The American landscape has undergone tremendous alteration and devastation; 90 percent or more of its prairies, wetlands, and virgin forests have been consumed by development. And now many parts of the developing world are feeling the bite of the chain saw and bulldozer. But in counterpoint to this depressing scenario, restoration ecology--the science of rehabilitating degraded ecosystems--is growing. The field is attracting many new scientists, more funding is becoming available, and a new jou

Officials, scientists, and others agree that her close ties to Bush policies could cost the agency director her job More than ever before, the future direction and leadership of the National Institutes of Health will hinge on the outcome of a United States presidential election. There is strong feeling among many key congressional staffers and other Washington observers that NIH director Bernadine Healy, because she appears to be inextricably linked to the Bush administration and its policies,

Plant science gets short shrift when it comes to research funding compared to the booming biomedical field, say many in the discipline, especially in light of the fact that through photosynthesis, plants are the source of life on earth. According to a recent government report, most funding goes toward research on agricultural problems and pests. The report says that research on plant genetics, biochemistry, and physiology in the United States needs help to avoid being trapped in a downward spir

The recent Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero may have raised worldwide consciousness on the seriousness of global environmental problems, but it did not raise a lot of cash to study and act against the problems. So, environmental scientists in the United States should not expect to see a flood of new funding or a preponderance of new research directives in the wake of the June meeting, according to environmental policy experts. There are budget difficulties in Congress. There is a presidential

In a book to be published this October, physicist Paul Halpern will explain how to build and use a cosmic wormhole as an interstellar shortcut to distant parts of the universe, or to travel backward in time. As fanciful as this sounds, many physicists say Halpern's book is not necessarily science fiction. There is indeed serious science at work here—at least on a theoretical level—they say. Halpern, who doesn't think such devices could be found or constructed anytime soon, noneth

THE VANDERBILT FREE ELECTRON LASER CENTER Vanderbilt University's Free Electron Laser Center was dedicated on April 16, 1992, with a commemorative lecture delivered by noted physicist Edward Teller, an outspoken proponent of the Strategic Defense Initiative. The FEL facility is a 13,000-square-foot building, which includes a subsurface vault with seven-foot-thick concrete walls for housing the radiation-producing laser. The laser light is sent upstairs to the research laboratories through a ser

It sits nestled in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration budget, drawing a scant one-tenth of 1 percent of the $15 billion total, yet the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is singled out on an almost annual basis for congressional flagellation. And this year is no exception--even as NASA gears up for the October inception of a 10-year effort to tune in radio signals from advanced alien civilizations. The problem for SETI, congressional staffers say, is the "giggle fa

A recent document from the NRC is seen as a boost for entrepreneurs whose ventures center on the controversial technique A recently released National Research Council report on DNA fingerprinting not only puts the stamp of approval on the widely used technique, but also, according to one forensic scientist, should effectively mandate accreditation for labs preforming the test. And in the private sector, many in the business of providing DNA fingerprinting services and supplying reagents for D

They fear that funding support for their vast gene-mapping project could erode now that the Nobelist is leaving While the head of the nation's premier health agency may not be losing sleep over the resignation of James Watson as head of the Human Genome Project (HGP), many genetic researchers are distressed to see him go. Genome scientists interviewed for this article say it will be difficult for the National Institutes of Health, via its search committee, to find someone with the same drive

The study of aging has had a long reputation of quackery and wild speculative theories. Francis Bacon took note of this problem in 1645 in his Historia Vitae et Mortis: "With regard to the length and shortness of life in animals, the information to be had is small, observation careless, and tradition fabulous." But by applying the tools of molecular biology to the question of the causes of aging and death, researchers have lately been pulling the field into mainstream respectability and potenti

****** Editor's note: David Farber, a professor of computer and information sciences at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, says he has developed a keen interest in high- speed computer networking through "20 years of being buried inside of networks." He started work at Bell Telephone Labs, now called AT&T Bell Laboratories, in Murray Hill, N.J., where he was involved in the design of the first electronic central office and was an originator of SNOBOL, a symbolic- and string-manipu

It's an exhilarating time for climate researchers: The pressing questions of when the greenhouse effect will begin to be felt and how severe it will be have thrust their work into the eyes of the public and the policymakers. But while high visibility has injected money into the climate research field and imbued scientists with a sense of social relevance, it's also brought frustrations. Climatologists say the frustrations include dealing with impatient politicians and the media, who often triv