When the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on the rocks of Bligh Island on March 24, the more than 10 million gallons of crude oil it carried, invaded every nook and cranny of Alaska’s Prince William Sound, polluting the air, fouling the beaches, and staining the water for miles around. Within hours, while the stricken yessel remained on the rocks that had sliced it open like a tin can, a second invasion began: the scientists. They included fisheries biologists, oceanographers, vete

Africanized honeybees have not reached the United States yet—the smart money is on their crossing the border from Mexico about February 1990. But these aggressive insects have already turned the bee research community upside down—a classic example of how Nature, every once in a while propels a low-profile scientific discipline into the limelight. While some bee scientists in the field may bemoan the swarms of reporters demanding time-consuming interviews, others seem to enjoy b

NEW YORK—Superconductive power lines, high-strength composite cements and genetically engineered artificial sweeteners produced in the United States, Western Europe and Japan might seem of little concern to the people of Brazil, Zaire or other Third World nations. But an upcoming report from the U.N. Center for Science and Technology for Development (UNCSTD) says such a belief is not only mistaken but also damaging to the economies of those developing countries. It hopes to illustrate tha