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WASHINGTON—The American Psychological Association has beefed up its commitment to its scientific members as part of an internal realignment that intended to better serve the needs of an unusually diverse membership. A steady rise since the 1950s in the number of practitioners—those who provide health care directly to the public—has slowly tipped the balance against the academics and researchers who once dominated the 95-year-old association. As a result, that group has grown

WEST BERLIN—The chief funding agency for West German university scientists has proposed an ambitious expansion of its budget for the next three years. “The 1990s could become a time of blossoming for the German universities,” said Hubert Markl, president of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).” The DFG, the German counterpart to the US. National Science Foundation, administered a budget of $600 million last year. That figure represents about 5 percent of the mo

LONDON—Squibb Corporation, the U.S. pharmaceutical company, plans to spend $32 million over the next seven years at Oxford University on basic neuroscience research. The agreement is one of the biggest between industry and academia since Hoechst announced its $50 million, 10-year investment in molecular biology at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1982. Squibb is the first company to respond with cash to a workshop, organized jointly by the university and Britain’s Medical R

LONDON—An unusual alliance of scientific luminaries and the radical British Society for Social Responsibility in Science is campaigning for the adoption of an Oath for Scientists. Modeled after medicine’s Hippocratic Oath, it is a revised version of an earlier statement that recognizes the social impact of scientific developments. The 19 initial signatories of the oath include three Nobel laureates—Sir John Kendrew, president of the International Council of Scientific Unions

ZURICH—With two Nobel prizes in as many years, something good has to be going on at IBM’s research laboratory in Rüschlikon on the outskirts of this city. But apart from an environment that offers fine wines, Swiss cheeses and, on a clear day, a postcard view of the Alps, is there a lesson for other industrial research labs? The IBM lab’s achievements are by now familiar. Last year’s Nobel Prize in physics went to IBM researchers Gerd Binning and Heinrich Rohrer

WASHINGTON—NIH may lose a program to train researchers in primary medical care because of congressional concern that the money is going to researchers in other fields. The General Accounting Office has concluded that all 16 of the National Research Service Awards that NIH earmarked for work in primary health care in 1986, totaling $2.1 million, are instead supporting “biomedical research on specific diseases and in specialty areas of medicine rather than primary care.” Awar

AUSTIN, TEXAS—The Wild West has a new hero. Abraham Charnes, the founder of the Center of Cybernetic Studies at the University of Texas, has unhoistered mathematical equations to help Texas farmers win a long court battle over water rights from the Pecos River. The headwaters of the Pecos lie in central New Mexico. Flowing southward into West Texas to join the Rio Grande, the river runs through some of the most arid country in the United States. Texas and New Mexico have argued over

LONDON—Higher salaries at private companies have left Britain’s Ministry of Defense with hundreds of vacancies in its $12 billion procurement office. Ten percent of the 9,200 specialist posts are now unfilled. The problem is particularly acute among electrical and electronics engineers who assess, order and monitor the performance of sophisticated weapons systems. “We face a diabolical situation in defense procurement,” said Jenny Thurston, assistant general secretar

WASHINGTON—The U.S. fusion program must accept “an unprecedented degree of collaboration” with Western Europe, Japan and the Soviet Union if it is to achieve its current goals, according to government officials and the authors of a new report to Congress. Going it alone is too expensive and, besides, the money isn’t available. That was the clear message from the Department of Energy and the congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) at a hearing last month b

LONDON—A team of 40 scientists from the United States, Western Europe, Japan and the Soviet Union plans to begin work next spring on a three-year, $180 million effort to design the next large thermonuclear fusion experiment. If the participants accept the design, construction of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) could begin as early as 1993. Meeting last month in Vienna, officials from each of the participants also agreed on a European site for the project. It

WASHINGTON—On November 6 the American Chemical Society will celebrate National Chemistry Day. The posters proclaiming that "chemistry is everywhere” are part of the society's campaign to blunt the impact of such environmental disasters as Bhopal and Love Canal and, at the same time, gain crdit for some of the recent advances in medicine and biotechnology. Even as ACS is looking outward, however, it is also trying to harmonize its dual roles as a professional society and as an advi

WASHINGTON—Ohio State University physicist William Palmer says he felt like “eollapsing in the corner” after working long hours to help his state complete its proposal for the Superconducting Supercollider. But the september 2 filing deadline was just the beginning of the race for the multi-billion-dollar high-energy physics project. Officials from Ohio and 24 other states barely had time to catch their breath before plunging ahead into the next phase of the campaign, which