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NEW YORK—Some 20 eminent scientists and a similar number of television news executives will meet to try to bridge the distance between the scientists who make the news and the journalists who broadcast it. The December 12-13 meeting in Tarrytown, N.Y., is the first step in a long-term project made possible by a $876,225 grant to the Scientists Institute for Public Information (SIPI) from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation of Chicago. “I used to call it a gap. Now it

The principal contributions to astronomy that I have been able to make in the past 50 years of my professional life involve the study of binary stars—in particular, pairs of stars that are so close as to mutually eclipse each other in the course of each revolution and that, in so doing, exhibit characteristic telltale changes of light. The importance of such systems is that they offer us the only possible means to determine the masses and absolute dimensions of stars other than our Sun.

Q:Since Prime Minister Thatcher came to power in 1979, her three governments have changed the agenda for political debate in Britain. Has Conservative rule also altered the agenda for science policy? Do you believe that the difficulties now facing U.K. science are simply the outcome of an attempt to save money, or are they the result of a coherent plan? BODMER: Definitely not the latter. Our problems are largely to do with cash and with a monetary policy which says that government expenditure

In its development, the American engineering profession has drawn upon two competing yet complementary traditions: the hands-on, muddy-boots pragmatism inherited from Britain and the elite, science-oriented approach of the French polytechnique. Science and mathematics gradually have taken a central position, with emphasis being placed upon their creative application. The less theoretical “hardware” aspects of technology have been delegated in part to graduates of two-year technici

Many US. scientists cloning genes in microbes could be affected by a patent awarded this month to Genentech Inc. of South San Francisco. The decision’s scope remains to be seen, but some observers believe that the impact may be slight—a sign, they say, of the growing maturity of the biotechnology industry. The question of which institutions or researchers must seek a license from Genentech, and at what stage in the process, is “a legal quagmire,” according to Iver Coo

WASHINGTON—Research administrators in the Soviet Union are joining their counterparts around the world in bringing together university and industrial scientists to encourage commercial applications of basic research. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s repeated calls for perestroyka (restructuring) have reverberated through the Soviet government and bureaucracy and are being heard in the staid halls of the country’s universities. His goal is to make the entire university syst

PARIS—Czech universities and institutes of the country’s Academy of Sciences may be permitted to conduct research for industrial clients along the lines of a model already established in Yugoslavia and beginning in the Soviet Union. Speaking at the Czechoslovakian Science and Technology Information Center here, the president of the J.E. Purkyne University in Brno said that the five-year plans covering the nature and funding of applied research may be modified to permit such contract

LONDON—For the past 10 years Britain’s Medical Research Council (MRC) has fostered efforts to speed up the transfer of key inventions from academia to industry. Already hard at work on a new collaborative center to open next spring, MRC officials last month were pleased to learn that one of their most promising offspring is ready to grow up. Celitech, founded in 1980 largely with government money, has become the country’s leading inde pendent biotechnology company. The key

WASHINGTON—The office that coordinates efforts among Public Health Service agencies to fight AIDS is being expanded in both size and scope, according to Peter J. Fischinger, the recently appointed PHS AIDS coordinator. “We want to get to the point where we are proactive in dealing with the problems,” said Fischinger, who is on leave for one year as deputy director of the National Cancer Institute. To do so, a new post of deputy AIDS coordinator has been created and the offi

When Robert Kupor, a biotechnology consultant with Cable, Howse, and Ragen in Seattle, was asked by some clients recently to evaluate a company’s new treatment for emphysema, he put aside his MBA and picked up his Ph.D). in molecular biology. His scientific sleuthing, which involved poring over conference abstracts and talking with researchers, allowed him to judge the potential market for such a technology with an understanding that went far beyond the fledgling firm’s management

WEST BERLIN—Just one month after signing an agreement on scientific cooperation with its other half, West Germany has strengthened ties to another Eastern bloc country. The Federal Republic and Hungary have agreed on a framework of cooperative projects in all areas of science, engineering, the humanities and the social sciences that is similar to the one reached in September with East Germany (see THE SCIENTIST, November 2, p. 1). The initial list of 32 research projects covers such area

WEST BERLIN—Europe’s biggest private science foundation, derived from Volkswagenwerk AG, is counting on a rebound of world financial markets to secure the capital it needs to meet its ambitious goals for the support of research. A planned November 9 sale of the government’s 16 percent share in the auto maker’s stock has been postponed indefinitely, West German Finance Minister Gerhard Stoltenberg announced earlier this month. The value of the stock package is roughly $2