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WASHINGTON—Organizers of a new effort to carve out a larger role for minorities in science and technology, faced with a shortage of people in the various disciplines, believe the solution lies in part with making better use of the minority scientists that do exist. “The money is secondary at this point,” explained Melvin Thompson, director of the Institute on Science, Space and Technology to be housed at Howard University. “We’ll attract the resources we need by

LONDON—Europe has decided to remain at the forefront of condensed matter research with an agreement by nine countries to start building the $500 million European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) next year in Grenoble, France. At the same time, the United Kingdom has bolstered its reputation for remaining out of step with the rest of European science by refusing to pledge its support for the ESRF at a key meeting last month. Although the British Science and Engineering Research Cou

SAN FRANCISCO—What constitutes duplicate publication of scientific material? And what should happen to researchers who cross that line? The September 24 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine featured letters from readers who complained that an article on postmenopausal bone loss in the January 22 issue of NEJM was remarkably similar to an article by the same authors in the January issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The authors replied that the pa- per

SAN FRANCISCO—A California court has awarded a $65 million en- dowment from the Buck Trust to begin a multidisciplinary research institute on aging. The Buck Center on Aging, to be built in Main County, will be affiliated with the Berkeley, San Francisco and Davis campuses of the University of California system. The center expects to open in 1992 with a research staff of 60, including 15 senior researchers, and an annual operating budget of $4.5 million. The staff is expected to grow to

ADDIS ABABA—Ethtiopia’s military government is moving rapidly to create a National Science Center to force the pace of technical change in one of the world’s poorest countries. The center is an outgrowth of the increased support for science expressed in the country’s new constitution, approved in May and put into effect last month. The idea for a center comes largely from Abebe Muluneh a civil engineer in his late 40s who heads the country’s Science and Technolog

MAINZ, WEST GERMANY—An international scientific society is once again embroiled in a debate on apartheid in the form of a proposal to change its constitution to permit the exclusion from meetings of scientists from South Africa and Namibia. The 11th Congress of the International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (IUPPS) met here in August amid protesters who demanded that the organization exclude scientists who work in countries that practice apartheid. The lines of the

PARIS—The Pasteur Institute, which over the past century has evolved into a major center of biomedical research, celebrate its centennial this week with unusual panache for such a venerable institution. It enters its second century in far better financial shape than it was a decade ago, and having recently tucked several new feathers into its cap. French President Francois Mitterand and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac will launch the anniversary events, which include a conference on the f

COVENTRY, ENGLAND—Western scientists need to do more to obtain and make use of Japanese technical research results if their countries hope to remain competitive in many emerging areas. American and European scientists, administrators and industry representatives heard that message repeatedly from speakers at the International Conference on Japanese Information, held here last. month at the University of Warwick. They were also told that scientists should not expect any extraordinary ef

HEDGESVILLE, W.VA.—Guidelines for coping with scientific fraud and misconduct may be drafted by a joint committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Bar Association. Draft guidelines could be prepared and discussed at the group’s next meeting in the spring of 1988, according to Albert H. Teich of the AAAS. Teich is project director of the subcommittee on scientific fraud and misconduct of the AAAS/ABA National Conference of Lawyers and Sc

SAN FRANCISCO—Animal rights and environmental groups have targeted several proposed research facilities here in what univer- sity officials see as a serious threat to basic research and academic freedom on their campuses. Although there is a nationwide pattern of activity by various groups (see related story on p. 5), the Bay area has emerged as a major hot spot. At present Stanford University, University of California-Berkeley and UC-San Francisco are all fighting for permission to ex

The Pasteur Institute is world famous for the science it has produced for the past century, particularly in molecular biology. But for the past year and a half, molecular biologists have been concerned about another institute matter: six of its molecular biologists working with the teclmiques of genetic engineering have developed cancer. What do these cancers mean? Do they show that genetic engineering is hazardous for workers, as has been suggested by its critics from the beginning? Or is

Looking back, my scientific career seems to have been liberally strewn with missed opportunities. In fact, right at its outset I missed an opportunity by force of circumstance. After a six-year break in my studies occasioned by service with the Jewish Brigade in the 8th Army during World War II, I began work on my Ph.D. thesis at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1947. The subject was a search for soil bacteria that would produce an antibiotic against typhoid and dysentery bacteria. At th