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In the last decade, the Japanese have succeeded in convincing their competitors in the world market that the old saw—that the Japanese can imitate, not innovate—no longer cuts the mustard. But it would appear that they have yet to convince themselves. For while any expert in global economics would say that the Japanese are capable of doing a lot more than simply knocking off United States inventions and turning those knockoffs into irresistibly cheap and sought-after exports, the Jap

Inside Bell Labs: Excitement On The Bench; Concern On High AUTHOR: SHARON BEGLEY Date: September 05, 1988 Researchers have never felt freer, but some lab heads and a prominent former manager see major changes since divestiture The stockholder was annoyed. Why, he demanded, was AT&T paying Thomas Gradel, a middle-aged scientist, to tromp around the Jungles of Brazil studying ants, when the dollars could be better used to fatten up Bell’s notoriously meager dividends? The irate stoc

Technical problems plague Stanford’s Linear Collider, threatening its ability to produce breakthroughs in particle physics Expectations were running high. For months, the Stanford Linear Collider (SLC), an innovative particle accelerator nearing completion at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Facility (SLAC) in Palo Alto, Calif. had been preparing for its debut. This was the machine that would mint a million Z0 particles a year. Close study of the Z0—it’s mass, for example̵

Criticism Builds Over Nature Investigation AUTHOR:BERNARD DIXON Date: September 05, 1988 There may be no solution that can’t be diluted, but this is one controversy that won’t die out; Maddox vs. Benveniste LONDON--La'affaire Benveniste has been this summer’s, best soap opera—another thrilling episode in “As the World of Science Thins.” Who could have imagined that Jacques Benveniste, a scientist at a prestigious French government laboratory would claim to

Nobelist Sam Ting says his CERN experiment is like the United Nations—‘except we get something done.’ Here’s why GENEVA--"I don’t know what your rules are,” the particle physicist Sam Ting tells. the officials from the Soviet Union as they drink coffee in his Geneva office. “I don’t even care. What I am saying is this: When the announcement of a discovery is made, the people on the podium are the people who get the. credit. If you want your sci

The Scientist has asked a group of experts to periodically comment upon recent articles that they have found noteworthy. Their selections, presented here in every issue, are neither endorsements of content nor the result of systematic searching. Rather, they are personal choices of articles they believe the scientific community as a whole may also find interesting. Reprint. of any artieles cited here may be ordered through The Genuine Article, 5501 Market St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19104, or by tel

The Scientist has asked a group of experts to periodically comment upon recent articles that they have found noteworthy. Their selections, presented here in every issue, are neither endorsements of content nor the result of systematic searching. Rather, they are personal choices of articles they believe the scientific community as a whole may also find interesting. Reprint. of any artieles cited here may be ordered through The Genuine Article, 5501 Market St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19104, or by tel

The Scientist has asked a group of experts to periodically comment upon recent articles that they have found noteworthy. Their selections, presented here in every issue, are neither endorsements of content nor the result of systematic searching. Rather, they are personal choices of articles they believe the scientific community as a whole may also find interesting. Reprint. of any artieles cited here may be ordered through The Genuine Article, 5501 Market St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19104, or by tel

The Scientist has asked a group of experts to periodically comment upon recent articles that they have found noteworthy. Their selections, presented here in every issue, are neither endorsements of content nor the result of systematic searching. Rather, they are personal choices of articles they believe the scientific community as a whole may also find interesting. Reprint. of any artieles cited here may be ordered through The Genuine Article, 5501 Market St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19104, or by tel

The Scientist has asked a group of experts to periodically comment upon recent articles that they have found noteworthy. Their selections, presented here in every issue, are neither endorsements of content nor the result of systematic searching. Rather, they are personal choices of articles they believe the scientific community as a whole may also find interesting. Reprint. of any artieles cited here may be ordered through The Genuine Article, 5501 Market St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19104, or by tel

Biotech Patent Bottleneck Harms Makers Of Better Mousetraps AUTHOR:RON COWEN Date: September 05, 1988 While the U.S. Patent Office fiddles, small firms lacking earnings records may be losing potential investors WASHINGTON—Chemist George Rathman won’t soon forget July 1, 1987, the day that the worth of his company’s stock dropped $10 million in six hours. President and CEO of Aragen Inc., an eight-year-old biotechnology firm in Thou- sand Oaks, Calif., Rathmann calls the ex

A flap over photographs has made the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University the target of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The suit charges that staff photographer Terry Corbett was illegally fired in August 1987 after he refused to take pictures of demonstrators protesting the lab’s work on nuclear weapons. ACLU lawyer Charles Becker contends that the rights of demonstrators were violated when the Defense Department-funded lab gave pictures of the demonst