Articles by Kris Herbst

Just one week after receiving a compact disk containing a definitive database of worldwide geomagnetic and solar activity readings, a project team led by UCLA geo- arid space-physics professor Robert L. McPherron recently made an important find. They discovered a previously unreported correlation between magnetic field variations at the geomagnetic pole and the strength of the ring current produced by drifting particles in the Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts. This information will all

DOD dollars have been stripped from California and Massachusetts in behalf of heartland science. WASHINGTON—Last fall, Caltech mechanical engineer Frank Marble was due to receive $500,000 from the Department of Defense to study the fuel dynamics of the hypersonic aerospace plane. It was to be the second installment in a three-year, $1.75 million award under the Defense Department’s new University Research Initiative—a program designed to support on campus. research with pote

Fits and starts in the drive to contruct an information age interstate highway system WASHINGTON—White House science policy analyst, Paul Huray wanted to send the latest draft of an upcoming report on advances in computer technology to members of his intergovernmental Committee on Computer Research and Applications. So he sought an electronic solution. But Huray found that the jumble of networks that now exist couldn’t do the job. Networks balked when ordered to talk to each o

WASHINGTON—The Somalia government has commuted the death sentences of two American-trained scientists whose brutal treatment in prison was the focus of an onsite visit by a delegation from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine. The two men, civil engineer Suleiman Nuh Ali and mathematician Abdi Ismail Yonis, have instead received 24-year prison sentences after having been convicted of treason during a trial last month. A spokesman for the Somalia government sa

WASHINGTON—A newly released study by the National Science Foundation reveals what many academic researchers know only too well: The quality and amount of instrumentation available in the physical and computer sciences and engineering are not keeping pace with their needs. A survey of of the largest U.S. research universities, conducted in 1985, revealed that 51 percent of the engineering chairs felt that present equipment within their departments prevents faculty from pursuing major rese

"In terms of being a constituency group, the scientific community may not even exist as an organized body." That comment from neuroscientist Donald Stein of Clark University could also serve as the epitaph for the Washington. D.C based National Coalition for Science and Technology. Its demise last month marked the end of a six year effort to build a grassroots organization to lobby for more federal support for all of science. NCST never enrolled more than a few hunderd individual members and

"In terms of being a constituency group, the scientific community may not even exist as an organized body." That comment from neuroscientist Donald Stein of Clark University could also serve as the epitaph for the Washington. D.C based National Coalition for Science and Technology. Its demise last month marked the end of a six year effort to build a grassroots organization to lobby for more federal support for all of science. NCST never enrolled more than a few hunderd individual members and

WASHINGTON—The government’s management of scientific and technical information came under heavy fire last month at a congressional hearing. Witnesses charged that the Reagan administration has failed to develop a coherent national policy, and attacked its plans to broaden security restrictions on such information and sell off the National Technical Information Services (NTIS), the nation’s largest repository of technical material. The hearing before the Science, Research a