The Scientist - Home

LONDON—Britain is using “ferrets” to transfer technology from its national defense research laboratories into the civil sector. These two-legged ferrets, all of whom have good technical qualifications, are employed by a technology broker to spot promising ideas and obtain licenses for them. The broker is a private company called Defence Technology Enterprises based at Milton Keynes. Owned by eight British financial institutions, it so far has signed up more than 200 associa

WASHINGTON—Thanks to the new tax law, many U.S. graduate students this year will owe taxes on their fellowships and stipends for the first time. And some will see their financial aid shrink accordingly. “There’s a lot of dissatisfaction, dissension and anger” among affected students about the new tax regulations, said Patrick Melia, assistant dean of the graduate school at Georgetown University here. “It’s created a lot of unneeded frustration.” U

WASHINGTON—The fear of lawsuits is blocking efforts to purge the scientific literature of articles by psychologist Stephen Breuning that are based on fraudulent data. The National Institute of Mental Health concluded this spring that Breuning “knowingly, willfully and repeatedly engaged in misleading and deceptive practices in reporting results of research.” Although all journal editors who published Breuning’s questionable papers were sent copies of the NIMH report, on

LIVERMORE, CALIF.—The University of California will continue to run the nation’s two federal laboratories for designing nuclear weapons, with a new five-year contract that nearly doubles its management fee. Officials said that much of the extra money will be spent on commercializing research from the federal labs. The regents voted 17-3, with one abstention, to maintain the university’s ties to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., and the Los Ala

If someone had told me last December that I would meet Andrel Sakharov six months later in Moscow, I—a notorious optimist—would have considered that person a fool. But in June, after unsuccessfully trying to call Sakharov shortly after my arrival in Moscow en route to a conference in Novosibirsk, I asked a friend to drive me to 48B Chkalov Street at around 9 p.m. I rang at the shabby door, which was opened by Yelena Bonner, Sakharov’s wife. She is used to late visitors, to

Q: The U.S. government is concerned about high technology links with the Eastern bloc. Does that concern you? SEIBOLD: I am a scientist, and this is a European science foundation. It doesn’t matter to me, if a man is a good geologist, whether he is a communist or a Jesuit. If he cooperates and brings good ideas and is a good scientist, fine. Q: But isn’t science becoming more closely linked with technology? Isn’t it becoming more difficult to draw a sharp line between what

When Eugene Seibold —German marine geologist, doyen of European science policy and president of the European Science Foundation (ESF)—f aces the problems of organizing international collaboration on the linguistically and culturally divided European continent, he says he is a realist. In Europe, where it’s unheard of for a French academic, for example, to be given a professorship in a German university, any real integration is unlikely “for another 200 years.” Seib

Working with laboratory animals carries several risks. Apart from the obvious physical hazards of bites and scratches, animal research often involves biological hazards that exist because animals can serve as natural reservoirs for infectious diseases (including zoonoses), hosts in studies of pathogenic microorganisms, and sources of allergens. These hazards can affect not only laboratory personnel, but also other laboratory animals, including valuable breeding stocks. Infectious diseases that

WASHINGTON—A draft report on the nation’s largest teachers’ pension system recommends a variety of new investment choices for its policyholders—but still may not silence its swelling chorus of critics. The report by a special trustee committee of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF) calls for adding six pension funds to the $63 billion system. More than 1 million policyholders have joined the system in plans offere

WASHINGTON—A draft report on the nation’s largest teachers’ pension system recommends a variety of new investment choices for its policyholders—but still may not silence its swelling chorus of critics. The report by a special trustee committee of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF) calls for adding six pension funds to the $63 billion system. More than 1 million policyholders have joined the system in plans offere

Biophysicist Harold Morowitz spent his last sabbatical pondering the cosmic mysteries aboard a yacht anchored off the West Maui mountains in Hawaii. The result of his musings can be found in Cosmic Joy and Local Pain: Musings of a Mystic Scientist (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1987). [For a review of the book, see THE SCIENTIST, September 21, 1987, p. 20]. The first possession he packed for his trip was Lawrence Henderson’s book The Fitness of the Environment. In this excerpt, Morowitz

WASHINGTON—Taking its cue from recent studies that point to a funding gap in science education at liberal arts colleges, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has begun a program to upgrade science curricula at selected undergraduate institutions. HHMI has invited 76 liberal arts colleges not affiliated with any Ph.D.-granting university and 18 historically black colleges to compete for the grants, which will range from $500,000 to $2 million. The winners will be announced next sp