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The next time your graduate students complain of overwork, lack of direction, and inadequate funds, show them the study presented by UCLA's Patricia J. Gumport as part of a session on U.S. research universities. The professor of graduate education interviewed dozens of graduate students in physics and history at a "mid-level" university--and discovered that science is Fat City compared to the humanities. Several million dollars in grant money flow in to support physics students, while those in

Forget filling out grant applications or begging your department head for discretionary funds - your next research award may come courtesy of the daily papers. Last month, two of Canada's leading newspapers, The Globe and Mail and La Presse, ran full-page ads that shouted in end-of-the-world-size type: "ATTENTION SCIENTISTS. $1 MILLION GRANT AVAILABLE FOR DISCOVERY OF NON-INVASIVE MEANS TO DETECT GASTROINTESTINAL DAMAGE CAUSED BY ARTHRITIS MEDICATIONS." Placed by Searle Canada Inc., the ad was

Computer artists transform equations into dramatic simulations at the Ilinois Supercomputer Center. On a hot day in Illinois, a storm is brewing. Above cornfields and a dusty road, a cloud dramatically billows and grows. To the experienced eye of veteran meteorologist Robert Wilhelmson, the gathering tempest looks like a potential tornado. But don't run for the storm cellar. The cloud is only 12 inches high and the sky is just the deep blue background of a computer screen. The whole scene e

Tired of being the defenseless targets of animal rights protestors, scientists are fighting back-and winning. SAN DIEGO--In a laboratory at Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, Calif., Michael J. Campbell conducts experiments on mice in an attempt to develop a vaccine for deadly B-cell lymphoma. But the 28-year-old biologist is also fighting what he regards as another deadly affliction, this one a threat to science itself. Two years ago, Stanford proposed building a new facility

Competition for research funds will heat up, but most scientists sat that NIH is making the right decision. WASHINGTON, D.C.--The National Institutes of Health have long struggled with a painful dilemma. Given finite dollars, how can a funding agency manage to reward proven investigators while still nurturing fresh talent? In recent years, NIH's answer has been to trim existing grants in order to fund more new scientists. But in a recent major change in policy, NIH has decided to sharply redu

The Bundestag is about to hand down a decision whether biotech work can continue FRANKFURT--It's not often that a country grapples publicly with its future in a key area of science and technology. But that's what is happening now in West Germany. Later this month, a plenary session of the Bundestag (the nation's parliament) will begin debating the report of a parliamentary commission, entitled Prospects and Risks of Genetic Engineering, which recommends a total ban on the release of genetical

Francisco J. Ayala Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology University of California Irvine, Calif. Latimeria chalumnae was discovered 50 years ago, one of a group of fishes (coelacanths) thought to have died out 80 million years ago. Latimeria raised hopes of gathering direct information on the transition from fish to amphibians, because coelacanths were thought to be ancestral to the tetrapods. Studies of Latimeria anatomy and physiology have shown that it is not the missing link betw

Sokartes T. Pantelides IBM Research Division Thomas J. Watson Research Center Yorktown Heights, N.Y. A recent paper gives an interesting view, strictly experimental, on the possibility of an electromagnetic "fifth " force, in complete analogy with the highly controversial gravitational fifth force. D.F. Bartlett, S. L"gl, "Limits on an electromagnetic fifth force," Physical Review Letters, 61 (20), 2285, 14 November 1988. The dispersion front of a tracer fluid flowing in a porous medium has

Bernard Dixon European Editorial Offices The Scientist Uxbridge, U.K. A genetically engineered retrovirus has been insterted into yolk sac and other cells and exploited as a marker with which to identify their progeny over time. This ingenious technique is already contributing to the solution of the central problem of embryology - the means by which cells differentiate in response to the program carried in a primordial cell's DNA. J.R. Sanes, "Analysing cell lineage with a recombinant retrov

Peter J. Smith Department of Earth Sciences Open University Milton Keynes, U.K. An analysis of trace elements in three Chinese Permian-Triassic (P-Tr) boundary sections reveals no enhancement of iridium, thus offering no support for the idea that the P-Tr mass extinctions were due to bolide impact. On the contrary, other trace element concentrations indicate intense volcanism at that time. L. Zhou, F.T. Kyte, "The Permian-Triassic boundary event: A geochemical study of three Chinese sections

Mary Anne Fox Department of Earth Sciences University of Texas, Austin Austin, Tex. The Seventh International Conference on Organic Synthesis (July 1988) provided an excellent overview of rapidly developing methodology in the field. The lead-off lecture, published as a journal article, highlights synthetic applications of stereospecific radical reactions, the role of organic tellurides as accumulators and exchangers of carbon radicals, and the palladium-mediated conversion of organotellurides

Appointment of a new executive director is expected to be announced early this year by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation of New York, and one of the programs the new director will review and probably tinker with is the grant program in chemistry for liberal arts colleges. This program provides $45,000 for each of 10 schools to pair a recent Ph.D. in chemistry as a teaching fellow with an established chemistry professor as mentor. The foundation staff is considering proposing some improv