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Despite the trouble being encountered by some fledgling U.S. optics firms, when the University of Arizona’s Optical Sciences Center celebrated its 25th anniversary in March with the opening of a new $3 million building, optics specialists Used the occasion to herald a bright future for the discipline overall and for the young scientists who are enentering it. “I’m so bullish on the field that we’ve already selected an architect for the next addition to the center,R

Man Versus Man William Wordsworth waxed poetic about “man’s inhumanity to man,” but the more broadminded Harry Frank Guggenheim was interested in studying, as he put it, “man’s relation to man.” In keeping with that idea, the New York foundation that Guggenheim endowed in 1929 has traditionally sponsored a seven-part international program of scientific research aimed at better understanding the causes of dominance, violence, and aggression. Now an eighth a

Steven H. Safe, professor of veterinary physiology and pharmacology at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Texas A&M University, is recipient of the 1989 Burroughs Wellcome Toxicology Scholar Award. The $300,000 prize recognizes 15 years of Safe’s “strong commitment to toxicological research, training, and education," particularly in his studies of toxic dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and the relationships of these substances to cancer and birth defects. The Univers

To Catch A Spy. Debt, stress, and greed may be a routine part of life for most scientists. But they are a constant source of worry for Sandia National Lab security chief Jerry Brown. Brown recently analyzed more than 100 cases, of Communist Bloc-sponsored espionage since 1950 (of which more than half occurred in the last decade) in which he found that money was the most common motive. “That fits right in with the Soviet premise that every American has a price,” says Brown, who found

Calling All Industry Scientists NSF has selected 47 scientists to spend several months doing research in Japan under three new fellowship programs designed to even out the flow of knowledge between the two countries. But while the Japanese-funded programs are open to any qualified scientist, everyone in the first batch hails from either a university or government laboratory. “The lack of participation by industry has been a real disappointment,” admits NSF,s Charles (“TomR

And They’re Off! 23 Feet Under The Waves Remember submarine races? The competition that took place at the end of lovers’ lane? Well, lovers’ lane now stops at West Palm Beach, where Florida Atlantic University and the H.A. Perry Foundation are sponsoring the First Annual International Submarine Races June 23-25, in part to encourage improvements in the hydrodynamics, propulsion, and life support systems of underwater vehicles. About 20 human-powered “wet subs”R

Merieux-Connaught Merger To Benefit R&D Scientists at Toronto-based Connaught BioSciences, and Institut Merieux S.A., of Lyon, France, both pharmaceutical companies, have nothing to fear from the recently announced merger of the human health care divisions of the two firms— indeed, they may have much to cheer, according to Gerald Wood, Connaught’s vice president and chief financial officer. In fact, Connaught’s desire to strengthen its research efforts “is the main reas

Privileged Info: The Names Of Referees The right of scientific journals to keep the identities of their manuscript referees confidential has been buttressed by a recent court decision. The decision, first made last year by a district court and then upheld by a federal appeals court in March, is one of the byproducts of a case brought against Arco Solar Inc. When the solar energy subsidiary of the Arco oil company found itself charged with patent infringement by Solarex Corp. and RCA Corp. for i

In a striking move, Emeryville, Calif.-based Cetus Corp. is clarifymg its position on the use of polymerase chain reaction (PCR), the company’s proprietary DNA amplification technology. This action comes after several months of confusion, doubt, and outrage within the scientific community over the firm’s unusual licensing policy for PCR. Since bursting upon the scientific scene less than two years ago, PCR, the process by which scientists can rapidly duplicate strands of DNA in

The search had been going on for four days. Crammed into the cockpit of the submersible Alvin—the research vessel used to survey the Titanic—geochemist Harmon Craig and a group of colleagues from Scripps Institution of Oceanography were scouring the Pacific Ocean floor off the island of Hawaii, looking for the crater of Loihi, an undersea hot spot thought to be the volcanic precursor of the next Hawaiian island. At a depth of 1,000 meters, with the darkness relieved only by the A

First she was his student, a medical resident working under an internationally recognized expert in the field of nuclear medicine. Then she was his academic and clinical colleague, making her way as a re spected scientist. Finally, after 10 years m the lab, Heidi S. Weissmann became the plaintiff, and Leonard M. Freeman the defendant, in a bitter and costly legal dispute that touches on one of the pillars of the research enterprise: assigning credit for original work. In February, weissman

The nation’s second-largest foundation is doing some in-house spring cleaning—the second time in as many years. Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts, a collective of seven funds established by Sun Oil Co. founder Joseph N. Pew and family, has decided to streamline its recently installed management hierarchy by replacing it with a “flat” structure, eliminating four vice presidential slots and installing. individual program directors to manage each of the trusts six pr