular matrix, and inherited 
disorders whose genes have recently been identified. For example, 
at least four companies are developing treatments for 
amyotropic lateral sclerosis, an estimated $450 million market.



There is often plenty of room to diversify, biotech officials 
say, even if a company's stated goal is one type of illness. This 
is the case at OsteoArthritis Sciences Inc., also of Cambridge.


"We are focusing on a particular pathology, as opposed to having 
anti-inflammatory mediators," or monoclonal antibodies whose 
targets are unknown, says Nelson Campbell, vice president for 
business development. "We are working on understanding how 
cartilage breaks down in osteoarthritis. That is the core idea 
that is the foundation of our research. Yet at the same time, we 
are thinking of every which way to attack the problem of 
cartilage damage. Do we repair it, lessen the damage, or slow the 
degradation?"


Campbell says there are many ways to approach a single pathology. 
"This is where the diversity comes in," he says. "Is it a 
biochemical process? That is our hypothesis. But you can take an 
opposite focus--that is, that [osteoarthritis] is a mechanical 
process. Then you take the cartilage, grow it in the lab, and 
implant it"--and, indeed, some companies are doing this.


Maintaining this diversity is a must for biotech startups, many 
industry experts agree. They note, for example, that although 
Centocor Inc. of Malvern, Pa., has been pummeled with setbacks in 
approval of its highly touted Centoxin, an anti-septic shock 
drug, the company earns $50 million a year in infectious disease 
diagnostics, and has active research projects in the treatment of 
cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and cardiovascular disease.



"Some people say that if your focus is too narrow, and the 
product is not approved, which we have seen happen, then $100 
million is invested and you go nowhere if there are no backups," 
says Ernst & Young's Brownlie. "Or, some people feel that if a 
company takes too wide a focus, they won't get anything through 
the pipeline. It seems that the most successful approach is to 
have flagship research plus several alternatives, such as 
applications of that technology, or other products."


A general formula for a biotech company is to apply a process--
such as gene targeting or transgenic technology--to obtaining a 
product that will solve a problem. But with 10 to 12 companies 
attacking the same disease with basically the same set of tools, 
a new approach to an old problem can put a company out in front, 
biotech officials say. "Startups need an enabling technology 
where the founders feel they have a leadership position," says 
ESCAgenetics' Sharp. Avigen, for example, is using an adenovirus 
vector for its gene therapy for sickle cell disease, hoping it 
will prove safer than a bone marrow transplant, another route of 
gene therapy for this disorder that carries a 15 percent 
mortality risk.



Locale Is Important
Almost as important as what a company does is where it does it, 
say both startup entrepreneurs and scientists at more established 
facilities. It is hardly coincidence, they note, that biotech 
companies have sprung up around academic hubs. "Academic centers 
provide one of the best sources for creativity and novelty," says 
Myco Pharmaceuticals' Timberlake. Myco's location at One Kendall 
Square in Cambridge, Mass., puts it in easy reach of Boston's 
finest institutions. Adds neighboring OsteoArthritis Sciences' 
Campbell, "There is a lot of basic research in a variety of 
institutions in Boston. Cambridge is one stop [on the mass 
transit system] to Massachusetts General Hospital, and one stop 
in the other direction to Harvard Medical School." Osteo-
Arthritis Sciences currently collaborates with eight universities 
in the area.



On the West Coast,  Avigen's Hancock also extols the advantages 
of locating near academic centers. Avigen's San Francisco Bay 
area locale is near, for example, the University of California, 
Berkeley, and dozens of other biotech companies. "The applicant 
pool, particularly for technical help at the entry level, offers 
more to choose from, and the company doesn't have to pay 
exorbitant fees for the employees to relocate," she says. "Also, 
we have access to university seminars and discussions with 
scientists. A startup has to be very conscious, and very 
conscientious, about how they spend funds. We're much more 
inclined to take a trip across the bay than across the country," 
she says.



Staffing Considerations
Traditionally, a biotech startup often begins simply with a 
couple of researchers and an exciting idea. In 1983, for example, 
Rutgers University biochemists Frank Davis and Abraham Abuchowski 
founded Enzon Inc., South Plainfield, N.J., to commercialize 
their "pegnology" technique of hooking therapeutic enzymes to 
polyethylene glycol, which keeps them in a patient's circulation 
long enough to correct a deficiency (Leah Beth Ward, The 
Scientist, Oct. 1, 1990, page 1).


At the beginning, the founders often wear many hats, says 
OsteoArthritis' Campbell, answering phones, talking to attorneys, 
doing secretarial and janitorial chores, and, maybe, some 
science, as the facilities are built. Additional staff tends to 
come from word-of-mouth hires in which a cofounder scouts a 
university with which he or she has been associated for talent. 
Jobs fairs at national meetings also match biotechnologists to 
companies.


Also, Hancock says, many academic scientists are lured to biotech 
startups by a combination of frustration with university life and 
the seeming freedom of the corporate environment. "The forces 
drawing academic scientists into industry haven't changed much 
over the past few years. The competition for funding, the amount 
of time they have to spend doing that and administrative tasks is 
very high. In this time, they feel, they could be doing science 
at a company," she says.



Eventually, when the time nears for a potential drug to begin 
clinical or field testing, and permission from the appropriate 
regulatory agency is needed, newer biotech companies need to hire 
staff who can handle regulatory affairs and submissions for 
approval to government agencies, says Sharp of ESCAgenetics. "A 
small company has a difficult time at this. There have been a lot 
of failures because small companies do not have all the talents," 
Sharp says. When a small or start-up biotech company is absorbed 
into a large pharmaceutical firm, it is sometimes because of a 
lack of regulatory expertise, he adds.


Looking To The Future
The modern biotech industry dawned in sunnier economic times. 
Today's product-minded startups, entrepreneurs say, must keep in 
mind the current health care cost-cutting trend, which is likely 
to continue. "Companies will be forced to look at whether or not 
they can make a drug cost-effective," says Hancock. "In those 
cases where a company makes a new drug where treatment exists, 
they must analyze how to be competitive with what the patient 
population already spends." 



Unfortunately, say industry officials, the few biotech-derived 
drugs that are costly because of their methods of manufacture--
such as Genzyme Corp.'s Ceredase to treat Gaucher's disease at 
$100,000 per year per patient--make more headlines than the 60-
plus DNA probe-based diagnostic tests and the hundreds of 
monoclonal antibody-based diagnostics approved by the Food and 
Drug Administration. Experts agree that the rapid and expanded 
diagnoses possible with these tests will ultimately lower health 
care costs by providing earlier, and therefore more treatable, 
detection of infections, cancer, and degenerative and inherited 
illness.


Compared to their predecessors, today's biotech startups have far 
more starting materials, as well as methodologies, to choose 
from. The biotech companies of a decade ago were based on just a 
trio of technologies--recombinant DNA, monoclonal antibodies, and 
cell culture. Today that repertoire also includes gene targeting, 
transgenic technology, antisense technology, and the polymerase 
chain reaction. New research directions are being revealed by the 
Human Genome Project, and from ecosystems being preserved because 
of a renewed interest in biodiversity. Plus, rational drug design 
based on gene discoveries and natural products uses ever more 
sophisticated computer modeling capabilities, enhancing further 
the potential for new discoveries in biotech.



Ricki Lewis is a freelance writer based in Scotia, N.Y. She is 
the author of a biology textbook and has just completed a human 
genetics text.



(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:


TI   :    Sources Indicate A U.S. Return To UNESCO Is Likely


AU   :    BY RON KAUFMAN

TY   :    NEWS                
PG   :    3


A recently proposed congressional resolution and statements by 
President Clinton are giving some scientists and diplomats the 
feeling that the United States will soon return to UNESCO after a 
decade of absence. If so, the group would once again be allowed 
to hire Americans for scientific, teaching, and administrative 
positions.



UNESCO--the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural 
Organization--was abandoned by the Reagan administration in 
December 1983 for what were seen as largely political reasons. 
One year later, both Great Britain and Singapore followed suit, 
withdrawing staff, funding, and support.



"Right now, things are bubbling," says Jack Fobes, who was a 
deputy director of the organization from 1971 to 1978.  He says a 
number of high officials in the Clinton administration, such as 
Vice President Al Gore, science adviser John Gibbons, and deputy 
Secretary of State Clifton Warden have indicated that they would 
consider reestablishing ties with UNESCO.




Cutting Ties
The U.S. withdrawal from UNESCO was chiefly prompted by three 
factors, says Gregory Newell, assistant secretary of state for 
multilateral policy in the Reagan administration. Newell, who now 
does international corporate consulting from his home in Provo, 
Utah, says the factors that caused him to advise President Reagen 
to cut ties with UNESCO were:


* the extraneous politicization of the agency, as evidenced by 
its attempted expulsion of Israel because of the Palestinian 
issue;
* an endemic hostility toward Western ideals;
* significant management problems and budgetary increases larger 
than those of other U.N. institutions.



Newell remains opposed to U.S. membership, although he believes 
that the 1987 election of Director-General Federico Mayor 
Zaragoza, a Spanish biochemist, eased some of the hostility 
toward Western values. Nevertheless, programs that he objected to 
a decade ago are still in place and, he contends, little good 
science is done under UNESCO auspices (see story on page 9).
"I would be very resistant to rejoining," he says, "because I 
think it's wrong. We didn't leave because people were spitting on 
the American flag; we left because the programs and policies were 
bad."



Those who are encouraging resumed U.S. participation point out 
that, since his election as director-general, Mayor has attempted 
to resolve the many political, budgetary, and managerial problems 
cited by the U.S. and the U.K. as their reasons for withdrawal. 
For example, in a few months he will be traveling to Israel as a 
goodwill gesture toward that country.



UNESCO's scientific programs include the Man and the Biosphere 
(MAB) program, the Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere (TOGA) 
program, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), 
and the International Commission of Scientific Unions (ICSU). The 
organization also  provides a coordinating structure for six 
global scientific information networks.



Though these programs grew slightly in the last decade despite 
the absence of the U.S. and Great Britain, the additional funding 
and scientific expertise these countries could provide would 
greatly strengthen the agency.



The return of two of the world's major powers would mean a 
significant   increase in   funding for UNESCO. Estimates put the 
U.S. contribution at around $55 million a year and the U.K.'s 
between $11 million and $13 million per year. When the U.S. left 
10 years ago, UNESCO's annual operating costs were $400 million.



Tom Forstenzer, a UNESCO consultant at the Paris office, laments 
the absence of what he terms "the U.S. and U.K. scientific, 
intellectual, and artistic communities" during recent years. "We 
can't really do our job without the full participation of major 
communities like that."



While the increase in funding helps, he says, the most important 
impact of reentry by the U.S. and U.K. would be intellectual. 
Some people remain from before the pullout, but, he says, it's a 
declining number and an aging group.



Philip Hemily, a former UNESCO consultant and currently a staffer 
at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), suggests that another 
possible impact of renewed participation would be to strengthen 
UNESCO's role in the following up on the June 1992 Earth Summit 
in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.



Fobes, who is chairman of Americans for the Universality of 
UNESCO (AUU), a Washington, D.C., group  of former UNESCO 
diplomats that has monitored the organization since the U.S. 
withdrawal, says the sympathetic view of many in the Clinton 
administration makes a return likely.



However, Fobes cautions that the administration will make no 
official statements about UNESCO until an assistant secretary of 
state for international organization affairs is confirmed by 
Congress. Clinton's nomination of National Public Radio CEO 
Douglas Bennet for this position was announced March 5, but a 
confirmation hearing has yet to be scheduled.



In Congress, Rep. Esteban Torres (D-Calif.), who was the U.S. 
ambassador to UNESCO under Jimmy Carter, is introducing a House 
resolution in the next few months that will, if passed, express 
the willingness of Congress to return. Because reentering UNESCO 
is solely an executive decision, this piece of legislation is 
symbolic and cannot force Clinton to act.



Along with Torres, Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), chairman of the 
Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs'  Subcommittee 
on International Development, Finance, Trade, and Monetary 
Policy, which would handle UNESCO funding, maintains that the 
agency has made significant reforms and that the Clinton 
administration should reconsider U.S. membership.



In Great Britain, a group of scientists, educators, and artists 
called Friends of UNESCO has been holding meetings during the 
past few months to try to prod their government to rejoin.



"There has been no official action in the British government, but 
much behind-the-scenes activity," says Maurice Goldsmith, 
chairman of the London group and president of the International 
Science Policy Foundation. "I understand that the Americans have 
already made it clear in private deliberations that they propose 
to reenter. Because Britain would probably not like to go in 
following on the coattails of the U.S., if an announcement is 
made, they  will  probably  make  it  together."



However, those watching the organization say a time limit exists. 
In October, the UNESCO general conference will convene at the 
group's headquarters in Paris, at which time a six-year direction 
plan will be adopted and a new director-general will be elected. 
Mayor has not stated whether he intends to run.



(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:



TI   :    SOME QUESTION UNESCO'S SCIENCE 


AU   :    Ron Kaufman

TY   :    News
PG   :    9


Though some of those familiar with the United Nations 
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 
eagerly support a return to the organization by the United States 
and Great Britain, others say such a move would have no 
scientific merit.


"By going back we'd only get good will--maybe," says Gregory 
Newell, the assistant secretary of state for U.S. multilateral 
policy from 1982 to 1985 and the architect of the U.S. decision 
to withdraw from UNESCO. "Scientific work does not happen with 
UNESCO anymore." 



Newell says the original reasons for leaving and the only reasons 
for going back to UNESCO would be political, not scientific: "Is 
there scientific value to rejoining? Absolutely not." He says 
there are other U.N. organizations the U.S. can cooperate with 
that are more effective than UNESCO.



When UNESCO was formed in 1945, the agency played a key role in 
smoothing intercontinental correspondence among scientists, says 
Newell. He says in the early years, UNESCO was helpful in 
standardizing communications and convening international 
scientific meetings or seminars. But because information-exchange 
systems have advanced, he says, "a scientist from MIT no longer 
needs UNESCO to hook him up with someone in Mongolia or Nepal. He 
can now do this on his own or through more specialized 
organizations."



Geophysicist Fred Singer concurs: "Scientifically we certainly 
would not get our money's worth."



According to Singer, currently the director of the Science and 
Environmental Policy Project in Arlington, Va., an environmental 
monitoring group, no scientific reason exists for rejoining. 
"UNESCO has no competence in meteorology or oceanography," he 
asserts. "The only reason for rejoining would be to demonstrate 
solidarity or good will."


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:




TY   :                     NOTEBOOK

PG   :4


TI   :    Patently Special


Two Merck & Co. Inc. researchers have been named cowinners of the 
Inventor of the Year award, given by Intellectual Property 
Owners, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit association that 
represents owners of patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade 
secrets. Gary H. Rasmusson and Glenn F. Reynolds will share the 
$5,000 award, presented at an April 15 ceremony in Washington, 
for Proscar, a new drug used to treat benign prostate 
enlargement. Also honored, with Distinguished Inventor Awards, 
were a team of seven engineers, designers, and chemists from the 
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. of Akron, Ohio, for their Aquatred 
tire, which improves braking on wet surfaces, as well as four 
researchers for Affymax Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., 
who developed a tool for synthesizing and screening large numbers 
of different compounds on a microchip. All of the winning 
inventions were patented.



(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:



TY   :    NOTEBOOK

TI   :    To Russia With A Rebuke

PG   :    4


The scientific community continues to react to Russian 
mathematician Igor Shafarevich's book Russophobia, which has been 
interpreted by many readers as an anti-Semitic treatise (see 
Opinion, page 11, and Letters, page 12). C.K. Gunsalus, who 
chairs the American Association for the Advancement of Science's 
Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, sent 
Shafarevich an April 1 letter saying: "We wish to express 
repugnance at and condemnation of your anti-Semitic writings as 
conveyed in `Russophobia.' Your prestige as an eminent 
mathematician gives credence and special weight to your singling 
out one group for special opprobrium. . . . The Committee finds 
it regrettable that a mathematician of your stature has 
disseminated such unfounded and vile characterizations in your 
writings."




(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:



TY   :    NOTEBOOK

TI   :    More Messages For Coloradans

PG   :    4


Another issue that still deeply concerns many activists in the 
scientific community is Colorado's Amendment 2, which outlaws 
local antidiscrimination laws protecting homosexuals. At the 
American Physical Society meeting on March 21, APS's Committee on 
International Freedom of Scientists passed a resolution stating: 
". . . We deplore the action of the majority of voters in 
Colorado. . . .  We recommend that the Council of the APS not 
approve APS sponsorship of any further meetings in Colorado while 
language similar to that of the Amendment . . . remains in the 
Constitution of Colorado...." Committee chairman Joseph Birman, 
Distinguished Professor of Physics at the City College of New 
York, says the matter is especially relevant to physicists 
because the 14th International Conference on High-Pressure 
Science and Technology, to which APS has lent its imprimatur, is 
slated to take place in Denver June 28-July 2. While the 
committee does not plan to call for cancellation or moving of the 
conference, Birman says, "We want the organizers of the meeting 
to be aware of this resolution, and for some way to be found to 
bring it to the attention of persons planning to attend this 
meeting."




(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:


TY   :    NOTEBOOK

TI    :   New Molecule On The Block

PG   :    4


Move over, buckyballs. Researchers at the University of Michigan 
have synthesized the world's largest pure <P8M>hydrocarbon 
molecule, composed of 1,134 carbon atoms and 1,146 hydrogen 
atoms--100 times the volume of buckminsterfullerene, the molecule 
made up of 60 carbon atoms. According to Jeffrey S. Moore, an 
assistant professor of chemistry and macromolecular science and 
engineering, these giant molecules might be combined to form a 
device, similar to a solar cell, that can focus energy from 
sunlight and transform it into chemical energy. He also believes 
the molecule has potential applications as a drug delivery 
system. The chemical structure of the molecule has been verified 
with nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, according to Moore. 
Moore and postdoc Zhifu Xu described the molecule during a 
presentation at the recent American Chemical Society meeting in 
Denver. A complete description of the molecule will be published 
in the Journal of the German Chemical Society (Angewandte 
Chemie).




(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:




TY   :    NOTEBOOK

TI   :    Stairway To The Stars

PG   :    4

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific offers a set of 40 
slides, plus an accompanying booklet, as a teaching aid for 
lessons about the most prominent constellations of the Northern 
Hemisphere. For more information, contact the Astronomical 
Society of the Pacific, Constellation Slide Set Orders, 390 
Ashton Ave., San Francisco, Calif. 94112; (415) 337-1100. Fax: 
(415) 337-5205.




(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:


TY   :    NOTEBOOK

TI   :    Skin Care

PG   :    4


Applications are now being accepted for the four categories of 
academic research awards offered by the Dermatology Foundation. 
The Leader Society Clinical Career Development Award is a 
$40,000-per-year stipend (renewable for two years) intended to 
advance the research of a dermatology faculty member pursuing a 
clinical investigation intended to approve clinical dermatology. 
The Career Development Award in Skin Research is designed to 
assist junior investigators in the early stages of their careers. 
Available to dermatology faculty members, the stipend is also 
$40,000 per year. One fellowship is also awarded in the area of 
skin photobiology. One-year fellowships of $25,000 are available 
to support research training in dermatology and cutaneous 
biology. One-year grants of $10,000 to initiate research into 
dermatology, cutaneous biology, skin cancer, dermatologic 
surgery, and other skin-related areas are also being awarded. The 
deadline for all applications is August 1. For details and 
applications, contact: Medical and Scientific Committee, 
Dermatology Foundation, 1560 Sherman Ave., Suite 302, Evanston, 
Ill. 60201; (708) 328-2256, Fax: (708) 328-0509.




(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:



TI   :    On Shafarevich And NAS: Tolerance Vs. Indifference

AU   :    Semyon Reznik

TY   :    OPINION
PG   :    11

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Editor's Note: Last July, National Academy of Sciences president 
Frank Press and foreign secretary James Wyngaarden sent an 
unprecedented letter to Russian mathematician Igor R. 
Shafarevich, head of the V.A. Steklov Institute in Moscow, 
suggesting that he resign his membership as a foreign associate 
of NAS because of "anti-Semitic writings" contained in 
Russophobia, a book by Shafarevich. The letter further alleged 
that Shafarevich "used [his] position to interfere with the 
careers" of young Jewish mathematicians. Shafarevich, denying 
that Russophobia is an anti-Semitic work and that he interfered 
with anyone's career, refused to resign from the academy.


When word of the letter spread through the scientific community, 
several mathematicians and NAS members from all over the world 
criticized the academy's action. For one thing, they said, NAS 
had not previously criticized a member for holding unpopular 
beliefs, although numerous precedents existed. Furthermore, 
several Jewish former students of Shafarevich reported that he 
had helped to advance, not hinder, their careers; those objecting 
to the Press-Wyngaarden letter said that the NAS officials should 
not have based their allegations on hearsay evidence, but should 
have first checked the facts themselves.


On the other hand, some researchers expressed support for the 
sentiments expressed in the NAS letter, even though a number of 
them said they believed that the wording used was problematic. 
They contended that anti-Semitism is a grave problem in Russia 
and that Shafarevich, through his high standing as an eminent 
mathematician, was encouraging widespread religious intolerance 
in the country, potentially leading to violence. The academy, 
they said, had an obligation to express its disapproval for such 
intolerance, and they were glad that some action was taken, 
regardless of the specifics of the language in the letter.


Shafarevich, widely acknowledged by his colleagues to be a 
brilliant mathematician, was a vocal critic of the Soviet 
government in the 1970s. In retaliation for his activities as a 
dissident, he was ousted from the Steklov's Scientific Council. 
He was elected a foreign associate of NAS in 1974. Some contend 
that his anti-Soviet politics played a role in his election; yet 
the academy's bylaws state that nominees are to be judged only on 
the basis of their scientific achievements.


In the following essay, Russian migr writer and historian Semyon 
Reznik reacts to two articles in The Scientist describing the 
Shafarevich affair (Barbara Spector, The Scientist, Sept. 28, 
1992, page 1; Dec. 7, 1992, page 4). Reznik says that the main 
issue in the discussion should be the mathematician's "hatred 
against Jews, liberal intellectuals, and everybody else whose so-
called patriotism does not go as far as Shafarevich wishes," 
rather than the text of the academy's letter. The fact that NAS 
distanced itself from Shafarevich's views, Reznik says, is "of 
great moral importance."
----------------------------------------------------------------



A chapter in my latest book The Red and the Brown: Russian Nazism 
in the Past and Present, which was published in Russian 
(Washington, D.C., Challenge Publication, 1992) but is yet to be 
published in English, is devoted to the literary and public 
activities of Igor Shafarevich. Thus, the two articles by Barbara 
Spector dealing with Shafarevich (The Scientist, Sept. 28, 1992, 
page 1; Dec. 7, 1992, page 4) are in the framework of my 
professional interests.



Both articles cover an extensive discussion among United States 
scientists provoked by a letter that Frank Press, president of 
the National Academy of Sciences, and James Wyngaarden, NAS 
foreign secretary, had sent to Shafarevich, who is a foreign 
associate of NAS. In this letter, the NAS leaders condemned their 
Russian colleague for his anti-Semitic activities and asked him 
to resign from the academy.



I was pleased to learn from Spector's articles that the American 
scientific community is so concerned about the rise of anti-
Semitism in Russia, but at the same time I was surprised that 
some participants in the discussion concentrated more on the 
letter than on Shafarevich's activities. Such an emphasis focused 
the discussion on the academy's response--not on the reasons for 
the response.



More than two decades ago, when Shafarevich--together with Andrei 
Sakharov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Pyotr Grigorenko, and other 
dissidents--started to speak out against human rights violations 
in the Soviet Union, the support of Western intellectuals helped 
them to survive in that cruel and repressive environment.



In 1974, Shafarevich was elected a foreign associate member of 
NAS, primarily in recognition of his outstanding achievements in 
mathematics. His prestige had dramatically increased, and even 
the KGB could not ignore that fact. Authorities forbade him to 
teach at Moscow University, but he was never fired from the 
Steklov Institute of Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences of 
the USSR. Shafarevich never was arrested, tried, exiled, or 
searched, as were many other active dissidents.



Unfortunately, the Soviet dissidents were united only on the 
issues of what they stood against. When time came for them to 
define what they stood for, it became increasingly obvious that 
for some of them, like Sakharov, democracy was the only 
alternative to the communist regime, while for others, like 
Shafarevich, democracy was an even greater evil than communism. 
The latter group dreamed about replacing a bad form of 
dictatorship with a "good" one, based on an ideology of Russian 
chauvinism, which they preferred to define as "patriotism." 
Shafarevich started to promote a so-called Russian idea, which 
does not differ much from the "German idea" under the Third 
Reich.



Shafarevich expressed his views in his book Russophobia, in which 
he developed a theory of "the small people"--including Jews and 
liberal intellectuals under Jewish influence--and "the big 
people," or the majority of Russians. According to this theory, 
the small people have nothing in common with the big people: The 
small people do not understand--and despise--traditional values 
and the beliefs and lifestyles of the big people, and seek to 
introduce, by force, values and lifestyles borrowed from the 
West. According to Shafarevich, these "russophobic" activities of 
the small people are very dangerous for the big people, so 
patriots should do everything possible to stop them.



After publication of Russophobia in 1989, Shafarevich 
dramatically increased his public activities. In numerous 
articles and interviews published in different Russian newspapers 
or broadcast on radio and television, he continued to press the 
same point: that the Jews and liberal democrats are inside 
enemies of Russia and the Russian people.



Shafarevich was among the authors of the anti-Semitic "Letter of 
74 Writers" that was widely quoted in the American press in 1990, 
when a group of anti-Semitic Russian writers, some of whom also 
signed this document, traveled throughout the U.S. (Washington 
Post, April 17, 1990, page 1).



Shafarevich was also one of the instigators of a campaign of 
obstruction against a Russian liberal literary journal, Oktyabr, 
that dared to publish a few works forbidden by Soviet censorship 
for decades. While the communist ideologists considered these 
works to be anti-Soviet, Shafarevich labeled them "russophobic."



One of the characteristic realities of today's Russia is the 
unification of communists (the "Red") and radical nationalists 
(the "Brown") in order to fight against democracy. Following this 
trend, Shafarevich put aside his previous differences with 
communists and actively began cooperating with them in right-wing 
organizations like the Russian National Sobor ("Gathering") and 
the Russian Salvation Front, which were created last year. The 
main goal of these organizations is to "save" Russia from 
democratic reforms, which, they claim, are introduced by Jews, 
liberal intellectuals, and "russophobes."



Shafarevich joined the editorial board of Nash Sovremenik, a 
Russian journal that is a champion of anti-Semitic and anti-
democratic propaganda. Until recently, he was also a member of 
the editorial board of the Den ("The Day") newspaper, which is 
especially active in bringing together the "Red" and the "Brown," 
including leaders of the August 1991 coup against democracy. This 
newspaper demands the restoration of the Russian state "within 
the 1985 borders"--that is, the return of all former Soviet 
republics and East Europe back to Moscow rule.



Promoting such ideas in modern Russia is especially dangerous 
because that nation's traditional xenophobia is rapidly 
intensifying in the ongoing crisis there--a crisis that is not 
only political and economic, but also spiritual--which leads to 
the loss of all human values.



Escalation of hatred against Jews, liberal intellectuals, and 
everybody else whose so-called patriotism does not go as far as 
Shafarevich wishes incites ethnic clashes and bloody pogroms. 
Thousands of people of different nationalities have already been 
killed in the violence, and millions have managed to save their 
lives only by fleeing in panic from their native countries, 
cities, villages, and homes. They have been left  in  despair,  
without  shelter, food, and jobs, helpless and neglected.



Shafarevich, together with other "patriots"--not only Russian, 
but also Georgian, Azarian, Tadzhikian, Osetian, and so on--have 
to share direct and indirect responsibility for this nightmare.



Russian chauvinists are active on a wide international arena as 
well. They work hard to undermine good relations between Russia 
and the West because a renewal of the Cold War-style 
confrontation with the U.S. would help them to achieve their 
domestic goals--to restore a militant, totalitarian regime in the 
former USSR.



While Serbian extremists have been condemned by the whole 
civilized world as war criminals, Russian hard-liners, including 
Shafa revich, are strongly supporting their "Slav brothers" in 
their violent activities, including ethnic cleansing. At the same 
time, they support their "Moslem brothers" in the Middle East and 
the Persian Gulf. During the Gulf War, one "patriotic" paper 
covered it under a headline: "Thanks to Iraq for bombarding 
Israel! The kikes deserve it!!!" (emphasis as in the original).



Surely, Shafarevich personally does not use such language, but it 
is obvious to me that he shares similar views. In late January of 
this year, a leading Russian TV program, "Vremya" ("The Time"), 
announced a major event: Shafarevich expressed his sympathy and 
support to Saddam Hussein, and criticized the Russian government 
for adopting the Security Council sanctions against Iraq and for 
taking what he considered to be "the wrong side" in the Gulf war.



With his public activities Shafarevich has put himself beyond the 
borders of civilized society, but his international reputation as 
a mathematician is still very high and contributes to his 
influence--thanks especially to his NAS membership. And there is 
no Iron Curtain available to guard the NAS from that unpleasant 
reality.



Tolerance of independent thinking is one of the most precious 
values of the world culture, but if it becomes boundless, it 
turns into indifference. Probably a more adequate form could be 
found to denounce Shafarevich's activities than the one used by 
Press and Wyngaarden. I think their letter would have been more 
convincing if they had said more about Shafarevich's writings and 
did not touch on his alleged participation in discriminating 
against Jewish mathematicians in the Steklov Institute. (The late 
academician Ivan Vinogradov, the longtime director of the 
institute, cynically enforced a policy of squeezing all Jews out 
of the institute--and mathematics at large. Many others were 
enthusiastic about helping him, but Shafarevich's personal 
involvement in these activities is difficult to prove.)



Despite these problems with Press and Wyngaarden's letter to 
Shafarevich, the very fact that they publicly detached the NAS 
from his cannibalistic "patriotism" is of great moral importance. 
Practically, NAS has no other choice if it wants to remain on the 
side of humanity.



Semyon Reznik is a Washington, D.C.-based Russian migr historian 
and writer, author of 11 books and hundreds of articles.




(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:



TI   :    COMMENTARY


AU   :    Eugene Garfield

PG   :    12


Citation Searches Can Be Powerful Tools In Combating Redundant Publication


Recently in The Scientist ("Vigilant Science Journal Editors 
Fight Redundancy," March 8, 1993, page 1), writer Paul McCarthy 
focused on a widespread and apparently growing concern among 
publishing professionals: the attempt by some scientists, as 
McCarthy put it, to "add heft to their c.v.'s" by getting two or 
more articles into print that are based on a single research 
finding. He made the point that today's highly competitive job 
market has exacerbated the ongoing duplicate publishing problem 
by making many of these investigators downright gluttonous in 
their efforts to rack up long lists of publishing credits.



The article correctly pointed out that the problem is by no means 
a new one. This situation has existed for a long time; it can't 
simply be chalked off as a transient byproduct of a depressed job 
market, reduced grants, or the increasing number of scientific 
journals being published.



Actually, the problem of redundant publication--intentional and 
otherwise--has been plaguing the science community for more than 
a quarter-century, and its presence certainly has not been 
confined to the United States. Its prevalence in Great Britain, 
for example, was the subject of a classic 1964 study by John 
Martyn, then research director of the Association of Special 
Libraries and Information Bureaux. In Martyn's survey, 25 percent 
of U.K. scientists reported unwitting duplication of research 
already reported in the literature (J. Martyn, "Unintentional 
duplication of research," New Scientist, 377:388, 1964). 



To me, the problem of redundant and even plagiaristic publication 
was evident back in the 1950s, when I was launching the Institute 
for Scientific Information (ISI). In fact, it motivated some of 
my earliest experiments with the Science Citation Index (SCI) (E. 
Garfield, "Citation Indexes for  Science," Science, 122:108-11, 
1955). Ten years later, my follow-up report in Science (144:649-
54, 1964) referred to a published apology in the Journal of 
Biological Chemistry (237:3315, 1962) by R.H. Mazur, a researcher 
specializing in the detection of peptides, nucleotides, and other 
compounds.



Mazur had the distasteful task of stating publicly that he and 
his colleagues had inadvertently published a duplication of a 
detection method reported in 1958 by D.P. Schwartz and M.J. 
Pallansch in Analytical Chemistry (30:219). Subsequently, in an 
essay published in the July 28, 1971, edition of Current 
Contents, I showed how Mazur and his associates--or their editor-
could have used the SCI to determine the prior publication's 
existence. Had they used any of six papers cited in common as 
starting points for both research reports, a citation search 
would have exposed the duplication.



Authors and editors today could perform a similar procedure using 
the SCI to significantly reduce the occurrence of redundancy, be 
it intentional or unwitting. Even better, compared with the old 
days, the double-checking could be accomplished much more easily 
using either the SCI's on-line version, SCISEARCH, or its CD-ROM 
version.



In the case of putative plagiarism or similar outright 
duplications, conducting a boolean search of several cited 
references would retrieve a series of related records. This 
process is easy enough and should be part of the journal editor's 
routine preparation of a text for publication; it also would 
serve authors well, in my opinion, to run such a search prior to 
submitting a paper to a journal--or, better yet, before fully 
embarking on a research project.



In the Current Contents essay mentioned previously, I remarked: 
"No reputable scientist wants to duplicate unwittingly the work 
of another.... There is little enough time and money to learn the 
endless mysteries of nature without unintentionally repeating 
work already done." My advice, of course, is directed at those 
reputable scientists.



As for the few disreputable investigators who thrive on redundant 
publication--they probably won't listen in any case. But they 
might consider that the failure to cite other authors might mean 
that their own work will be missed in a citation search.




(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:


TY   :                   LETTERS TO THE EDITOR


TI   :    Cryptozoology

TY   :    Letter

PG   :    12

Paul McCarthy's story about cryptozoologists (The Scientist, Jan. 
11, 1993, page 1) left me wondering why these researchers are so 
scorned by other scientists and by funding agencies when 
evolutionary biologists engage in the same activity.


McCarthy noted that French zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans coined 
the term "cryptozoology" to describe the study of unverified 
animals. Of course, that's what evolutionists do when they 
speculate about undiscovered transitional fauna in the fossil 
record. Recently it has become fashionable to ascribe the absence 
of transitional forms to the sudden development of new species. 
Yet in The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin sharply criticized 
speculation that species could suddenly arise, thereby leaving no 
fossil trail. Those who claim God had a hand in any of this are 
ridiculed even more than the cryptozoologists.


With as many as 10 million undiscovered insect species alone, 
science needs fewer cryptozoologists and more traditional 
naturalists. The ongoing destruction of old-growth habitat by 
loggers and impoverished farmers, and of museum specimens by 
biologists questing for DNA, mandate a prompt end to the neglect 
of collecting and classifying undiscovered species. 


AU   :    FORREST M. MIMS III
          Editor, Science Probe
          Seguin, Texas


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:


TI   :    AMS Condemns Russophobia

TY   :    Letter

PG   :    12


The article by Barbara Spector in the Sept. 28, 1992, issue of 
The Scientist [page 1] reported on actions taken by the National 
Academy of Sciences with regard to one of its foreign associates, 
the eminent Russian mathematician Igor R. Shafarevich. In brief, 
Shafarevich had written a book, Russophobia, which many readers 
interpreted as a thinly veiled anti-Semitic diatribe. NAS 
president Frank Press, speaking on behalf of NAS, had protested 
Shafarevich's words of hatred and had written a letter to him in 
which he suggested that Shafarevich resign from NAS. In the Dec. 
7, 1992, issue of The Scientist [Barbara Spector, page 4], there 
was a follow-up article, reporting on reactions to the NAS action 
within the scientific community, and including a response from 
Shafarevich to the September 28 article [page 11].


The American Mathematical Society is the principal United States 
organization of research mathematicians. Its members use 
Shafarevich's books and theorems in their daily work. They also 
have a direct chain of human contacts that brings them close to 
the problem in a very immediate and personal way. His behavior 
is, in that sense, their "family problem."


At its annual winter meeting, held on Jan. 12, 1993, the AMS 
Council passed the following resolution:


"Resolution: The Council of the American Mathematical Society 
expresses its condemnation of the anti-semitic writings of I.R. 
Shafarevich, as expressed in Russophobia. Dr. Shafarevich has 
used his highly respected position as an eminent mathematician to 
give special weight to his words of hatred, which are contrary to 
fundamental standards of human decency and to the spirit of 
mathematics and science."



AU   :    JOAN S. BIRMAN
          Professor of Mathematics
          Barnard College of
          Columbia University
          New York
          Member of the Executive
          Committee and Council,
          American Mathematical Society



(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:



TI   :    Undergraduate Research

TY   :    Letter

PG   :    12


Laura Mays Hoopes's commentary (The Scientist, Feb. 22, 1993, 
page 10) sets the stage for listing several advantages of the 
"practicum" or "special problem" in the undergraduate curriculum.


A research problem allows for observation of experimental 
materials over time; too often, students graduate perceiving 
research as a series of studies designed, carried out, and 
interpreted during two-hour lab periods. A well-designed 
practicum can provide an opportunity for the student to integrate 
information from several courses, and make use of diversely 
located space and research instrumentation not available in 
large, regularly scheduled labs.



Finally, a good research problem affords a student an opportunity 
to recognize a real problem of importance, learn how to survey 
literature and formulate hypotheses, develop research objectives, 
develop research plans and techniques, learn to record and 
analyze data, and get tutored experience in interpreting data and 
in writing scientifically.



AU   :    KURT C. FELTNER
          Executive Director
          North Central Association
          of State Agricultural
          Experiment Station Directors
          Manhattan, Kans.



(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  



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              ================================


NEXT:

                            RESEARCH


TI   :    Science Research In 1992: What Fields Were The  Hottest 
          Of The Hot?


TY   :    RESEARCH
PG   :    14


Editor's Note: Among all research fields last year, papers 
addressing the role of beta-agonist bronchodilators, such as 
albuterol, in the treatment of asthma attracted a higher 
bimonthly average of citations than did any other single area of 
scientific investigation, according to data from the 
Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). 
Based on this criterion, ISI's monthly newsletter Science Watch 
put this area of scientific study at the top of its list of last 
year's seven hottest research fields, and--using citation 
analysis--also identified the 31 most cited research papers of 
the year. Examined together, the lists provide a fascinating 
glimpse of where the world of science has been heading in the 
recent past--and where it may be heading in the near future. In a 
December 1992 article, Science Watch presented the lists along 
with an illuminating commentary on them. Following is the 
article, reprinted with the permission of ISI.



Science Watch searched ISI's exclusive "Hot Papers" database to 
compile a list of 31 of 1992's superstar papers; all had 
attracted at least 20 citations by the end of the year. From this 
group, seven red-hot fields emerged: six in the biological 
sciences and one in the physical sciences (see accompanying 
chart).



The fields identified in the chart are ranked by the average 
bimonthly citations of the hot paper or papers in each field. 
This measure allows reports published later in the year to 
compete with those that appeared earlier and had more time to 
collect citations. Still and all, most are from the first half of 
the year. Each of the 31 papers in the group is listed in the 
table on page 15, ranked by total citations. As usual, Science 
Watch elected to pass over the year's highly cited reviews, 
electing to focus instead on the year's most-cited discovery 
accounts.



In last year's study of the hottest papers, research on C60 and 
the other fullerenes all but stole the show. Buckyball papers, in 
fact, accounted for nearly half of the 23 papers that were then 
highlighted (Science Watch, 3[1]:1-2, January 1992). The current 
crop, however, produced no buckyball battalion. In fact, only one 
C60 paper managed to make the list of 1992's most cited reports.



According to the measure of average bimonthly citations, 1992's 
hottest paper was a Canadian study (see item No. 3 in the table) 
on the use of inhaled beta-agonist bronchodilators in the 
treatment of asthma. The study compared a group of patients who 
had suffered fatal or near-fatal asthmatic events with a control 
group of asthmatics who had not experienced such adverse events. 
The regular use of inhaled beta-agonists, such as albuterol and 
fenoterol, was associated with an increased risk of death from 
asthma. According to lead author Walter O. Spitzer, McGill 
University, Montreal, the study has had a major impact on asthma 
treatment. "This paper very clearly showed that the first line of 
defense in the management of asthma should be topical steroids, 
and not beta-agonists. Beta-agonists should be a backup drug for 
breakthrough symptoms and should be used parsimoniously," he 
says.



Another of 1992's hottest hits reported further research on the 
cystic fibrosis gene (No. 6). The cloning of this gene in 1989 
attracted wide and sustained interest (Science Watch, 2[1]:5, 
January/ February 1991).



As part of the continuing effort to understand the structural and 
functional properties of the gene, researchers in Toronto and 
Birmingham, Ala., purified its protein product, known as cystic 
fibrosis transmembrane regulator (CFTR). Previously, it was not 
entirely clear whether regulated ion channel activity was a 
property of the CFTR molecule itself; results in this paper 
suggest that it is. The authors note that the purified protein 
should be very useful for subsequent research: "We will be able 
to directly assess the functional consequences of biochemical and 
genetic modification of CFTR. A completely in vitro system for 
the study of CFTR should also prove useful for study of drugs 
that may alter the activity of the protein."



A Japanese team fielded another of 1992's hottest papers (No. 9), 
which discusses a family of metabotropic glutamate receptors. 
Glutamate acts as a major excitatory neurotransmitter, and the 
neurotransmission of glutamate is believed to play a central role 
in many neuronal functions, including memory and learning, as 
well as in conditions such as epilepsy and stroke. Researchers at 
Kyoto University isolated three novel metabotropic glutamate 
receptors from rat brain, bringing the known membership of this 
receptor family to four. The family's unique structural 
architecture, the authors note, includes a large extracellular 
domain. "No functional role of this conserved domain has been 
elucidated yet," they point out, "but it may have some important 
functions such as interaction with a specific protein involved in 
the regulation of glutamate neurotransmission."



Six papers in all (Nos. 2, 4, 7, 8, 12, and 17) pertain to still 
another of 1992's hot areas: identifying and characterizing the 
genetic flaw in myotonic dystrophy. Seven different research 
groups--six working in concert under the auspices of the Muscular 
Dystrophy Association, and another group that took up the chase 
independently--were pursuing the defect. All the groups published 
their results within a month of one another in Nature, Cell, and 
Science. The defect, a repeating triplet of cytosine, thymine, 
and guanine on chromosome 19, proved to be very similar to the 
expanding nucleotide triplet repeat seen in another genetic 
disorder, Fragile X syndrome (Science Watch, 3[7]:5, September 
1992). Suspecting the possibility that a similar mechanism might 
underlie other heritable diseases, geneticists are beginning to 
scrutinize diabetes, Huntington's disease, and Alzheimer's, among 
others (R. Nowak, Journal of NIH Research, 4[4]: 49-55, April 
1992).



The next hottest subject of 1992 involved nuclear retinoid 
receptors. In fact, in terms of total citations, this topic 
accounted for 1992's most cited paper. Published in Cell, the 
No.1 paper, by Pierre Chambon and colleagues, reports the 
purification and cloning of a retinoid X receptor (RXR) protein 
that stimulates binding of thyroid hormone receptors and retinoic 
acid receptors (RAR) to various response elements. The authors 
also comment on the contributions of RAR-RXT heterodimers to such 
functions as transcription and signaling. The other hot 1992 
paper on this topic (No. 11) discusses a specific retinoic acid 
that acts as a ligand for RXR. "Our observations suggest that a 
better understanding of retinoid metabolism may provide new 
insights into physiology," note the authors.



After turning up in the 1991 list, amyloid proteins stayed near 
the top of the hot topics in 1992, with two papers weighing in. 
One paper (No. 5) reported on the processing of the amyloid beta 
precursor protein (betaAPP) by the endosomal-lysosomal system. 
Results supported the hypothesis that dysfunctional processing in 
this system may play a role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's 
(Diana Steele, The Scientist, April 5, 1992, page 15).



The second paper (No. 26) examined the activity of beta-amyloid 
in human cortical neurons.



Among the other topics treated by 1992's red-hot biomedical 
reports: the cloning of the transforming growth factor-beta type 
II receptor, a sequence identification of human brain genes, and 
the cloning of inducible nitric oxide (NO) synthase from mouse 
macrophages. The role of Ras in nerve growth factor function was 
another hot topic, as was that perennial favorite, the tumor 
suppressor gene p53.



The physical sciences, despite the falloff in fullerene fervor, 
still managed a respectable showing in this 1992 tally. At the 
top for physics, quite suitably, is a paper discussing the top 
quark. The hunt for this elusive particle--the last of 12 
fundamental units of matter recognized by physicists--has been 
going on for more than a decade. In paper No. 10, the Collision 
Detector Facility (CDF) Collaboration at the Fermi National 
Accelerator Laboratory's Tevatron Collider presented its analysis 
of data collected during 1988-89. Although the CDF team failed to 
cop the top quark, it was able to posit a lower limit on the 
particle's mass. A year later, the world still awaits 
confirmation of the top quark, although events in the CDF in the 
fall of 1992 had physicists buzzing.



Other heavy hitters in physics included 1992's sole entry from 
the buckyball brigade: a report (No. 21) on structural phase 
transitions in C60. Physicists also sought enlightenment 
concerning the source of visible photoluminescence in porous 
silicon. A paper on this topic by a German team (No. 22) burned 
brightly in 1992. A key 1990 paper on photoluminescence in 
silicon recently arose as a fixture in Science Watch's physics 
Top 10, as well (Science Watch, 3[6]:6, August 1992).




(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:


TI   :              1992'S HOTTEST RESEARCH PAPERS

TY   : RESEARCH   
PG   : 15


RANK    PAPER   CITATIONS
1       M. Leid, et al., "Purification, cloning, and RXR identity 
        of the HeLa cell factor with which RAR or TR heterodimerizes 
        to bind target sequences efficiently," Cell, 68(2):  377-
        95, 24 January 1992.    58


2       J.D. Brook, et al., "Molecular basis of myotonic 
        dystrophy; Expansion of a trinucleotide (CTG) repeat at 
        the 3<F128M> <F255D> end of a transcript encoding a 
        protein kinase family member," Cell, 68(4):799-808, 20 
        February 1992.  47


3       W.O. Spitzer, et al., "The use of beta-<D%0>agonists and 
        the risk of death and near death from asthma," NEJM, 
        326(8):501-6, 20 February 1992. 42


4       H.G. Harley, et al., "Expansion of an unstable DNA region 
        and phenotypic variation in myotonic dystrophy," Nature, 
        355(6360):545-6, 6 February 1992.       41


5       T.E. Golde, et al., "Processing of the amyloid protein 
        precursor to potentially amyloidogenic derivatives," 
        Science, 255(5045):728-30, 7 February 1992.     41


6       C.E. Bear, et al., "Purification and and functional 
        reconstitution of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane 
        conductance regulator (CFTR)," Cell, 68(4):809-18, 21 
        February 1992.  39


7       C. Aslanidis, et al., "Cloning of the essential myotonic 
        dystrophy region and mapping of the putative defect," 
        Nature, 355(6360):548-51, 6 February 1992.      39


8       J. Buxton, et al., "Detection of an unstable fragment of 
        DNA specific to individuals with myotonic dystrophy," 
        Nature, 355(6360):547-8, 6 February 1992.       37


9       Y. Tanabe, et al., "A family of metabotropic glutamate 
        receptors," Neuron, 8(1):169-79, January 1992.  36


10      F. Abe, et al., "Lower limit on the top-quark mass from 
        events with two leptons in pp collisions at = 1.8 TeV," 
        Phys. Rev. Lett., 68(4):447-51, 27 January 1992.        
        35


11      R.A. Heyman, et al., "9-Cis retinoic acid is a high 
        affinity ligand for the retinoid X receptor," Cell, 
        68(2):397-406, 24 January 1992. 33


12      Y.-H. Fu, et al., "An unstable triplet repeat in a gene 
        related to myotonic muscular dystrophy," Science, 
        255(5049):1256-8, 6 March 1992. 31


13      K.W. Wood, et al., "ras mediates nerve growth factor 
        receptor modulation of three signal-transducing protein 
        kinases: MAP kinase, Raf-1, and RSK," Cell, 68(6):1041-
        50, 20 March 1992.      28


14      H.Y. Lin, et al., "Expression cloning of the TGF-beta 
        Type II receptor, a function transmembrane serine/ 
        threonine kinase," Cell, 68(4):775-85, 21 February 1992.        
        27


15      M.D. Adams, et al., "Sequence identification of 2,375 
        human brain genes," Nature, 355(6361):632-4, 13 February 
        1992.   27


16      S. Matsuda, et al., "Xenopus MAP kinase activator: 
        identification and function as a key intermediate in the 
        phosphorylation cascade," EMBO J., 11(3):973-82, March 
        1992.   27


17      M. Mahadevan, et al., "Myotonic dystrophy mutation: an 
        unstable CTG repeat in the 3 untranslated region of the 
        gene," Science, 255(5049):1253-5, 6 March 1992. 26


18      Q.-W. Xie, et al., "Cloning and characterization of 
        inducible nitric oxide synthase from mouse macrophages," 
        Science, 256(5054):225-8, 10 April 1992.        25


19      A.D. Federman, et al., "Hormonal stimulation of adenylyl 
        cyclase through Gi-protein beta gamma subunits," Nature, 
        356(6365):159-61, 12 March 1991.        24


20      L.A. Donehower, et al., "Mice deficient for the p53 are 
        developmentally normal but susceptible to spontaneous 
        tumours," Nature, 356(6366):215-21, 19 March 1992.      
        24


21      W.I.F. David, et al., "Structural phase transitions in 
        the fullerene C60," Europhys. Lett., 18(3):219-225, 21 
        February 1992.  24


22      M.S. Brandt, et al., "The origin of visible luminescence 
        from `porous silicon': a new interpretation," Solid State 
        Comm., 81(4):307-12, January 1992.      23


23      C.R. Lyons, G.J. Orloff, J. M. Cunningham, "Molecular 
        cloning and functional expression of an inducible nitric 
        oxide synthase from a murine macrophage cell line," J. 
        Biol. Chem., 267(9):6370-4, 25 March 1992.      23


24      S.M. Thomas, et al., "Ras is essential for nerve growth 
        factor and phorbol ester-induced tyrosine 
        phosphorylation of MAP kinases," Cell, 68(6):1031-40, 20 
        March 1992.     22


25      C.T. Baldwin, et al., "An exonic mutation in the HuP2 
        paired domain gene causes Waardenburg's syndrome," 
        Nature, 355(6361):637-8, 13 February 1992.      22


26      M.P. Mattson, et al., "Beta-amyloid peptides destabilize 
        calcium homeostasis and render human cortical neurons 
        vulnerable to excitotoxicity," J. Neurosci., 12(2):376-
        89, February 1992.      21


27      W.J. Fanti, et al., "Distinct phosphotyrosines on a 
        growth factor receptor bind to specific molecules that 
        mediate different signaling pathways," Cell, 69(3):413-
        23, 1 May 1992. 21


28      D.P. Gearing, et al., "The IL-6 signal transducer, gp130: 
        an oncostatin M receptor and affinity coverter for the 
        LIF receptor," Science, 255(5050): 1434-7, 13 March 1992.       
        21


29      C.A. Midgley, et al., "Analysis of p53 expression in 
        human tumors: an antibody raised against human p53 
        expressed in Escherichia coli," J. Cell. Sci., 
        101(1):183-9, January 1992.     21


30      A. Kashishian, A. Kazlauskas, J.A. Cooper, 
        "Phosphorylation sites in the PDGF receptor with 
        different specificities for binding GAP and PI3 kinase in 
        vivo," EMBO J., 11(4):1373-82, April 1992.      20


31      S. Dalton, R. Treisman, "Characterization of SAP-1, a 
        protein recruited by serum response factor to the c-fos 
        serum response element," Cell, 68(3):597-612, 7 February 
        1992.   20



SOURCE: Science Watch/Institute for Scientific Information




(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:


                           HOT PAPERS

(The articles listed here, all less than two years old, have 
received a substantially greater number of citations than others 
of the same type and vintage, according to data from the SCIENCE 
CITATION INDEX of the Institute for Scientific Information, 
Philadelphia.

Why have these research reports become such standouts?  A comment 
following each reference, supplied to THE SCIENTIST by one of the 
authors, attempts to provide an answer.)


TI   :    CELL BIOLOGY

TY   :    RESEARCH
PG   :    16

S.A. Kliewer, L. Umesono, D.I. Mangelsdorf, R.M. Evans, "Retinoid 
X receptor interacts with nuclear receptors in retinoic acid, 
thyroid hormone, and vitamin D signalling," Nature, 355:446-9, 
1992.



Steven Kliewer (The Salk Institute, La Jolla, Calif.): "Vitamin 
D, thyroid hormone, and all-trans retinoic acid are essential 
cofactors in development, differentiation, and homeostasis. The 
effects of these endocrine signals on target gene expression are 
mediated through nuclear hormone receptors (VDR, TR, and RAR), 
which function as ligand-activated transcriptional regulators by 
binding to specific DNA sequences, termed hormone response 
elements (HREs). Work from several laboratories had indicated 
that VDR, TR, and RAR require auxiliary nuclear factors for high-
affinity binding to their cognate HREs. However, the identity of 
these factors was unknown. In addressing this issue, we have 
shown that, surprisingly, each of these receptors binds 
cooperatively to its HRE through the formation of a heterodimer 
with the retinoid X receptor (RXR), itself a receptor for the 
novel hormone 9-cis retinoic acid. More recently, we showed that 
RXR forms an additional heterodimer with peroxisome proliferator-
activated receptor, a receptor activated by fatty acids and 
hypolipidemic drugs such as clofibric acid (S.A. Kliewer, et al., 
Nature, 358:771-4, 1992). Thus, RXR serves a unique, central 
regulatory role in hormonal signaling.



"Our finding that RXR serves as a common heterodimeric partner 
for the VDR, TR, and RAR has received attention because it 
demonstrates the convergence of retinoic acid, thyroid hormone, 
and vitamin D signaling through a shared fourth pathway. This 
coupling provides a means for cross-talk between hormonal 
networks that is likely critical during all phases of 
development. Recently, several isoforms of RXR (alpha, beta, 
gamma) have been identified. Thus, the combinatorial 
possibilities generated through interactions between multiple 
species of RXR and the various isoforms of TR, RAR, and VDR are 
also likely to be essential in creating the diversity and 
specificity necessary to regulate the myriad hormone-responsive 
genes."




(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:



                           HOT PAPERS


TI   :    A.C. Rapraeger, A. Krufka, B.B. Olwin, "Requirement  of 
          heparan sulfate for bFGF-mediated fibroblast growth and 
          myoblast differentiation," Science, 252:1705, 1991.

TY   :    RESEARCH
PG   :    16


Alan Rapraeger (University of Wisconsin, Madison): "The 
gratifying aspect of this work has been its appeal to a wide 
group of scientists, owing to its relevance to cell-matrix 
interactions, cell growth and differentiation, and cell signaling 
mechanisms. The broad appeal of the work is partly because of the 
blending of my interests in the role of syndecans in cell-matrix 
interactions with the interests of Brad Olwin, a coauthor on the 
paper also at UW-Madison, in FGF signaling during muscle 
differentiation.



"The fibroblast growth factors (FGFs) have been envisioned to 
signal via tyrosine-kinase receptors, and these receptors and 
their variants are now being described in detail. However, the 
affinity of these growth factors for heparan sulfate has 
suggested an important role for heparan sulfate-bearing 
proteoglycans in FGF signaling. These proteo-glycans, 
particularly cell surface forms, are close neighbors to the FGF 
receptors where the signaling must originate.



"Recent molecular work has demonstrated that there are families 
of these cell surface proteoglycans, such as the syndecans, which 
made us realize that the roles of respective family members are 
not understood. The finding that heparan sulfate proteoglycans 
are a clear requirement for FGF signaling defines one role.



"Heparan sulfate binds a variety of molecules in vitro, but the 
degree to which the binding is biologically significant often 
remains as a haunting question. Here is a case in which depletion 
of heparan sulfate in a biological system has dramatically 
blocked FGF signaling in every case that we have examined. 
Furthermore, A.M. Yayon and associates showed the binding 
requirement in a completely different way (Cell, 64:841, 1991), 
and D.M. Ornitz and colleagues have more recently confirmed its 
effect on biological activity (Molecular and Cellular Biology, 
12:240, 1992). This now provides the opportunity for biologists 
to examine the role of specific proteoglycans and their heparan 
sulfate moieties in a biological activity that is easily 
quantifiable.



"The finding also stresses the concept of coreceptors. Two 
heterologous receptor molecules must collaborate; the 
availability of the proteoglycan in time and space, which may be 
regulated by matrix and cytoskeletal anchorage, will have a 
profound influence on the proliferation and differentiation of 
the cell."




(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:

                           HOT PAPERS


TI   :    MICROBIOLOGY

TY   :    RESEARCH
PG   :    16


F.C. Michel, S.B. Dass, E.A. Grulke, C.A. Reddy, "Role of 
manganese peroxidases and lignin peroxidases of Phanerochaete 
chrysosporium in the decolorization of kraft bleach pulp," 
Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 57:2368, 1991.



Frederick C. Michel, Jr.: (Michigan State University, East 
Lansing): "Lignin, a major structural polymer of vascular plants, 
is second only to cellulose as the most abundant renewable 
organic polymer in the biosphere. Microbial removal of lignin has 
important biotechnological applications in the conversion of wood 
to food, fuels, and chemicals and in the manufacture of paper 
pulp. Wood-rotting fungi have attracted worldwide attention not 
only for their ability to degrade lignin but also for their 
ability to degrade a wide variety of xenobiotic compounds, such 
as PCBs and dioxins. Two families of extracellular enzymes, the 
manganese-dependent peroxidases (MNPs) and the lignin peroxidases 
(LIPs), are thought to be key components involved in lignin 
degradation by the wood-rotting fungus Phanerochaete 
chrysosporium.



"A number of laboratories have demonstrated the decolorization of 
pulp bleach plant effluents (BPE) using white-rot fungi. However, 
the involvement of the LIPs and MNPs in this process was not 
known. By manipulating culture conditions and using mutant 
strains, we investigated the relative roles of the LIPs and MNPs 
in the degradation of soluble chlorolignins present in BPE. This 
research, which was conducted under the overall direction of  
C.A. Reddy, showed for the first time that MNPs play a dominant 
role in BPE degradation by P. chrysosporium.



"Our research is important because it demonstrates that 
immobilized enzyme systems based on MNPs could now be engineered 
for on-site decolorization of BPE and thus alleviate a major 
effluent disposal problem faced by the pulping industry. The 
importance of MNPs in BPE decolorization has recently been 
confirmed by two other laboratories. Moreover, more recent 
research done at Canada's Pulp and Paper Institute has shown that 
MNPs are also important in the delignification of wood pulp."



(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:



TI   :    Cutting Hazardous Waste Disposal Costs In Lab Research


AU   :    BY CAREN D. POTTER

TY   :    TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY
PG   :    17


Few laboratory researchers would question the need for hazardous 
materials in certain experimental procedures. The radioactive 
isotope P32, for instance, is vital in DNA research, and 
hazardous solvents such as xylene and methylene chloride are 
virtual staples of organic chemistry and biochemistry. But the 
cost of disposing of such materials now routinely exceeds their 
purchase price, adding significantly to expenses in already-tight 
research budgets. And this cost is rising, driven largely by a 
host of federal, state, and local regulations designed to protect 
lab workers and the environment.



"Research dollars are in short supply, and scientists have to 
fight hard for their grants," says Rebecca Jehorek, program 
director for Chemical Safety, a firm that produces waste 
management software in Richmond, Calif. "And in the last two 
years, they've had to spend a great deal of money that they 
didn't spend before on waste disposal."  



As a result, across the United States, scientists in commercial 
and academic laboratories of all sizes are looking for ways to 
cut waste disposal costs. For the most part, this means shopping 
carefully for products and services to help them contain and 
dispose of their lab wastes.



More and more, however, lab researchers are turning to minimizing 
the amounts of hazardous materials used as a part of their 
disposal strategies. Efforts in this direction range from the 
elementary to the technically complex, but regardless of method, 
minimization tactics make sense, says Jeff Sacre, industrial 
health and safety manager at the Center for Hazardous Materials 
Research (CHMR) in Pittsburgh.



"There is a great opportunity to reduce hazardous lab waste, 
which is good for the environment, but it also makes good 
economic sense," says Sacre. "It takes a little effort initially, 
but in the long run it's very cost-effective."



@BODY SUBHEAD = Hazardous Material Everywhere
Hazardous waste disposal is a complex issue for research labs. 
There are different categories of hazardous waste: chemical, 
radioactive, biomedical (assumed to be infectious), and so-called 
mixed waste (a combination of two or more kinds of hazardous 
materials).



For each category of hazardous waste, there is a corresponding 
regulatory agency. When asked to enumerate the agencies that New 
York City-based Rockefeller University deals with regarding 
hazardous waste, Edward L. Gershey, the university's director of 
laboratory safety, reels off a list that includes: the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission (NRC), Environmental Protection Agency 
(EPA), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Occupational Safety 
and Health Administration (OSHA), Food and Drug Administration 
(FDA), and Department of Transportation (DOT).



This is a lengthy roster, but these are only the federal agencies 
that regulate Rockefeller's waste. "The state and city have their 
counterparts," Gershey explains. "New York state and city health 
departments have bureaus that deal with radiation control. There 
are state and city environmental conservation agencies; a state 
OSHA; state and city DOT counterparts, and so on."



Each agency exerts some measure of control over how Rockefeller 
disposes of its waste, and, unfortunately, federal, state, and 
city regulations do not always agree with each other. 



"If you're dealing with one facility in one location, keeping up 
with all the hazardous waste-related regulations is a job," says 
Sacre of CHMR. "But if you're dealing with an organization that 
has facilities in different states or in different EPA regions, 
it becomes more of a nightmare than a job."



Disposal methods for hazardous lab waste vary according to the 
regulations of the different governmental jurisdictions as well 
as according to waste type. The options for disposing of 
radioactive waste, for example, include holding it on-site until 
it decays and then shipping it to a commercial burial facility. 
(There are only two such facilities in the United States, one in 
South Carolina and one in Washington state. Only the site in 
South Carolina is able to receive waste from states outside the 
northwest region.)  



Not all labs have the option of shipping radioactive waste off-
site, however. Radioactive waste generated by 1,065 labs at the 
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor must be stored indefinitely, 
since the state has no low-level radioactive waste disposal 
facility of its own, and because no other site will take waste 
generated in Michigan. "This state chose not to participate in 
long-range federal planning for radioactive waste disposal," says 
Joseph Owsley, director of news and information services for the 
university. "We have nowhere to send our waste."



Medical waste can often be treated on-site so that it is no 
longer regulated as hazardous waste. After being autoclaved or 
soaked in chlorine, for example, liquid medical waste can usually 
be discarded via the sewer and solid waste can be destroyed by 
shredding and disposed of as regular trash. Here, too, local 
regulations dictate the final disposal method. Many states have 
regulations against burial of medical waste, so in those states 
it must be incinerated.



How does a researcher or lab administrator keep up with all of 
this? It's not easy, these individuals say. "If your job is 
research, it's very difficult to keep up with all regulatory 
requirements," says Sacre. 



Cutting Back
With all of this in mind, strategies for minimization of 
hazardous lab waste make increasing sense. The first step, 
according to several sources, should be to "get the big picture," 
taking a look at the lab from the perspective of hazardous 
materials. It wouldn't hurt to have an outside consultant do 
this, according to Sacre.



"It's good to have a fresh set of eyes take a look at what's 
going on in a lab," he says. "There have been breakthroughs in 
chemical substitutions and treatment processes that the people in 
a lab might not be aware of."



Next, experts advise, scientists should make a comprehensive 
inventory of all hazardous materials in use and in storage. Says 
Chemical Safety's Jehorek, "When you can follow the life cycle of 
a chemical from when it enters your facility until it leaves, you 
can make effective minimization efforts. When you see only a 
piece of this picture, you'll be ineffective."



Sacre agrees with the importance of an inventory. "The most 
critical thing you can do is inventory the chemicals coming in 
and the waste going out. That's important to ensure that disposal 
is appropriate. If you're not finding the waste coming out of the 
lab that you should, it might be going down the drain or into the 
trash or up a vapor hood."



There is software that helps with the task of cataloging and 
managing hazardous materials. One package, Environmental 
Management System (EMS) from Chemical Safety, keeps track of 
hazardous materials and prints out reports needed by the 
different regulatory agencies. The program also permits users to 
search an electronic database of materials safety data sheets 
(MSDS). 



Searching a materials database is useful because it simplifies 
the task of finding alternatives to hazardous materials--another 
minimization strategy. The EMS package works in conjunction with 
the MSDS database put out on CD-ROM by the Canadian Centre for 
Occupational Health and Safety. This MSDS database is 
comprehensive and updated quarterly, according to Jehorek. It is 
also reasonably priced, at about $300 for a single yearly 
subscription.



Rigorous waste labeling and segregation procedures can also help 
reduce the amount of hazardous waste that must be disposed of. 
Labeling is critical because many places require unlabeled 
materials to be treated as hazardous waste. Kevin Creed, director 
of environmental health compliance at Humboldt State University 
in Arcata, Calif., tells the story of a small, unlabeled gas 
cylinder that cost $4,700 to dispose of because the paper label 
had disintegrated.



Waste segregation doesn't exactly reduce the amount of hazardous 
waste that is produced, but it does prevent different types of 
hazardous materials from combining to form mixed waste. Mixed 
waste increases disposal costs because it requires the more 
rigorous form of disposal. For example, if a radioactive isotope 
comes into contact with waste chemicals, those chemicals must 
then be disposed of as radioactive waste. 



Hazardous waste minimization strategies, like the topic of 
hazardous waste itself, are not entirely simple and 
straightforward. What might be acceptable in one state may be 
highly regulated--or even illegal--in another. 



A case in point involves recycling equipment that recovers 
hazardous solvents such as xylene and purifies them for reuse. 
These are distilleries, basically, and they have several 
advantages. They not only can eliminate the cost of disposing of 
hazardous solvents, but also can save money on the cost of 
replacements, because the recovered material is 99.9 percent 
pure. 



However, according to Creed, researchers should look carefully 
into local regulations before considering this route. Some states 
require a special permit for treatment of hazardous waste, he 
says.



Keith Brody, president of Black Rhino Recycling Inc. of 
Pittsburgh, which sells and rents chemical recovery systems, says 
that although the federal EPA does not require a special permit 
for a hazardous waste generator to reclaim its solvents on-site, 
different states have different regulations. "People are 
bombarded with regulations," he says. "They assume that solvent 
recovery will require another permit. The state of Pennsylvania 
actually offers a 25 percent reimbursement grant to labs that 
recover their own solvents."



There are a number of other practical ways to minimize hazardous 
wastes. (See box on page 17.) Any actions that minimize hazardous 
waste are worthwhile, for their impact both on the environment 
and on a lab's budget. As Gershey says, "Hazardous waste 
minimization results in one of the few tangible gains of an 
environmental health and safety operation."



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



(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:


TI   :    WAYS TO MINIMIZE HAZARDOUS LAB WASTE


AU   :    Caren  D.  Potter

TY   :    TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY
PG   :    17


Scientists and lab directors say that there are many ways to cut 
down on hazardous waste. These include the following measures:
* Substitute a safe chemical for one that is hazardous. Non-
  hazardous degreasers have been developed to replace xylene, for 
  example.
* If a safe alternative is not available, a less-hazardous 
  chemical, such as toluene, can sometimes be used in place of a 
  very hazardous one, such as benzene.
* Practice microscale laboratory techniques whenever possible.
* Purchase analytical instruments that are sensitive to small 
  volumes.
* Segregate hazardous materials and label with care. In some 
  places, unlabeled materials must be treated as hazardous waste. 
  Mixed waste requires the more costly disposal route.
* Use secondary containment procedures--dishpan under bottles of 
  chemicals; seismic braces on shelves. Spilled chemicals must be 
  treated as hazardous waste in many places. 
* Share surplus materials. A central stockroom and an up-to-date 
  hazardous materials inventory are key ingredients in this 
  effort.
* Buy only in volumes you need. Initial purchase savings on large 
  quantities are often offset by disposal costs.
* Review current practices and revise where possible. For 
  example, establish detergent and hot water as the routine 
  glassware cleaning materials and use chromic acid only when 
  absolutely necessary.


--C.D.P.



TI   :    HELP WITH HAZARDOUS WASTE

TY   :    TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY


Below  is a sampler of resource organizations for labs that  work 
with hazardous waste:

BLACK RHINO RECYCLING
INC./FRESH CHEMCO
P.O. Box 18044
Pittsburgh, Pa. 15236
(800) 633-6030
Fax: (412) 655-4034 

CANADIAN CENTRE FOR
OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH
AND SAFETY
250 Main St., E.
Hamilton, Ontario L8N 1H6
(416) 572-2981
Fax: (416) 572-2206

CENTER FOR HAZARDOUS
MATERIALS RESEARCH
(CHMR)
320 William Pitt Way
U. of Pittsburgh Applied Research Center
Pittsburgh, Pa. 15238
(412) 826-5320
Fax: (412) 826-5552

CHEMICAL SAFETY
1301 S. 46th St., Bldg. 180
Richmond, Calif. 94804
(510) 231-9490
Fax: (510) 231-9520 

CHEMICAL WASTE
MANAGEMENT INC.
(subsidiary of Waste Management Inc.)
3003 Butterfield Rd.
Oak Brook, Ill. 60521
(708) 218-1500
Fax: (708) 572-3094

FEDERAL EMERGENCY
MANAGEMENT AGENCY
500 C St., S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20472
(202) 646-4600

ROLLINS ENVIRONMENTAL
SERVICES INC.
P.O. Box 2349
Wilmington, Del. 19899
(302) 426-2700
Fax: (302) 426-3873

SAFETY KLEEN CORP.
777 Big Timber Rd. 
Elgin, Ill. 60123
(800) 323-5040
(708)697-2783

(See  also  the  Hazardous Waste  Disposal  Productsand  Services 
Directory on page 31.)



(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:


TI   :    Do High School Science Competitions Predict Success?

AU   :    BY LINDA MARSA

TY   :    PROFESSION
PG   :    21


When the winners of the Westinghouse Science Talent Search were 
announced at an awards banquet in Washington, D.C., last month, 
two young women had taken the top slots in the prestigious 
precollege competition. Elizabeth Pine, 17, of Chicago finished 
first for her experiments linking two different types of fungi; 
Xanthi Merlo, also 17, placed second for demonstrating the role a 
specific protein may play in prolonging blood clotting.


"After they announced the first five of the top 10, I didn't 
expect to win--I was truly shocked when I heard my name," Merlo 
said minutes after winning the $30,000 scholarship. Like Pine, 
Merlo, whose parents own an auto parts store in Racine, Wis., 
plans on getting a Ph.D. and pursuing a career in biological 
research.



These two teenagers, along with the eight other finalists, are 
members of an exclusive club. Of the 2,080 finalists in the 
Science Talent Search since its inception in 1942, five have won 
Nobel Prizes; two have won Fields Medals for distinguished work 
in mathematics; eight have been awarded MacArthur Foundation 
Fellowships, the so-called genius awards; 28 have been elected to 
the National Academy of Sciences; and three are members of the 
National Academy of Engineering.



Clearly, being a Westinghouse finalist carries an inestimable 
cachet. And growing research evidence--including studies done by 
Harriet Zuckerman, a professor of sociology at Columbia 
University, and Benjamin S. Bloom, an education specialist now 
retired from the University of Chicago--suggests that the 
participation of high school students in such extracurricular 
competitions as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search (STS); the 
International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the "World 
Series" of science, now in its 44th year; or the Math Olympiad, 
which began in 1972, are indicators of characteristics like 
originality, persistence, and dedication, which are important for 
success in a scientific career.



But does winning the Westinghouse or any of these other 
prestigious competitions accurately predict future success in 
science? Or is it the experience merely of entering such a 
contest that encourages a young person to pursue a career in 
science?



In fact, many of these young people already have impressive 
resumes when they graduate high school: summer stints at research 
universities, numerous awards and scholarships, prizes from the 
regional science fair circuit, and even papers published in 
refereed journals. So what factors determine which ones 
eventually become scientists and which pursue other careers?



"There are so many other variables as to whether someone will 
succeed in science, including whether that young interest 
persists or whether you discover new things in college you had no 
awareness of before," says Nina Tabachnik Shor, who won first 
place in the 1972 STS, and was the first female participant to 
capture first place among finalists of both sexes. She is now a 
cancer specialist at the University of Pittsburgh. "I would have 
gone into medically related research regardless of what happened 
in the competition," she says. "But it did give me a vote of 
confidence that I could do this at a very early stage."



There is one ongoing longitudinal study of the 300 semifinalists 
in the 1983 STS. It's too soon to draw any statistically 
significant conclusions, but the preliminary data are intriguing, 
according to Rena F. Subotnik, an associate professor of 
educational foundations at Hunter College of the City University 
of New York, who conducted the study. Her research is scheduled 
to be presented in the forthcoming book Beyond Terman: 
Contemporary Longitudinal Studies of Giftedness and Talent, 
edited by Subotnik and K.D. Arnold, to be published by Ablex 
Publishing Corp. of Norwood, N.J. The book's namesake, Lewis 
Madison Terman (1877-1956), was a child psychologist who did 
pioneering studies on gifted children in the late 1940s and early 
1950s.



Out of the original group of 300 semifinalists, 98 have continued 
to participate in Subotnik's study: 60 men and 38 women. By 1990, 
49 of the remaining 60 male participants, or nearly 82 percent, 
could be categorized as scientists or mathematicians from their 
field of study or employment in scientific research or an applied 
discipline; of these 49, 21 are currently in graduate school. Of 
the 38 women, 25 are still in science; 10 of these are in 
graduate school.



Thus far, a much higher percentage of STS participants than the 
norm for U.S. high school students are still on the research 
track, although it is important to note that people who would 
enter the talent search are by definition more motivated than the 
average student. One-third of the 1 million new students entering 
four-year colleges each year express an interest in natural 
science or engineering. About 20 percent of that one-third get 
baccalaureates in science and engineering, 7 percent of those go 
to graduate school, and fewer than 1 percent of that portion 
complete advanced degrees, according to a 1989 report from the 
Office of Technology Assessment, entitled "Higher Education for 
Science and Engineering."



So, clearly, there is some correlation between doing well in the 
Talent Search and pursuing science. But Subotnik believes the 
attrition rate would be even lower if these gifted young people 
were identified and encouraged throughout their college years. 
"Winning the Westinghouse allowed many of them to go to a more 
prestigious college than they would have normally," says 
Subotnik. "But once they got to college, they were all thrown in 
with everyone else and the fact that they won the Westinghouse 
was lost. The more dedicated ones stayed in science, but many 
dropped out because they weren't encouraged. This is especially 
problematic for women, who tend to react to any kind of negative 
reinforcement, and are more easily discouraged and more easily 
seduced by other disciplines."



In fact, other studies suggest that, when it comes to predicting 
science success, winning major contests is not what counts--the 
mentoring relationship that evolves of necessity through the 
process of entering a competition seems to be the key ingredient. 
As Chicago's Bloom noted from interviews of talented performers 
in a variety of disciplines, special experiences are important 
for the development of talent.



"No matter what the initial characteristics (or gifts) of the 
individuals, unless there is a long and intensive process of 
encouragement, nurturance, education, and training, the 
individuals will not attain extreme levels of capability in these 
particular fields," noted Bloom in Developing Talent in Young 
People (New York, Ballantine Books, 1985).



In other research, Columbia's Zuckerman analyzed the career paths 
both of Nobel laureates and of occupants of the "41st chair"--
scientists who did research of Nobel quality but were not awarded 
the prize. They are analogous, according to Zuckerman, to "the 
`immortals' who happened not to have been included among the 
cohorts of forty in the French Academy" (Harriet Zuckerman, 
Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States, New York, 
Free Press, 1977, page 42).



Zuckerman found that virtually all of the individuals whom she 
studied showed promise very early in their careers--which, in 
turn, opened up more opportunities for intellectual development. 
Most laureates, for example, attended the most distinguished 
universities (10 universities produced 55 percent of the 
laureates), where they apprenticed with previous laureates. What 
is equally significant is that the high achievers actively 
created these opportunities. In other words, it wasn't just 
intelligence and ability--it was drive, determination, and a host 
of other intangibles that pushed them ahead of their peers.



What can be distilled from all of this research, experts say, is 
that the various competitions--as well as summer research 
programs and the new science-oriented "magnet" high schools that 
are popping up across the U.S.--are extremely important. That's 
because they create enhanced learning environments enabling 
gifted young people to become acquainted with science, they force 
them to be enterprising, and they hook them up with mentors, who 
are most often the catalysts for guiding youngsters into 
scientific careers.



"Teachers matter a lot," says Roald Hoffmann, a chemistry 
professor at Cornell University and a winner of the 1981 Nobel 
Prize in chemistry. During his senior year at Stuyvesant High 
School in New York City, Hoffmann took top honors at the STS in 
1955 for a project analyzing the tracks of cosmic rays. "This new 
phenomenon of these science academies in various states is good 
because they create that stimulating hothouse environment--like 
Stuyvesant did for me," says Hoffmann. "It's a very good climate 
for young people because it shows them the reality of what 
science is about."



Tessa Walters, a chemistry major at Harvard University who placed 
sixth in the 1991 STS, agrees, although she didn't attend a 
magnet school. Preparing with her teacher for the STS project was 
tremendously valuable, she says. "There is an incredible workload 
in science at Harvard," Walters says. "If I hadn't had the 
research experience in high school, it's quite possible I would 
have been diverted into another field."



The science magnet program at Montgomery Blair High School in 
Silver Spring, Md., is a prime example of what can be done with 
generous funding--its annual budget for equipment and materials 
is about $78,000, more than twice that of the school's regular 
science department--and a program that emphasizes hands-on bench 
work under the guidance of a faculty adviser or an outside 
mentor.



This year, Montgomery Blair, which started its science magnet 
program in 1985, produced three of the top 10 finishers in the 
1993 STS.



Another program for the gifted, the Study of Mathematically 
Precocious Youth (SMPY), was launched by Julian C. Stanley, a 
professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University, in 1971 in 
order to identify 12- and 13-year-old adolescents who possess 
exceptional mathematical abilities, and then ascertain the 
factors that contribute to their educational and vocational 
development.



The program has since evolved into a vast network that searches 
for verbally as well as mathematically talented teenagers.  Those 
who score in the top 1 percent for their age group on the 
Scholastic Aptitude Test, recently renamed the Scholastic 
Assessment Test--and about 50,000 young people do each year--are 
invited to participate in summer enrichment programs at six 
different universities across the U.S.



Many of the gifted young mathematicians in the SMPY program are 
among the nearly 40,000 junior and senior high school students 
who take tests each year to qualify for the 24 berths on the USA 
Math Olympiad. Out of these two dozen adolescents, six are then 
chosen to compete in the International Math Olympiad.



On other fronts, 19 of the U.S.'s outstanding high school science 
students are selected each year to participate in the Dr. Bessie 
F. Lawrence International Summer Science Institute at the 
Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, a leading 
research center in that country (Barbara Spector, The Scientist, 
July 9, 1990, page 4). Now in its 24th year, this international 
program brings together 71 students from 19 countries for five 
weeks of lectures and laboratory work.



STS semifinalists are invited to apply to the Bessie Lawrence 
program as part of the recruitment effort for the program. "We 
get a lot of really talented kids applying for this, but if they 
haven't done an independent research project, they don't 
qualify," says Margaret Brewer, director of the Bessie Lawrence 
program. "We know that the Westinghouse kids have [done 
independent research], so we invite semifinalists to apply."



Not all of these young prodigies end up in science, however.  
Those who enter other fields have varied reasons for doing so, 
but most say it's just because they discover other interests. 
"You always have a few people who are just plain maladjusted--who 
have mental health problems or aren't ambitious," says Stanley of 
Johns Hopkins. "But we haven't had any real failures, though 
there were a few college drop-outs who got bored in their early 
years of school and never did recover."



One SMPY math whiz, for example, is now a nationally ranked 
player on the racquetball circuit. Another became a financial 
analyst on Wall Street. And Jim Scott, who scored 720 on his math 
SAT at age 12 and could multiply two-digit numbers by two-digit 
numbers in his head when he was four years old, chose to forgo 
math: He majored in history and economics at the University of 
Virginia. "I assumed I'd be a mathematician and attend MIT or 
Caltech," says the 23-year-old Scott, who won more than $149,000 
in 1991 on the television game show "Jeopardy."



"But I just hit a brick wall when I took calculus--I barely 
scraped through. It was very frustrating, but," he wryly adds, "I 
think things have worked out pretty well for me." He plans to use 
his winnings to pay for law school.



"Competitions are usually stimulating, but I'm not sure how much 
of a predictor of future success they are," concludes Hoffmann.  
"If you took a cohort of about 40 scientists around the age of 
55, you'll find that perhaps one or two did well in the 
Westinghouse.  The other 38 probably came up in different ways."



Linda Marsa is a freelance science writer based in Los Angeles.



(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:


                             PEOPLE


TI   :    Two From France To Get Wolf Prize In Mathematics


AU   :    Ron Kaufman

TY   :    PROFESSION
PG   :    23


Two mathematics professors based in France, Mikhael Gromov of the 
Institut  des  Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (IEHS)  in  Bures-sur-
Yvette  and Jacques Tits of the Collge de France in  Paris,  will 
share the 1993 Wolf Prize in Mathematics.



Since  1978, the Israeli-based Wolf Foundation has been  granting 
four  $100,000 prizes annually for individual achievements  among 
the five fields of agriculture, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, 
physics, and the arts. No prize in medicine will be awarded  this 
year.  The prizes will be presented May 16 by  Israeli  President 
Chaim Herzog at the Knesset building in Jerusalem.



Gromov, who spends one semester a year teaching at the University 
of  Maryland,  College  Park, is being honored for  his  work  in 
symplectic and Riemannian geometry and the geometry of groups. 



"The  Wolf Prize is pleasant to have, but it's not the aim of  my 
research,"  says  Gromov,  49.  "It's helpful  to  give  us  some 
publicity  and focus public attention to not only  geometry,  but 
mathematics in general."



Gromov,  a native of Russia, received his Ph.D. in 1969 from  the 
University  of Leningrad. He emigrated to the United  States  and 
worked  as a professor of mathematics at the State University  of 
New  York, Stony Brook, from 1974 to 1981. In 1982, he  became  a 
permanent  fellow at IHES in France. He began his appointment  at 
Maryland in 1991.



Tits,  a  native  of  Belgium, is receiving  the  prize  for  his 
"contributions  to the theory of the structure of  algebraic  and 
other  classes  of  groups and in particular for  the  theory  of 
buildings," according to the award citation.



Tits,  62, received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the  University 
of  Brussels  in 1950. From 1957 to 1963 he was  a  professor  at 
Brussels,  and from 1964 to 1973 he taught at the  University  of 
Bonn. He came to the Collge de France in 1973.


AU   :    Ron Kaufman



(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:


                          PEOPLE BRIEFS


TI   :    Five Researchers Receive King Faisal Prizes In  Science 
          And Medicine

TY   :    PROFESSION
PG   :    23


The King Faisal Foundation, located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 
recently announced the recipients of the 1993 King Faisal 
International Prizes. The awards were presented at a ceremony in 
Riyadh on April 10.



Herbert Walther, director of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum 
Optics in Munich, Germany, and a professor of physics at Munich 
University, and Steven Chu, chairman of the physics department at 
Stanford University, have been selected as recipients of the King 
Faisal International Prize for Science.



Jean-Claude Chermann, director of the laboratory of retroviruses 
and associated diseases of the Institut Nationale de la Sante et 
de la Recherche   Medicale (INSERM) in Marseilles, France; Luc 
Montagnier, a professor at the viral oncology unit of the Pasteur 
Institute, Paris; and Francoise Barre-Sin-oussi, head of the 
retrovirus biology laboratory at INSERM, have been named as 
recipients of the King Faisal International Prize for Medicine.


The foundation cited these researchers for being "the first to 
discover and characterize the virus that is responsible for 
AIDS." Montagnier, the leader of the lab in which both Chermann 
and Barre-Sinoussi work, has been embroiled in controversy since 
1984 with National Cancer Institute researcher Robert Gallo over 
who was the first to discover the HIV virus.



The topic of this year's International Prize in Science was 
quantum optics. According to the award citation, the prize was 
given to Walther for being "the first to investigate fundamental 
quantum phenomena involving single atoms and photons" and to Chu 
for "developing the technique of optical cooling and trapping of 
atoms."



The 17-year-old King Faisal Foundation presents prizes in the 
fields of science, medicine, Arabic literature, Islamic studies, 
and service to Islam. This year, however, no prize in Arabic 
literature will be given.



The foundation has been presenting the awards in science and 
medicine since 1982. The awards include a gold medallion and a 
cash prize of $93,333, an amount the co-winners share. Recent 
winners of the science prize include Caltech professor of 
chemical physics Ahmed Zewail (1989) and Texas A&M chemistry 
professor Frank Albert Cotton (1990).




(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================


NEXT:


TI    :     AIBS Executive Director Named President  Of  Lawrence 
            Technological University

AU   :      Ron Kaufman

TY   :      PROFESSION
PG   :      23


Charles Chambers, currently executive director of the American 
Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS), will assume the position 
of president of Lawrence Technological University in Southland, 
Mich., on July 1.



Located about 25 miles northwest of Detroit, Lawrence Tech is a 
5,000-student private university specializing in design work and 
applied research in robotics, aviation, and automotive systems.



The school offers 30 day and evening programs in science, 
engineering, architecture, and business at the graduate, 
bachelor's, and associate level. The university was started in 
the early 1930s under the auspices of the Ford Motor Co. Eighty-
one percent of its graduates are located in Michigan.



Chambers, 51, says one of his main intentions as president is to 
broaden the geographic area from which the university draws its 
students. "I hope to be able to add two or three times as many 
master's programs, each one carefully crafted to focus on a 
particular need in the high-tech area of the upper Midwest," he 
says.



"The university has served the local needs very well, but is now 
at a point where we can, with these master's programs, serve a 
broader four- or five-state area."



Chambers received his B.S. (1962) and Ph.D. (1964) in physics 
from the University of Alabama. From 1977 to 1983 he was vice 
president of the Council on Postsecondary Accreditation in 
Washington, D.C. Since 1983, Chambers has been executive director 
of AIBS in Washington, D.C. His responsibilities there have 
included heading the American Foundation of Biological Sciences, 
a consortium affiliated with AIBS, as well as being the publisher 
of the AIBS publication Bioscience.


AU   : Ron Kaufman


(The Scientist, Vol:7, #8, April 19, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
  
              ================================

