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{WantNoCacheVal} EC Hopes to Reverse Brain Drain RICHARD STEVENSON LONDON—Stanford University wanted to create a program in organic geochemistry. Simon Brassell, a young research fellow at Bristol University, was looking for a better career opportunity. Unfortunately for Europe, it was a good watch: Brassell is now an associate professor of applied earth sciences and geology at Stanford. That combination of plentiful resources overseas and tight budgets at home has meant a continuing

LONDON—John Hamlyn’s laboratory walls at the University of Maryland are plastered with pictures of the English countryside of his youth. The 34-year-old physiologist says he would like to return there some day, “but not in the foreseeable future. ” Hamlyn received his Ph.D. in physiology from Glasgow University and planned to return to the United Kingdom after some training abroad. But during a 1981 visit home he “was appalled at the state of science” in hi

RICHARD STEVENSON LONDON—Stanford University wanted to create a program in organic geochemistry. Simon Brassell, a young research fellow at Bristol University, was looking for a better career opportunity. Unfortunately for Europe, it was a good watch: Brassell is now an associate professor of applied earth sciences and geology at Stanford. That combination of plentiful resources overseas and tight budgets at home has meant a continuing brain drain of the region’s scientific

Conferences serve many purposes, both professional and social. They aim to foster efficient information exchange, offer the opportunity to investigate employment possibilities, and provide a chance for old friends to get reacquainted. With a certain regularity and for a brief time a far-flung community comes together. I am not the only one to have noticed, however, that many conferences serve younger professionals poorly. Graduate students and recent postdocs—the people who have the most

Editor’s note: Last November 30, we published an Opinion piece by Alexander Kohn, professor of virology at Tel Aviv University. In the article, Kohn questioned the wisdom of inserting the CD4 gene from HIV into cell lines, especially HeLa cells. Such research could, Kohn suggested, expand the host range of HIV In this response, Howard M Temin, of the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, tries to lay Kohn’s concern to rest. We invite further comment. Alexander Kohn and the headl

It’s not easy, at first sight, to discern signs of ideological harmony between biologists who are working toward the environmental dissemination of genetically altered organisms and “activists” who are deeply apprehensive about the idea. Look more closely, however, and one argument appears as a possible basis for unity: the need for far greater investment in the ecological research necessary for prudent development of this novel range of technologies. As reflected in the ag

In the annual Westinghouse Science Talent Search almost 40 years ago, the top girl and the top boy each received prizes. Although it is unclear which gender benefited most from the dual awards, the judges presumably wanted to recognize the abilities of both boys and girls. Despite the best attempts of the Talent Search and other efforts, women are still greatly underrepresented in the United States’ scientific and engineering workforce. This problem is suddenly achieving national atte

WASHINGTON—If Air Force pilots one day are able to use their brains’ internal chemistry to combat fatigue and stay alert during long periods of stress, the achievement will be the result of intensive research by military scientists. But it will also be due to a phone call that program manager Bill Berry made in the fall of 1982 to MIT neuroscientist Richard Wurtman. WASHINGTON--DC The National Institutes of Health has created an adminstrative structure for directing what could

WASHINGTON—The National Science Foundation’s science and technology centers program, intended to be a beacon for collaborative U.S. research that would speed applications to the marketplace, instead has become a lightning rod for criticism from the scientific community. NSF’s decision not to fund any such centers this fiscal year provoked keen disappointment among scientists, especially those who had raced to meet the January 15 deadline. A number of applicants echoed the

ITHACA N.Y—In the late 1950s Mildred Dresselhaus was a post-doctoral associate at Cornell and her husband, Gene, was a junior faculty member there. But Cornell's rules barring nepotism prevented the couple from building physics careers there, and they packed their bags for MIT, which had an outstanding reputation for recruiting women faculty. Thirty years later, Mildred Dresselhaus is an institute professor of physics and electrical engineering and her husband is a senior scientist at

BOSTON—A Soviet committee created to reduce bureaucracy and increase efficiency within the scientific establishment has received more than 5,000 letters by citizens from all walks of Soviet life. Last month the chairman, Yuri Osipyan (see THE SCIENTIST, January 25, p. 1), carried his message to the annual meeting here of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Osipyan is also director of the Soviet Institute of Solid State Physics. Soviet scientists are eager for more

In [the United States] biotechnology is still perceived primarily as a regulatory and legal problem, not an economic opportunity. A regulatory structure has been fashioned that is functioning quite well in assuring the public that the science of biotechnology is safe. Beyond the regulatory concerns, however, there is a political vacuum. Historically, I think, it is fair to say that our country rarely charts a long-term strategy for emerging technologies in order to assure they are properly rec