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TORREON, MEXICO— On a dusty movie set in the Mexican desert, J. Robert Oppenheimer—or, more correctly, actor Dwight Schultz is writing equations on a blackboard. The setting is Los Alamos in 1944, and the actor is portraying the famous physicist as he excitedly describes a key step in the process of constructing the first atomic bomb to the general—played by Paul Newman—in charge of the new wartime laboratory. In minutes the camera stops rolling, and one of the actors str

Persons trained as medical doctors have traditionally played an important role in advancing the frontiers of biomedical research. But the need to pay medical education debts and the competition for funding have pushed many potential researchers away from the laboratory and into clinical practice. Enter the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. HHMI has just launched a postdoctoral research fellowship program to encourage clinically trained M.D.'s to pursue careers in research. Each year the program w

Scientists continue to feel aftershocks from the surprise shutdown in April of ETA Systems Inc., the Minneapolis-based supercomputer manufacturer (The Scientist, May 15, 1989, page 1). The latest victim is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamic Laboratory, the world's leading atmospheric modeling facility. The Princeton, N.J., lab had hoped that an upgrade of its current pair of aging CYBER 205 supercomputers would meet its increasing need for global warm

WASHINGTON-United States astronomers are preparing to ask the National Science Foundation to build two telescopes for the price of one. Their request, to be submitted next month, is part of a larger effort to reduce the cost of new projects in ground-based astronomy by increasing international collaboration. A plan for two 8-meter telescopes, one on Mauna Kea in Hawaii and one at Cerro Tololo in Chile, has been drawn up by the National Optical Astronomy Observatories (NOAO). The organization, wh

Even before it finishes up new rules on misconduct, NIH is already looking ahead to the next set of possible guidelines for grantees. These rules would cover standards of conduct to avoid real or imagined conflicts of interest by scientists who get government grants. The complex topic, believed by many observers to be a more serious problem than fraud itself, has already drawn congressional attention in light of federal pressure to strengthen ties between academic scientists and industry, and NI

WASHINGTON-The search for a successor to James Wyngaarden as director of the National Institutes of Health has begun, and members of the committee given the job of sifting through the applications say that the process isn't wired. "There's no shoo-in for the job," says Joseph ("Ed") Rall, NIH deputy director for intramural research. "I expect an open and honest search. I don't see anyone on the committee with a political agenda." James Mason, the new assistant secretary for health within the Dep

At a time when the supply of live animals for research use has become unreliable, expensive, and controversial, a Philadelphia organization is providing experimenters with a convenient alternative: human tissue. The National Disease Research Interchange, founded by Lee Ducat and funded in part by NIH grants, links scientists into a nationwide network of organ banks and hospitals whose excess surgical, transplant, and autopsy material would otherwise go to waste. In business for the past decade,

When fire swept through part of a mouse-breeding building at the Jackson Laboratory on May 10, there wasn't enough time for fear. 

The scientific jury may still be out on cold fusion, but some social scientists have already reached the verdict that the spectacle has been good for science. Just as a political scandal can invigorate politics by showing the public how it works, the cold fusion story has benefited science by exposing its hidden side, according to a panel of scientists, philosophers, and sociologists who met last month at the University of California, San Diego. "We saw science in the making. We learned a lot ab

WASHINGTON—in the three years since it was first proposed, the U.S. effort to map and sequence the human genome has joined the ranks of Big $cience with astonishing speed. Unlike the prospects for such controversial megaprojects as the superconducting supercollider and the space station, funding for the genome project appears to be going nowhere but up. The Bush administration has requested a total of $128 million more than double the current level of $53 million, and Congress appears

When the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on the rocks of Bligh Island on March 24, the more than 10 million gallons of crude oil it carried, invaded every nook and cranny of Alaska’s Prince William Sound, polluting the air, fouling the beaches, and staining the water for miles around. Within hours, while the stricken yessel remained on the rocks that had sliced it open like a tin can, a second invasion began: the scientists. They included fisheries biologists, oceanographers, vete

REDWOOD CITY, CALIF. —Don’t look for high-tech razzle-dazzle at Advanced Polymer Systems Inc. (APS). Unlike most of its entrepreneurial neighbors located in the creative ferment of the San Francisco Bay area, APS is not built upon some headline-grabbing new technology. There are no genetically engineered organisms here, no new drugs poised to save the world, no superconducting substances ready to revolutionize electronics. Founded in 1983, APS is anchored upon a relatively humdru