The president's global change program looks impressive, thanks to a cooperative Congress and some sleight of hand. WASHINGTON--This year the federal government will invest $664 million to study global climate change, a fivefold increase over its 1989 efforts. But this seemingly huge increase is more a reflection of a broader definition than of a bigger pocketbook. The biggest change occurred when the National Aeronaytics and Space Administration shifted almost $500 million into its global chan

Imagine a research team 42,000 members strong. Ranging in age from 9 to 90, they’re up before dawn in their quest to outdo one another in a daylong data collection binge. Then contemplate a database with more than a billion entries. It spans 90 years and includes more than a thousand species of birds sighted in the Western Hemisphere. That’s the Audubon Society Christmas, Bird Count, the world’s largest and oldest wildlife survey. A statistician’s nightmare? Possibl

WASHINGTON—The National Science Foundation has changed its format for proposals in a strong message to applicants about what their priorities should be. The new format reflects the nation’s increasing concern about the training of new scientists and information overload. On October 1, NSF began requiring that all proposals include a statement about a proposed project’s educational potential and a list of the young scientists being trained in the applicant’s laborato

TUCSON—Karen Saucier’s first glimpse of her new workplace—the insect molecular genetics laboratory at South Carolina’s Clemson University—came as a shocking disappointment. “I almost cried,” recalls Saucier, who had just left a high-powered postdoctoral fellowship at a human genetics laboratory at the University of Miami and was eager to apply those techniques to insects. What confronted her upon arriving at Clemson last year was a huge storage room

PHOENIX—It’s not often that Stephen Lisberger, a neurobiologist at the University of California, San Francisco speaks to 400 scientists at one sitting. But there was standing room only at this month’s 19th annual meeting of the Society for Neu- roscience when Lisberger—who uses monkeys to study eye movement—and two other researchers shared their experiences with proponents of theanimal rights movement. That panel discussion was one of three sessions designed t

A year ago, Ira Rubinoff was considering a gala celebration, with lots of media and top brass, to dedicate the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s new $8 million laboratory in Panama City. Not any more. When the Earl S. Tupper Research and Conference Center finally opens its doors this winter, months behind schedule, the event will be decidely low-key. Given the increasingly tense political situation between the United States and Panama, Rubinoff isn’t eager to draw atten

WASHINGTON—When forest biologist Richard Condit of Princeton University applied for a grant to study how trees in tropical forests are related, the National Science Foundation told him that he had a great idea. But they rejected his application because he couldn’t prove that his approach would work. Condit is trying again, but NSF has decided to give scientists like him a chance to prove their theories without wasting a lot of federal money on experiments that don't work. The ne

Forty-five years ago David Hubel thought he would become a physicist. That is, until he went to his first international scientific meeting. “I was scared off by the number of people,” recalls Hubel so he switched to a science still in its infancy and far more intimate—a science called neurophysiology, The move proved to be very useful for science—in 1981 Hubel received the Nobel Prize in medicine for his contributions to understanding the organization and functioning of

WASHINGTON—Two major foundations have put up $12 million to get a new discipline off the ground. They’ve drafted neurobiologists and cognitive scientists as pilot and copilot in the hope that, once airborne, cognitive neuroscience will improve our understanding of the biological basis of complete behavior. In December, the McDonnell-Pew Program in Cognitive Neuroscience will award $1.2 million grants to six institutions to help crystallize efforts in this hybrid approach to master

WASHINGTON—Scientists from all over the world are traveling to the earth’s coldest places to do what might turn out to be the decade’s hottest research. Buried deep in Greenland’s ice sheet may be answers to a problem—global warming—that threatens the entire planet. This problem has sparked much talk of international alliances among investigators. But in Greenland, United States scientists have split off from their European colleagues so that now there are tw

WASHINGTON—"There are resources that are going begging.” That’s how Charles Owens, section head in the National Science Foundation’s division of international programs, describes NSF’s efforts to send more United States scientists to Japan. For the past two years NSF, armed with $4.8 million and the moral support of the Japanese government, has offered language, fellowship, and research op- portunities in that country. The goal is to remove the barriers that make

WASHINGTON—Despite applause from both sides, Soviet and U.S. scientists may be slow to take advantage of two new agreements for joint research. The agreements call on scientists to set up their own collaborations and to find their own funding. Many Soviet scientists are not used to doing this, officials from the National Science Foundation learned during a recent tour of Soviet institutes. “They seem to have some reservations about how this kind of system would work and how it