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A news brief on page 6 of The Scientist's Jan. 8, 1990, issue reporting on a survey conducted by the Public Agenda Foundation that will compare the views of scientists and the public misstated the source of the names of the scientists who participated. The scientists were chosen at random from American Men and Women in Science (17th ed., New York, R.R. Bowker, 1989). Also on page 6 of the Jan. 8, 1990, issue, captions were transposed on photographs of FIDIA Pharmaceutical Corp. president Albert

Together, the nation's marine lab directors hope to shape their futures and keep their institutes and coastal sciences thriving WASHINGTON--The directors of the nation's marine labs are banding together to keep their institutions afloat. Next month, as soon as the trustee ballots are in, Harlyn Halvorson will begin his tenure as the first president of the National Association of Marine Laboratories (NAML). This loosely knit network of directors and administrators intends to prove that, when it

The National Academy of Sciences has a program for researchers in search of colleagues in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union. Beginning in April, the academy will sponsor two-week project development visits by U.S. scientists to the USSR, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, or Yugoslavia. This new effort is meant to pave the way for long-term cooperative research. Scientists can visit one or more institutions in Eastern Europe in any discipline supported by NSF. Vi

Marian Diamond, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, has been appointed acting director of U.C.-Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science, the campus' public science center. The facility, which serves as a research center for science curriculum development and teacher education, also features science exhibits and public programs. Diamond's research focuses on brain anatomy and environmental effects on the brain. She recently served as scientific adviser for the

WASHINGTON--For entomologist James Erickson, the former director of the U.S. Agency for International Development's troubled malarial vaccine program (The Scientist, July 10, 1989, page 1, and Dec. 11, 1989, page 1), 1989 was not a good year. And this week he'll find out whether things are going to get any better in 1990. Erickson goes before U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., to defend himself against charges that he defrauded the government program of more than $140,000. He was indicted

The lines between those who support and those who oppose the use of animals in research have always been rather sharply drawn, with last month's break-in and theft of files from a University of Pennsylvania's anatomy professor's lab only the latest example. But now it will be ever easier for members of Congress to choose sides in the acrimonious debate. Last fall, Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) and Rep. Bob Smith (R-N.H.) formed the Congressional Friends of Animals to provide a forum for those who

The already low profile of the House science, research, and technology subcommittee is likely to sink further in the next session of Congress with the expected transfer of the gavel from chairman Rep. Doug Walgren (D-Pa.) to Rep. Tim Valentine (D-N.C.). Walgren, who has led the panel since 1983, has done his best to showcase such issues as science education, university-industry consortia, and the health of academic research. But his earnest, soft-spoken style doesn't attract much attention, and

The New York-based scientific publisher Gordon and Breach has suffered a setback in the first round of its legal battle waged in European courts against the American Institute of Physics. The publishing firm had brought suits against AIP last year, claiming that an article in the July 1988 issue of the institute's monthly, Physics Today, reporting on a survey of journal prices (The Scientist, Sept. 4, 1989, page 4), was damaging to Gordon and Breach. The article, written by retired physicist He

The SSC Laboratory in Dallas, the Department of Energy's newest national laboratory, says that its 54-mile proton accelerator will cost about 25% more than what the department had estimated. The price of the facility was pegged at $4.4 billion by DOE when it announced Texas as the site of the mammoth supercollider project in December 1988; DOE officials later increased that figure to $5.9 billion to account for the cost of inflation over its eight-year construction cycle. The new estimate, whic

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory work too hard. So officials have decided to cope with a 3% cut in the lab's 1990 budget by telling everybody to stay home as much as possible. This is how it works: Director John Nuckolls has asked the lab's 8,000 employees to use up all of the vacation time they earn this year, as well as one fourth of the time they have accrued during their tenure at the lab. The money to pay vacation time comes out of a different pot from the money for reg

Maryland Governor William Schaefer hopes to encourage more high-tech entrepreneurship in his state with a $15 million seed-capital fund he proposed to his state's General Assembly last month. The plan calls for a pool of money - mostly from public pension funds - that would be invested in venture capital firms; these firms would match the state investment and provide capital for high-tech startups. J. Randall Evans, secretary of the Maryland Department of Economic Development, says there could

Artificial intelligence continues to make inroads into the airline industry, helping carriers like Iberia deal with flight rescheduling problems and maintenance schedules. Now AI's combative little brother, neural networks, has made its first contribution to making the friendly skies more profitable. NationAir, a Montreal carrier, has installed a "yield management" system designed by BehavHeuristics Inc., to forecast passenger demand for flights at various fare levels. The system, which learns