Wisconsin geneticist Oliver Nelson: "Stick with the real problems. Stay flexible and learn new techniques." Scan the lists of grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation and you'll find that there are several hundred scientists who seem to have the knack of finding a funding source and keeping it -- not for the one or two renewals that most scientists consider the answer to a prayer, but for two or three decades. How do they manage this? Scientists w

Lynn Riddiford, a professor of zoology of the University of Washington, exemplifies how to keep your spirit alive and your research fresh--and, perhaps, your funding rolling in. Delving deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the hormone ecdysone, which controls the molting process of the tobacco hornworm, Riddiford has progressed from whole-insect work, through work with cell cultures, all the way to the molecular biology level. One of the ways she learned these new skills was in sabbatical

The diminishing capacity of the government to recruit top candidates for key government scientific positions has "long-term consequences ... very serious for the nation," a recent report issued by the Panel on Presidentially Appointed Scientists and Engineers states. "There is considerable evidence of increasing difficulty in recruiting ... highly qualified appointees," according to "Science and Technology Leadership in American Government," and this has "a significant and harmful effect on t

Feminist groups applaud as the beleaguered NIH employee can go back to work, vindicated, after a six-year-long battle Date: April 27, 1992 In a move that may finally resolve a suit filed three years ago, the National Institutes of Health offered to reinstate Sharon Johnson in a job earlier this month. The position of "floating scientific review administrator," Johnson says, is not exactly the same job that she fled on April 21, 1986, three years before she filed a successful lawsuit alleging

The National Academy of Sciences is scheduled to present 11 awards to 13 noteworthy individuals in the scientific community at its annual meeting in Washington, D.C., today. "Certain awards are annual, and some cycle differently--every two years, every five years," though all are given at the spring NAS meeting, says Mary Hofbauer Brown, NAS director of membership services. "This year we have a small crop--next year we'll have something like 16 or 17." Of the recipients, Brown says, "of cou

Curriculum quality must change in order for the depleted math profession to attract young scholars, workshop attendees agree The teaching of mathematics requires drastic change, according to a group of academic mathematicians who met in Oakland last month. The approach and the content of university mathematics are dangerously out of synch with the needs of both students and industry, and the result, the mathematicians contend, is causing the number and quality of mathematics students to dwindl

It's a temptation to say that for Kurt Thorn, of Wading River, N.Y., an interest in science was worth a lot of clams--after all, Thorn won $40,000 by becoming the top award winner in the 1992 Westinghouse Science Talent Search. In fact, though, it was clams that Thorn used to win the award. Clam shells, actually. "The basic idea is that clam shells produce daily growth lines," says Thorn, 16, a senior at Shoreham-Wading River High School. "The interest in the scientific community is in using

Gallo Investigation: A `Messy Business' Raises Many Issues Author: SCOTT HULER As the probe into alleged misconduct by the National Cancer Institute lab of Robert Gallo in its search for the AIDS virus deepens, the scope of the investigation broadens as well. Recently joining the National Institutes of Health's Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI) in its long-running investigation of Gallo are the General Accounting Office, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ho

In recent months, the problems that the former Soviet scientists are encountering in their newly divided homeland have been well-publicized: the scarcity of funding, the lack of scientific information, and the threat of total scientific isolation. Meanwhile, many U.S. scientists, eager to help, have run up against what they consider a frustratingly lethargic show of support by scientific colleagues and administrators. One of these U.S. researchers is Eugene Skolnikoff, a professor of politic

To chemists arriving in San Francisco for next week's American Chemical Society meeting, Arnold Thackray, director of Philadelphia's Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry, suggests something to keep in mind. If you check into a hotel room today, he says, and you're wearing a polyester suit, "odds are everything in the room is composed of chemically processed polymers except for your body--and we're on the verge of decoding [even] that." During a time of remarkable advances, one might

Date: March 16, 1992 Revamping of the biology directorate and creation of a social sciences unit aims to accommodate new trends in life sciences When Cora Bagley Marrett assumes full duties in May as the first assistant director of the new social, behavioral, and economic sciences division (SBE) of the National Science Foundation, she will give social scientists something for which they have long lobbied: their own voice in high-level NSF decisions. NSF announced the new directorate last Oc

Doing good science may be its own reward, but every year another scientific society or institution endeavors to honor successful researchers more tangibly by establishing a new scientific prize. This has created an accumulation of awards so vast that it's almost impossible to get a full picture of the laurels being distributed. In his office at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute, Larry Tise looks ruefully around him at the piles of books and papers dealing with scientific awards: pamphlets, rin