Kathleen Mailer says that she has been in some ludicrous predicaments. The worst, says the professor of chemistry and dean of science at Athabasca University in Alberta, Canada, is when she has attended meetings with the Canadian deans of science--and found she was the only woman. "I would think to myself, `This is a really stupid situation.' To be the only woman in science is simply not normal." The incident, she says, is representative of the ongoing problem of underrepresentation of women in

If Karen Worth and her colleagues on a National Research Council project have their way, it won't be long before the traditional three R's of childhood classrooms--reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic--are expanded to include an "S," for science. Worth, an education instructor at Wheelock College in Boston, is playing a lead role in a recently launched NRC initiative focusing on precollege education, specifically on the status of science as a vital ingredient in K-12 curricula. The fledgling eff

When Antonie van Leeuwenhoek first peered into the realm of microorganisms in 1675, he launched a field of study that grew steadily over the years. Today, of course, the field is virtually exploding as new discoveries occur. Carl Woese, a professor of microbiology at the University of Illinois' Urbana campus, has added significantly to this growing body of knowledge, and for this he recently was awarded the prestigious Leeuwenhoek Medal. Given once a decade by the Science Division of the Ro

The world's foremost supplier of genetically engineered mice, the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, is scurrying to hire as many as 20 geneticists over the next three to four years. 

Now that the National Science Foundation's Strategic Systemic Initiative (SSI) is in its second year, with the second round of grants awarded on May 1, science educators have had a chance to assess the program's progress. And some of them are not pleased. Some critics contend that the initiative--an effort to foster widespread, comprehensive change in the way mathematics and science are taught in United States elementary and secondary public schools--is being hampered. The problem, they say,

In his home state and here, they cite the presidential candidate's inclination and aptitude for nurturing science The prospect of Bill Clinton as president--should scientists be concerned? Robert Wright, an environmental scientist who has worked in the Arkansas state university system under Clinton's governorship, says no. "Bill Clinton is a strong friend of the applied sciences," claims Wright, a professor of biology at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. "He is acutely aware of w

Out of more than 200 nominees, Perry L. McCarty, Silas H. Palmer Professor of Civil Engineering at Stanford University, and Robert M. White, president of the National Academy of Engineering, have been awarded the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. The 19-year-old prize, awarded May 1, honors individuals or institutions displaying a reverence for the protection, maintenance, and improvement of the world's ecological and environmental conditions. The University of Southern California admi

For someone who searches the vast frontiers of the universe trying to discover its boundaries, receiving an award here on Earth could seem almost mundane. But John Bahcall, a professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., who received the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Distinguished Public Service Medal on March 17, says he views the award as an exciting precursor to more astronomical discoveries. Bahcall says he is elated

Amid the advertisements for bras, baby clothes, and low-rate mortgages cluttering the first section of the April 21 New York Times appeared a photo of a big, fat, white rat. A full-page ad featuring the rodent was headlined, "Some People Just See a Rat. We See a Cure for Cancer." Text running beneath the striking photo attacked "animal rights activists [who] use disinformation, pressure tactics and active terrorism.... "Society cannot allow itself to be manipulated by a handful of zealots w

For most of this century, United States colleges and universities adhered to a dogma that the best way to compete for students, faculty, and research dollars is to expand. But this approach has led to large, complicated bureaucracies, according to Barbara Bergmann, president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). The net result of this, Bergmann says, is a debilitating malady called "administrative bloat." Bergmann, a professor of economics at American University, contend