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LONDON—Cambridge and Oxford are the academic foci for new research programs that the British hope will make them more competitive in the expanding field of high-temperature superconductivity. The Cambridge group will be Britain’s first University Research Center. Bolstered by $10 million in government funds over the next six years, it is expected to attract private support and generate marketable products within 10 years. The URC will be a new university laboratory within the Cav

The strategic role of the private foundations Purnell Choppin observes in this issue (p. 16-17) that “the health of the biomedical research enterprise [in the United States] is inseparable from the health of the NIH.” Since two thirds of federal support for biomedical research in this country goes into or through the NIH, and since that amounts to one third of total national support for basic research in biomedicine, one can only agree with the statement of the president of the How

McDonald is on the staff of THE SCIENTIST.

Although such appropriations and bond issues promise to foster excellence throughout the state, the primary beneficiaries of much pump priming are usually state colleges and universities. These efforts, in turn, have triggered recruitment wars between established research institutions and newer programs trying to join the top echelon. The bidding is particularly fierce in such fields as ceramics, computers, chemical engineering and all aspects of biotechnology. And although higher salaries alo

LONDON-A major new trade union has emerged in Britain with the goal of organizing skilled workers in the new technologies. With trade union membership falling, the new organization, known as Manufacturing, Science and Finance (MSF), hopes to extend the frontiers of organized labor into areas where recruitment has been difficult. Its co-leaders, Clive Jenkins and Ken Gill, are confident that the new union can establish its identity quickly. MSF is the product of the merger of two medium-sized

Recent events have resulted in a great deal of publicity about competitiveness. Among the so-called races in high technology, the biotechnology race has attracted much attention and comment. In the United States, there is much concern about the perceived possibility that history may repeat itself, and that a technology that was invented in the United States may find its most impressive commercial applications developed in Japan. It is all very well to talk about competitiveness, not withstandi

STOCKHOLM--The Nobel Foundation plans to sell stock in a new firm being formed to preserve the value of the annual prizes it awards.. . . This year's prizes.. . will each be worth $340,000... . Shrewd investments in the past decade. . . have reversed years of declining value for the prizes, and have raised the foundation's assets to near the real value of the original estate in 1900. --From THE SCIENTIST October 5, 1987, p.4. Lend an ear to hear the story of my galloping success. I was onc

When I started Syntex Pharmaceuticals in Britain nearly a quarter of a century ago, the triumvirate to whom I reported in Mexico were all youngish scientists themselves, and all paper millionaires by their own remarkable efforts. The chairman of the corporation, George Rosenkranz, not only was one of the founders of the modern steroid industry, but he also had seen himself through the Eidgenössiche Technische Hochschule in Zurich by playing soccer for the Grasshoppers, acting at the Stadt

The development of the free-flyer will give us expertise in many areas, including control over our own low-gravity materials processing studies and in the various areas of robotics which will be involved in helping maintain and service parts of the platform. In general, Europe will have more freedom than if it had only the attached module. DEPENDENCE ON PUBLIC MONEY Q: Would you explain the rationale behind putting large sums of money from governments, rather than from the private sector, int

For one thing, no computer is as natural as pencil and paper. Placing a word in a certain location, writing in big letters or changing to script or Greek can be done almost without thinking when using a pencil, but all these actions require explicit commands when using a keyboard. It's difficult to build a system with easy-to-remember commands, in large part because ease of use depends upon personal preference. For many people, typing "center," or the command "ce" to center a line is easier tha

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