Articles by Jacques Richardson

Spanish biochemist and administrator Federico Mayor Zaragoza, who on November 15 began a six-year term as director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, picks up the reins at a critical time for the institution. One challenge is to reverse Western nations’ sense of alienation from UNESCO, and to induce the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore, which withdrew from the organization in 1984-85, to return to the fold, adding their funding

PARIS—American and British officials say that the selection of Spanish biochemist Federico Mayor Zaragoza as director-general of UNESCO is not enough to secure their return to the scientific and cultural agency they abandoned. But Mayor’s nomination October 18 by the 50-member executive board is being seen as an opportunity to correct some of the problems in spending and organization that have grown up during the 13-year reign of Senegal’s Amadou Mahear M’Bow. The 53-

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

PARIS—Only a few weeks before UNESCO’s 50-nation Executive Board meets here for its semiannual session, a scientific front-runner has emerged in the race to succeed Senegal’s Amadou Mahtar M’Bow as director-general. He is Federico Mayor Zaragoza, a 53-year-old Spanish biochemist and pharmacologist who was deputy director-general for UNESCO, the chief U.N. agency for scientific research from 1978 to 1981. He has since served as minister of education and research in Ma

Paris—The French-inspired Eureka program is hoping to forge links with the world of venture capital to finance a series of cooperative industrial research and development projects throughout Europe. The 2-year-old program features 108 projects involving industrial firms from at least two European countries. Member governments agree to help their own national companies, typically through subsidies, but do not provide direct financial aid. As a consequence, several small and medium-sized com

PARIS—The recent decision by the French government to ban for three years any genetic manipulation of the human embryo within the country's leading research centers follows a recommendation from its own expert committee on bioethical questions. The ability to shape public policy has been a hallmark of the committee since it was formed in 1983. Its report, denouncing a "zeal to procreate" among some segments of society, warned that current advances in genetics could be exploited in eugenics

BORDEAUX—Nearly 200 years after the French Revolution, this city may face another upheaval. More than 2,000 scientists, engineers and technicians at the core of France's military aerospace effort cast off their normal shyness about self-promotion and turned out in force for the Techno-Espace exhibit and conference held here in early December. This first-ever exposition was intended to offset the dominant position of the civil aerospace industry in the ToulouseMontpellier region to the sout

PARIS-The corridors and elevators were visibly less crowded than in past years this fail at UNESCO headquarters here. But the shrinking staff is only one sign of the withdrawal of the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore from the United Nations' principal educational and scientific agency. The agency's science and engineering programs have been cut by 37 percent, and its staff reduced from 167 to 126 professionals. Its $16 million budget, rather less than that available to the science