The Scientist - Home

[Editor’s note: As chairman of the human resources subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Operations, Rep. Ted Weiss (D- N.Y) has devoted considerable attention to the issue of scientific misconduct. What follows is an edited transcript of an interview on the subject, conducted July 18, by senior editor Jeffrey Mervis.] Q You’ve held a series of hearings on issues that relate to public support of science. What are your principal concerns? A If I hadt o sum it up in one

MALIBU, CALIF—Almost, nothing is visible on the Pacific Ocean this warm, clear day. No boats, no suffers, no swimmers—only waves breaking on the beach. That’s no doubt just fine by Michael J. Little, because there’s enough going on already. In his office high above the Malibu surf, the physicist swivels in his chair and reaches into a drawer to extract what looks like a wooden box for chessmen. No knights and rooks come spilling out, however. Instead, Little careful

Tables Turn For Xerox Spin-Off Although Envos Corp., an artificial intelligence spin-off of the Xerox Corp., folded back into Xerox last spring after nine months in operation, the parent company is “absolutely” committed to developing similar ventures in the future, according to Xerox spokesman Peter Hawes. “We have been trying to identify [Xerox] technologies,” says Hawes, “and choose which. ..might lend themselves to alternative exploitation.” Envos, which

OTTAWA—Research chemist J.J.B. Pierre Blais joined the health protection branch of Canada’s Department of National Health and Welfare in 1976 in the midst of a productive career in the federal science bureaucracy. He had spent seven years at the National Research Council, and looked forward to many more satisfying years with his new agency. For a while it was just that. An expert in the biocompatibility of implant materials, Blais has worked on projects that have led to amendme

WASHINGTON-In the beginning there was an idea. And the idea was good: The National Science Foundation would bring high-performance computing to the scientific masses through a national network of supercomputing centers. Although some feared the network would cater to the computational elite, the five centers created in 1985 have now emerged at the crest of an extraordinary electronic revolution that promises to open wide the doors of numerical simulation to scientists in nearly every discipline.

LIVERMORE, CALIF.-Last summer Edward Teller, founder of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, took his protégé, Livermore theoretical physicist Lowell Wood, to the White House. There they met with President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George Bush to discuss Wood's latest idea for a weapon to defend the country against incoming Soviet missiles. Joining them was John Nuckolls, a nuclear physicist who a few months earlier had become the director of Livermore, the Department of

Until six months ago or so, ecologist H. Ronald Pulliam never bothered with fax machines. Now his work depends on them. Every day he and 20 colleagues use the machines to iron out the details of a multimillion-dollar, multidisciplinary, multi-university proposal to study how plants interact with the atmosphere. But fax machines aren't the only things that have changed the way Pulliam, director of the Institute on Ecology at the University of Georgia, carries out his work on global change. Indeed

The U.S. Department of Energy may well have expected applause when it announced in June that it would allow independent researchers to analyze the health records of workers at the nation's nuclear reactors and weapons facilities. After all, the decision was meant to address the public's growing concern about the environmental impact of the nation's 45-year experience with nuclear materials. At the same time, the decision would reverse a long-time DOE policy of restricting access to its employees

So what's really new this year from the federal government's treasure chest? A workshop in the nation's capital, slated for Oct. 3 and 4, will discuss 1990 funding priorities in research, development, education, and technical assistance for colleges and universities, medical schools, and private laboratories. Representatives from NSF; NIH; EPA; NOAA; the departments of Defense, Energy, Agriculture, Interior, Education, and Transportation; and the Office of Naval Research will discuss funding out

Allan Brornley finally got his chance July 21 to appear before the Senate as part of his nomination as director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and presidential science adviser. And it seems as though the Yale physicist will be in great demand once he steps into his new job. (The Senate was expected to vote last week to confirm him.) Sen. John Danforth (R-Mo.), calling himself "a complete ignoramus on science," invited him to a series of informal breakfast meetings to brief Commer

WASHINGTON-A recent decision by the U.S. House of Representatives to spend $110 million to begin construction of the superconducting supercollider is expected to break a political and financial logjam that has stymied advocates of the 53-mile-long laboratory. The lopsided House vote on June 28 (see page 11 for excerpts of that debate) has been greeted by SSC backers as the first tangible commitment by Congress to build the $6 billion accelerator. Although the mammoth project must now clear a sim

Three years after the Department of Energy mothballed the $246 million Lawrence Livermore lab Mirror Fusion Test Facility in favor of more promising tokamak designs, lab scientists are scavenging choice parts of the huge machine for a new international fusion project. MFTF magnets worth $11 million will soon form the core of a new facility that will test and certify superconducting material for the proposed four-nation International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, still in the planning stage