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Prescriptions. Third-party payments. Health maintenance organizations. What do these have to do with science? That’s exactly what research scientists in the American Psychological Association have been asking for the past two decades as they watched psychologists in professional practice increasingly dominate the APA. Why should they put up with debates over health insurance and hospital admitting privileges? Why should they slog through conventions devoting more time to counseling techn

After years of hype, the national aerospace plane may finally be lumbering off the ground. Gone are the visionaries who spent years promoting proposals that have turned out to be little more than pipe dreams. Replacing them is a group of practical scientists and engineers. They admit that they are working on an experimental prototype that may never fly, much less carry passengers. Ironically, though, it’s just this kind of pragmatic talk that could bring the project the credibility it will

Creating machines that truly mimic the mind has long been the Holy Grail of computer scientists. And like the path to that mythical prize, the quest for artificial “brains” that can balance a checkbook or recognize flaws in aircraft engines with all the aplomb of a human is strewn with failed attempts But now there is a promising new contender. The approach goes by the name artificial neural network, because it works by duplicating the neural structure of the brain and it is already

Picture this You’re in an isolated corner of Easter Island, leading a research expedition peopled by lay volunteers who have actually paid for the privilege of helping you find and catalogue a series of ancient rock paintings. You’ve hiked for hours over extremely rough terrain to get to your site, a cliffside so precipitous that the volunteers have to be anchored to solid ground with ropes. Out of the blue, a female vol unteer approaches you and asks if there’s anyplace nearby

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND—In 1981, two years after Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher first attacked Britain’s slack management and bloated work forces, a powerful government committee decided to apply her doctrines to the nation’s universities. Out came the budget knife, and every university suffered cuts. A few of the cuts were so severe that they stunned even supporters of austerity measures. And the worst hit university, everyone agreed, was Salford, an establishment in a depressed

End Peer Review Several articles in the July 25 issue of The Scientist focus on one of the major problems that we are having in American science and why we are losing our technological edge to other countries. The articles on “blue sky” funding [from British Petroleum] and “renegade” researchers, and the editorial about Uncle Sam needing more good scientists all illustrate problems that have roots in the peer-review process. It is well known that people with innovative,

Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry has submitted its budget proposals to the Finance Ministry and, as usual, they provide a strong indication of the fields Japan intends to concentrate on next. Among the hot topics targeted by MITI are: " Artificial intelligence—MITI recommends that a study group of computer experts be convened to examine new approaches, such as neural network computers, which could be used to build a machine that imitates human thought. " Superc

The move to streamline the paperwork for federal grants is gaining steam. A new set of simplified rules has been in effect experimentally with Florida schools for three years, arid when designers of the streamlining project asked for volunteers to test the procedures nationwide, 50 institutions signed up. Meanwhile, the number of federal agencies participating has grown from five to eight, and NASA has been attending meetings on the system and may join soon. Currently taking part are: NIH, NSF,

Hazardous wastes study. $25,000 from the General Electric Foundation to Resources for the Future, Washington, D.C. HEALTH SCIENCES Mental health. $19,500 from the Chicago Community Trust to the University of illinois at Chicago for the Pacific/Asian American Mental Health Research Center Obstetrics. $32,535 from the Ford Foundation to International Women’s Health Coalition, New York, for research on reproductive health care in Indonesia Geriatrics center. $1 million from the Sarah and

Pity the planners at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility. After 25 years operating one of the nation’s top experimental accelerators, LAMPF officials fear that their operation may fall victim to the Energy Department’s desire to attract international partners for the superconducting supercollider. Both LAMPF and a similar Canadian meson physics facility in British Columbia want to upgrade their accelerators to the tune of several hundred million dollars—and it appears likely

By building a tiny “cityscape” on a chip of gallium arsenide, with crystal “skyscrapers” less thanone ten-thousandth of an inch high, Cornell University scientists have developed a simple method to improve electronic devices based on gallium arsenide (GaAs). As the basis for high-speed transistors, microprocessors, and tiny solid-state lasers, gallium arsenide outperforms silicon. However, its use has been limited by the number of defects plaguing the sandwich-like devic

Debra Jan Bibel; Science Tech Publishers; Madison, Wisc., and Springer-Verlag, London; 330 pages; $35 “When a science is making rapid and giant strides forward, as has been the case in immunology these past 25 years, there is little time to reminisce,”writes immunologist Arthur Silverstein in the introduction to this book. He laments that “most of [the young immunologists act (and write the introductions to their scientific papers) as though the entire history of the field we