Laboratories

Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co. and three more of the nation's top aerospace companies have agreed to share laboratories and lab workers to cut costs.If successful, the agreement could open up a whole new arena of cooperation among the five companies, Boeing officials said.The companies that signed the agreement are Boeing, McDonnell Douglas Corp., Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Lockheed Aeronautical Systems unit, Rockwell International Corp. and the B-2 and military aircraft divisions of Northrop Grumman Corp.

Dr. Richard J. Bouchard, a retired cardiologist who played an instrumental role in the establishment of the cardiac catheterization laboratory at St. Agnes Hospital, died Saturday from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma at Stella Maris Hospice. The longtime Timonium resident was 89. The son of a railroad conductor and a homemaker, Richard Joseph Bouchard was born and raised in Ogdenburg, N.Y., where he graduated in 1946 from St. Mary's High School. "His main interest was heart catheterization, and he was very good at it. His patients loved him and he was an extremely honorable man," said Dr. Ronald H. Gillilan, a semiretired cardiologist and director of the cardiac rehabilitation program at St. Agnes Hospital.

WASHINGTON -- A secret report to top Clinton administration officials in November warned that China posed an "acute intelligence threat" to the government's nuclear weapons laboratories and that computer systems at the labs were constantly being penetrated by outsiders.Yet investigators waited until March to search the computer of a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico who had been under investigation for nearly three years, suspected of spying for China. It was not until April that the Energy Department shut down its classified computer systems to impose tighter security over their data.

Robert A. Makofski, a retired Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory scientist and administrator who headed Howard County General Hospital's board, died of cancer Dec. 25 at Pen Bay Medical Center in Rockport, Maine. The former Columbia resident was 81. Born in Wanamie, Pa., he was the son of a coal mine fireman and a homemaker. "His father would not let him visit the coal mine until he had graduated college," said his wife, the former Cathy Lickteig. "His father did not want him to work in the mines.

Every now and then, a company comes out of nowhere to dramatically alter its field and make a ton of money, too, like Apple Computer.PharmaKinetics Laboratories Inc. was supposed to be the Apple of the pharmaceuticals business. The Baltimore drug-testing firm practically pioneered the concept of using independent laboratories to test and gain federal approval for pharmaceutical manufacturers' products. Observers still marvel that the 14-year-old firm managed to isolate and act upon a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

The threatened closure of the Naval Electronics Systems Engineering Activity in St. Inigoes was averted yesterday when a federal commission exempted naval engineering facilities from consolidation.The commission also voted to delay action on naval laboratories, which affects several sites in Maryland, until a parallel FTC commission studying military laboratories completes its work.The Navy had wanted to overhaul its research program by creating new engineering centers on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, with facilities including St. Inigoes, in St. Mary's County, relocated to Portsmouth, Va.The Navy also proposed consolidating labs specializing in air and surface warfare, which would eliminate jobs at facilities in White Oak, Annapolis and Carderock in Maryland.

PharmaKinetics Laboratories Inc., the troubled Baltimore pharmaceutical services company, announced yesterday that Max L. Mendelsohn has been named vice president for business development and client services.Mr. Mendelsohn, who joined PharmaKinetics in January, was president of Barre-National Inc., a subsidiary of A. L. Laboratories Inc. of Fort Lee, N.J. He is taking over for Cindy Schurick, who is taking a part-time position "for personal reasons," PharmaKinetics said.The company also announced that Ruth Randolph-Boulter, an account manager, has been promoted to director of sales.

Washington. -- Military bases used to be the champs at survival when the budget cutters went on the rampage.But, with the Cold War passing into history, Army, Navy and Air Force installations are actually being shut down.Now rapidly coming along as their successors in eluding extinction are scientific vestiges of the Cold War, the big research centers that assured nuclear pre-eminence against the Soviet Union.The U.S. no longer manufactures or tests nuclear weapons, and is on the way to reducing its nuclear-weapons stockpile by 90 percent by the year 2002.

North American Vaccine, of Beltsville, and Abbott Laboratories, of Abbott Park, Ill., signed an agreement yesterday for Abbott to market and distribute North American Vaccine's DTaP vaccine for the prevention of diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis, or whooping cough, in the United States.North American is seeking Food and Drug Administration approval to market the vaccine in the United States. The agreement provides for an investment of up to $42 million by Abbott. On signing, North American Vaccine received an equity investment, marketing fee and clinical development payment from Abbott totaling $13 million.

Scientists in three laboratories in the United States and Europe are preparing to test samples of an experimental polio vaccine stored for more than 40 years to determine whether it might have inadvertently been the spark that ignited the worldwide AIDS epidemic. The scientists will be testing a highly controversial and seemingly far-fetched theory that holds that an oral polio vaccine, used in vaccine trials in what was then the Belgian Congo in the 1950s, might have been made with chimpanzee tissue that might have been contaminated with an ancestor of the AIDS virus.

When Elsayed Talaat first began working at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow, he was assigned to a project exploring Earth's atmosphere. That was 1999. To this day, he's still dedicated to the TIMED mission, analyzing the findings of the Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics spacecraft, a 1,300-pound instrument built at APL that has been orbiting Earth since 2001. Talaat's expertise makes him a fitting candidate to share the mission with the public through a new lecture series Beyond Earth presented by APL scientists at Columbia's Robinson Nature Center.

The opening scene went something like this: Setting: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab building 17 cafeteria -- Fall 2009 Rocket Scientist #1: I do community theater. Rocket Scientist #2: I almost minored in theater in college. Rocket Scientist #1: Really? We should start a drama club here. Rocket Scientist #2: I'm in. Rocket Scientist #1: OK, good. For Big Science types at APL, tilting too far to their logical, self-controlled left brains could be hazardous. But that's less of an issue since the curtain was raised on the APL Drama Club by mission designer Chris Dong and fellow space department member Dawn Moessner, a mission design analyst.

William Magruder Waters, a retired Johns Hopkins and Navy electrical engineer and inventor who built his own car and held patents related to radar imaging, died of congestive heart failure Dec. 17 at Renaissance Gardens at Oak Crest Village. He was 86. The son of Methodist missionaries, he was born in Kobe, Japan. He came to the U.S. when his father accepted a ministerial assignment in Roanoke, Va. He later lived in Gambrills, Harmans and Goldsboro, and was a 1943 graduate of Beall High School in Frostburg.

Alvin Ralph Eaton, a pioneer in modern guided missile systems and the longest-serving employee at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, died of cancer Oct. 20. He was 91 and lived in Clarksville. Mr. Eaton's 66-year career coincided with — and he contributed to — historic developments in U.S. missile defense. He corrected flight problems in the first supersonic surface-to-air missiles, developed a widely used tail-control system for supersonic interceptor missiles, and helped shepherd the Patriot anti-missile program in the 1980s.

Andrew A. "Andy" Dantzler, an optical engineer who was program area manager for civilian space at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, died Thursday of cardiac arrest at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The longtime Sykesville resident was 49. The son of a federal government worker and a counselor, Andrew A. Dantzler was born in Bethesda and raised in Rockville, where he graduated in 1980 from Robert E. Peary High School. After earning a bachelor's degree in astronomy and physics in 1984 from the University of Maryland, College Park, he went to work as an optical engineer at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.

Lewis H. Battee, a retired laboratory manager and avid crabber, died June 14 of pneumonia at Mercy Hospital in Oklahoma City. The former Linthicum Heights resident was 95. Born one of nine in Baltimore and raised near Patterson Park, Mr. Battee was the son of a city police officer and a homemaker. He dropped out of city public schools when he was 15 to help support his family. He went to work at the Koppers Co. and rose through the ranks. At the time of his 1977 retirement, he was head of Koppers' metrology laboratory.

Hitting back at the 'hit list'Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and Rep. Tom McMillen, D-4th, introduced legislation yesterday that would temporarily prohibit the closing of military laboratories.Six research and development facilities in Maryland are on Defense Secretary Richard Cheney's "hit list" of military bases to be closed or consolidated. That list is now being reviewed by a base-closure commission.Members of Congress, including the entire Maryland delegation, have criticized the list, saying they made it clear they didn't want laboratories included until a specially appointed commission turns in its findings.

A little-known offshoot of the Pentagon's latest base-closing plan is a massive, and at this point premature, reordering of the national research and development infrastructure. Dozens of labs, among them Annapolis' David Taylor Research Center and its sister installation in Carderock, Md., are headed for closure or realignment to minimize costs and maximize efficiency. One can hardly find fault in downsizing, given the profound changes in United States military strategy. But the research labs, testing and engineering centers now being swept up in the tide of recommended closures are not bases, but seeding grounds for some of the nation's premier scientific activity.

Lewis H. Battee, a retired laboratory manager and avid crabber, died June 14 of pneumonia at Mercy Hospital in Oklahoma City. The former Linthicum Heights resident was 95. Born one of nine in Baltimore and raised near Patterson Park, Mr. Battee was the son of a city police officer and a homemaker. He dropped out of city public schools when he was 15 to help support his family. He went to work at the Koppers Co. and rose through the ranks. At the time of his 1977 retirement, he was head of Koppers' metrology laboratory.

A second high-level official at the state health department's laboratory was placed on leave this week, following revelations that the lab destroyed a large number of records documenting lead poisoning in Maryland children. The lab's deputy director, Michael J. Wajda, has been removed from his position pending an investigation by the department's inspector general. The lab's former director, John DeBoy, was also placed on paid leave earlier this month. DeBoy, meanwhile, said through his attorney Friday that he destroyed lab records only after receiving approval from the office of the state attorney general, an assertion that a spokeswoman for the office did not directly address.