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Requests to fund university research facilities, also known as "academic pork," that have become a growing and controversial part of the congressional budget-making process have been trimmed in the 1989 appropriations for the Department of Energy. Only two such projects, totaling $16.6 million, appear in the bill passed May 17 by the House, in contrast to nine projects, worth $73.7 million, that the House approved last year. Loma Linda University’s Proton Beam Cancer Treatment Center ($1

Want to take a cruise in the Black Sea? Short of defecting to the Soviet Union, the best way may be to join up with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The institution’s research vessel Know the first U.S. ship to enter the Black Sea in 13 years, is in the middle of a planned series of six trips to the Soviet body of water. Its scientists are using the radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl disaster to study circulation patterns and chemical processes in the sea. Meanwhile, back in

Rebuffed in February by a California lower court, four former and one current University of California professors and the American Federation of Teachers have vowed to continue their fight against the university’s tenure and promotion peer review process by filing an appeal. The professors’ suit charges that the standard practice of keeping the identity of peer reviewers secret violates each candidate’s right of due process. "This is the first time in the country that this se

The Japanese think so and have-tried to sign up super startups who can’t attract U.S. corporations to their superwares SACRAMENTO, CALIF--"It’s too low-tech for some people," admits Ray Anderson cheerfully. "But I like the idea: using low tech to make high tech." Anderson casts a slightly apologetic glance around his company’s big workshop. A crazy quilt of clutter fills it: stacked chairs, boxes, empty Pepsi cans, silvery asbestos-lined gloves, metal shelves, wooden benches

When the news is this good, it’s hard to keep it to yourself. It might even be illegal. That’s why Chiron Corp. violated a basic tenet of the science profession by announcing in a press conference, rather than in a scientific journal following peer review, that it had isolated the virus for hepatitis non-A, non-B. States Ginger Rosenberg, associate director of business development of the seven-year-old Emeryville, Calif., medical research company, to have done otherwise may have v

When he couldn’t find a job, the Depression forced Lewis Harris to become an entrepreneur. In 1933, he opened his own research, development, and testing lab with only his new degree in pharmaceutical chemistry from the University of Nebraska and $100 he had intended to use for his honeymoon. (The wedding was postponed for two years, until business was steady.) Last month, Harris Technology Group was named Nebraska’s Small Business of the Year, one of the few science-minded companie

No other scientific field has as many Nobel laureates per capita as the field of crystallography, and the American Crystallographic Association boasts five living Nobelists among its members. Six laureates—including all five ACA member Nobelists—will be in Philadelphia from June 26 to July 1 for the association’s annual meeting. Their symposium on Methods and Applications in Macromolecular Crystallography helps explain why conference organizers are predicting the highest atte

ARS’s respected administrator has retired but not without blasting his successor WASHINGTON--When Terry B. Kinney Jr. decided to retire as administrator of the Agricultural Research Service, he planned an orderly transition. He announced his intentions early so that his boss would have ample time to find a replacement, and he made it clear that he would remain long enough to train his successor. In addition, he discussed with others the need to bring on a savvy Washington insider. Kinn

Kodak, The ‘Great Yellow Father,’ AUTHOR: MATT DAMSKER Date: May 30, 1988 Is Innovating Like A Newborn To young scientists, it’s yuppie paradise; to the veterans, a mixed blessing ROCHESTER, N.Y—The old Kodak is still in evidence here. Downtown, the dignified brown skyscraper lords the familiar logo over Rochester as it has for more than half a century. A few miles to the north, there’s the company’s sprawling scientific complex, Kodak Park, and, at its hu

Matthew Meselson is catalyzed whenever he sees ‘misguided’ national policies CAMBRIDGE, MASS--At age 19, future Harvard biochemist and noted activist Matthew Meselson dropped out of college, went to live in Paris, and pondered forging a career as a Freudian analyst ot na- tions. With youthful hubris, he thought he might be able to explain the genesis of wars and other avoidable human catastrophes by scrutinizing the actions of governments past and present through the prism of mode

When NAS’s Frank Press said yes, some science leaders balked WASHINGTON--National Academy of Sciences president Frank Press took an unusually bold plunge into dangerous waters last month by calling for a new approach to funding science. Instead of forcing Congress to choose from among a bewildering array of costly projects, Press told NAS members, scientists themselves should decide what’s best. Frank Press has suggested that federal funding of science be divided into three ca

Handling ‘hot’ chemicals was one thing, but now comes the AIDS virus "Traditionally, most chemists have been macho," says Shane Que Hee, an occupational medicine specialist at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. "In laboratories—not the tidiest places in the world—you see volatile chemicals not in fume hoods. You see people not wearing gloves. I have even known chemists who washed their hands with benzene." That sort of cowboy swagger is fast falling ou