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Roy Schwitters, Director The National Science Foundation demonstrated its knack for spotting talent 10 years ago when it selected this experimental physicist for its prestigious Alan T. Waterman Award as the nation’s outstanding young scientist. Schwitters, then a recently named professor of physics at Harvard, was chosen for his important contributions in the design and construction of a particle detector for the Stanford Positron-Electron Accelerating Ring at the Stanford Linear Acceler

WASHINGTON-A new program at the National Science Foundation will give institutions a larger voice in training researchers in the life sciences. The initiative, which NSF plans to launch with a $4 million investment next year, is also aimed at stimulating interdisciplinary research in the nation’s universities. Called the Research Training Group Awards, the program is sponsored by the NSF’s Biological, Behavioral and Social Sciences (BBS) directorate. The foundation hopes to award

Marvin L. Speck was a professor of food science and microbiology at North Carolina State University when he developed a new process to help people digest milk. Speck recognized that his discovery, which he called SweetAcidophilus in honor of the fact that it improved on the unpleasant taste of the existing process, had commercial possibilities. So in 1972 he convinced the university to assign the trademark to a state dairy foundation, which then signed agreements with two companies, one to manuf

Pity the Nobel committee now trying to make its selection for the next prize in physiology or medicine, soon to be announced. The committee has a very difficult task. The five-member group at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm is sifting through dossiers on more than 100 candidates. The committee members are no doubt asking themselves, as they must ask themselves every year, “How are we to select from among this collection of outstanding, world-class researchers just one (or at mos

New Postdoctoral Fellowship For Minorities To increase the number of black, Hispanic, Native American, and other minority life scientists, NSF will sponsor 10 postdoctoral fellows in the biological, behavioral, and social sciences. Applicants must have earned their Ph.D.’s between January 1986 and January 1991. As part of this new program, NSF will help place these fellows and will provide up to $3,000 so that qualified candidates can visit prospective mentors or attend professional meet

Project Focuses On Roots Of World Hunger When the agricultural expertise that produces Georgia’s peaches meets the brains behind Israel’s Jaffa oranges, the result may be a key to ending world hunger. Israeli scientists working under the auspices of the Jewish National Fund, a nonprofit group dedicated to developing Israeli agriculture through reforestation, have teamed up with the University of Georgia School of Forest Resources to study the ecophysiology and genetics of drought-t

SAN DIEGO—The University of California, San Diego, and its affiliate, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, are planning a new center that will combine the basic research skills of Scripps investigators with the medical talents of the university’s school of medicine to unlock the secrets of sea life. The UCSD-Scripps project—details of which are still being worked out—is the latest of several efforts in recent months by institutions intent on forging ahead with new

Berkeley Bevalac, Three Others Threatened Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s venerable Bevalac accelerator, for 35 years a laboratory centerpiece and the tool for four Nobel Prizes, appears to be the big loser in another national lab’s campaign for a new heavy-ion research facility. A Department of Energy panel has suggested that the Bevalac be phased out in the mid-i 990s in favor of Brookhaven National Lab’s proposed Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider if the department’s nuclear ph

The 1989 Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation Medical Research Awards, given to six scientists for their achievements in the medical sciences and public health administration, were announced last week. The awards, first presented in 1944, are divided into three categories: public service, clinical medical research, and basic medical research. A $15,000 prize is given in each Category. Lewis Thomas, 75, scholar-in-residence at Cornell University Medical College, Ithaca, N.Y., received the 1989 Al

When Price Is No Object Once the Department of Energy selected Texas as the preferred site for the Superconducting Supercollider, it wanted everybody to know exactly how it had gone about assessing the environmental aspects of its big decision. The resulting document, in four volumes, weighed 26 pounds; DOE sent out 17,000 copies, at a cost of $1.4 million. That extravagant first-class mailing piqued the interest of Congress, especially members from some of The seven states that had lost out t

Stellar Discovery For 19-Year-Old Student “Pretty good.” That’s how 19-year-old Celina Mikolajozak feels about discovering a supernova this summer. Mikolajczak, an engineering student at the California Institute of Technology, spotted the event—designated SN 1989N—while participating in Caltech’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF). The program, says Eleanor Helm, a planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who sponsored Mikolajczak th

A Chip Off The Old Du Pont A group of about 100 former Du Pont engineers and scientists has issued its first multiclient marketing research paper, an important step in the growth of the firm’s marketing business. Established in 1985 after Du Pont drastically cut its worldwide staff with an unrestricted early retirement plan, Condux Inc. is a consulting firm that primarily offers industry its technical expertise. Not surprisingly, perhaps, one of Condux’s clients has been Du Pont it