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Voters in Maryland strongly favor higher federal spending for health care and medical research, according to a recent poll commissioned by Research!America. The Alexandria, Va.- based nonprofit advocacy group sponsoring the study promotes the benefits of medical research. Seventy-six percent of those polled would increase federal spending on health care, while perennial favorites such as education and the environment fared slightly less well, with 72 percent and 68 percent, respectively, of re

Peace Dividend Slimy Characters Split Personality Move Over, Mickey Hair-Raising Possibilities Hormonal Edge Science, politics, and law intersected in a speech by Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz at a recent Philadelphia fund-raiser for Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science. Dershowitz, whose keynote address followed a talk by Hadassa Degani, head of Weizmann's nuclear magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy unit, said Israel's scientific prestige could exceed its curr

For 32 years, Richard Aulerich, a professor of animal science at Michigan State University, has dedicated his work to one area, mink research. An attack in late February by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), however, destroyed his lab and most of his current data. Aulerich now finds himself in the center of what has become an archetypal struggle between those who favor animal rights and those who say they are engineering progress through the use of live animals. Mink research at MSU began in t

With recession taking its toll on campuses throughout the U.S., scientists seek ways to cope with hard times Sizable cutbacks in state funding to public and private academic institutions are taking an increasingly heavy toll on campus research, say university scientists and administrators throughout the United States. The debilitating impact, they claim, is being felt as the 1991-92 school year draws to a close. While summers past may have carried the promise to university researchers of a f

They fear that funding support for their vast gene-mapping project could erode now that the Nobelist is leaving While the head of the nation's premier health agency may not be losing sleep over the resignation of James Watson as head of the Human Genome Project (HGP), many genetic researchers are distressed to see him go. Genome scientists interviewed for this article say it will be difficult for the National Institutes of Health, via its search committee, to find someone with the same drive

Wisconsin geneticist Oliver Nelson: "Stick with the real problems. Stay flexible and learn new techniques." Scan the lists of grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation and you'll find that there are several hundred scientists who seem to have the knack of finding a funding source and keeping it -- not for the one or two renewals that most scientists consider the answer to a prayer, but for two or three decades. How do they manage this? Scientists w

Henry Hurwitz, Jr., a physicist at General Electric Co. who pioneered the theory and design of nuclear power plants and most recently helped engineer the reactor for the Seawolf nuclear submarine, died April 14 in Schenectady, N.Y., at the age of 73. In 1955, a year after Fortune magazine named him as one of the top 10 scientists in U.S. industry, Hurwitz contributed to establishing the first atomic containment sphere for GE. The development advanced industry-wide safety protocols for enclosin

W. Paul Havens, Jr., a professor of medicine at Jefferson Medical College and a prominent researcher into viral hepatitis, died April 6 at his home in Haverford, Pa., at the age of 80. Havens began his medical career in 1932 as a graduate of Harvard Medical School, when the amount of clinical information available in the United States was, of course, not nearly as voluminous as it is today. During the time Havens served with the U.S. Army Medical Corps in World War II, little was known about

The next president--whoever it may be after elections this fall--must make the future of the biotechnology business a priority, according to a leading industry group. In a detailed agenda released late last month and forwarded to each major party's platform committees, the Industrial Biotechnology Association (IBA) identified the issues most important to its 130 members. "The highest-visibility issues for biotechnology this election surround health care reform and patent issues," says IBA dir

Pugwash For The Pros Keeping Current - Sort Of Olympic Trials Peak Conditions Young scientists and other professionals who as students were active in Student Pugwash USA now have a means to stay involved with the Pugwash movement after they graduate. The Student Pugwash office has announced the birth of Professional Pugwash, a new arm of the movement that explores the relationship of science to society (The Scientist, April 2, 1990, page 7). While Student Pugwash is itself a spin-off o

Amid the advertisements for bras, baby clothes, and low-rate mortgages cluttering the first section of the April 21 New York Times appeared a photo of a big, fat, white rat. A full-page ad featuring the rodent was headlined, "Some People Just See a Rat. We See a Cure for Cancer." Text running beneath the striking photo attacked "animal rights activists [who] use disinformation, pressure tactics and active terrorism.... "Society cannot allow itself to be manipulated by a handful of zealots w

The public strongly supports scientific research, according to a recent poll from Louis Harris and Associates Inc., but shows marked favoritism when asked to choose among fields. Of eight areas, medical research was rated as "most valuable" by almost half of those polled--49 percent--while environmental and energy investigation were so ranked by 29 percent and 10 percent, respectively. At the bottom end of the sampling, only 1 percent to 3 percent of the people questioned gave top votes to el