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When pathologists talk about a lack of bodies, they don’t always mean staff. They’re referring to, and lamenting, the declining autopsy rate. If you died in 1950—during the golden age of autopsy—the chances were 50-50 that your body would be opened to determine the cause of death. The rate dropped to 41% in 1964, 35% in 1972, and 22% in 1975. Today, it is closer toone in 10 and still falling. Researchers are now voicing alarm about the implications this decline poses for

Did Someone Say Profit? The debate over potential conflicts of interest in science may be a hot topic among life scientists (The Scientist, Oct. 16, 1989, page 1). But judging from the comments of two Washington policymakers, the debate hasn’t filtered down to all segments of the scientific community. Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) recently gave a speech marking a new report from the National Academy of Sciences on opportunities in materials science that emphasizes how industry, academia, a

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.—In 1969, the Union of Concerned Scientists was formed to combat the perceived threat of the United States military’s spread onto campuses, throughout southeast Asia, and into space. Next week, the organization will again rally faculty and students against a potential threat to their well-being. But this time the danger—the possibility of global warming and its impact on the environment—affects the entire planet. Officials of the Cambridge, Mass.-based

NIH has calculated award rates for its individual research (ROl), career development (RCDA), academic research enhancement (AREA), and Small Business Innovation Research Phase 1 and 2 awards for fiscal year 1988. For the ROl program, the typical grant to an individual investigator, the National Eye Institute had the highest award rate among the 13 institutes, at 46%. The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases had the lowest award rate, at 27%. The overall NIH rate

John J. Hopfield—neuroscientist, chemist, physicist, and computer scientist—has been selected as the winner of the 1989 Wright Prize for interdisciplinary study in science and engineering from Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, Calif. Hopfield, 56, known for his research on neural networks, received $20,000 and a bronze sculpture from the college on October 12. Hopfield currently holds a joint appointment in the departments of chemistry and biology at the California Institute of Te

For researchers in such fast-growing fields as gene sequencing and crystallography, the end of traditional scientific publications may be in sight. Quietly, over the last year, a trial program in the electronic submission of data has laid the foundations for a revolution that may someday replace the research journal as the vehicle for scientific communication. In an agreement With GenBank, the main U.S. gene sequence database, nearly a dozen journals are refusing to accept papers with sequ

To say that Robert Hunter has made enemies in his first year as director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Research is an understatement. In fact, the real question may be just how many friends he still has left. Earlier this month, Congress held a rare three-day hearing on the troubled magnetic fusion program largely to build a case against Hunter and his plans to deemphasize tokamak fusion in favor of more work on a laser-based method known as inertial confinement fusion. A

A few years ago, physicist Abdus Salam, Nobel laureate and founder of the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, suggested that a sister institute to ICTP be founded in the Western Hemisphere. Leave it to physicists frorr Texas to lasso the idea and rope it in. “Other places a couple of years back expressed some interest,” explains David Ernst, a physicist at Texas A&M. “We took the idea and tried to do something.” In September, Ernst and his col

WASHINGTON—Two major foundations have put up $12 million to get a new discipline off the ground. They’ve drafted neurobiologists and cognitive scientists as pilot and copilot in the hope that, once airborne, cognitive neuroscience will improve our understanding of the biological basis of complete behavior. In December, the McDonnell-Pew Program in Cognitive Neuroscience will award $1.2 million grants to six institutions to help crystallize efforts in this hybrid approach to master

WASHINGTON—United States scientists are putting the final touches on the first issue of an English-language version of a Soviet magazine for gifted high school science and math students. A striking example of glasnost, the publishing venture is all the more remarkable because of the scientist who first proposed the idea of a joint arrangement between the two countries. The magazine will be called Quantum, a translation of its namesake, Kvant. It will debut in late November under the aus

PASADENA, CALIF—Two months after its extraordinarily successful encounter with the planet Neptune, Voyager 2 is battling its failing senses and ebbing vitality in an attempt to wrestle yet more science from the cold and barren expanses of interstellar space. The spacecraft has been flung by Neptune’s gravity out of the plane containing the planets of our solar system and is moving ever farther away from planetary science. For scientists and engineers at the National Aeronautics and

It’s two o’clock on an ordinary Monday afternoon, and Stephen Wolfram is just showing up for work. He greets an assitant grabs a batch of charts, and heads for his first meeting, a conference with a team of graphic designers. Together they’ll tackle a tough question regarding a piece of Wolfram-designed software. The question: In what variety of colors should the software be displayed on a computer screen? Wait a minute. This is Stephen Wolfram, the boy genius and enfant ter