A survey of 836 United States companies released in September by the New York-based American Management Association found that one in four of them planned layoffs by June of this year. In government, the news is also grim. When President Bush proposed increasing 1993 science spending by 6.5 percent, Congress slashed it to a paltry 2.3 percent, paralyzing budgets at many agencies. And President-elect Bill Clinton's focus on technologies that meet social needs more immediately than does basic res

Research into the links between genes and heart disease is attracting more attention from both cardiologists and granting agencies. Both groups are coming to accept what cell biologists have suspected for some time--that dissecting the genetic causes of extremely rare diseases will yield important clues to the pathogenesis of more common maladies. Since 1989, the genes behind a handful of inherited cardio-vascular conditions have been identified, shifting the focus of the field to genetic studi

Two months after Andrew unleashed its devastating fury, scientists continue to assess the damage the storm caused to their lives and laboratory endeavors Eight weeks have passed since Hurricane Andrew cut its devastating swath across South Florida, and public officials are still in the process of assessing the damage its winds and waves wrought in terms of fatalities, property loss, and shattered human lives. Scientists working and living in Andrew's path were by no means spared, for the ra

Their field is blossoming, but many are disturbed by what they see as a lack of official recognition The field of medical genetics--whose practitioners are, for the most part, Ph.D.'s--recently received a significant boost by being offered member status by the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS), an Evanston, Ill.-based indepen- dent body that evaluates and certifies physician specialists, such as cardiologists. The prestigious ABMS hasn't admitted a new field to its 23-group roste

LIBRARY SHOPPING To obtain a DNA library is like getting your hands on a bagel or a pizza: It's easier to buy one than it is to assemble the ingredients to make your own. "Libraries are difficult to make: Most scientists only make a library once or twice in their careers," and perfecting library-making detracts from other activities, says Lani San Mateo, technical service representative at Clontech Laboratories Inc. in Palo Alto, Calif. Clontech's extensive collection of libraries includes a g

Finals are finished, students are gone, and at long last peace pervades the campus. Many a science professor is entertaining the notion that now is the perfect time to write a textbook. They know the material well, the professors reason, so it shouldn't take long, and having a text under their belts might even provide a boost up the promotion and tenure ladders. If you are having such thoughts, think again, many textbook authors advise. For one thing, they say, writing a textbook takes years

Advances in molecular biology foster greater interdependency among physicians, researchers The province of the scientist traditionally has been one of theory and experiment, exploration and discovery--contrasting sharply with the practical concerns of the physician. But times have changed. Today, physicians find themselves in need of knowledge in such esoteric matters as the polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment-length polymorphism maps. Meanwhile, scientists are having to acqua

The need for chemical standards is skyrocketing, as a health-conscious public clamors to learn exactly how many parts-per-billion of pesticides are in their veggies, PCBs in their fish, dioxins in their milk, antibiotics in their burgers, cholesterol in their blood, and drugs in their employees' urine. But like a diner unable to judge the quality of a French restaurant because she's never sampled the finest French cuisine, analytical chemists charged with the mounting demand to establish trace

Next, the gimmicks are dismissed--contests offering prizes in the author's name, pledges to donate royalties to save whales or rain forests, vows to overcome science illiteracy, touring authors, and so forth. Remaining, finally, is a pile of books, most of them well-written and abundantly illustrated. How is a busy professor to choose? * The instructor of a 500-student nutrition class is offered $500 if she orders a particular book. The payment is for keeping a diary of student reactions to

A chemical technique that generated tremendous excitement in the mid-1980s--though the hoopla has since faded somewhat in the United States--may be undergoing a renaissance in the international arena. The technique, metal atom vapor chemistry, generates single atoms of metal, which behave quite differently from their more familiar bulk metal forms--and reacting these metal atoms may someday generate valuable new materials. Before that can happen, however, problems in adapting the process to a

Trim the curriculum Ronald Gillespie, a professor of chemistry at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, is one of many teachers who noticed about 10 years ago that the 1960s trend of stressing physical chemistry concepts in introductory courses omitted inorganic, descriptive chem- istry. As a result, his students knew little about common chemicals. The solution in the United States and Canada was to put the missing topics back in--but the average chemistry textbook swelled to more than a ki

In the summer of 1988, more than 2,000 American adults answered a short list of questions designed to test their basic knowledge of common science terms and concepts, in a study sponsored by the Public Opinion Laboratory at Northern Illinois University in De Kalb. The results were shocking--only 6 percent were judged to be scientifically literate. One of the most interesting findings of the study was that among those who scored well on the test, the "predominant, single most important predictor