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SNOWBIRD, UTAH--Time was when five ecologists couldn't sit in a room without arguing about what exactly their field was and where it was headed. Last month, however, about 2,000 of these scientists agreed on precisely those issues. The result is a document that commits ecologists to examine topics important to both science and society. Although the document summarizing that consensus has a long title, The Sustainable Biosphere Initiative: An Ecological Research Agenda for the Nineties, its mes

Bye-Bye, American Pi The Gift Of Life Wanted: Ideas For Advanced Technology Integrity In Research New On The Job Who Says Science Can't Be Fun? It was supposed to be a joke, but some scientists aren't laughing. On July 1, the New York Times published a letter from UC-Berkeley mathematics professor Paul Chernoff that called for his colleagues to ask the government for big bucks to keep the U.S. No. 1 in determining "the entire decimal expansion of pi." The letter was meant to spoof the current t

Top scientists from eight companies discuss what it takes to maintain a creative and productive laboratory environment Back in 1983, scientists at Calgene Inc. in Davis, Calif., began to tinker with genetically engineered corn. Their goal at the time - to improve the vegetable's carbohydrate storage as well as its resistance to pests - seemed to make pretty good sense from both the scientific and the business points of view. Just five years later, however - after spending $5 million - Calgene

A routine hearing turns explosive when a critic of the program finds himself under attack by a prominent senator WASHINGTON - On the morning of July 11, in the rear of Room 366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, health policy analyst Robert Cook-Degan was pacing anxiously. It was supposed to be a routine hearing, a chance for officials from the government's Human Genome Project to explain to a very sympathetic audience how well two federal agencies - the National Institutes of Health and t

Director Robert Stevenson takes its mission beyond keeper of the country's microbes to attract key researchers and funding ROCKVILLE, MD. - Like a headmaster looking after a huge dormitory of slumbering schoolboys, Robert Stevenson watches over 50,000 microbes suspended in a sleep of absolute biochemical inactivity. As director of the American Type Culture Collection, the 64-year-old bacteriologist provides scientists with clean, well characterized cultures of yeasts and fungi, monoclonal anti

At an NIH workshop, they discover how advanced computation can improve their vision of life processes PITTSBURGH -- Time was, all that a biologist ever wanted was a new microscope. But times change. A decade after the first supercomputers began to open up new vistas for physicists and engineers, life scientists are beginning to use these powerful machines to work on everything from high-resolution protein reconstructions to detailing how the brain functions. "Anything I can do with a supercom

NIH Reviews Electronic Mailing Of Guide Electronic mailings will one day replace the distribution of the printed weekly Guide for Grants and Contracts. Those concerned about how this change will come about and how it will affect their institutions are invited to participate in a one-day workshop September 7 at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. The meeting will run from 8:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M., and will include formal presentations and on-line and simulated demonstrations. Partic

Theodore Friedmann, professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, has been appointed to the Muriel Jeannette Whitehill Chair for Biomedical Ethics at the school. Friedmann, who has been at UC-San Diego since 1969, has focused his research efforts on the genetic mechanisms underlying disease and the development of methods to correct genetic defects. In a benchmark 1972 essay in Science (175:949-55), Friedmann introduced the phrase "gene therapy" to descr

The American Chemical Society, whose members will gather in Washington, D.C., next week for the organization's 200th national meeting, is facing several legal attacks against its profitable Chemical Abstract Service. In June, Dialog Information Services, a California-based online information vendor, filed a $50 million suit against the society for "anticompetitive, illegal and predatory" management of CAS databases. The society is also fighting several law suits brought against it by the Columb

The 1991 Budget: So Far, So Good Stifling Environment At Livermore Fast-Foods Chain Serves Up Science Breaking Down The Lab Walls Some Discretion, Please The House, on recess until after Labor Day, has passed along to the Senate several of the appropriations bills for fiscal year 1991 covering the government agencies that fund basic research. And the news, so far, is pretty good. NSF has tentatively received a $250 million increase over current levels, divided between $170 million more for r

WASHINGTON -- A Boston University computer scientist and a Baltimore software company have put an unusual twist on United States firms' practice of going abroad in search of cheap labor. For Yuri Shestov and Intelligent Resources International (IRI) Inc., the underdeveloped world is the Soviet Union. "A lot of companies don't realize how much scientific talent is available in Russia," says Shestov, vice president of research and development at IRI. "And it's unbelievable what you can pay for l

Bush's science adviser says he'd like to see government bolster financial support, urges more consideration for individual researchers WASHINGTON--The Bush administration wants to do more for "small science," says presidential science adviser D. Allan Bromley. But the type of support Bromley has in mind appears to be more psychological than financial. "The small investigator needs to have a feeling of being paid attention to," Bromley told The Scientist. "There's a feeling that the large proj