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Ford Foundation Supports Postdocs Each year the Ford Foundation supports 25 young minority Ph.D. scholars as part of its Postdoctoral Fellowships for Minorities program. Minority investigators who have received their doctorates in the past seven years and who show great promise as academics can apply for nine- or 12-month fellowships. Scientists, mathematicians, engineers, social scientists, and humanists are eligible. Applicants must belong to one of the following ethnic groups: Native Americ

David Munz, a stress researcher at St. Louis University who leads a program in stress management at Monsanto Co., recommends the following methods for coping with job pressures: Exercise regularly. Even a 10-minute bout of brisk walking will improve your frame of mind. Use positive, not negative, language to refer to your projects. After a while, the positive attitude will begin to be second nature. Take frequent mental breaks or, to use a psychological term, hypnogogic naps. Close your eyes

LIGO Director Takes The Cosmic View Have A Heart, Johns Hopkins Data Confounded By Changing Cages Another Quantum Leap Forward See Rifkin Run NSF's big- gest new construction project--the proposed Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory--has fallen victim to Congress' 1991 budget axe. The observatory is meant to detect elusive gravity waves from the far reaches of space, and LIGO's director, Caltech physicist Rochus Vogt, says that he understands that sometimes, especially w

Congress fears that the deal with the weapons lab would have allowed NEC Corp. to acquire U.S. software expertise A move by the U.S. Senate to give scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory the chance to buy and test a new Japanese supercomputer has been derailed by political fears that such purchases would hurt home-grown companies and contribute to the erosion of the nation's competitive edge. Language that would have given Livermore explicit permission to purchase a supercompute

NEW HAVEN, Conn.--Patricia Goldman-Rakic, sitting in her office at Yale University, is talking to a visitor about the problems and pleasures of being married to another scientist when her department chairman knocks on her door and enters. He explains that he's normally more polite but that, since she is his wife, he takes certain liberties. They smile, then he gets down to the business at hand--copy for an advertisement for a new journal, Cerebral Cortex, of which they are coeditors. She skims

Following is a list of all eleven married couples who are members of the National Academy of Sciences. It includes the year of their election to NAS as well as their discipline and affiliation: Maurice Goldhaber (1958) and Gertrude Scharff-Goldhaber (1972), Physics, Brookhaven National Laboratory Leo M. Hurvich (1975) and Dorothea Jameson (1975), Psychology, University of Pennsylvania John W. Kappler (1989) and Philippa Marrack (1989), Microbiology and Immunology, Howard Hughes Medical Inst

UPTON, N.Y.--Gertrude Scharff-Goldhaber has pulled out a few faded, blue three-ring binders, several books, and other reprints. It's a two-foot pile of paper that provides tangible evidence of her half-century of work as a physicist. The documentation is unnecessary. The fact that she belongs to the National Academy of Sciences seems proof enough that her work is important. But Scharff-Goldhaber persists. As one-half of a marriage that began during an era when women scientists were consistentl

A wide range of scientific challenges spawns a surge in basic research for this once unacclaimed discipline Most researchers long believed that the sense of smell was genetically determined and, therefore, unchangeable. But at least one scientist--Charles Wysocki of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia--doubted this theory. Wysocki, a psychobiologist who investigates the genetics of olfaction in the 45 percent of the adult population who can't detect androstenone, a component in s

While a workable policy for modified organisms stays unresolved, scientists laud recent developments WASHINGTON--Congress and the Bush administration are moving along parallel tracks in search of a more efficient and comprehensive system to regulate the testing and mass production of genetically modified organisms. Most industrial scientists, academics, and environ- mentalists hail this movement as a sign of progress toward resolving this major obstacle for the biotechnology industry. At the s

But advocates wonder if the kind of research body they have in mind can survive turf skirmishes in the Washington ecosystem WASHINGTON--Ecologists scored a victory last month when Congress earmarked $400,000 for the Environmental Protection Agency to sponsor an independent evaluation of the nation's environmental research. Scientists view this study, which EPA initially opposed as unnecessary, as a first step toward creating a national environmental research institute. As envisioned, this new

ENDOTHELIN: A WHOLE-BODY APPROACH John Burnett's team has been on a winning streak in the past few months as the Mayo group of clinicians had two more endothelin studies accepted for publication: one appeared in the August issue of the American Journal of Physiology (P.G. Cavaro, et al., "Endothelin in experimental congestive heart failure in the anesthetized dog," 259:F312-17, August 1990), and one is to be published in the January 1991 issue of Circulation. The team also presen

Westinghouse Searches For Science Talent The Westinghouse Science Talent Search is boosting its awards total this year from $140,000 to $205,000. High school seniors can apply for these scholarships to fund individual research projects in science, mathematics, and engineering at the college or university of their choice. Forty finalists will receive scholarships ranging from $1,000 (30 recipients) to $40,000 (one recipient). Westinghouse will also pick up the tab for a five-day trip to Washing