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WASHINGTON—Congress wants to cap the salaries that biomedical scientists receive for their work on federal research grants. Although the proposed limit .may not actually shrink the paychecks of individual scientists and will save the National Institutes of Health only about $10 million annually, it represents the latest move in a campaign to force universities to pick up a greater share of the cost of their research faculty. Asking universities to take on that burden, according to feder

Exit The Fusion Critic The persistent rumors that Robert Hunter was on his way out as director of DOE’s Office of Energy Research came true last month when Hunter resigned, effective immediately. His abrupt departure marked the end of a year-long battle with advocates of magnetic-confinement fusion projects like the Princeton Plasma Lab’s tokamak. Hunter preferred a process known as inertial-confinement fusion that is being developed at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national la

PHOENIX—It’s not often that Stephen Lisberger, a neurobiologist at the University of California, San Francisco speaks to 400 scientists at one sitting. But there was standing room only at this month’s 19th annual meeting of the Society for Neu- roscience when Lisberger—who uses monkeys to study eye movement—and two other researchers shared their experiences with proponents of theanimal rights movement. That panel discussion was one of three sessions designed t

Lederberg Plans Ahead With his successor, David Baltimore, waiting in the wings, Joshua Lederberg, president of the Rockefeller University in New York, can now think about his retirement. Lederberg, who has served as president since 1978, says he’s “looking forward to another change.” Lederberg will retire at the end of June, after reaching the mandatory retirement age of 65 in May. As for the future, “I’m still making my plans,” he says. “I’ll r

Lab’s Second Journal Debuts The Long Island, N.Y.-based Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory recently began publishing its second journal. Cancer Cells: A Monthly Review made its debut in September, joining Genes and Development, the lab’s 2 1/2-year-old periodical. “The lab has a big, publishing program, but it’s primarily books,” says Paula Kiberstis, Cancer Cells' editor. Kiberstis foresees even more Cold Spring Harbor journals in the pipeline: “The publications

WASHINGTON—A federal agency that polices the accuracy of U.S. advertising has sent a message to industry that it must report scientific results fairly and completely. Last month the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. reached an agreement on an FTC complaint brought against a 1985 advertisement by Reynolds that discussed the findings from a major National Institutes of Health-funded clinical trial aimed at reducing deaths from coronary heart disease. They

Early Warning About 12 seconds before the October 17 earthquake shook the San Francisco and Oakland region, 10 sensors placed along the Bay Area Rapid Transit’s subsurface rail lines warned of the imminent tragedy. Detecting the harmless “P waves” that arrived from the earthquake’s epicenter shortly before the more destructive “S waves,” the sensors triggered an alarm system that brought the trains to a crawl until they reached their next stations. The senso

WASHINGTON—Four months after one federal agency killed the prospect of government support of cold fusion, a second agency has brought it back to life. The strange phenomenon of low-temperature nuclear fusion, announced at the University of Utah with great fanfare March 23 by two chemists, took another bizarre turn last month when a self-described “upbeat, enthusiastic” panel of experts assembled by the National Sci ence Foundation’s engineering division concluded tha

On Feb. 5, 1987, Vilma Ponce and her infant daughter were stabbed to death in their Bronx, N.Y., apartment. Police arrested a suspect, Joseph Castro, on whose wristwat they found a small bloodstain. The police took the evidence to Lifecodes Corp. in Valhalla, N.Y., where lab analysis convinced the company’s scientists that DNA retrieved from the blood on the watchface matched that of the dead woman. If true, this would have put Castro at the scene of the crime. Chances of the match bei

WASHINGTON—”Vietnamese science,” says physicist Nguyen Van Hieu, “is only a little boy. We hope that the United States can help us to become strong and healthy.” Fourteen years after the end of a bitter war, Vietnam is trying to enlist U.S. scientists in an ambitious campaign to rebuild its impoverished country. The job won’t be easy: The U.S. has a ban on all trade with Vietnam, the two governments have no diplomatic relations, and there is no tradition

A year ago, Ira Rubinoff was considering a gala celebration, with lots of media and top brass, to dedicate the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s new $8 million laboratory in Panama City. Not any more. When the Earl S. Tupper Research and Conference Center finally opens its doors this winter, months behind schedule, the event will be decidely low-key. Given the increasingly tense political situation between the United States and Panama, Rubinoff isn’t eager to draw atten

WASHINGTON—When forest biologist Richard Condit of Princeton University applied for a grant to study how trees in tropical forests are related, the National Science Foundation told him that he had a great idea. But they rejected his application because he couldn’t prove that his approach would work. Condit is trying again, but NSF has decided to give scientists like him a chance to prove their theories without wasting a lot of federal money on experiments that don't work. The ne