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Volume 3, #2The Scientist January 23, 1989 UNIVERSITY BRIEFS Scientists Take To The Silver Screen When movie director Roland Joffé set out to chronicle the dawn of the Atomic Age, he sent out an unusual casting call. Rather than use actors to portray most of the Los Alamos physicists of the 1940s, he decided that only real scientists would do. So he and his crew passed around the word at several universities, and he soon recruited 50 scientists, engineers, and physician

U.S. industry produces nearly 300 million tons of hazardous waste annually, and spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year trying to treat it, carry it away, bury it, or otherwise get rid of it. And as the amont of waste--and the cost of dealing with it--rises, corporate America is beginning to search for a better approach. Increasingly, industry is shifting its attention from treating and storing what comes out of the "pipe," to reducing the amount of waste produced in the first place.

"One of the big problems we had in venture capitalism was that in order to check an idea, you had to start a company," says David Rammler. But no more. Rammler, an organic chemist-turned-financier who has been involved with eight startups and is a former director of research in the Institute for Molecular Biology at Syntex Corp., solved that problem a year ago by forming a venture capital firm that employs more scientists than MBAs--and which thoroughly tests ideas from potential scientist/en

TI: Will Bush's Record On Waste Be Better Than Reagan's AU: JEFFREY MERVIS DT: January 23, 1989 PG: 7 TY: NEWS (The Scientist, Vol:3, #2, pg. 7-8, January 23, 1989) (Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.) ---------- WASHINGTON--Environmental problems have become so pervasive, that such complex issues as toxic wastes, global warming, and depletion of the ozone layer have become the topics of casual conversation among an otherwise scientifically illiterate public. And yet the one government agency that

In The Graduate, the character played by Dustin Hoffman was told that he should hitch his future to "Plastics!" But if the movie were being made today, the advice to college students might be a little different; the hot field is "hazardous waste." Listen to Ralph Kummler, professor and chairman of chemical and metallurgical engineering at Wayne State University. "Hazardous waste is probably the single-most booming area in new education in the U.S. today," Kummler says. "Five years ago univers

The rules in the race to develop anti-AIDS drugs are changing, and as a result, Business Technology Research (BTR), a subsidiary of consulting firm Venture Economics, is hedging its bet as to who the winners may be. In a marketing report published last month, BTR examines the effects that upcoming changes in FDA regulations will have on firms fighting to develop the next anti-AIDS therapeutic. Only one drug, Burroughs Wellcome's AZT, has been approved against AIDS so far, leaving a host of we

U.K. produces more papers than any other European nation, but articles from Switzerland carry more clout For centuries, the nations of Europe have been competing fiercely with one another. They have fought long and bitter battles over mere slivers of land. They have clashed repeatedly in pursuit of new markets. Fortunately, outright warfare over land and markets is largely a thing of the past. But there is one realm in which the competition, although more civilized, is still hotly contested

Sidebar: What Can Scientists Do To make Animals 'Happier' Animal rights activists have had an impact, but the biggest changes are coming from scientists themselves Why should a physicist or a chemist care about the endless public debate over the use of research animals? Almost every scientist knows the creatures are crucial for progress in biology and medicine. And scientists are fed up with the clamor being raised by folks who seem to care less about the human animal than about the lab anima

Some call him a genius, others a charlatan; but even his critics agree that Huang's optical computers are unsurpassed HOLMDEL, N.J.--Absent was the cautious reserve usually adopted by scientists in formal presentations. In its place was Alan Huang's characteristic approach to the scientific briefing: machine-gun bursts of excited speech, highly animated hand gestures, all in support of the virtues of Huang's passion - optical computers, whose circuits run on light rather than electricity. Hu

New Ph.D.'s are at a 10-year low as cultural and educational obstacles keep blacks from careers in science and engineering As ambitions go, Nola Campbell's do not seem grandiose. The senior at Roosevelt High School in Washington, D.C., just wants to get a Ph.D. in chemistry and become a scientist. But the odds are against her, for one simple reason: Campbell is black. The statistics paint a bleak picture of her chances. In 1987 only 222 blacks received Ph.D.s in the sciences and engineering

Bernard Dixon European Editorial Office The Scientist Uxbridge, U.K. " One source of unease about the deliberate release of genetically engineered microbes for agricultural and other applications is the inadequacy of present techniques for monitoring the movement of certain types of organism. The answer: gene probes, which also provide new information about the relations between different groups of bacteria. T.C. Hazen, L. Jimenez, "Enumeration and identification of bacteria from environment

Frank A. Wilczek School of Natural Sciences Institute for Advanced Study Princeton, N.J. " Some of the most subtle and surprising manifestations of quantum mechanics involve the appearance of phase factors as particles wind around another. The prototype of this is the Aharonov-Bohm effect, whereby charged particles are deflected as they orbit around a solenoid, even though there is no force acting. Similar ideas appear in the theory of quark confinement and in the theory of fractional statist