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WASHINGTON -- On March 22 the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology rolled up its sleeves and got down to business, namely, the task of getting United States industry to play a larger role in strengthening science. The council has a mandate to provide the president with all manner of scientific and technological advice on pressing issues of the day. And its 12 members, who were sworn in February 2 (The Scientist, March 5, 1990, page 3), represent a diverse elite, from billi

They're Having A Blast At Livermore An external panel will search for causes in three recent "highly unusual" accidents at Lawrence Livermore National Lab's high-explosive test facilities. The panel's main task will be to discover whether the three incidents, which occurred within a six-week period, "were just bad luck, or whether a pattern emerges," says a lab spokesman. "One of our very best records is in high-explosive safety," he adds. Two accidental detonations occurred at Site 300, a high

Temporary shutdown of research reactor turns into three-year hiatus as managers try to understand the world after Chernobyl OAK RIDGE, TENN. -- Though it may be impolite, it's hardly news when a scientist avoids a meeting to carry out an experiment. But for Oak Ridge National Laboratory nuclear physicist George Wignall, showing up late for an interview with a reporter was cause for celebration. "We've been waiting three and a half years for this machine," he explained to a reporter, exulting

Recombinant DNA Biodegradable Pesticide Mycogen Corp. has begun the first large-scale field trials in the U.S. of a pesticide developed through recombinant DNA techniques. The pesticide, called MVP, is a protein produced by a strain of the Bacillus thuringiensis (B.t.) bacterium. The San Diego firm inserts the gene that produces the B.t. toxin into another bacterium called Pseudomonas fluorescens. Then the new bacteria are killed, and a "biocapsule" forms around the toxin, which is fatal to lea

More than 11,000 scientists from 30 countries are expected to attend the 199th national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston next week. The six-day-long gathering (April 22 through April 27) at the Hynes Convention Center will feature more than 4,400 papers presented during 604 technical sessions. The presidential plenary, which kicks off the week-long gathering Sunday, April 22, at 4:30 P.M., will focus on a problem that the field of chemistry shares with other disciplines: the

Sharing Science "Kids are natural scientists," says Yale biology senior Geoffrey Laff. "We're trying to capture them at a point when they think that learning is still a cool thing to do." Laff is founder of DEMOS, a volunteer student group that shares the magic and excitement of science with third, fourth, and fifth graders in New Haven, Conn., elementary schools. Every week, the 35 members of DEMOS (the acronym doesn't really stand for anything: "I like to let people use their imaginations," s

An immunologist who has turned entrepreneur builds a one-man publishing business around a 30,000-item directory It is one of those small yet irksome inconveniences that dog immunologists and those working with biological reagents. No matter how generous one's funding or how proficient one's technicians, there are certain nettlesome tasks that threaten to halt one's research. What to do, for example, when an experiment requires a highly specific monoclonal antibody? If it can't be found in a ca

What happens when an eminent Soviet scientist, battling for reforms in his own country, must confront U.S. peer review? WASHINGTON -- The wave of perestroika in Soviet science has crossed the Atlantic and is lapping up on the shores of the Potomac. And one of the first landmarks it has encountered is the process of peer review. Two years ago biologist Valery Soyfer was waiting to emigrate to the United States after enduring nearly a decade of isolation for his human rights activities. At the

While Japan is bearish on the potentially lucrative field, American government and industry fail to show enthusiasm or backing WASHINGTON -- To promoters of U.S. competitiveness, Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry sometimes seems invincible. MITI has an enviable reputation for helping industry develop new products - often based on United States discoveries - that eventually dominate global markets. So MITI's decision to spend almost $200 million in the next decade on marine b

From Q To GLQ223 Eight months after the FDA stopped a San Francisco group from giving an unauthorized drug called Compound Q to HIV-infected patients, another version of the drug will be dispensed to the same patients - this time by a pharmaceutical company and a biotechnology company now clinically testing the compound. Derived from a plant protein imported from China, Compound Q had been offered in 1988 and 1989 to between 80 and 100 patients by Project Inform, an AIDS advocacy group. Genelab

ACS' 10 Millionth Customer It may not garner as much hoopla as, say, being Macy's 10 millionth customer or, perhaps, scoring major league baseball's 10 millionth run. But the American Chemical Society's Chemical Abstract Service has recently achieved a milestone in its own right. The CAS chemical registry is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year by recording its 10 millionth chemical substance. CAS, which abstracts and indexes all the world's literature on chemical science and technology,

The San Francisco disaster proved the urgency of work toward mitigating damage as well as predicting when future quakes will strike WASHINGTON -- The physical aftershocks from last fall's deadly earthquake in San Francisco have ceased. But earthquake scientists are hoping that the political aftershocks from that devastating event, and the recent smaller trembler near Los Angeles, persist long enough to invigorate a field that has suffered from more than a decade of neglect since the launching