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WASHINGTON—In a document that is being roundly condemned by science administrators, lobbyists, and other observers, the National Institutes of Health has proposed vol- untary guidelines on financial conflicts of interest by university researchers. The criticism from experts in the field is expected to sharpen the explosive debate on how to preserve the integrity of federally funded research while at the same time translating that research into products that are designed to improve publi

WASHINGTON—Scientists from all over the world are traveling to the earth’s coldest places to do what might turn out to be the decade’s hottest research. Buried deep in Greenland’s ice sheet may be answers to a problem—global warming—that threatens the entire planet. This problem has sparked much talk of international alliances among investigators. But in Greenland, United States scientists have split off from their European colleagues so that now there are tw

Back To El Salvador Archaeology during a civil war is dangerous, but as the bloody conflict in El Salvador drags on, a team has resumed work on a prehistonc site 20 miles north of the capital, San Salvador. The team led by Payson Sheets, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, spent the summer working on what he calls an “archaeological goldmine,” the best preserved domestic village in SQuth America. “I’ve never seen a site like that,” he says. &

WASHINGTON—"There are resources that are going begging.” That’s how Charles Owens, section head in the National Science Foundation’s division of international programs, describes NSF’s efforts to send more United States scientists to Japan. For the past two years NSF, armed with $4.8 million and the moral support of the Japanese government, has offered language, fellowship, and research op- portunities in that country. The goal is to remove the barriers that make

The new NIH regulations that determine how universities should respond to allegations of scientific misconduct (The Scientist, Sept. 4, 1989, page 1) have derailed proposed legislation in Congress. For several months Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) who has explored the issue in numerous hearings involving MIT biologist David Baltimore, has been on the verge of introducing legislation that would force institutions and federal agencies to be more responsive to the issue. But an aide on the House Ener

WASHINGTON—Despite applause from both sides, Soviet and U.S. scientists may be slow to take advantage of two new agreements for joint research. The agreements call on scientists to set up their own collaborations and to find their own funding. Many Soviet scientists are not used to doing this, officials from the National Science Foundation learned during a recent tour of Soviet institutes. “They seem to have some reservations about how this kind of system would work and how it

NIOSH Narrows Focus, Increases Award The federal National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has sweetened the pot in its search for applied scientists interested in conducting research on job-related risk factors. The agency has increased the annual stipend for its Special Emphasis Research Career Awards to $50,000, up from $30,000, and has lowered its requirements for research experience. The nonrehewable awards, begun in 1984, must now support training in applied or clinical—

In this post, Novacek will coordinate the research efforts of the scientific staff members, who are conducting investigations in more than 50 areas of biology, mineralogy, and anthropology. He will also advise the president on all matters dealing with the direction of research at the museum, and will act as the chief spokesman on the museum’s scientific programs, both internally and externally. Novacek, who joined the museum staff in 1982 as an assistant curator, will continue his rese

There’s No Place Like Home When the Los Alamos National Lab started searching for an eminent scientist to lead its Human Genome Center last fall, biology group leader George Bell told The Scientist (Sept. 5, 1988, page 2): “We’re looking for someone of [Charles] Cantor’s stature.” It was a reference to the well-known Columbia University geneticist whom Lawrence Berkeley Lab had just hired to run its own program. Last month Los Alamos named Robert Moyzis, an in-hou

WASHINGTON—Scientists are serving as the footsoldiers in the latest campaign to bring the United States back into UNESCO—the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. But theirs is an uphill battle, and their advocacy is forcing them into apparent alliances with some unfamiliar— and, to many people, unsavory—causes. Last month the scientific community argued its case before Congress, as the House foreign affairs subcommittee on international op

SCID Mice Go Commercial The Philadelphia-based Fox Chase Cancer Center has entered the mutant mouse business with a series of licensing agreements that will allow commercial distribution of a key strain used to study diseases of the immune system. The SCID (severe combined immune deficiency) strain, which arose naturally from a chance mating of two normal mice in the Fox Chase labs in 1981, was the first to accept human immune system cells, making national headlines for two California research

G. CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON WASHINGTON—The Department of Energy, reacting to congressional pressure and criticism of its epidemiology program, has asked a new advisory panel for help. The move is aimed at defusing an increasingly volatile dispute between environment and health activists and the energy department over the health records of 600,000 DOE nuclear weapons plant workers (The Scientist, Aug. 7, 1989, page 1). Meeting last month for the first time with his Secretarial Panel for t