February 1988

New YORK - The Soviet Union is considering proposals for a new science agreement with the United States that would replace a 1972 agreement that was allowed to lapse. The new agreement could he the highlight of this summer's superpower summit, if the two sides are unable to complete work by that time on a treaty to cut in half the number of strategic nuclear weapons. Negotiations on a basic sciences agreement could begin within several weeks, according to Rd Mcsweegan a microbiologist at the Na

LONDON - The Thatcher government has decided to scrap existing schemes to help individual companies commercialize their research, in favor of support for a long-term collaborative effort between universities and industries throughout Europe. At the same time it is adding $35 million to the budget of the Department of Trade and Industry for innovative programs, and plans to continue its support for new high tech firms. "The government should not take on responsibilities which are primarily tho

The Soviet government has informed AAAS that the following scientists will speak on these topics: Y. VELIKHOV, vice president, USSR Academy of Sciences, A review of Soviet progress in science; K. FROLOV vice president, USSR Academy of Sciences, head, machine study section; no title. E. SOKOLOV head, general biology section, USSR Academy of Sciences, The rational uses of biological resources and their protection; Zh. ALFEROV, director, Joffe Physical Technical Institute, The development of semi

WASHINGTON - Japan, under pressure to open its labs to outsiders, may soon be inviting more than 300 additional foreign researchers, under programs approved last month by the nation's Finance Ministry. During a visit here last month, Prime Minister Noboru Takeashita offered $4.4 million to help finance long-term visits by U.S. scientists to Japan's government university and industrial labs. He suggested that the National Science Foundation pick the recipients. Charles T. Owens, a Japan special

NSF Science Centers Dead for ' 88 Washington - The National Science Foundation's plan to fund $30 million in university-based science and technology centers is dead for this year, according to NSF sources. But the program will get a boost in the 1989 budget that President Reagan will submit next Week. A tight 1988 budget has forced NSF officials to delay plans to begin the centers program this year. At press time NSF was still processing some 400 to 500 proposals that ware submitted by, and I

Washington - A proposal for a permanent body to stimulate biotechnology research and its commercial applications has triggered political tug-of-War over the right to shape federal policy. The Senate is expected to act a early as this spring on a bill (S. 1966) to set up a National Biotechnology Policy Board with 20 members drawn from government agencies, industry and academia. The board would be a permanent body within the executive branch and would produce a report every two years, beginning

OTTAWA -Scientists are cautiously optimistic that Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney will deliver on a promise to spend an additional $1.3 billion Canadian ($ 1.014 billion U.S.) on federal science and technology initiative over the next five years. Mulroney made the announcement to 200 business and university leaders last month in Toronto at a federally sponsored conference called to solicit their advice or developing a new national science and technology strategy. A portion of the funds

OTTAWA - A new federal law extending patent protection on new drugs will lead to a doubling of R&D spending over the next decade, Canada's pharmaceutical manufacturers have promised. But this $1.4 billion (Canadian) commitment, made through the 64- member Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association of Canada, has met with some skepticism. PMAC President Judy Erola acknowledged the problem when she testified last fall that "some have said that the industry has never invested this kind of money in

London - A new government policy has brought into sharp focus a simmering row between British academics and the Department of Health and Social Security on the integrity of their research findings. The immediate problem stems from new contract language specifying that publication of findings "is subject to the proper consent of the secretary of state, which consent shall not be unreasonably withheld." Under the terms of the old contract, which covers social policy research commissioned by the

Volume 2, #3The Scientist February 08, 1988 Law Sets Nonmilitary Data Rules AUTHOR:TED AGRES Date: FEBRUARY 08, 1988 Washington - A new law gives a civilian agency the authority to set standards on access to unclassified data, including scientific and technical information. The law ends a long debate over how to protect certain types of computerized data and wrests control of such decisions from the military. "We're very pleased," said Kenneth B. Allen, senior vice president

WASHINGTON - Terry B. Kinney Jr., administrator of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), hopes that his retirement this spring will be accompanied by an end to the criticism that the agency has lagged behind other federal science agencies in its use of peer review for awarding grants. The issue, which has dogged the U.S. Department of Agriculture's food and agricultural research programs for years, came into sharp focus last year in a National Research Council report that criticized several

News Critics Skeptical of USDA Biotech Meetings AUTHOR:DANIEL GROSSMAN Date: FEBRUARY 08, 1988 WASHINGTON - The Department of Agriculture is hoping that a series of meetings this spring will demonstrate its desire to learn more about biotechnology research and strengthen its role in federal regulatory efforts. But some observers view the four regional conferences as a slick way to promote existing programs. "It seems like a lot of this business is a cynical way of getting public approval fo

EUGENE, Ore. - For six days last month defense witnesses testified that Roger Smith Troen made a "choice of evils" when he participated in the October, 1986 theft of about 125 research animals from a University of Oregon psychology laboratory (see THE SCIENTIST December 14, p.1). On the seventh day, Lane County Circuit Judge Edwin Allen said he would hear no more of it. The lengthy pretrial hearing failed to convince Allen that a seldom-used state law of evidence should apply to Troen's animal

WASHINGTON--Once more, with feeling. That's how officials at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences seem to view a cooperative agreement with the Soviet Academy of Sciences. They hope the new five-year agreement will lead to a more productive exchange of scientists than occurred under a nearly identical two-year pact that would have expired in April. The impact of perestroika and glasnost was visible in our discussions," said NAS President Frank Press on his return from Moscow after signing th

WASHINGTON - Well paying graduate fellowships are needed to attract more American-born engineering students, according to a new report from the National Research Council. The report tackles the controversial issue of the growing presence of foreign-born engineers in U.S. universities, both as students and faculty, and the parallel drop in the number of Americans pursuing advanced degrees in the field. Its subtitle, "Infusing Talent, Raising Issues," emphasizes its decision to avoid racial or e

LONDON -The publisher of a prestigious academic dictionary has apologized in print to an Oxford b ologist for misrepresenting his views on sociobiology and has revised the entry in a new version of the dictionary just released. The biologist, Paul Harvey, was angered when he received a sample copy of The Dictionary of Personality and Social Psychology in the fall of 1986. The dictionary, published by Basil Blackwell Ltd. in Britain and the MIT Press in the United States, was one of three deriv

Alvey Provides Model for Collaboration BY JOHN STANSELL LONDON - The Alvey program in advanced microelectronics leaves a legacy of cooperative research that promises to outlast the completion of its last individual project later this year. Begun in June 1983, Alvey proved to be a model for government- university-industry collaboration, for joint efforts among competing companies, and for cooperative research throughout Europe. It has also received high marks for luring top scientists back to

Paris - The founder of the International Center for Theoretical Physics has called for extending the concept to other disciplines and eventually creating an International Center for Science. Abdus Salam has proposed a loose federation of new and existing international bodies that would study basic and applied science and science technology problems of interest in the developing world. (For an interview with Salam, see page 20.) The group would include the ICTP in Trieste as well as new or exis

NEWS NIH Scientists Seek Animal Patents Author:JEFFREY PORRO Date: FEBRUARY 08, 1988 Japanese May Invite 300 Into Labs WASHINGTON - Japan, under pressure to open its labs to outsiders, may soon be inviting more than 300 additional foreign researchers, under programs approaved last month by the nation's Finance Ministry. During a visit here last month, Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita offered $4.4 million to help finance long-term visits by U.S. Scientists to Japan's government, univers

Japanese May Invite 300 Into Labs WASHINGTON - Japan, under pressure to open its labs to outsiders, may soon be inviting more than 300 additional foreign researchers, under programs approved last month by the nation's Finance Ministry. During a visit here last month, Prime Minister Noboru Takeashita offered $4.4 million to help finance long-term visits by U.S. scientists to Japan's government university and industrial labs. He suggested that the National Science Foundation pick the recipients.

Another valuable asset in community relations is the site itself. Encouraging curiosity and welcoming the public inside the factory fence brings two enormous benefits. First, visitors become familiar with what is going on in the factory. Meeting workers who are going about their jobs with confidence helps to allay unease about safety-chemical workers are ordinary people after all, with the normal human instincts for self- preservation. It is an important step for the public to realize that a c

The committee finds no evidence to suggest that learning occurs during verified sleep (confirmed by such [measurements] as electrical recordings of brain activity). However, waking perception and interpretation of verbal material could well be altered by presenting that material during the lighter stages of sleep. We conclude that the existence and degree of learning and recall of materials presented during sleep should be examined again as a basic research problem. Many studies have found t

Maier-Leibnitz is emeritus professor of physics at the Technical University Munich. His address is Pienzenauerstrasse 110, 8000 Munich 81, West Germany Based on an article in the Summer-Autumn 1986 issue of Minerva A Review of Science, Learning and Policy. See also "English Spoken Here," THE SCIENTIST,September 7, 1987, p. 9.

When the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science opens in Boston later this week, eight of its scores of sessions will deal with AIDS. That is far more attention than the meeting allocates to any other single topic. Even superconductivity, the glamour kid of science, gets only two. Despite all those days of discussion, judging by the condensed program available in advance of the meeting, the organizers have ignored a critical aspect of AIDS research: the safet

Scientists like to succeed. They like to get the results they hope for, to be recognized for what they have done. But they also know that the greatest success may come from something unexpected, including failure. For example, the failure of Michelson and Morley to detect ether drift was a magnificent failure, which upset classical physics and helped advance Einstein's revolutionary ideas. At the other extreme are the dismal failures that do nothing but consume time and energy and erode the sp

Copyright © 1988 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reprinted by permission.

Editor's note: This is the first of three articles on utilities for personal computers that will appear over the next several issues. Part 2 will deal with DOS utilities and part 3 with desktop utilities. What are "free" programs and "shareware" programs? Free programs are exactly what they sound like: If you can get copies, they cost nothing. They are often called "public domain," which is a misnomer since most In fact are copyrighted. Shareware is often confused with free software. Its ce

THE NEW RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT Videotape 1-Animal Rights The Threat to Research. Videotape 2 The New Research Environment The Foundation for Biomedical Research. Washington. DC, 1987. VHS: $50 set. 3/4-inch U-Matic: $55 set. INVESTIGATOR'S HANDBOOK For Researchers Using Animal Models. The Foundation for Biomedical Research, Washington DC. 1987.86 pp. $10. CARE AND USE COMMITTEES January 1987 Issue of Laboratory Animal Science. F. Barbara Orlans. Richard C. Simmonds and W. Jean Dodds, eds. The

Dialectical Materialism in the 1980s Radiobiology's War of Words Exchanges, Acronyms And More PHILOSOPHY, AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN THE SOVIET UNION Loren R. Graham. Columbia University Press, New York, 1987. 565 pp. $45. BY LINDA L. LUBRANO In 1970 Loren R. Graham completed an outstanding work entitled Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union. Nominated for the National Book Award, it was the first book to explore the close interrelationship between dialectical materialism and the i

A Niche for Reagan's AIDS Commission A New Yawning Theory International Cooperation: Possible But Not Practical R&D's New Role Who's the Bumblingest Of Them All? Who Will Be the Lucky One? Beyond the Three Rs The more important function for which the [Presidential Commission on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus] . . . commission might be uniquely situated is to remove bureaucratic impediments to research. Fundamental investigation in virology, pathology and drug therapy must be given its

PEOPLE AWARDS DEATHS OPPORTUNITIES ECETERA MEETINGS Richard J. Gowen, president of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology became 1988 chairman of the American Association of Engineering Societies on January 1. John W. Ahien, president and chief executive officer of the Arkansas Science and Technology Authority, director of the Arkansas Capital Corp. and Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton's science adviser, was elected chairman of the AAES public affairs council, and Delon Hampton,

This is the last of a three-part series on temporary staffing in science.

Simple Curiosity: Letters from George Gaylord Simpson to His Family, 1921-1970. Leo F. La- porte, ed. University of California Press: February, 340 pp. $29.95. Collection of letters that range from Simpson's career as a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, Harvard, the University of Arizona and the British Museum, through expeditions he took to the American West, South American Pampas, North Africa and Italy. Reproduction and Development Marine Invertebrates of the North

The same anti-historical stance applies to instrumentation. It's true enough that a new form of gas chromatograph or monochromator is assembled not for its novelty value but to get results. But if the results turn out to have special significance, then the instru ment with which they were obtained gains special status too. Clearly, not every production line galvanometer used by a Nobel laureate merits hallowed status, but when a custom -made instrument delivers important new insights it deserv

Science as a Religious Search for Knowledge Q: What is your view of the burgeoning of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East today? SALAM: I am well aware that I have made myself unpopular in certain quarters by refusing to endorse many of these developments. I believe that some of the things now happening in those countries are not in line with the teachings to be found in the Koran. For me they represent an aberration of true Islamic teaching. Q: One of your interests is the relationshi

The Videomex-V video image analyzer combines sophisticated hard ware and software, enabling users to track multiple animals with a single television camera. The user can adjust for the sizes of objects to be monitored and the areas in which they move. This system is adaptable for measuring the activity of microscopic parasites as well as the movement of large animals. With the help of a microprocessor, the Videomex-V activity analyzer can acquire and process images 30 times/second, either dire

NEW PUBLICATIONS Engineering Optics an Institute of Physics reprint journal that contains applied and engineering optics papers previously published in IOP journals, debuts this month The quarterly journal covers papers on fiber optics; optical communications, Integrated Optics optical sensors, lasers and displays and optical systems design. Charter two-year subscription rates are $56 (25 pounds U.K., 32 pounds overseas); personal subscriptions are $28 per year (12.50 pounds U.K., 16 pounds ov