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Before I had a PC, I wouldn’t have thought of using a paper and pencil outline before writing an article or committee report. Now it’s rare that I don’t use my PC’s outliner. Not only do I compose full outlines before sitting down to write papers, but I prepare most of my course and professional lectures either partially or entirely in an outliner. What makes an outlining program (at least one of the good ones) so much more powerful than paper and pencil is the ease o

Two years after the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, the surrounding lakes and streams are finally returning to their original radiation levels. It took that long for Nature to work the nasty poison out of her system. Should a similar disaster occur today, a new material could do in two weeks what it took Nature two years to accomplish in Chernobyl, predicts Sridhar Komarneni, professor of clay mineralogy at Penn- sylvania State University’s Materials research Lab and Department of Agron

The tunable dye laser, once a highly specialized instrument used only by laser physicists, is proving irresistible to a wider range of physicists, chemists, and engineers, as well as to biologists, physicians, psychologists, and even art historians. Recent advances in dye laser research and three noteworthy new products are pushing time-able dye lasers into more laboratories than ever before. A colliding pulse mode-locked dye laser kit developed by Clark Instrumentation Inc. produces 100-fem

The device most people think of when they imagine a laser is actually a laser oscillator. A laser is actually a light amplifier. Dye laser oscillators are light sources that can be tuned to any color in the visible and near-visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum (3900A-9000A). Unlike other types of lasers, the dye laser amplifies light over a large range of frequencies. In this sense, the dye laser islike apublic address system, which amplifies sound over a large range of frequencies

They were never in the same place at the same time, yet three renowned scientists, working in tandem, came up with a new dinosaur Gorgosaurs were close relatives to the well-known Tyrannosaurus rex, huge beasts, up to 45 feet long and weighing as much as five tons. This skull was small, supposedly the remains of a baby gorgosaur. But it just didn’t look like a gorgosaur to Bakker. He told as much to the museum’s curator, Michael Williams, but he couldn’t prove his hunch. A

Scientists at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory have picked up a strong—and unwelcome—signal from a source close to home. NSF has slashed the observatory’s research equipment budget in half, cut staff by 10 percent, and sharply reduced funding for postdocs. This is the fourth straight year of shrinking budgets for the program, which includes three observatories and 10 very long baseline array antennas being constructed around the country. Recruiters at Los Alamos Na

From Yale To Stanford, Universities Are Thoubled Shortfalls in overhead, depreciation, and other indirect costs can tear apart faculties and bring strong provosts to their knees. Indirect costs aren’t glamorous. They won’t solve the mystery of dinosaur extinction or find the charm in quarks. But whisper those two simple words in the ear of virtually any president or provost of a major research university, and you may see a strong person blanch. The reason: Indirect costs are risin

Retin-A, the acne drug that is prescribed for wrinkles, has also smoothed the future for the University of Pennsylvania’s dermatology department. The drug’s inventor and patent holder, longtime Penn dermatologist Albert Kligman, 71, has been donating his royalties to the department. The money, $4 million so far and climbing fast, frees the department from the hypocrisy” of grant-getting, says Kligman, and has been used to recruit faculty, buy equipment, and fund research. Un

Strong measures to save Imperial College from indirect costs have ruffled scientists’ feathers LONDON--When the tall, spare frame of David Thomas glides into their laboratories, even the crustiest dons at London University’s Imperial College quake inside their tweed coats. For Thomas is the college’s ghost of Christmas future, warning of impending ruin unless scientists mend their financial ways. His message, preached with Welsh fervor, is simple. Imperial College and other

Three Japanese behemoths led the list of companies receiving the most U.S. patents in 1987. Canon K.K., Hitachi Ltd., and Toshiba together received more patents (2,515) than General Electric Co., IBM Corp., and RCA Corp. (1,874), according to a study by Intellectual Property Owners. The Japanese also raced to a commanding lead in the auto industry, where Mitsubishi, Honda, and Toyota each chalked up more patents than the U.S. leader, General Motors. All told, 29 Japanese companies appear amon

Fun And Profit In The Skin Trade From deep biology to Epidermis Inc., another tale in the merchandising of science CAMBRIDGE, MASS--Jeff Morgan and Brad Guild moved into their new office on the opening day of baseball season this April. The space was small: a single room with built-in desks lining opposite walls and barely enough room to swivel their chairs. The pair stacked boxes and unpacked a few books. And Guild took up a blue magic marker and scrawled the business’s first official

Are the special sparks of creativity and do-it-yourself vigor that are the hallmarks of entrepreneurship something that can be learned in a classroom? Increasingly, scientists are teaching scientists the art and business of new commercial ventures. At Northwestern, for example, students with science and engineering backgrounds compose one-third of the classes taught by physicist and business professor Stuart Meyer in the Kellogg School of Management. And at Cornell, former physicist and Genera