Articles by Jon Turney

LONDON—Stephen Maim, an upand-coming young chemist at England’s Bath University, was delighted recently by his unusual promotion from junior lecturer directly to reader—a move that, is the United States, would be like rising overnight from instructor to associate professor. But his new status—just one rung below full professor—and the pay raise that accompanied it came with a big snag. As a junior lecturer, Mann had had tenure; universities in the U.K. normally a

LONDON--A plan to have British industry pick up the cost of "near-market" research may jeopardize the jobs of thousands of agriculture and food researchers at state-funded institutes. Officials at the British Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food are reviewing the department’s $200 million annual budget to find which portions should be transferred to industry over the next two years. That approach parallels a recently announced policy that the Thatcher government would support R

LONDON -The publisher of a prestigious academic dictionary has apologized in print to an Oxford b ologist for misrepresenting his views on sociobiology and has revised the entry in a new version of the dictionary just released. The biologist, Paul Harvey, was angered when he received a sample copy of The Dictionary of Personality and Social Psychology in the fall of 1986. The dictionary, published by Basil Blackwell Ltd. in Britain and the MIT Press in the United States, was one of three deriv

LONDON—Europe has decided to remain at the forefront of condensed matter research with an agreement by nine countries to start building the $500 million European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) next year in Grenoble, France. At the same time, the United Kingdom has bolstered its reputation for remaining out of step with the rest of European science by refusing to pledge its support for the ESRF at a key meeting last month. Although the British Science and Engineering Research Cou

LONDON—A new, open-ended program to fund AIDS research has drawn praise from British scientists who see the directed initiative as a refreshing change from the parsimonious attitude taken by the government toward most basic research efforts. Six months ago the government announced a special allocation of $23 million over three years for AIDS research. The program, overseen by the Medical Research Council, has already involved 24 laboratories at universities, hospitals and biotechnology

LONDON—An international group of eminent scientists hopes to establish a European Academy of Science to provide a new voice for researchers. Sir Arnold Burgen, a biologist and former foreign secretary of the Royal Society has taken the lead in convening an ad hoc group with representatives from seven European nations to discuss the academy. Its proposal received a favorable reception this summer at the European Science Foundation’s council meeting in Bonn. The Royal Society has ag

LONDON—British universities have been invited to participate in a network of interdisciplinary research centers that will be created if the government provides sufficient funds. The Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) hopes to set up at least 10 such centers during the next three years as part of a new strategy to support state-of-the-art basic research that will have commercial applications. The program is similar in many ways to the new Science and Technology Centers prog

LONDON—Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher will take the lead in discussions of the country’s science and technology priorities as part of a shake-up in Britain’s approach to research. And one of the first items on her agenda is a request from scientists to create a network of interdisciplinary, university-based research centers. These are two of the features detailed in a series of documents released last month before the end of the British parliamentary session. On July 20

LONDON—Fears of a brain drain of British scientists have been quieted by a new survey from the Royal Society. Many researchers have pointed to the success of overseas recruitment—with U.S. institutions seen as the chief culprits—as a consequence of continuing tight research budgets in British labs. But the Royal Society was unable to find figures to back up the often politically motivated rhetoric. Overall, its report produces a picture of a global intellectual market from whic

LONDON—An international review of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva has dealt a double blow to the laboratory's administration. Severely critical of CERN's management, accounting and personnel policies, it nevertheless has not identified cash savings that would persuade Britain to remain a member of Europe's premier high-energy physics center. The review panel, set up at Britain's instigation, presented its interim findings to CERN's council in early June. It

LONDON—Prime Minister Thatcher's landslide victory in Britain's general election June 11 means that U.K. science is unlikely to receive more money from her Conservative government. Instead, the scientific community is bracing for changes designed to make better use of existing funds. The state of British science rarely surfaced in a campaign pre occupied with welfare and defense. Although both main opposition parties—Labour and the alliance of the Liberals and Social Demo crats̵

LONDON—Nearly one-half of the United Kingdom's university earth scientists will become second-class citizens if a classification of their institutions proposed in a report to the country's University Grants Committee (UGC) is accepted. The report is widely seen as a blueprint for reorganizing research funding throughout the sciences. It calls for a three-tiered university system, with expensive research equipment concentrated in top-level universities and little or no opportunity for resea

LONDON—Government spending on research is becoming a major issue in Britain's upcoming elections, with the major parties staking out their positions. Campaigning is not officially underway, but the election is expected to take place by early autumn. There is a growing split between the Conservative administration of Margaret Thatcher, which argues that state expenditure on research is about right, and opponents who believe more cash is needed to strengthen basic research and stem the trans

LONDON—British science policy advisers sent their government a message of gloom and dismay along with their recommendations for the country's 1987-88 science budget. And they were backed by opposition politicians in the House of Lords who said the country's industrial future was threatened by its weak support for research. The Advisory Board for the Research Councils (ABRC) decided to award 20 million of the 24 million pounds ($34 million) that were added to Britain's 300-million-pound aca

LONDON-If international science is a race, Great Britain is beginning to tire. A study published this month shows a steady decline in Britain's scientific performance from 1973 through 1982. The decline is par-ticularly steep in physics, where the country of Maxwell and Lord Kelvin has been overtaken in many respects by France, West Germany and Japan. The Royal Society conducted the study on behalf of the government's science policy advisers after earlier figures suggesting a fall in the country