Government Briefs

Calling All Industry Scientists NSF has selected 47 scientists to spend several months doing research in Japan under three new fellowship programs designed to even out the flow of knowledge between the two countries. But while the Japanese-funded programs are open to any qualified scientist, everyone in the first batch hails from either a university or government laboratory. “The lack of participation by industry has been a real disappointment,” admits NSF,s Charles (“Tom”) Owen. “About 6% of the 5,000 inquiries we received came from industry, but none of them actually applied.” Likewise, none of the U.S. scientists has been placed in Japanese industrial labs. NSF officials aren’t sure why the participation skewed toward academia. But they admit that participation requires U.S. scientists to become more flexible. “The point of the program is to make opportunities available, as painlessly as possible, for Americans to live and work in Japan,” Owen says. “If we have to reproduce American conditions, including housing and overall standards of living, then it may not work.” NIH Scales Back Reorganization It seemed to NIH like a better way to carry out its work—and at the same time stretch its budget. But officials have recently abandoned a proposal to transfer certain programs within the Division of Research Resources to individual, disease-oriented institutes that were engaged in similar activities after outside scientists complained that the shift would harm the entire biomedical community. “We listened,” says William Raub, NIH deputy director and chair of an internal task force convened to study-the proposal, “and decided on a smaller, more surgical change than what had originally been proposed.” The initial plan would have placed the $110 million general clinical research centers program within the diabetes and kidney institute and the $35 million biomedical research technology program within the institute on general medical sciences, a move that NIH officials hoped would free up some slots that could be reassigned to new programs in other areas. But DRR’s James O’Donnell acknowledges that transferring the clinical program, for example, “would have led to pressure to focus on kidney and diabetes rather than on heart, lung and all the other areas of research.” NIH is going ahead with plans to combine its $29 million minority research support program with a $10 million program that encourages minorities to pursue research, already housed within general medical sciences. Raub admits that the new alignment’ “offers fewer opportunities for staff savings,” but he says that the primary reason for the changes is to strengthen the relevant programs, not to save money. Genome Project Seeks OK For Facilities Sometimes you can have too much of a good thing. That was the situation facing NIH’s officeof the human genome after an unknown patron in the Bush administration unexpectedly added almost 50% to its 1990 budget, raising the total to $100 million in the president’s request to Congress in February. What to do with the windfall? James Watson, the project’s part-time director, wasn’t stumped for long. Following the advice of his advisory committee, Watson has proposed using $20 million of his new, bigger budget as the first installment on $100 million worth of new facilities to map and-sequence the genome. Watson plans to finance the construction program by cutting the. number of new awards to investigators from 168 to 98 a figure that program manager Elke Jordan notes is more that twice the current level of 44 grants and “still a substantial number of new grants.” The $100 million for construction, over five years, would pay for additional laboratory space at universities and research labs across the country and build what Watsonsees as a network of 20 centers that will play a leading role in the $3 billion project. Watson’s plans depend bn receiving the full appropriation from Congress, a result that isn’t likely to be known until late this year. He also needs special legislation that would authorize NIH to spend some of its money on bricks and mortar.

Government Briefs

The Scientist Staff

Calling All Industry Scientists

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