July 1989

As the echoes of the tanks on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square begin to fade, scientists from the United. States whose research requires access to Chinese sites--and their Chinese counterparts working or studying in the U.S.—are wondering whether they should permanently write off their projects as casualties of the violence. Universities, private companies, national agencies, and individual scientists have spent years overcoming xenophobia, language barriers, and other obstacles to ]

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldin stepped onto the fine, loose soil of the lunar surface 20 years ago next week, science had a number of questions to ask of the moon. Was it geologically hot, or was it cold? What was its origin? Were there any protobiological substances on its surface? What geologic differentiation had occurred in its formation? How did it differ from the earth? What were the mascons, those mysterious subsurface objects, that perturbed the orbits of lunar satellites? Now, as

WASHINGTON—Malaria, a wily scourge that kills from one to three million human beings each year, now finds itself associated with a victim of another sort: a 15-year-old, $100 million federally funded program to develop a vaccine against this ancient threat. Wracked by internal bickering, distracted by lawsuits and investigations, and stymied by a lack of progress, the Agency for International Development’s (AID) malaria project has fallen years behind in its’ search for an e

WASHINGTON—Six months after a White House panel concluded that United States competitiveness in high-temperature superconductivity hinged on the successful creation of a half-dozen industrial consortia dedicated to superconductivity research, nearly twice that many either exist or are now proposed. But while organizers tout the vast potential of superconducting electronics and stress the need to beat the Japanese in this field, troubling scientific and economic issues still cloud the pr

WASHINGTON—The Department of Energy pulled the plug on millions of dollars of geologic research last year after members of Congress from New England became afraid that such work might lead to a nuclear waste repository in their region, a recently released government report has revealed. The congressional action came in the form of amendments passed late in 1987 to a bill that sets United States policy on the disposal of highlevel nuclear wastes. Investigators from the congressional Gen

The pressure on university scientists to publish research papers in great quantity is relentless; and themotive behind it is clear. More papers mean more prestige for a researcher’s department—and the prestige will translate, department heads hope, into more financial support from the university. Unfortunately, this pressure is likely to prompt disreputable, unethical, and even fraudulent publication practices. At the very least, the pressure encourages scientists to adjust their p

Have you had any papers rejected by reputable journals recently? Or even by the less reputable journals you were forced to send the paper to when its revolutionary importance was not appreciated by earlier reviewers? If so, consider this: Perhaps—even given the enormous effort that went into submitting the grant application, preparing the protocol, and writing the paper (and even conducting the research itself)— you never really wanted the paper published in the first place. At

The proliferation of scholarly journals in the perilous “publish or perish” academic climate of the last 20 years has produced considerable concern recently, particularly among college and university librarians, who must figure out what to do with them. For example, on an average day the medical school library to which I have access receives 50 new journal issues, taking up a total of 2 ft. of shelf space. The main campus library subscribes to about twice as many journals, and a

Environmental groups have waged an aggressive campaign to ban Alar, the controversial chemical used on apples to pro- mote uniform ripening and prolong shelf life. They want it banned because a breakdown product of Alar, UDMH, has been shown to cause liver tumors in mice and may pose a cancer risk to humans, especially children. The Alar controversy has heightened people’s awareness—and anxiety—about cancer risks of. man-made chemicals in our environment. But little publicit

We read with great interest Simon Mitton’s article “We Are Publishing Too Many Conference Proceedings” (The Scientist, Feb. 20, 1989, page 9). The author has to be congratulated on his analysis of the situation. No doubt., those in the publication business would agree that proceedings of conferences of marginal interest with numerous uninvited, often unrelated, and frequently unreviewed papers have. spoiled the name “Proceedings,” giving it the connotation of a sec

PHYSICS >BY FRANK A. WILCZEK School of Natural Sciences Institute for Advanced Study Princeton, NJ. " A special issue of Progress of Theoretical Physics is devoted to a broad consideration of a classic and still fascinating problem. Research Institute for Fundamental Physics and The Physical Society of Japan, “Origin of the solar system,” Progress of Theoretical Physics (Supplement), 96, 1-3 19, 1988. (Kyoto University, Japan) " This year’s Henry Norris Russell Lecture rev

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a relatively new laboratory technique that produces large amounts of specific DNA sequences in vitro, using only a small sample of genetic material. Researchers are using PCR to diagnose genetic disorders and to detect pathogens from viruses associated with AIDS, adult T-cell leukemia, and cervical cancer, as well as many other infectious diseases. The impact of PCR has, in fact, been so great that this field was identified as the second hottest area in all o

MONTREAL—A major AIDS conference held here last month left top scientists complaining that the sheer number of attendees, along with the noise they generated, prevented the scientists from exchanging ideas. Scientists present at the vast gathering—11,638 registrants from 87 countries, buzzed by 1,320 media people from 47 countries—say they were overwhelmed by the army of social workers and public health officials on the scene. Corridor talk of macrophages and CD-4 receptors

Biochemists, pharmacologists, and cell biologists frequently need to perform assays requiring the detection and quantitation of radioisotopes during such procedures as receptor binding assays, antigen detecting, metabolic/enzymatic as- says, and protein or antibody labeling. These assays invariably demand the analysis of a large number of samples, necessitating multiple pipetting. Consequently, such assays are prone to pipetting errors. Cambridge Technology Inc., based in Watertown, Mass., now