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WASHINGTON—NIH is looking into charges that it has improperly funded research on tissues and organs that have been removed from live human fetuses. The investigation stems from allegations by Jeremy Rifkin of the Foundation on Economic Trends, that the National Disease Research Interchange (NDRI) is not following appropriate protocols to establish death before obtaining the tissue and providing it to researchers. F. William Dommel, of NIH’s Office of Protection from Research Risk

WEST BERLIN—A West German physicist has begun a new effort to mobilize scientific and technical resources against some of the world’s most pressing problems. The idea of creating a Global Challenges Network is a “crazy vision,” admitted Hans-Peter Dürr, professor of physics and director of the Werner Heisenberg Institute of Physics at the Max Planck Society in Munich. But he said that the magnitude of the problem requires a worldwide effort involving the most ta

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.—City officials here are wrestling with a proposal to place experiments involving animals under the control of a new council-appointed body that would have the right to delay or veto any work it did not like. The city council is in the midst of hearings leading to a possible vote on two ordinances relating to animal research at Harvard University, MIT and other private institutions within the city limits. The first proposal would seek to ensure that all laboratories are

WASHINGTON—Federal biosafety guidelines for laboratories handling the AIDS virus are appropriate, a team of virus safety experts has concluded after investigating labs working with large amounts of highly concentrated AIDS virus. But workers need to better understand how and why the practices should be followed. The four-member group, formed last month after NIH announced that an unidentified lab worker was infected while working with the virus, spent two weeks at the dozen or so NIH

WASHINGTON—Although women and minorities still make up only a small percentage of scientists in most fields, their presence is being felt within the governing body of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This fall, for the first time in AAAS’s history, all four candidates for the two vacancies on the board of directors are women and/or minorities. And the next AAAS president is University of Chicago physicist Walter Massey, who is black. AAAS officials downpl

LONDON—A new, open-ended program to fund AIDS research has drawn praise from British scientists who see the directed initiative as a refreshing change from the parsimonious attitude taken by the government toward most basic research efforts. Six months ago the government announced a special allocation of $23 million over three years for AIDS research. The program, overseen by the Medical Research Council, has already involved 24 laboratories at universities, hospitals and biotechnology

WASHINGTON—A $1.6 million study by an independent research firm is likely to provide ammunition for members of Congress who want the National Science Foundation to become more involved in pre-college science education. The study by SRI International of Palo Alto, Calif., requested in 1985 by Congress, was released during the August congressional recess. But it is likely to be “chewed over” next year, according to Thomas Van der Voort, staff director of the Senate Appropriat

SAN FRANCISCO—It’s not uncommon for one scientist to build on the work of another. But it’s rare for that research to spawn an organization dedicated to saving the lives of its subjects. For Molly Gleiser, a chemist at the University of California-Berke- ley, the idea for Suicide Prevention Among Scientists began with an 1984 article in Chemical and Engineering News that described a study of the causes of death among female chemists. One figure jumped out at her: the suici

BELFAST—The British Association for the Advancement of Science, for the first time in living memory, has entered the political arena to defend the interests of British scientists. The association, assembled here for its 149th annual meeting, sent a letter to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher asking for more government spending on research and urging her to chair meetings of the newly created Advisory Council on Science and Technology. It said scientists would back the government’s

MEXICO CITY—The official opening here last month of the Center for Electronics and Information Technology (CETEI) underscores Mexico’s efforts to strengthen ties between academic and industrial R&D sectors. The new center was created to support the development of the country’s fast-growing electronics industry by mediating technological supply and demand. The government is encouraging such university-industry cooperation in effort to offset spending cuts it has in academic

WASHINGTON—Members of the first of five newly created U.S.-Soviet joint scientific working groups have reached a tentative agreement to exchange data on space life sciences and rekindled hope for longlasting coordination of overall research efforts in space. The joint group, which met for six days last month in Moscow, agreed to update a comprehensive space biology and medicine text published jointly in the 1970s and to form a subgroup to explore cooperative projects in extraterrestria

One of the most eminent and controversial scientists of this century, nuclear physicist Edward Teller is perhaps best known for his role in the development of nuclear weapons at Los Alamos National Laboratory during World War II. Often called the “father of the hydrogen bomb,” he also played a controversial role in the loss of security clearance by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the former director of Los Alamos. More recently Teller has been an outspohen advocate of defensive weap- ons, in