July 1987

TOKYO—American fears that Japan is coordinating a national effort to achieve world supremacy in high-temperature superconductivity R&D are exaggerated, say Japanese scientists and officials, who point out that the government lacks the money and clout to orchestrate such a campaign. "Too many people in the U.S. are overestimating our abilities," said Masatoshi Urashima, director for development of advanced industries in the Agency for. Indus trial Science and Technology under MITI (the Min

SANTA FE, N.M.—No project in modern times has brought science and religion into closer contact than efforts to assess the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. And the debate about the role of scientists in the project has been every bit as heated as the religious discussions. At the center of the controversy is a group of scientists that make up the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP). Formed here in 1976, the 30 or so volunteers rely on private donations to conduct their work. Robe

BOSTON—Thousands of scientists and engineers who have been in the United States illegally over the past decade after arriving as students may not be able to gain amnesty under an interpretation of the new immigration law by Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officials. The law, which promised amnesty to foreigners living illegally in this country since before 1982, is being applied "very liberally" to those who entered the country illegally—primarily undocumented workers fr

WASHINGTON—The National Academy of Sciences has assembled its blue-ribbon panel to assess proposals for the Superconducting Supercollider. And participants promise that the group will take a balanced—if not completely disinterested—look at the suitability of what are expected to be dozens of proposals to land the multibillion dollar construction and research project. "Short of getting Martians, there was no way to avoid bringing in people who might be affected by the ultimate

WASHINGTON—Scientists, science organizations and industry groups are investigating charges the federal government is improperly sup pressing publication of two fusion energy magazines tied to presidential candidate and conspiracy theorist Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. On April 21 federal marshals seized the Washington, D.C., area offices and froze the bank accounts of Fusion magazine and The International Journal of Fusion E ergy, both published by the Fusion Energy Foundation, a LaRouche affili

WASHINGTON—NSF's proposed science and technology centers should not be required to obtain industry support nor to encompass more than one discipline, according to a new report by the National Academy of Sciences. Funding should be ended after nine years, the report suggested, and the pro gram should not be supported at the expense of grants to individual investigators if NSF's budget fails to grow as quickly as the administration has proposed. The 11-member panel, chaired by chemist Richa

WASHINGTON—When Robert Coleman took the phone call, the University of California at Berkeley mathematician thought the official-sounding voice was a sales man. When he heard the words "MacArthur Foundation," he expected to be asked for a donation. But when program director Kenneth Hope told Coleman that he was one of 32 new MacArthur fellows and that he would receive $215,000 over the next five years, the message finally got through. By at least one measure, how ever, the 32-year-old Cole

WASHINGTON—The future of America's economy depends in large measure on the ability of industry to exploit new and emerging technologies, according to a new Commerce Department study. The report, prepared by experts from the National Bureau of Standards and other Commerce agencies, identifies seven major groups of emerging technologies that they believe will result in new products or processes in the next century. These include advanced materials, electronics, automation, biotechnology, co

WASHINGTON-The question this summer for AIDS researchers is not whether, but by how much, the federal budget will be increased for work on the disease. President Reagan recently boosted his budget request to $523 million, up from the $413 million originally sought in fiscal 1988 for Public Health Service efforts to fight the disease. The additional money would increase funding for research on the causes of the disease to $266 million, and provide $257 million for the development of treatments an

LONDON—An international review of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva has dealt a double blow to the laboratory's administration. Severely critical of CERN's management, accounting and personnel policies, it nevertheless has not identified cash savings that would persuade Britain to remain a member of Europe's premier high-energy physics center. The review panel, set up at Britain's instigation, presented its interim findings to CERN's council in early June. It

AMSTERDAM—In a session specifically devoted to safety, participants at the 4th European Congress of Biotechnology held here last month expressed virtually no concern about potential dangers during large-scale production of microbes containing recombinant DNA or following the release of such organisms into the environment. Kees Winkler from the University of Utrecht, in views that were not challenged, argued that because such bacteria—like those in the natural world—would have

Peter Ward, a marine biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, is fascinated by the chambered nautilus, the lone survivor of an entire subclass of molluscs that emerged some 500 million years ago. In the course of thinking about how to open this world to the public—whom he calls "the real supporters of science"—Ward received a flyer describing a new publishing venture by the New York Academy of Sciences. The result is In Search of Nautilus, one of the first in a series d

LWERMORE, CALIF.—The Reagan administration once again has reached into industry to fill a key science policy position with the nomination of Robert 0. Hunter Jr. to head the Energy Department's Office of Energy Research. President Reagan announced June 23 that he will nominate Hunter for the position, which oversees $2 billion worth of energy research programs. The Senate, which must confirm the appointment, will set a date for hearings once the nomination is officially submitted. Hunter

MADRID—Spanish officials have begun work on a first-ever National Plan for Scientific Research and Development that is meant to rationalize and invigorate the country's entire research program. Cell biologist Emiio Mufioz has been chosen to lead the effort, which stems from a law passed last year to promote and coordinate the country's R&D efforts. But Mufioz, who has overseen science policy for the Socialist government since it came to power in 1982, faces major obstacles to his goal of

Poland, where Nicholas Copernicus was born in 1473, was one of the "people's democracies" singled out for particular praise in J.D. Bernal's Science in History, published in 1954. Having visited the country many times during the postwar years, Bernal wrote of the "new burst of activity in the scientific field" that ho had witnessed. "The physics laboratories of Warsaw University, for instance, are better equipped than any in Britain, and only yield place to those in the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R"

WASHINGTON—Whether the topic is AIDS or supernovas or high-temperature superconductivity, the blistering pace of discovery is prompting researchers in hot fields to flock to special meetings, spend hours on the phone, scan computer data bases and swap reams of journal article preprints in an effort to keep up and to record their own contributions. As scientists in those fields become increasingly dependent on such methods, however, some are concerned that the resultant short cuts have lowe

Witnessing Japan in its transition to inter nationalization is interesting. That includes reading about people like Takashi Mukaibo who are doing that (The Scientist, May 4, 1987, p. 14). While apparently there are a lot of efforts in spreading internationalization with a religious fervor in Japan, it is still not uncommon to see a foreigner being watched like an alien from another planet. Japan has just discovered how to use brain power from developing countries and as a result enrollment of f

In his interesting essay "What Viruses Might Do for a Living", Lewis Thomas suggests that viruses may have speeded up the evolutionary processes by helping organisms exchange genetic information.' Related ideas have also been discussed by Benveniste and" Thdaro and much earlier by Ravin, who in his discussion of "heritable infections," called attention to certain similarities between viruses and genes. I would like to speculate on a slightly different version of this idea. The function of' the

I was surprised at Donald J. Barnes' lack of information regarding the American Psychological Association's efforts to ensure the humane and responsible use of laboratory animals ("The Humane Community Does Do the Funding"). APA's enforceable code of ethical principles demands that APA members adhere to extensive guidelines for ethical conduct in the care and use of animals. These guidelines detail APA policies concerning the acquisition and care of animals and recommend standards for specific

An unacceptable level of teleology crept into Lewis Thomas' article on viruses (The Scientist, April 6, 1987, p. 13). They do not have functions, they just have properties. The small and simpler viruses are just chemical structures, perpetuated because they delude pre-existing synthetic mechanisms into copying them. They can do that effectively only if they survive in the hostile environment of a host cell. It is hostile more because of scavenging enzymes than because of directed host activities