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Insurance Pool Formed

By Susan Walton | November 17, 1986

WASHINGTON-A group of biotechnology companies have agreed to form a captive insurance plan to help them cope with the rising cost of liability insurance. The captive plan will give participating companies both product liability and directors and officers' coverage, explained Jeffrey Gibbs, associate general counsel for the 175-member Association of Bio technology Companies. It will provide the 24 companies now interested in the plan with an aggregate limit of $2.5 million in liability coverage,

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Is Eureka Too Big For Europe?

By David Fishlock | November 17, 1986

LONDON-Next month in Stockholm the 19 members of the Eureka project will discuss whether to accept non-European countries. If they agree to an expansion, the fledgling research enterprise will have taken another big step toward its goal of stimulating collaboration among nations on high technology projects. The Eureka project is meant to force collaborative research and development partnerships between companies drawn from at least two different European nations. The goal is to develop new comm

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Lab Facilities Gap Widens

By Tabitha Powledge | November 17, 1986

WASHINGTON-The 50 U.S. universities that spend the most on R&D already average more than three times the research space available at less affluent institutions, according to a new survey re leased late last month by the National Science Foundation. In addition, plans for expanding and refurbishing research space at these institutions in the next five years outstrip by 25 percent similar construction plans at the other 115 schools. What NSF calls the "top 50" schools expect to have 12.3 milli

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Let Science and Religion Stay Separate

By Francisco Ayala | November 17, 1986

The theory of evolution asserts ' that evolution has occurred and explains how it occurred. Biological evolution is a fact established beyond reasonable doubt. Living beings descend from other organisms more and more different as we go farther back into the past. Our ancestors of many millions of years ago were not human. We are related to the apes and other animals by common ancestry. Biological evolution is a fact established with the same degree of certainty as the rotation

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Model to Measure Impact of Technology

By Amy Mcdonald | November 17, 1986

The new gallium arsenide computer chips, with processing speeds nearly 10 times faster than silicon, provide plenty of food for thought to an electronics industry hungry for success. But observers still have little to chew on when they try to measure the chips' impact. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers wants to enrich the meal. It has joined with Nobel laureate Wassily Leontief of New York University's Institute for Economic Analysis on a model to help people evaluate the economic imp

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Nobel Winners Stimulate Research

By Alexander Grimwade | November 17, 1986

PHILADELPHIA-The Nobel Prizes are not the result of an election among scientists for "best scientist of the year." But practicing scientists do pass judgment of a kind when they cite other scientists' work in their papers or build on that work to move into a new research area. By that yardstick, this year's laureates are worthy recipients of the prizes from the Swedish Academy of Sciences. All the winners have published work that has been highly cited by their peers and which has led to importan

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Release Study Lacks Funding

November 17, 1986

WASHINGTON-The National Research Council wants to lend an in-dependent voice to the current stalemate on the release into the environment of genetically engineered organisms-but it lacks the cash. Its Board on Basic Biology concluded a two-day meeting last month with a resolution stressing "the scientific and economic urgency" of conducting such a study that would seek a scientific consensus on definitions and on classifications of risk. Last year four federal agencies rejected separate requests

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Scientific Computing

By Simon Dm White | November 17, 1986

NUMERICAL RECIPES The Art of Scientific Computing. William H. Press, Brian P. Flannery, Saul A. Teukoisky and William I. Vetterling. Cambridge University Press, New York, 1986. 838pp., illus. $39.50. Example Book (FORTRAN), 187 pp. Paper, $ 18.95. Example Book (Pascal), 246 pp. Paper, $18.95. FORTRAN and Pascal diskettes, $19.95 each. The use of computers is becoming a larger and larger part of the working life of most scientists. 'Twenty years ago obtaining numerical solutions was an arduous ta

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Scientific Memoir: Variations on a Theme

By Laurence Marschall | November 17, 1986

MEMOIR OF A THINKING RADISH An Autobiography. Peter Medawar. Oxford University Press, New York, 1986. 221 pp., illus. $17.95; £12.50. THE SMALL WORLD OF FRED HOYLE An Autobiography. Fred Hoyle. Michael Joseph, London, 1986. 191 pp. £10.95. A LIFE IN SCIENCE Nevill Mott. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia, 1986. 206 pp., illus. $27; £15. "The lives of scientists," writes Sir Peter Medawar, "almost always make dull reading." He is not just being coy. Science, for all its focus on the n

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So They Say

November 17, 1986

Excerpts from American and European media on the conduct of science. CONTENTS Show Some Muscle With Friends Like That What's In a Name? Looking to the Stars Zinos, Winos and Reality Plank's Other Law High Hopes Congress Knows Best Setting Up Shop in Space Show Some Muscle Too many universities in Britain are over-spending their over-modest budgets in ways that put them in hock to the University Grants Committee and even, on some occasions, the commercial banks; no

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