The Scientist - Home

WASHINGTON--Once more, with feeling. That's how officials at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences seem to view a cooperative agreement with the Soviet Academy of Sciences. They hope the new five-year agreement will lead to a more productive exchange of scientists than occurred under a nearly identical two-year pact that would have expired in April. The impact of perestroika and glasnost was visible in our discussions," said NAS President Frank Press on his return from Moscow after signing th

Alvey Provides Model for Collaboration BY JOHN STANSELL LONDON - The Alvey program in advanced microelectronics leaves a legacy of cooperative research that promises to outlast the completion of its last individual project later this year. Begun in June 1983, Alvey proved to be a model for government- university-industry collaboration, for joint efforts among competing companies, and for cooperative research throughout Europe. It has also received high marks for luring top scientists back to

Paris - The founder of the International Center for Theoretical Physics has called for extending the concept to other disciplines and eventually creating an International Center for Science. Abdus Salam has proposed a loose federation of new and existing international bodies that would study basic and applied science and science technology problems of interest in the developing world. (For an interview with Salam, see page 20.) The group would include the ICTP in Trieste as well as new or exis

LONDON -The publisher of a prestigious academic dictionary has apologized in print to an Oxford b ologist for misrepresenting his views on sociobiology and has revised the entry in a new version of the dictionary just released. The biologist, Paul Harvey, was angered when he received a sample copy of The Dictionary of Personality and Social Psychology in the fall of 1986. The dictionary, published by Basil Blackwell Ltd. in Britain and the MIT Press in the United States, was one of three deriv

Japanese May Invite 300 Into Labs WASHINGTON - Japan, under pressure to open its labs to outsiders, may soon be inviting more than 300 additional foreign researchers, under programs approved last month by the nation's Finance Ministry. During a visit here last month, Prime Minister Noboru Takeashita offered $4.4 million to help finance long-term visits by U.S. scientists to Japan's government university and industrial labs. He suggested that the National Science Foundation pick the recipients.

NEWS NIH Scientists Seek Animal Patents Author:JEFFREY PORRO Date: FEBRUARY 08, 1988 Japanese May Invite 300 Into Labs WASHINGTON - Japan, under pressure to open its labs to outsiders, may soon be inviting more than 300 additional foreign researchers, under programs approaved last month by the nation's Finance Ministry. During a visit here last month, Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita offered $4.4 million to help finance long-term visits by U.S. Scientists to Japan's government, univers

TOKYO—Physicist Ron Scott returned to the United States in 1980 after working in Japan on a one-year grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation. But two years after going back to work for McDonnell-Douglas, he said with his easy Texas drawl, “I felt I hadn’t seen it all. So I returned to Sendai for six months to write a paper.” Six years later Scott is still in Japan, working in the northeastern city of Sendai as a research physicist for the Inaba Biophoton Proj

Washington-Becoming infected with the AIDS virus is an occupational hazard facing laboratory workers who handle highly concentrated preparations of the virus, according to a study published in the January 1 issue of Science. To minirnize what they call a “very low” risk of infection, the authors urge a review of federal safety guidelines and increased vigilance in following prescribed safety procedures. WASHINGTON—A monthly science magazine that was shut down by the feder

The Soviet Academy of Sciences got more than it bargained for when in 1985 it created a commission to eliminate much of the red tape that has strangled innovation in the country’s more than 200 research institutes. Word of the cormmission’s existence sparked pleas for help from everyone from truck drivers to petty crooks in coping with the country’s gargantuan bureaucracy. The panel has since revised Its title to the “Commission for the Regulating of the Style and Met

In the summer of 1985 Washington Post reporter Phil McCombs, whom I had met socially, approached me about being interviewed for a story he was planning. He wanted to profile a scientist who did biomedical research with animals. Although I was flattered, all my instincts screamed “NO! Don’t do it!” Being an untenured assistant professor building a laboratory at an emerging research institution, I felt there was nothing to be gained and everything to lose professionally if I gr

Humans are addicted to cherished principles, certainties that have been expensively acquired and should not be questioned. Science is in this respect extremely human—it is always relieved to feel that however large our ignorance there are some questions that appear to have been settled once and for all. Around these questions it tends to draw the wagons: anyone who insists on reopening them is eccentric, misguided if not anti-scientific. However, if we look at scientific history, the de

TOKYO—Physicist Ron Scott returned to the United States in 1980 after working in Japan on a one-year grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation. But two years after going back to work for McDonnell-Douglas, he said with his easy Texas drawl, “I felt I hadn’t seen it all. So I returned to Sendai for six months to write a paper.” Six years later Scott is still in Japan, working in the northeastern city of Sendai as a research physicist for the Inaba Biophoton Proj