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Bill TAPs Labs For Industry A New York congressman has introduced a bill that is meant to do for industry what the Department of Agriculture's extension service has long done for farming. The bill (H.R. 4659), entitled the Technology Access Program, would provide easy access to federally funded research for businesses nationwide, says Rep. John LaFalce (D-N.Y.). Modeled on both the federal extension service and a state-level technology access service in Minnesota, TAP would authorize the Nation

Federal office helps scientists get controlled substances, but the price is paperwork and secrecy WASHINGTON - Pharmacologist Louis Harris keeps his drugs in a massive safe bolted securely to the floor of his lab at Virginia Commonwealth University. Barbara Slifer, a behavioral pharmacologist at the University of New Orleans, refuses to tell her lab partners where she's stashed the chemicals for their next experiment. They and thousands of their colleagues around the country can wait weeks and

Jobs In Space For those scientists desiring a celestial career, the Princeton Planetary Society has the publication for you. PPS, a nonprofit, student-run education group at Princeton University in New Jersey, has recently published its premier edition of Space Jobs. The publication offers a listing of full-time job opportunities, most of which are entry-level openings, with consulting and engineering firms, NASA, and nonprofit organizations as well as summer employment opportunities and a spec

A university facility looks for tropical medicines while its epidemiology program tries to link disease and lifestyle HONOLULU -- An organism that Hawaiians call limu-make-o-hana thrives in the tide pools near the town of Hana, on the island of Maui, according to University of Hawaii chemist Richard Moore. And when Hawaiian warriors of the past, in search of a lethal poison, placed an exudate of this organism on their spear tips, they were on the right track, says Moore. Palytoxin is the exud

questions about the wisdom of rushing into clinical trials WASHINGTON -- The first company to win permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to test an AIDS vaccine on humans was an obscure biotech firm in West Haven, Conn. That step, taken in August 1987, was viewed as a great leap forward in the fight against AIDS and a coup by the four-year-old company, MicroGeneSys, in its race against two other firms. Yet some scientists believe that the company made a false start. Because not

Lab aides, though crucial to research, discover that it takes union campaigns to get their bosses' attention BOSTON -- Fifteen years ago, Kristine Rondeau wore a white lab coat and spent her day doing experiments in the physiology and biochemistry departments of Harvard Medical School. Today, her place of work is 67 Winthrop Street in Cambridge, headquarters of the two-year-old Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, which she now heads. Rondeau's career progression parallels an equa

Instructional laser videodiscs promise to serve up physics with pizazz in high schools across the country Ephraim L. Rubin, physicist, businessman, and classical clarinetist, has seen the grim statistics on the level of scientific literacy among the current generation of high school students. "It's terrifying and mind-boggling how bad it is," he says, citing studies like the one done in 1988 by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement in which 12th-graders f

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

James E. Darnell, Jr., Vincent Astor Professor at the Rockefeller University, has been appointed vice president for academic affairs, a new position at the school. Darnell, 59, was named to the position by President-Elect David Baltimore and will become the university's chief academic officer. He will assume the post July 1. Darnell has been a professor at Rockefeller since 1973 and says he looks forward to his new position. His new duties include more responsibility for the university's facu

John Kenneth Hulm, chief scientist emeritus at the Westinghouse Electric Corp., has been appointed to the U.S.-Japan Joint High Level Advisory Panel by Allan Bromley, the president's assistant for science and technology. The advisory panel is composed of 20 distinguished U.S. and Japanese scientists and engineers from industry and academia. Formed in 1988, the panel provides advice to both governments on their science and technology relationship. Hulm, a physicist who is internationally recogni

New joint effort doesn't erase differences in how the two agencies view the long-term impact of getting proposals on the wire WASHINGTON -- The National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation have teamed up to study how the government might develop a system for scientists to submit their grant applications via modem. University grants administrators predict that such submissions are inevitable, and speculate about the possibility of a single application for all federal grants

Let's Talk--To Each Other A recent report by a five-person task force of the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government called on the executive branch of government to consolidate its advice to the president on the environment, energy, and the economy. A subset of the 22-member commission, created in 1988 to recommend ways that the government could make better use of the country's scientists and engineers, suggests how to encourage White House-level panels "to look beyond the sh