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Navy Scuttles U.S.-Soviet Alvin Dive The little scientific submersible Alvin marked its 25th anniversary of deep-sea exploration last month, but even as oceanographers staged a gala party on the Woods Hole, Mass., waterfront, the Alvin was becoming the center of an international brouhaha over technology transfer. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which operates the Navy-owned sub for the scientific community, had hoped to stage joint dives off Bermuda later this summer with the Soviet

Even as Congress once again wrestles with levels of funding for the superconducting supercollider (SSC), plans for another large North American high-energy physics project are moving quietly but steadily ahead. While SSC supporters scramble to entice reluctant foreign partners to help foot an estimated $6 billion bill for what has always been promoted as a United States-led effort, the other project-a proposed $450 million Canadian accelerator-has been designed from the start with international

For most of the public, the word "fusion" refers to the recent claims by University of Utah chemists of a way to produce boundless energy in a jar at room temperature. But research on "hot" fusion, the attempt to simulate within the laboratory the enormous pressures and temperatures that fuel the stars, has been under way for more than a generation. And it was only last year that the press was reporting a possible breakthrough from experiments in which scientists subjected tiny capsules of hydro

WASHINGTON-Sharing notebooks and other data with someone outside their laboratory is an idea that is anathema to many scientists. But they may need to get used to it as part of the price of performing science with public funds. The search for a better system to record, retain, and share data is emerging as a key issue in the ongoing debate over how to curb scientific misconduct. It promises to remain a significant issue long after scientists have finished arguing about whether Rep. John Dingell

TORREON, MEXICO— On a dusty movie set in the Mexican desert, J. Robert Oppenheimer—or, more correctly, actor Dwight Schultz is writing equations on a blackboard. The setting is Los Alamos in 1944, and the actor is portraying the famous physicist as he excitedly describes a key step in the process of constructing the first atomic bomb to the general—played by Paul Newman—in charge of the new wartime laboratory. In minutes the camera stops rolling, and one of the actors str

Persons trained as medical doctors have traditionally played an important role in advancing the frontiers of biomedical research. But the need to pay medical education debts and the competition for funding have pushed many potential researchers away from the laboratory and into clinical practice. Enter the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. HHMI has just launched a postdoctoral research fellowship program to encourage clinically trained M.D.'s to pursue careers in research. Each year the program w

Scientists continue to feel aftershocks from the surprise shutdown in April of ETA Systems Inc., the Minneapolis-based supercomputer manufacturer (The Scientist, May 15, 1989, page 1). The latest victim is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamic Laboratory, the world's leading atmospheric modeling facility. The Princeton, N.J., lab had hoped that an upgrade of its current pair of aging CYBER 205 supercomputers would meet its increasing need for global warm

WASHINGTON-United States astronomers are preparing to ask the National Science Foundation to build two telescopes for the price of one. Their request, to be submitted next month, is part of a larger effort to reduce the cost of new projects in ground-based astronomy by increasing international collaboration. A plan for two 8-meter telescopes, one on Mauna Kea in Hawaii and one at Cerro Tololo in Chile, has been drawn up by the National Optical Astronomy Observatories (NOAO). The organization, wh

Even before it finishes up new rules on misconduct, NIH is already looking ahead to the next set of possible guidelines for grantees. These rules would cover standards of conduct to avoid real or imagined conflicts of interest by scientists who get government grants. The complex topic, believed by many observers to be a more serious problem than fraud itself, has already drawn congressional attention in light of federal pressure to strengthen ties between academic scientists and industry, and NI

WASHINGTON-The search for a successor to James Wyngaarden as director of the National Institutes of Health has begun, and members of the committee given the job of sifting through the applications say that the process isn't wired. "There's no shoo-in for the job," says Joseph ("Ed") Rall, NIH deputy director for intramural research. "I expect an open and honest search. I don't see anyone on the committee with a political agenda." James Mason, the new assistant secretary for health within the Dep

At a time when the supply of live animals for research use has become unreliable, expensive, and controversial, a Philadelphia organization is providing experimenters with a convenient alternative: human tissue. The National Disease Research Interchange, founded by Lee Ducat and funded in part by NIH grants, links scientists into a nationwide network of organ banks and hospitals whose excess surgical, transplant, and autopsy material would otherwise go to waste. In business for the past decade,

When fire swept through part of a mouse-breeding building at the Jackson Laboratory on May 10, there wasn't enough time for fear.