The Idaho Statesman from Boise, Idaho • 2

HOME 2A Monday, November 8, 1993 The Idaho Statesman Lottery results There were no winners of the $7.2 million jackpot in Saturday's Idaho Powerball drawing. The jackpot for Wednesday's drawing is estimated at $9 million. Saturday's numbers were 3, 22, 26, 28 and 45. The powerball was 26. TEL-US There were 60 responses Sunday to this question: Have you ever purchased goods in Oregon to avoid Idaho sales tax? YES NO UNDECIDED TODAY'S QUESTION Rate President Clinton's foreign policy performance.

Touch users call one of these toll-free numbers: 888- 4043 in Boise, Meridian and Nampa or 454-1186 in Caldwell. Wait for instructions and enter category 7777. Call between 5 a.m. and 8 p.m. today The results of this telephone poll are unscientific About your paper General information 377-6200 The Idaho Statesman (USPS256020) is published daily.

Our daily business hours are 8 a.m.-5:30 p.m. at 1200 N. Curtis Road, Boise, Idaho 83706 (P.O. Box 40, Boise, 83707). Other numbers 467-1145 Toll free in 1-800-632-8082 Outside Idaho 1-800-635-8934 News If you have a news tip, call the city desk at 377-6401.

If you have a complaint or suggestion, call Managing Editor Bill Roberts at 377-6406. Our fax number for press releases or letters to the editor is 377- 6449. Advertising Classified ads. 377-6333 Paid obituaries 377-6317 p.m. daily weekends) Fax number 377-6309 Other Information 377-6350 Circulation The Statesman should arrive by 6:30 a.m.

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For home delivery call: Ada 377-6370 Nampa-Caldwell 467-1145 (or call the toll-free number above) For USA TODAY subscription information, call the circulation department. Four-week rates Suggested Sales rate tax Total Carrier 7-day $11.40 60 $1200 Carrier daily only 7.81 39 8.20 Carrier 667 33 7 00 Motor 7-day 12.73 67 13.40 Motor daily only 8.76 44 9 20 Motor 7 05 35 7 40 For mail subscriptions, call 377-6370 Second-class postage paid at Boise, Idaho and additional mailing office. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Idaho Statesman, P.O. Box 40, Boise, Idaho 83707. Department heads Publisher Gordon Black 377-6300 Circulation director Bob Barth 377-6380 Executive editor John Costa 377-6403 Controller Lindy Edmund 377-6455 Advertising director Leslie Glallombardo 377-4357 Human Resources director Janet Hardy 377-6244 Marketing director Nancy McKinnon 377-6382 Production director Mike Tomasieski 377-4491 FOR THE RECORD Our main concern in all stories is to be accurate.

If you know of an error in a story, please let us know by calling 377-6401. SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY THE NATION a OPEN The Associated Press UP IN THE AIR: Crew members and workers examine the Earthwinds Hilton capsule in Reno, on Sunday, following the aborted launch of the first manned around-the-world balloon flight on Saturday. The capsule and helium balloon broke free from some of its moorings shortly before launch and went almost 90 feet into the air before being restrained by tiedowns. The capsule then settled heavily back onto the pad. The project will go forward, but until any damage is assessed, it is unknown whether the project will take place during this window, which lasts until February, or wait until November 1994.

WELFARE REFORM DOMINATES POLITICS: Reforming welfare is now such a popular idea that Republicans are racing to beat President Clinton to the punch while moderate Democrats press the White House to overhaul the system in time for their 1994 campaigns. House Republicans just finished their version of welfare reform legislation and plan to introduce the 154-page bill Wednesday. It ends welfare to most non-citizens, requires mothers who apply for assistance to identify their children's fathers, and limits lifetime benefits to two years. Centrist Democrats, meanwhile, have sent notice to a White House that needs their votes that they intend to help the president keep his campaign promises to impose time limits and work requirements. "'We want him to know that he does not have to back down and settle for window dressing around the edges and leave the dry rot to continue to weaken the entire structure," Rep.

Nathan Deal, said. FIRE LOSS ESTIMATE RISES: Fire-devastated residents of Malibu, sought solace at church services Sunday, while the American Red Cross reported damage more extensive than previously thought. A Red Cross survey counted 390 residences destroyed, seven with major damage and 51 with minor damage, spokeswoman Barbara Wilks said. The tally of lost homes was up from an earlier figure of 350. "It's OK to cry.

We have Kleenex in the pews for you today," the Rev. David A. Worth said at Malibu Presbyterian Church. "To those of you who lost homes: Our hearts go out to you. If you're going through a crisis, let's talk it out." Most of the members of the congregation were wearing shorts and T-shirts or sweatshirts.

BOMBING SUSPECT TURNS 18: A white supremacist who turned 18 in jail on Sunday after being arrested in five racially motivated firebombings in Sacramento, should be tried as an adult and face penalties of life in prison, a prosecutor said. The suspect was taken into custody Saturday in the first arrest since the attacks began in July. Police Chief Arturo Venegas said the teen-ager was "a believer in white supremacist movements" but was "not being characterized as a skinhead." County District Attorney Steve White said he would ask the Juvenile Court at a hearing Tuesday to have the teen-ager tried as an adult. White said the suspect's name would be released only if the court agreed to try him as an adult. The identities of juvenile suspects are secret.

Venegas said police were continuing their investigation, but that it was too early to say whether others were involved. GAYS CALL FOR BOYCOTT OF CINCINNATI: Gay activists are calling for a boycott of Cincinnati to protest voters' rejection of a year-old law that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. "'The reality is to put some pressure on this city," said Todd Kamm, a boycott organizer. "I'm certainly willing to make my sacrifices over it, and a lot of other people are, he said. The ballot measure, which passed by a 3-2 ratio, forbids the City Council to adopt or enforce any law that gives legal protection specifically to homosexuals.

NORTH KOREA THREATENS SOUTH KOREA: North Korea declared Sunday that it would deal decisively with what it called South Korea's hostile attitude, but gave no indication what action it had in mind. Reacting to U.S.-South Korean security talks last week, the North's leading newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, denounced the rival government in Seoul as "a puppet under foreign domination." About 35,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea, which the North invaded in 1950, starting a three-year war. Under present defense arrangements, an American commander would head U.S. and South Korean troops in case of war.

The newspaper is an organ of the ruling Workers (Communist) Party. JORDAN CANDIDATES CAMPAIGN: Candidates made last-minute appeals Sunday for votes in Jordan's first multiparty elections since 1956, in which proponents of peace with Israel are expected to retain a majority in parliament. Today's elections come after Israeli officials confirmed over the weekend that Jordan and Israel are close to reaching a peace agreement. King Hussein has not yet made any public comment. While Muslim fundamentalists are expected to win the single largest bloc in the 80-seat lower house of parliament, conservative and tribal members who support Hussein's propeace policy are expected to keep a majority of seats.

Nobel Prize in medicine brews resentment, envy By Anthony Flint Boston Globe The champagne bottles were uncorked and the television cameras whirred in the atrium of New England Biolabs in Beverly, that sunny afternoon of Oct. 11. Hours before, one of the lab's top researchers, Richard J. Roberts, had learned that he had won the Nobel Prize in medicine, and everyone was beaming. But behind that happy celebration is a tale of an intense competition for recognition among the scientists involved in the work that won the prize, a landmark study on how genes are spliced.

The struggle raises new questions about how the scientific community bestows credit for major discoveries. According to several scientists, Louise T. Chow, a Taiwanese researcher who worked with Roberts at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1977, the year the discovery was made, should have shared in the Nobel. Chow operated the electron microscope through which the splicing process was observed and designed the crucial experiment using techniques she developed in the previous two years at the lab. evidence she discovered formed an important part of the total creative insight that splicing was taking place.

Only she could have interpreted those data," said Norman Davidson, a professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology and an expert in electron microscopy, under whom Chow apprenticed as a graduate student. 4 mary credit for the gene-splicing work starting in 1977 and that Chow, in particular, was privately dismayed that she did not share in the prize. "I knew she was upset," he said. Roberts said Chow and her husband and fellow researcher, Tom Broker, who also was at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1977, deserve "lots and lots of credit" but, "In the long run, when the Swedes make a decision, they don't have the luxury of including five to 10 people on the James Watson, head of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and the 1962 Nobel co-laureate for the initial discovery of the structure of DNA, said he wanted Chow to share in the prize. But he said he was limited by the Nobel committee's rule that a maximum of three people can win one award and that if he nominated Chow, the committee would have felt compelled to include Susan Berget, who did the electron microscopy work for Sharp.

Controversy has arisen many times in the 92-year history of science's most prestigious award, when the Nobel committee in Stockholm has chosen individuals while the work, as so often is the case in science, is of a collaborative nature. Generally, scientists say the Nobel committee will not give the award to assistants and technicians who merely carry out orders. In the Cold Spring Harbor case, Chow says she was not just a member of a team but also had a critical, original, creative role in designing the 1977 experiment. Backstage affairs The case also reveals the intense, behind-the-scenes world of scientists who regard themselves as on equal footing jockeying for recognition. In April 1990, for example, Roberts produced a 15-page memo chronicling the process that led to the discovery complete with a summary at the end of who made what contribution.

The memo also carefully documented the extent of contact with Sharp, to distinguish the Cold Spring Harbor work from what Sharp was doing. "Everyone wanted to believe that their own part in the story was the most important. A competition began among the participants to downplay everyone else's contribution and so bolster their own," Roberts wrote of the Cold Spring team. Roberts said he wrote the memo at Watson's request and gave it to "one or two friends." Watson said he circulated the memo among scientists with whom the Nobel committee was likely to make contact. But the memo rankled some in the scientific community, who viewed it as an overly aggressive lobbying effort.

Broker was prompted to write and circulate a response to Roberts' memo. PEOPLE Each played a part "Roberts put it together, but Chow really broke the logjam," said a former employee of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory who was contacted by the Nobel committee, which for several years before the Oct. 11 announcement tried to discern precisely who should win the prize for the discovery. Chow, contacted at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, where she now is a professor of molecular biochemistry, said she did not want to raise the issue in the media. But when pressed about her role, she said the experiments she performed "were not trivial.

It was a new type of experiment and needed to be designed and set up." The co-winner of the prize, Phillip A. Sharp of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was a clear choice for the Nobel committee, according to sources familiar with the case; Sharp performed parallel but separate experiments on genesplicing in 1977. But the Nobel committee took longer to select a scientist from the Cold Spring Harbor team. In an interview, Roberts acknowledged that there was contention about who deserved pri- Gorbachev hero abroad, but just a has-been at home By Deborah Seward The Associated Press MOSCOW Life in the new Russia hasn't been easy for comrade Mikhail Gorbachev. A hero in the West, the former Soviet leader is a target of scorn and a symbol of failure in his own country.

Just before he flew to the United States this week at the invitation of Senate Republicans, a court ordered Gorbachev to apologize for insulting Moscow's mayor. The slander suit was the latest humiliating episode for Gorbachev, still treated as a powerful statesman abroad but a pariah at home. Russia's disdain for the man who presided over the demise of communism is bewildering in the West, where the Nobel Peace Prize winner is credited with ending the Cold War and lifting the Iron Curtain. In Russia, Gorbachev is blamed by all sides for all things. He is held responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rise of ethnic violence and the ruin of the country's economy.

Gorbachev now ranks so low in popularity polls that it is doubtful he could be elected to any major office in Russia. To enjoy the limelight, Gorbachev has to travel abroad, where he commands fat speaking fees many Russians envy and celebrity status they cannot fathom. He was expected to earn about $70,000 this trip. The dueling memos led to an intense but quiet debate in the scientific community about the case, both before the Oct. 11 announcement and after Roberts won the prize.

A copy of Roberts' memo was made available to The Boston Globe. In the days after the announcement, meanwhile, Chow's brother, Yu Chow, told a daily newspaper in Chow's native Taiwan about his sister's disappointment. Chow provided the newspaper a brief statement confirming what her brother had said and stating that without her, the discovery at Cold Spring Harbor would not have been made. But she would not comment further to the newspaper. The discovery at the center of this controversy was one of the great moments in molecular biology.

In separate but parallel experiments, Sharp and the Cold Spring Harbor team found that genes in higher organisms do not consist of a continuous, uninterrupted stream of DNA in chromosomes, as previously believed. They found that genes are interrupted by segments of "nonsense" information called introns, which are spliced or "edited" out by an intermediary agent called messenger RNA, which brings the information to the machinery in the cell that makes protein. In what scientists say is a common practice for the Nobel committee, the Swedes recognized the historic impact of the discovery first and then set about the business of sorting out who was responsible. For years, Sharp was known to be in line for the prize, but the committee had a tougher time deciding on the Cold Spring Harbor team. Blas suspected Davidson, although he said he did not want to second-guess the Nobel committee, suggested that Chow may have been slighted.

"She's a woman, an Asian woman who's a little quiet," he said. "Sometimes they get ignored." Roberts said he did not think he had lobbied for the prize' or subordinated anyone's contributions. He said there was contention about who should get credit for the work before the Nobel announcement and hard feelings now that the prize has been awarded. "To expect anybody close to this discovery not to expect the maximum amount of credit would be to deny human nature," Roberts said. His collaborators, he said, "want to get as much credit as they possibly can.

That's what happened in this case. Everyone associated with the case realized it was a' very big discovery. "The Swedes spent 16 years deciding what to do. We can only assume they researched the issue carefully and came to their own conclusions as to who did what. I don't think it was done lightly." "He'll have a place in history for sure," said Gennady Kolukhin, a biologist.

"But without a doubt, it will be a place of shame." Nearly two years have passed since Gorbachev relinquished power Dec. 25, 1991, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Gorbachev quickly vanished from the headlines in the Russian press, and few stories about him appear these days. Yuri Luzhkov's victory Tuesday in the slander suit against Gorbachev was fodder for the press, which ignored his trip to the United States, where he was to address the National Republican Senatorial Committee last Thursday. Gorbachev had accused Luzhkov of financing country homes for city officials.

The former Communist Party daily Pravda didn't miss a chance to take a dig at Gorbachev's domestic woes in September. Gorbachev's mother reportedly sold the family home to a Russian pop singer to get money to live. In its report, Pravda implied Gorbachev didn't care about his mother. Not that Gorbachev's government monthly pension of about $3.39 provides much of an income to care for his family. "It's not nice.

It's cheap. Do they (government) really think Gorbachev is going to beg?" said Vladimir Poliakov, a spokesman for the former Soviet leader's think tank. Gorbachev has increasingly Mikhall Gorbachev Rejected by comrades attacked his old rival, Russian President Boris Yeltsin. He has accused Yeltsin of violating the constitution and has condemned his use of tanks against his enemies in parliament an especially ironic charge since the Soviet president sent troops and tanks against civilians in Georgia, Tajikistan and Lithuania during his rule. Yeltsin also has taken shots at Gorbachev.

Last year, he released damaging Communist Party documents some of which indicated Gorbachev continued Soviet support of terrorists and he humiliated the former president by confiscating, his limousine and much of his office space. Every once in a while, Gorbachev drops hints that he would like "save the nation" by returning to politics. But not one party has asked Gorbachev to be a candidate in the Dec. 12 election to the new federal parliament. Even his old comrades won't take him back; they call him a traitor to the Communist Party..