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The Scientist has asked a group of experts to periodically comment upon recent articles that they have found noteworthy. Their selections, to be presented here in every issue, are neither endorsements of content nor the result of systematic searching. Rather, they are personal choices of articles they believe the scientific community as a whole mayalso find interesting. Reprints of any articles cited here may be ordered through: The Genuine Article, 3501 Market St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19104./

A new form of computation is emerging. Propelled by advances in software design and increasing connectivity, networks of enormous complexity known as distributed computational systems are spreading throughout offices and laboratories, across countries and continents. Unlike standalone computers, these growing networks seldom offer centralized scheduling and resource allocation. Instead, computational processes (the active execution of programs) migrate from workstations to printers, servers,

When it comes to peer recognition, papers published by Rockefeller University scientists get more than their share of attention. A lot more. In fact, the average journal article by a Rockefeller scientist was cited nearly three times more often than the average scientific paper tracked over a 12-year period (1973 to 1984) by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Also cited far more than the average were papers published by faculty at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Columbia, and the Univ

WASHINGTON--The National Institutes of Health has removed the head of the office that buys supplies and equipment for its intramural research program following a stinging government report that found widespread mismanagement of the federal fund being spent on supplies and equipment. A five-year battle between NIH and its parent, the Department of Health and Human Services, culminated last month in the replacement of Edwin ("Ted") Becker as director of NIH’s Office of Research Services

Scientists don’t spend years in graduate school to end up as accountants, but that’s sometimes how it seems. Writing proposals may consume more of. a researcher’s time than the research itself. And the paperwork only increases when the grant is awarded "salaries and fringe benefits have to be paid, capital expenses have to be encumbered, reports to the granting agency have to be made. If you’re sighing in agreement, take heart. At least three software packages now on

I’m convinced that real-time display is a must in data acquisition. I think I reached that conclusion one day after setting up an experiment during which I wired a dog to certain appropriate instruments and administered a drug to the animal. My data acquisition system allowed the data to go directly to the computer, although the screen display lagged considerably behind the sampling. Thus it was well into the process that I realized the data had stopped making sense, a wire had wiggled l

Back in 1985, chemist Peter Schultz drew considerable attention when, at the young age of 29 and after only two years on the job as assistant professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, he was promoted to associate professor with tenure, one of the quickest such promotions in the institution’s history. Today, the young Schultz’s fast-rising career has soared once again. At the age of 31, he has been named this year’s winner of the National Science Foun

Forget pH meters. Forget electrolysis cells. The new exhibit sponsored by the American Chemical Society at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History is going to be state-of-the-art. Early ideas include: computer games inspired by the interactions of molecules, a working lab open to students, and hands-on experiments. (Real crowd-pleasers typically burn, explode or light up, according to R. Eric Leber, former staff director of public policy and communication atACS, who

It Pulled The Plug On Two Engineering Centers, Provoking Debate Over Its Program Goals The National Science Foundation’s announcement in 1985 that it hoped to set up a network of up to 25 university-based engineering research centers set off a frantic scramble to snare a center—and a roiling debate about the value of the idea. After all, Director Erich Bloch’s vision to spend a half-billion dollars over the next decade on projects intended to improve both U.S. industrial co

Eager to encourage government-industry collaboration on the potential uses of high-temperature superconducting materials, the Reagan administration has rushed to announce an initiative that may be more snap than substance. The April 21 designation of Los Alamos, Argonne, and Oak Ridge national laboratories as superconductivity pilot centers went unaccompanied by additional funding or staff. Furthermore, acknowledged an Energy Department press spokesman, the department has no current plans to e

The rancor of the White House cost David T. Kingsbury, National Science Foundation assistant director for behavioral and biological sciences, a trip to Paris last month. It seems that officials of the Administrations’s Office of Science and Technology Policy are trying to punish him because of allegations that he advised a California biotechnology firm while a government official (see The Scientist, November 2, 1987, p. 3). So they forced Kingsbury’s superiors at NSF to withdraw hi

The Proton Refuses To Decay, But Physicists’Funds Are Fading Fast Two thousand feet under the shores of Lake Erie, in a six-story salt cavern, one of the most sophisticated light detectors ever constructed is waiting. Every second, several particles speed through the instrument’s enormous pool of water and collide with atoms in it, setting off flashes of light to be detected and recorded. But these events are merely physics’ flotsam and jetsam—things to be identified, c