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Author: PETER J. SMITH Department of Earth Sciences Open University Milton Keynes, U.K. The Cleopatra structure on Venus, 100 kilometers in diameter, has the morphology of an impact crater but the distinctly different depth-diameter ratio of a volcanic crater. It is not yet possible to decide whether it is a very strange impact crater or a very strange volcanic crater. A.T. Basilevsky, B.A. Ivanov, "Cleopatra crater on Venus: Venera 15/16 data and impact/volcanic origin controversy," Geophys

Volume 4, #11The Scientist May 28, 1990 FUNDING BRIEFS Date: May 28, 1990 DOD Help For Small Businesses The Department of Defense's Small Business Innovation Research Program is preparing to fund about 1,300 Phase I awards for fiscal year 1990, covering a wide variety of research projects. Awards up to $50,000 each are available as seed capital for U.S. research firms that qualify as small businesses. There are three phases of the SBIR awards. During the six months allotted for Phase I, awardee

Volume 4, #11The Scientist May 28, 1990 FUNDING BRIEFS Date: May 28, 1990 DOD Help For Small Businesses The Department of Defense's Small Business Innovation Research Program is preparing to fund about 1,300 Phase I awards for fiscal year 1990, covering a wide variety of research projects. Awards up to $50,000 each are available as seed capital for U.S. research firms that qualify as small businesses. There are three phases of the SBIR awards. During the six months allotted for P

Although many of the research community's major awards honor investigators' lifetime achievements, there are only a few that recognize researchers early on in their careers. One of the most prestigious of these honors, the National Science Foundation's Alan T. Waterman Award, was recently presented to Mark E. Davis, professor of chemical engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The prize, first awarded in 1976 and named after the first director of NSF, is given for o

Marjory Stoneman Douglas, an environmentalist who recently celebrated her 100th birthday, was an honored guest at a ceremony last month to dedicate a bronze sculpture by Philadelphia artist Eric Berg at the entrance to the Everglades National Park Royal Palm Visitor's Center in Florida. The life-size statue, which depicts a Florida panther, also honors landscape architect Ernest F. Coe (1886-1951), who conceived the idea of an Everglades national park in 1928. It is estimated that fewer than 5

Tokyo proposed the Human Frontier Program; now its scientists are among the first to take advantage of it STRASBOURG, FRANCE -- Biomedical researchers from around the world will have a second chance next month to participate in Japan's Human Frontier Science Program now that Tokyo has led the way in the first round of funding. The program was first proposed in 1986 by former Japanese Prime Minister Yosuhiro Nakasone at a summit conference of the seven leading democratic industrial nations -

Differing Views On AIDS Funding Scientists who don't receive federal funds to do AIDS research think that the government's AIDS program has drained away research dollars from other fields. But scientists who receive such funds think those other disciplines have not been affected. These findings are part of a survey by the congressional Office of Technology Assessment, sent to 400 members of the Institute of Medicine. The survey was actually conducted to measure the impact of AIDS research on ot

Radon Researchers To Share Results The boom in research on indoor levels of radon has spawned a new government-funded publication. Radon Research Notes will be published three times a year at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, under the auspices of DOE's Office of Health and Environmental Research and its radon research program. "The journal is intended to foster an exchange of information within the research community and provide scientific input into the development of radon policy," says Gloria

Patent counsels and scientists work together to further understanding of science and increase corporate financial gain WASHINGTON - Corporate patent lawyers just don't see science the way researchers do. "Scientists spend their entire careers creating intellectual property," says Auzville Jackson, Jr., a partner in the Washington firm of Staas and Halsey, which specializes in intellectual property law. "Yet they never think about property values and how to protect their property, which is ofte

WASHINGTON - Life scientists on the President's Council of Advisers for Science and Technology won their first skirmish last month in an ongoing campaign to prod PCAST into the 1990s. The issue that arose during the council's second public meeting was the question of whether PCAST should create its own advisory group on biotechnology. Presidential science adviser Allan Bromley, who also is director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, asked the council whether it wanted

Information And Mobility During a single month a few years ago, one newsweekly referred to the U.S. as "the Information Society," and another called it "the Mobile Society" - and that gave Al Becker an idea. The 41-year-old Becker is an inventor who, since dropping out of MIT in the late 1960s, has started three firms specializing in computer-related products. After selling the second company in 1986, he began looking around for a new invention. Seeing the two newsweeklies together, he realized

Scientists inside and outside the industry debate the commercial possibility of using antibodies as enzymes WASHINGTON - Catalytic antibodies are the stuff of Steven Benkovic's dreams. He hopes these immune system molecules, when put to work speeding up chemical reactions, will function as magic bullets to fight disease and infection. Benkovic, a physical organic chemist at Pennsylvania State University, is not alone in his reverie. More and more scientists and their corporate cohorts are env