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What if you know that patenting your discovery can increase its value but you are puzzled by the patent process? You might want to attend the annual conference for Inventors and Entrepreneurs, cosponsored by the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) and Intellectual Property Owners Inc., scheduled for February 10 in Arlington, Va. Topics to be covered in the one-day event include: dealing with the PTO, exploiting venture capital, working with large companies, and understanding the international t

Speeding The Use Of Supercomputers Supercomputers are fast, powerful - and worthless if only a chosen few are able to envision what the new machines can do. This is the message of Clifford R. Perry, Kodak's director of information and computing technologies, who told the National Academies of Science and Engineering recently: "Our number one priority, in my view, is to create better ways of communicating not only how we use supercomputers, but how we assimilate their use." He added that the cu

Out of the Minneapolis suburbs they swarm in business suits, popping up at technical conferences and slowly picking the brains of the best scientists in a given field. Reconnaissance complete, they return home to sharpen their plans. A target is singled out for the kill—and if all goes well, Cray Research Inc. has sold another multimillion dollar supercomputer. This is the company’s newest sales hit team, comprising 60 of the company’s best salespeople, engineers, and scientis

In March of this year, Colombia heard some important news that had nothing to do with the country’s infamous drug trade. A Colombian scientist named Manuel E. Patarroyo published a study in Nature showing that an experimental vaccine he had developed was tantalizingly effective against malaria, a disease that threatens two-thirds of the world’s population. Until then, the parasite that causes malaria had stubbornly resisted the efforts of hundreds of researchers in the U.S. and Eur

WASHINGTON—Anyone who may be wondering why John Sununu wanted to become White House chief of staff need only dig out a speech the retiring New Hampshire governor and mechanical engineer gave five years ago. Addressing the 1983 winter meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Sununu said that good public policy depends on good technical information flowing into the government. But too often, he said, the quality of the information deteriorates as it moves up the chain of

PASADENA, CALIF.—Harry Gray can walk the 30 feet or so from his third-floor office at the California Institute of Technology and look out the window at a gigantic hole in the ground. Next to it is a huge mound of dirt covered with opaque plastic. The dirt, taken from the hole, will eventually be used for backfill, and the mound is affectionately called “Mount Beckman” after its benefactor, Arnold Beckman. Gray walks to the window frequently and happily; he is looking at the

New Aid For AIDS In an effort to capture more data on the treatment of AIDS patients, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) will make $6 million available to community-based physicians via a new project, called the Community Programs for Clinical Research on AIDS. The aim is to broaden the statistical basis for research on the disease by providing researchers, statisticians, and computer services to primary-care physicians who are now treating AIDS patients and othe

BIOMEDICINE: Nutrition research. $500,000 total over five years from Bristol-Myers Co. to Tufts University Schools of Medicine and Nutrition, Boston; I.H. Hospital, Mahidol University, Rosenburg, and Ramathibodi Bangkok, Thailand; V. I. Tanphaichitr Developing Investigator Award: investigation of basic mechanisms of the inimunopharmacology of allergic diseases. $300,000 over five years from the Burroughs Weilcome Fund [through the American Academy of Allergy and Immunology] to W.E. Serafin, Br

More than six years after it was completed, Oak Ridge National Labs Holifield tandem accelerator has finally reached its design voltage of 25 million volts. The long-awaited event, which took place last month, marked the end of a troublesome startup for the experimental facility, which was designed to conduct experiments involving heavy ions. A sparking “acceleration tube,” which maintains a vacuum around the ion beam, proved the biggest problem for the $8 million machine. The tube

The pain research prize was given to Patrick D. Wall, a physician and professor of anatomy at University College, London, while the neuroscience award is shared by Tomas Hokfelt of the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; Walle J.H. Nauta of MIT; and T.P.S. Powell of the University of Oxford. The pain award was presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Toronto last month, and the neuroscience award was presented at a New York City ceremony in October. Commenting on his capturing

The National Academy of Sciences, including the Academy of. Engineering and the Institute of Medicine, has had a banner year in Congress. The 100th Congress, whose two-year life ended in October, asked the academies to conduct 20 separate studies, a record number that is double the average for the previous five Congresses. The planned studies, which will examine everything from AIDS to export controls, suggest both a growing faith by Congress in the ability of academy panels to deal comprehensi

[Ed. note: In the October 31 issue of The Scientist New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu was interviewed as a spokesman for the Bush campaign on science. Now, of course, Sununu has been named White House chief of staff, putting him into position to influence debate on many of the issues he discussed with The Scientist’s, Jeffrey Merivs. As a result, we have decided to print additional parts of the interview.] Q Do you think that some sort of national program is needed to bring about change