Research

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Stanford University vowed yesterday never to be embarrassed again by revelations of overcharging the government for research and unveiled a 35-point program to reform its accounting practices.The university promised tighter controls over what it charges the government for costs of doing research, stepped-up training of researchers and university employees to spot "unallowable" bills and guarantees to protect campus whistle-blowers who suspect wrongdoing in government contracts.

Genetic Therapy Inc. began construction yesterday of a new $20 million state-of-the art research facility in Gaithersburg.The company, which is developing gene therapies for cancer, vascular and other diseases, hopes to occupy the new building in late 1999, said Rachel King, chief executive officer of GTI, which is owned by drug-giant Novartis of Basel, Switzerland.King said the 70,000 square-foot, two-story project is a sign of the company's commitment to remaining headquartered in Maryland and of Novartis' commitment to advancing gene therapy.

Tadeusz H. Leser, a retired research mathematician, died March 28 of cancer at his Bel Air home. He was 91. He worked for the Army's Ballistics Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground for nearly 20 years until he retired in 1973. He published 15 research papers and wrote hundreds of reviews of scientific literature while at Aberdeen. Born in Lwow, Poland, he graduated in 1930 with full honors from the Warsaw Military College. In 1935, he began his studies at Warsaw Polytechnic Institute, where he received his master of science degree in engineering.

BOSTON - Before it rules on the important issue of federal support for embryonic stem- cell research, the Bush administration needs to fully inform itself about the ramifications of its decision. If the president acts to appease those who object to any use of human embryos, he would do more than smother research that could greatly advance the fight against diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson's, arthritis and Alzheimer's. A ban on federal support would substitute politics for merit in the making of science policy and would cast a pall over other efforts on the frontiers of medical science.

LOST amid the heat and smoke of the debate regarding public schools is the equally tragic failure of our elite private research universities. A startlingly frank report recently issued by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has put this issue squarely in the public eye.The report takes the country's research universities to task for largely ignoring their duty to undergraduates and for substituting platitudes and slick public relations for...

Mary Lowe, an assistant professor at Loyola College, is one of 30 recipients of this year's Presidential Faculty Fellow Awards, which will support her research to the tune of $100,000 a year for five years.Generally, schools like Loyola put such a heavy load of teaching on their faculty that original research is put on the back burner, particularly in scientific areas that require expensive laboratories and technical support. But the 33-year-old Dr. Lowe, a Harvard graduate who received her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, is trying to prove that top-level research can take place in the atmosphere of a small liberal arts college.

WASHINGTON - The long-raging conflict between Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence Small and the 156-year-old institution's scholars and scientists has been resolved, largely in favor of the scientists. A report prepared by 18 of the nation's leading science experts urged that scientific research at the Smithsonian be strengthened and expanded, rather than curtailed to accommodate fiscal constraints. It warned, however, that the taxpayer-supported Smithsonian is seriously underfunded and needs new revenue sources.

Life Technologies Inc. announced yesterday a joint research venture with Los Alamos National Laboratories that will put the Gaithersburg company near the forefront of path-breaking basic research into human genetics and the causes of human disease.The three-year deal gives the Gaithersburg company the first rightto manufacture any commercially useful chemicals discovered during the joint research with the New Mexico-based federal laboratory.Life Technologies will pay royalties to the laboratory if it decides to go ahead and produce any new enzymes or other chemicals, Mary Fraker, a company spokeswoman, said.

Carol P. Lewis, a researcher who studied the prevention and control of chronic diseases, died of liver disease Wednesday in Ume, Sweden, where she was on a research project. She was 69 and had lived in the Tuscany-Canterbury section of North Baltimore. Born and raised in Quincy, Mass., Dr. Lewis earned an undergraduate degree from Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Mass. She moved to Baltimore in the 1960s to pursue studies in social work, education and public health. In 1966, Dr. Lewis received a master's degree in social work from the University of Maryland and from the Johns Hopkins University, where she studied education and public health administration.

LA JOLLA, Calif. -- Two scientists working at the far edge of AIDS research have discovered two promising treatment approaches to the deadly global epidemic, and although both have shown success only in laboratory experiments, each researcher independently sees the other's as innovative and exciting.One of the scientists, Dr. Flossie Wong-Staal, is a molecular biologist who gained fame at the National Cancer Institute as a pioneer member of the team that first cloned the genes for the AIDS virus.