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LONDON—A consortium of four universities and three polytechnics in northwest England will host a new think tank aimed at improving Britain's ability to exploit its scientific research and development. The Centre for Exploitation of Science and Technology (CEST), funded by the government and private industry, is expected to remain independent of its academic hosts but conform to the standards of academe. Based in Manchester, it will maintain close links with all consortium members. CEST

WASHINGTON—White House science adviser William Graham has formed a new committee to shape administration policy in the life sciences. The 24-member coordinating committee will be chaired by Beverly Berger, assistant director for life sciences in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. It will consist of representatives from nine Cabinet-level departments and nine federal agencies, including several with the duty to regulate rather than finance research in the life sciences. The co

WASHINGTON—The American Society of Mechanical Engineers has thrown a life buoy to the Marine Technology Society. The support comes in the form of a two-year, interest-bearing loan and a temporary donation of office space, worth a total of $200,000. MTS, a 25-year-old interdisciplinary society, derives its $350,000 annual budget from dues of its 2,500 members, conference fees and publication sales, but the prolonged crisis in’the oil and gas drilling industry has put a squeeze on t

Ask Carl C. Peck of the Food and Drug Administration how important research is to his job, and he’ll simply point to the title of the center he heads. 

WASHINGTON—A quiet battle is being waged here to win control over certain types of unclassified information, including scientific data, despite the Reagan administration’s decision earlier this year not to broaden such control. The decision last March not to create a new category of “sensitive hut unclassified” information has not stopped the Pentagon’s National Security Agency from continuing to set policies for defining and protecting classified information. No

TOKYO—Some four months after Japan agreed to join the Strategic Defense Initiative championed by the Reagan administration, the scope and nature of its participation remain unclear. “We have only just finished studying what kind of cooperation and what kind of regulations are involved,” said Koji Inoue, assistant section chief of the Aircraft and Ordinance division of Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). “So far, no specific corporations.

WASHINGTON—The Reagan administration is asking Japan to participate in a major U.S.-led research project as part of what it hopes will be a tougher bilateral agreement on scientific cooperation. The U.S. proposal has, not been made public, but it is thought to seek Japan’s participation in a large-scale project such as the space station or the Superconducting Supercollider. According to Charles T. Owens, the National Science Foundation’s member of the negotiating team, R

A new survey based on a range of benchmark jobs shows that research directors and other top administrators earn up to twice as much as laboratory scientists. The survey of 5,000 employees in 116 industrial and academic research settings divides the work force into categories based on job responsibility. It ranges from those who direct 100 or more persons and whose duties are primarily managerial to laboratory scientists who work on a specific project. The survey found, on average, that pay

NEW YORK—Some 20 eminent scientists and a similar number of television news executives will meet to try to bridge the distance between the scientists who make the news and the journalists who broadcast it. The December 12-13 meeting in Tarrytown, N.Y., is the first step in a long-term project made possible by a $876,225 grant to the Scientists Institute for Public Information (SIPI) from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation of Chicago. “I used to call it a gap. Now it

The principal contributions to astronomy that I have been able to make in the past 50 years of my professional life involve the study of binary stars—in particular, pairs of stars that are so close as to mutually eclipse each other in the course of each revolution and that, in so doing, exhibit characteristic telltale changes of light. The importance of such systems is that they offer us the only possible means to determine the masses and absolute dimensions of stars other than our Sun.

Q:Since Prime Minister Thatcher came to power in 1979, her three governments have changed the agenda for political debate in Britain. Has Conservative rule also altered the agenda for science policy? Do you believe that the difficulties now facing U.K. science are simply the outcome of an attempt to save money, or are they the result of a coherent plan? BODMER: Definitely not the latter. Our problems are largely to do with cash and with a monetary policy which says that government expenditure

In its development, the American engineering profession has drawn upon two competing yet complementary traditions: the hands-on, muddy-boots pragmatism inherited from Britain and the elite, science-oriented approach of the French polytechnique. Science and mathematics gradually have taken a central position, with emphasis being placed upon their creative application. The less theoretical “hardware” aspects of technology have been delegated in part to graduates of two-year technici