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SAN DIEGO—The University of California, San Diego, and its affiliate, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, are planning a new center that will combine the basic research skills of Scripps investigators with the medical talents of the university’s school of medicine to unlock the secrets of sea life. The UCSD-Scripps project—details of which are still being worked out—is the latest of several efforts in recent months by institutions intent on forging ahead with new

Berkeley Bevalac, Three Others Threatened Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s venerable Bevalac accelerator, for 35 years a laboratory centerpiece and the tool for four Nobel Prizes, appears to be the big loser in another national lab’s campaign for a new heavy-ion research facility. A Department of Energy panel has suggested that the Bevalac be phased out in the mid-i 990s in favor of Brookhaven National Lab’s proposed Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider if the department’s nuclear ph

The 1989 Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation Medical Research Awards, given to six scientists for their achievements in the medical sciences and public health administration, were announced last week. The awards, first presented in 1944, are divided into three categories: public service, clinical medical research, and basic medical research. A $15,000 prize is given in each Category. Lewis Thomas, 75, scholar-in-residence at Cornell University Medical College, Ithaca, N.Y., received the 1989 Al

When Price Is No Object Once the Department of Energy selected Texas as the preferred site for the Superconducting Supercollider, it wanted everybody to know exactly how it had gone about assessing the environmental aspects of its big decision. The resulting document, in four volumes, weighed 26 pounds; DOE sent out 17,000 copies, at a cost of $1.4 million. That extravagant first-class mailing piqued the interest of Congress, especially members from some of The seven states that had lost out t

Stellar Discovery For 19-Year-Old Student “Pretty good.” That’s how 19-year-old Celina Mikolajozak feels about discovering a supernova this summer. Mikolajczak, an engineering student at the California Institute of Technology, spotted the event—designated SN 1989N—while participating in Caltech’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF). The program, says Eleanor Helm, a planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who sponsored Mikolajczak th

A Chip Off The Old Du Pont A group of about 100 former Du Pont engineers and scientists has issued its first multiclient marketing research paper, an important step in the growth of the firm’s marketing business. Established in 1985 after Du Pont drastically cut its worldwide staff with an unrestricted early retirement plan, Condux Inc. is a consulting firm that primarily offers industry its technical expertise. Not surprisingly, perhaps, one of Condux’s clients has been Du Pont it

MADRID—With 1992 and European commercial integration fast approaching, Spain has taken measures to launch itself into the mainstream of European science, boosting the funding and training of its scientists and taking key steps to attract foreign technology-based industries. While Spanish scientists are pleased with these measures, they also regard them as inadequate if Spain intends to compete successfully in the new, unified, high-tech Europe. “Seven years ago, Spain was at

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.—Every summer, Eric Johnson plays Santa Claus to deserving faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And the list that he checks before he hands out his gifts is laid out in a 3-inch-thick computer printout—an account of “points” accumulated by individual faculty members over the past year as the reward for having met with representatives of private industry to discuss their work and share their technical expertise. Those points are converted

On Wednesday, July 26, Henry Wendt, chairman and chief executive officer of the SmithKline Beckman Co., appeared before the firm’s shareholders at an 8:30 A.M. meeting in the chandeliered ballroom of the Hotel Atop the Bellevue in Philadelphia. Standing before a huge transparency displaying two hands clasping one another, Wendt urged the shareholders to approve a merger with the giant British drug firm Beechain Group PLC. Minutes later, 99% of the voting shareholders created SmithKline

Three weeks ago, ethnobiologist Darrell Posey closed the door of his house in Belém, Brazil, leaving behind his life and scientific work of the past 12 years. The 42-year-old United States scientist’s involuntary departure from his post as coordinator of ethnobiology at Belém’s Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi, South America’s oldest natural history museum, was forced by Brazilian authorities, who Posey says are retaliating for his activism on behalf of native rights.

WASHINGTON—At the National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Md., James Massey and his colleagues are holding their breath and waiting with fingers crossed for word from Dallas. Starting Sept. 26, researchers will be knocking on doors to collect blood samples and information about possible risk behaviors for AIDS from 1,600 Texans. The results of this pilot study will determine the future of the National Household Seroprevalence Survey, a planned $25 million project to canva

Five years ago, Mac Hyman began to worry about AIDS. “I was convinced that the problem was very much larger than the people around me were reacting to,” recalls Hyman, a mathematical modeler at Los Alamos (N.Mex.) National Laboratory. “There just wasn’t any other problem that was crying out like this.” Driven by this conviction, Hyman convinced fellow mathematicians, social scientists, computer specialists, and medical experts to help him build a theoretical mod