The residents of New Madrid, Mo., were ready. They bought their emergency supplies and reinforced their windows. But no great earthquake violently rocked the area on December 3, as New Mexico business consultant Iben Browning had predicted. The ground didn't even quiver. Maybe the earth didn't tremble, but Browning's prediction did set off some rumblings in the scientific community. "We [seismologists] are very angry with the news media," says Max Wyss, a geology professor at the University

In the nearly 128 years since the National Academy of Sciences was founded, its members generally have been regarded as constituting the elite of American science. The society, which at its inception numbered only 50 scientists, now includes 1,589 members, 83 members emeritus, and 271 foreign associates. Election to the academy is a confidential process. Each year, a central nominating committee receives a ranked list of candidates from each of the academy's 25 sections. From these, a combined

As the necessity of cleaning up the environment moves to the forefront of the public's consciousness, researchers in increasing numbers have been enlisting some of the earth's tiniest creatures to help clean up highly polluted sites and reclaim soils and groundwater systems. Stimulated by advances in microbiology and biotechnology, the booming multidisciplinary field of environmental biotechnology focuses on the use of microorganisms to treat or degrade hazardous waste, encompassing the techniq

While scientists have known for centuries that cells divide, only during the last couple of decades have researchers really begun to make progress in investigating the how's and why's of the division. Understanding the driving mechanisms involved--the chemical triggers-- will help scientists determine why this process sometimes goes wrong (as in the case of cancer cell growth) and, someday, may also spur the development of methods to prevent and reverse such malfunctions. Jonathon Pines, a visi

What does it take to win a Nobel Prize in science? An in-depth look at the citation records of this year's Nobel winners affirms that it takes more than good science. Not only must a laureate's work cross the frontiers of research--it must also be disseminated throughout the international scientific community. The citation records of the six North Americans who clinched the 1990 awards in medicine, chemistry, and physics (The Scientist, Nov. 12, 1990, page 8) indicate the broad and decisive im

Advances in transplant science, synthetic organic chemistry, and the study of quarks have allowed six North American scientists to sweep this year's three Nobel science prizes. E. Donnall Thomas, 70, and Joseph E. Murray, 71, shared the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology for their work in transplant medicine. Thomas, director emeritus of the Seattle-based Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center's Division of Clinical Research, was cited for his pivotal work on bone marrow transplantation--a

What does it take to win the Nobel Prize in chemistry? Does the prize-winning research involve, for instance, discovering a never-before- seen molecular structure? Or must one do something bordering on alchemy? In this issue, The Scientist continues its three-part series on potential candidates for the Nobel Prizes. Two weeks ago, the focus was on physicists (The Scientist, Sept. 3, 1990, page 16). Now, The Scientist examines citation data compiled by the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scien

What will this year's winner of the Nobel Prize in physics be doing when the Swedish Academy of Sciences makes its decision in October? When the call comes from Stockholm (winners from the United States usually are notified in the early hours of the morning), will the laureate be sound asleep, dreaming about superstrings or superconductivity? Or will he or she be wide awake, pondering the next equation, the newest experiment? When Alfred Nobel wrote his will in November 1895, he established wh

Picture a silica tube no thicker than a human hair, and then picture a fluid sample in that tube--a sample so small that the tiniest drop of water seems like a flood in comparison to it. Now imagine zapping the tube with electricity, shining a little ultraviolet or visible light on the migrating particles in the sample, and you have the basics for capillary electrophoresis, an analytical technique that holds great promise for investigators in the life sciences. Robert Palmieri, principal resea

Where do the authors of influential biological and biomedical research papers tend to get their financial support? A look at the "Hot Papers" noted by The Scientist during the past year can be revealing in this respect. In the last issue, The Scientist reported on the institutions and nations that produced the high-impact biological and biomedical articles featured in the "Hot Papers" column over the past 12 months (The Scientist, July 23, 1990, page 18). The 81 papers surveyed were selected f

Where is today's most influential biomedical and biological research being done--at what institutions and in what countries? And in what journals are the results of this research most consistently published? Judging from an examination of the 81 life science articles featured in The Scientist's "Hot Papers" section during the past 12 months, the answers, in order, are: the National Institutes of Health; the United States; and the journal Cell. Looking back on the "Hot Papers" columns of the p

At first glance the mandate set before the Commission on Health Research for Development when it was formed in 1987 may have read like an assignment from Mission Impossible: "to survey current health research worldwide, identify strengths and weaknesses, and propose improvements." But the independent international commission, headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., completed its task (the first of its kind) and recently published its findings in a 136-page report entitled "Health Research: Essential