The New York-based scientific publisher Gordon and Breach has suffered a setback in the first round of its legal battle waged in European courts against the American Institute of Physics. The publishing firm had brought suits against AIP last year, claiming that an article in the July 1988 issue of the institute's monthly, Physics Today, reporting on a survey of journal prices (The Scientist, Sept. 4, 1989, page 4), was damaging to Gordon and Breach. The article, written by retired physicist He

If the editors of Poisk, a lively new science newspaper published in Moscow, need historical justification for their project, they can point to Lenin, who on his deathbed in 1922 called for a newspaper that would provide a forum for scientists. Or the editors can produce the letter Soviet physicist Pyetr Kapitsa wrote to Nikita Khrushchev in 1958 on behalf of his colleagues at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Kapitsa, who would later win the Nobel Prize in physics, humbly wrote: "I would like t

From dedication inscriptions accompanying 17th-century Jesuit astronomical texts to the genesis of today’s animal rights debate, the past and present of scientific discovery were put under the microscope last month as the History of Science Society met at the University of Flor- ida, Gainesville, for its 65th annual conference. To society officials, several aspects of the three-day event affirmed not only the current vitality of the organization, but also its promising future: overal

Officials of the Fogarty International Center, a National Institutes of Health unit that has brought 2,700 foreign postdoctoral researchers to the United States since 1958, are considering steps to involve more scientists from Third World nations. A study of the center’s International Research Fellowship (IRF) program, commissioned by NIH and conducted by an independent firm earlier this year, generally praised the program, which was established to promote cooperation in biomedical re

Wolfram Research Inc. has taken a major step to broaden distribution of its Mathematica software system. signing an agreement with Digital Equipment Corp. to share marketing rights to the program. Under the licensing agreement, whose terms remain confidential, both Wolfram and Digital will be able to sell the software for use on Digital VAX and RISC computer systems. Mathematica, which Wolfram Research Inc. introduced in June 1988 for personal computers, is a software package that can per

On Wednesday, July 26, Henry Wendt, chairman and chief executive officer of the SmithKline Beckman Co., appeared before the firm’s shareholders at an 8:30 A.M. meeting in the chandeliered ballroom of the Hotel Atop the Bellevue in Philadelphia. Standing before a huge transparency displaying two hands clasping one another, Wendt urged the shareholders to approve a merger with the giant British drug firm Beechain Group PLC. Minutes later, 99% of the voting shareholders created SmithKline

Charging “unfair comparative advertising,” the scientific publishing firm of Gordon & Breach is suing the American Institute of Physics over an article and a letter about the costs of - professional journals that were published in the organization’s monthly magazine, Physics Today. The case raises numerous questions—in part because the New York-based publishing firm has so far chosen to press the case not in the United States, where Physics Today is published, but

In 1984 an annual subscription to Leukemia Research cost a library $160. It’s now $540. In 1985 a year’s worth of Gene was $627.40. This year it’s $1,870. Computers and Structures was $425 in 1983. Today’s rate:, $1,425. Brain Research, a weekly, is now priced at $5,080 per year. “Price gouging,” says Duane Webster, executive director of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). “Devastating,” says Michael Keller, an associate librarian at the

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldin stepped onto the fine, loose soil of the lunar surface 20 years ago next week, science had a number of questions to ask of the moon. Was it geologically hot, or was it cold? What was its origin? Were there any protobiological substances on its surface? What geologic differentiation had occurred in its formation? How did it differ from the earth? What were the mascons, those mysterious subsurface objects, that perturbed the orbits of lunar satellites? Now, as