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When the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science opens in Boston later this week, eight of its scores of sessions will deal with AIDS. That is far more attention than the meeting allocates to any other single topic. Even superconductivity, the glamour kid of science, gets only two. Despite all those days of discussion, judging by the condensed program available in advance of the meeting, the organizers have ignored a critical aspect of AIDS research: the safet

Scientists like to succeed. They like to get the results they hope for, to be recognized for what they have done. But they also know that the greatest success may come from something unexpected, including failure. For example, the failure of Michelson and Morley to detect ether drift was a magnificent failure, which upset classical physics and helped advance Einstein's revolutionary ideas. At the other extreme are the dismal failures that do nothing but consume time and energy and erode the sp

Copyright © 1988 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reprinted by permission.

Editor's note: This is the first of three articles on utilities for personal computers that will appear over the next several issues. Part 2 will deal with DOS utilities and part 3 with desktop utilities. What are "free" programs and "shareware" programs? Free programs are exactly what they sound like: If you can get copies, they cost nothing. They are often called "public domain," which is a misnomer since most In fact are copyrighted. Shareware is often confused with free software. Its ce

THE NEW RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT Videotape 1-Animal Rights The Threat to Research. Videotape 2 The New Research Environment The Foundation for Biomedical Research. Washington. DC, 1987. VHS: $50 set. 3/4-inch U-Matic: $55 set. INVESTIGATOR'S HANDBOOK For Researchers Using Animal Models. The Foundation for Biomedical Research, Washington DC. 1987.86 pp. $10. CARE AND USE COMMITTEES January 1987 Issue of Laboratory Animal Science. F. Barbara Orlans. Richard C. Simmonds and W. Jean Dodds, eds. The

Dialectical Materialism in the 1980s Radiobiology's War of Words Exchanges, Acronyms And More PHILOSOPHY, AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN THE SOVIET UNION Loren R. Graham. Columbia University Press, New York, 1987. 565 pp. $45. BY LINDA L. LUBRANO In 1970 Loren R. Graham completed an outstanding work entitled Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union. Nominated for the National Book Award, it was the first book to explore the close interrelationship between dialectical materialism and the i

A Niche for Reagan's AIDS Commission A New Yawning Theory International Cooperation: Possible But Not Practical R&D's New Role Who's the Bumblingest Of Them All? Who Will Be the Lucky One? Beyond the Three Rs The more important function for which the [Presidential Commission on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus] . . . commission might be uniquely situated is to remove bureaucratic impediments to research. Fundamental investigation in virology, pathology and drug therapy must be given its

Simple Curiosity: Letters from George Gaylord Simpson to His Family, 1921-1970. Leo F. La- porte, ed. University of California Press: February, 340 pp. $29.95. Collection of letters that range from Simpson's career as a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, Harvard, the University of Arizona and the British Museum, through expeditions he took to the American West, South American Pampas, North Africa and Italy. Reproduction and Development Marine Invertebrates of the North

This is the last of a three-part series on temporary staffing in science.

PEOPLE AWARDS DEATHS OPPORTUNITIES ECETERA MEETINGS Richard J. Gowen, president of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology became 1988 chairman of the American Association of Engineering Societies on January 1. John W. Ahien, president and chief executive officer of the Arkansas Science and Technology Authority, director of the Arkansas Capital Corp. and Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton's science adviser, was elected chairman of the AAES public affairs council, and Delon Hampton,

NSF Science Centers Dead for ' 88 Washington - The National Science Foundation's plan to fund $30 million in university-based science and technology centers is dead for this year, according to NSF sources. But the program will get a boost in the 1989 budget that President Reagan will submit next Week. A tight 1988 budget has forced NSF officials to delay plans to begin the centers program this year. At press time NSF was still processing some 400 to 500 proposals that ware submitted by, and I

Washington - A proposal for a permanent body to stimulate biotechnology research and its commercial applications has triggered political tug-of-War over the right to shape federal policy. The Senate is expected to act a early as this spring on a bill (S. 1966) to set up a National Biotechnology Policy Board with 20 members drawn from government agencies, industry and academia. The board would be a permanent body within the executive branch and would produce a report every two years, beginning