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WASHINGTON—NSF Director Erich Bloch has thrown Congress a curveball in the hope that legislators won’t knock his request for a 19 percent budget increase out of the ballpark. Bloch's 1989 budget contains a new pitch to salvage his plan for a dozen or more university-based science and technology centers. It requests $150 million up front—nearly half of the overall $333 million increase sought by NSF—for a five-year program that would be isolated from the foundationR

Boston-Scientists who advise the president face a dilemma. Their advice must remain confidential if it is to be useful. Yet their authority ultimately is derived from public acceptance of their technical expertise. Last month, at the annual meeting here of the Amencan Association for the Advancement of Science, a distinguished panel of past and present science advisers discussed how best to advise the president. Although the day-long symposium was spawned by the frustration and disappointment

Every few weeks I read another journalist’s jab at the value and quantity of scientific journals. When discussing the ever-expanding literature, reporters of the popular press frequently indulge in superficial analyses that distort reality, whether through misunderstanding or exaggeration. Nancy Jeffrey revealed profound misunderstanding in “Mollusks, Semiotics and Dermatology: Narrow Scholarly Journals Are Spreading” (Wall Street Journal, August 27, 1987, p. 25). She invites

The genome. project... seems a ploy to raise money, a project justified by its public relations value, not its scientific value... We stand now at a moment of great opportunity. We have, a low-resolution map of much of the human genome and it is sure to improve. We have the skills to develop clone banks, high-resolution maps and rapid sequencing techniques. We can do what we have always done: each of us can apply these techniques as we see fit. We can distribute our efforts over various exper

Editor’s note: February was a key month for the proposed project to map and sequence the human genome. The National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences issued its report “Mapping and Sequencing the Human Genome,” which sounds a strong call for an immediate, largescale program. Meanwhile, David Baltimorebiologist, devoted part of his keynote address at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science to a cautionary note regarding t

What should scientists and technicians working in a military research establishment do if they come across classified information that they believe should be made public? If they decide to publish information concerning a clear threat to world security, how should the international scientific community respond? Should it assist whistle-blowers if they are put on trial for breaking the country's secrecy laws? The plight of Mordechai Vanunu dramatically raises all these questions. Vanunu, a 33

Alongside triviality, unoriginality and, nowadays, dishonesty, one attribute for which journal editors are particularly vigilant in papers is obesity. Some research reports are, of course, necessarily bulky documents. This is especially true in fields such as high energy physics, where a collaboration of several dozen physicists and machine staff may be necessary to describe the design, outcome and analysis of experiments that take many months. At the other end of the scale, few if any worthwh

My scientific career has been helped along by two marvelous instances of good luck. The first occurred while I was a research student in chemistry at Leeds University where my supervisor was Prof. R. Whytlaw-Gray, the leader of a distinguished school for the measurement of atomic weights. His method depended on the use of a very delicate microbalance to determine the vapor densities of substances in their dilute gaseous states. The problem he gave me was to obtain a new and more precise va

On April 11, 1987, the Italian chemist and author Primo Levi was found dead in his apartment building in Turin. Reportedly depressed over worldwide violence, his deteriorating health, and a case of writer’s block, he apparently threw himself down the stairwell of his building. A survivor of Auschwitz, Levi had written a series of works, including The Periodic Table (Schochen Books, 1984), that intermingled stories of his captivity with metaphysical reflections (see THE SCIENTIST, May 18,

Nothing is certain but death and taxes, goes the old saw. And while there are programs that can help you write your will (and I suppose one could devise a far-fetched scenario involving medical databases) there really isn’t much that you and your PC can do about the former of these certainties. There is, however, a class of programs that can make filling out tax returns more pleasant and less time-consuming, if not outright fun. One of the leading IBM PC programs is TURBO TAX. The lead

The discovery of high-temperature (950K) superconductors has incited a stampede of activity in the last 18 months, not only in research labs, but also in newsrooms and editors' offices. According to the December 1, 1987 issue of High-Tc. Update, 12 new publications in press or planned are aimed at keeping scientists and industrialists up to date on the scientific, governmental and commercial activity involving the new superconducting ceramics. Add to this at least seven existing newsletters th

The 1988 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science confirmed one long.standing suspicion about the association: there’s no staff meteorologist. After subjecting participants to subzero cold and Lake Michigan’s 15-foot waves at last year’s bash in Chicago. AAAS this year decided to take on a howling storm that dropped a foot of snow on Boston. Nevertheless, the SCIENTIST's staffers overcame a closed Logan Airport to bring you the following report