Articles by Susan Milius

If you go along with the theory that the scientific mind functions best when it’s young, the West is head big for trouble—and Japan is in great shape. That’s the conclusion a youthcultist might draw from a recent National Science Foundation comparison of industrial and govern- ment scientists’ age distribution patterns in five countries France, Japan, United Kingdom, United States, and West Germany. When plotted on a curve, Japan’s population of scientists and e

Physics professors, on the average, are paid higher salaries than their biology, chemistry, and mathematics counterparts. And full professors in all scientific disciplines tend to earn more in private colleges and universities than those in state-supported institutions. However, the scientists in more than one-third of those state-supported schools—including the physicists—would be making a lot less money than they do now if it weren’t for collective bargaining. These are a

The ramshackle state of some of the nation’s science labs has prompted the Kresge Foundation in Troy, Mich., to step beyond its regular pattern of giving and add a special program for upgrading scientific equipment. The foundation, with assets of more than $1 billion, traditionally restricts its funding to construction and building-renovation projects. Now, says Kresge program officer Gene Moss, the foundation expects to give away between $10 million and $20 million for scientific equip

Handling ‘hot’ chemicals was one thing, but now comes the AIDS virus "Traditionally, most chemists have been macho," says Shane Que Hee, an occupational medicine specialist at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. "In laboratories—not the tidiest places in the world—you see volatile chemicals not in fume hoods. You see people not wearing gloves. I have even known chemists who washed their hands with benzene." That sort of cowboy swagger is fast falling ou

Within five years, the National Science Foundation hopes to receive a "substantial" number of proposals electronically, according to Alvin Thaler, NSF’s point man for computerizing document transfer. By late fall, Thaler hopes to see a test proposal arrive electronically, complete with tables, equations, diagrams, and photographs. In the meantime about 40,000 proposals a year arrive at NSF, each one (with its copies) about a foot thick. Line them up on a shelf and you have "seven miles

Professor X glares at his workstation computer screen in Michigan, abandons a struggling sentence, and begins to rough-sketch a diagram, shifting back and forth between text and graphics without leaving the system. As he sits back to consider his handiwork, the diagram’s axes flop, the labels change, and a new curve snakes up from the 0. These instantaneous changes come from Professor Y, who is refining the diagram on her own terminal, although she’s in her California of- fice and