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CAMBRIDGE, MASS.—If Rainer Weiss doesn't reach his goal of staring God in the eye—or at least gazing back to the first moment of creation—it won't be for lack of trying. Over the past 16 years, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist has appeared before a host of committees, flitted between coasts on red-eye flights to meet with collaborators, and even endured what some call a scientific version of a shotgun wedding with rival physicists at Caltech. For the pipe-smo

WILMINGTON, DEL.—When Du Pont executives first tried to recruit Mark Pearson back in 1982, he didn't take them seriously. After all, he reasoned, with no corporate history of ground-breaking work in molecular biology, what would the company do with a director of one of the National Cancer Institute's molecular biology laboratories? "Besides," he adds, "they were a chemical company." Not any longer. Within the past five years Du Pont has embarked upon new ventures in electronics, imaging, a

LIVERMORE, CALIF—Officials at the nation's three top-secret nuclear weapons laboratories know that drug use among employees poses an extremely serious security risk. But they don't appear to be doing enough about it. That's the verdict of some members of Congress, who cite a series of seemingly erratic measures the labs have been taking to combat the problem. "If you have someone who's dependent on drugs," says Clifford Traisman, an aide to a House oversight subcommittee that is looking in

When Richard McKinney draws his bow and takes aim during the Seoul Olympics next week, he will have an unusual ally-science—in his quest for the gold. Even though he won a silver medal in the 1984 Olympics and is a favorite to grab another medal in Seoul, the United States archer has, for four years, been tested. Measured, observed, and advised by two researchers at Arizona State University. "I think their work has helped me tremendously," McKinney says. "It's one reason I have stayed on t

Paul Chu's superconductor research at the University of Houston will act as a "multiplier" to Du Pont's own efforts, senior vice president Al MacLachlan said after Du Pont announced a multimillion dollar deal with Houston on August 23. Under the agreement, which took a year to negotiate, Du Pont made an initial payment of $1.5 million to the university and will fork over an additional $1.5 million upon issuance of a patent to Chu covering the class of 1-2-3 superconducting compounds (YBa2Cu3O7).

After years of battling their local nuclear power plant—and winning—Long Island environmental activists have turned on Brookhaven National Lab. The accusation? Its chemical and radiation releases are a threat to residents. The battle came to a head last month in Suffolk Life, a half-million circulation weekly that has run several articles in the past few years about local environmental investigations of the lab. In an August 3 editorial, the paper traced a string of environmental cal

After seven years of acting as a center for researchers from other institutions, the Neurosciences Institute will add in-house research to its current programs. An independent organization located on the campus of Rockefeller University in New York, the institute works to encourage interdisciplinary exchange of information in neuroscience. Under director Gerald M. Edelman, the institute hosts small conferences and workshops, which do not follow the usual paper-and-slides format but which encoura

New electrically powered microscopic motors, no larger than the width of a human hair, have potential applications in the next few years in both medical and microsurgical equipment and scientific instruments. Bell Labs and the University of California, Berkeley, reported on the new process at the same time, but Berkeley holds a patent on the process, which uses the techniques and materials of semiconductor manufacturing. The rotor in the motor is about two-thousandths of an inch in diameter. Its

Until recently, computer incompatibility and expense have hampered U.S. astronomers from easily accessing a valuable, extensively stocked French database called SIMBAD. But NASA and NSF have teamed up to pay for a permanent network hookup, circuit costs, and charges for scientists' use of the database itself. SIMBAD (Set of Identifications, Measurements, and Bibliography for Astronomical Data), maintained in Strasbourg, France, makes it possible for an astronomer to look up an astronomical objec

WASHINGTON—Presidential candidates are often criticized for being vague. But Michael Dukakis has learned the hard way that it also doesn't pay to be specific. He's had to change his stand on the space station. Constantly pressed to cite areas where the Democratic standard bearer would trim the federal deficit, the Dukakis campaign used to mention the $30 billion space station as one potential target-this despite the fact that the candidate endorsed the concept of a space station. In the pa

The Carnegie Corp. is pulling out all the stops for its planned 1991 report on the application of science and technology to government for the benefit of society. Earlier this year, the philanthropic organization formed a commission to prepare the sweeping report, loading it with such luminaries as Joshua Lederberg, Jerome Weisner, Bobby lnman, John Brademas, Donald Kennedy, and Jimmy Carter. But even that star-studded cast apparently wasn't luminous enough. Now, the new commission has taken the

In their campaign against the use of animals in research, animal rights activists have been trying to gain access to universities' animal care and use committees. The activists, whose methods range from direct pressure to lawsuits, have been successful in a number of states, including Washington and Florida. But on August 18, animal rightists suffered defeat when a lawsuit against the University of California system was dismissed. An Alameda County Superior Court judge ruled that the 10 animal c