March 1990

An initiative by Japanese firms and government agencies outpaces U.S. efforts, despite America's head start in the field WASHINGTON -- Try to imagine Motorola, Corning Glass Works, Bethlehem Steel, Merck, and Revlon sitting down at the table with Citibank, Chase Manhattan, Bank of Boston, and a few insurance companies and agreeing to invest more than $90 million in a new research project. Then throw in the federal government, with a matching contribution of $90 million. Such a scenario, impla

The new HHS unit resists pressure to reveal the names of the biomedical scientists it has found guilty of wrongdoing NEW ORLEANS -- The year-old Office of Scientific Integrity Review - responsible for resulting the cases of federally funded biomedical researchers accused of scientific misconduct - has meted out punishment to more than a dozen such researchers so far. But the head of that office said last month that he has no intention of making information pertaining to these cases available t

With Packard Foundation support, the 3-year-old MBARI is establishing its credibility in oceanographic research. MONTEREY, CALIF. -- A unique marine science institute is growing on the shore of Monterey Bay in central California, one that bonds scientists and engineers in a single unit through the use of the latest computer technology and unmanned submersible equipment. The three-year-old Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) is well-positioned to make a splash within the national

The chemical giant, looking for a better research climate, joins other German firms in the Western Hemisphere Eluding pressure from environmentalists and biotechnology regulators at home while looking for new markets to conquer abroad, the West German chemical giant BASF Corp. is establishing a foothold in the United States, with a $100 million research facility at the Massachusetts Biotechnology Park in Worcester. BASF's decision in 1988 to set up shop in the U.S. is the latest example of an

WASHINGTON -- The National Science Foundation, in the midst of declining funding rates and a growing debate about the nature of peer review, has decided to make it easier for scientists to appeal the bad news they receive. Procedural changes disclosed last month at a meeting of the National Science Board also are designed to help NSF identify the worthiest grant proposals and to provide applicants with more information about the factors that led to funding decisions. "We want to open up the pr

WASHINGTON -- Hackers have been breaking into an unclassified worldwide computer network that contains data on research in the space and earth sciences. So far the 100,000 scientists who are linked to the Space Physics Analysis Network (SPAN) are lucky: The unauthorized access hasn't been malicious, and no files have been altered. But a recent government report to Congress chides NASA for not doing enough to protect the integrity of the system. It takes the agency to task for its failure to co

When the superficial attraction of the latest equipment outpaces our knowledge of its value, the results can be costly The United States government, concerned about increasing health care costs and unsure about the claims made about some recent technologies, is weighing a proposal that would ask federally funded researchers to prove that new machines are indeed better than their precursors before they become widely used. "The fact is, as technologies emerge, they are driven by those who intro

Animal welfare activists are trying to open up the hearings of university animal care and use committees at state universities as part of their campaign to restrict or halt the use of animals in research. So far, however, they've had mixed success: State sunshine laws (which mandate open meetings of public bodies), public meetings, and the federal Freedom of Information Act have helped the activists obtain more data on research proposals, but acquiring the protocols for specific projects has re

Report says biotech firms must pick up the slack to supplement federal funding of the next generation of scientists WASHINGTON -- Biotechnology companies are running out of scientists, and it may be up to industry itself to educate the next generation of biochemists, according to a new report from the National Research Council. The report, funded by the National Institutes of Health at the behest of Congress, recommends that federally supported traineeships and fellowships for biomedical grad

Board cites need to reassess program's direction; moratorium surprises many in scientific community Mary Lasker, the octogenarian president of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation, has notified jurors that the foundation's Medical Research Awards - considered by many to serve as a "predictor" of the Nobel Prize - will not be presented in 1990. The decision, which was made by Lasker along with other foundation board members and was not announced officially to the press, has surprised and disap

[Editor's note: The interdisciplinary nature of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held last month in New Orleans, offers a perspective on the status of science in the United States that is not available at the typical scientific meeting, where most discussions are centered on a single discipline or specialty. For the benefit of those who were not in New Orleans - as well as those who were present but otherwise occupied - here's a sampling of some of

Physicist M. Brian Maple has only one regret about being named to the University of California, San Diego's, first Bernd T. Matthias Chair in Physics: that the late scientist for whom the chair is named, who was also Maple's teacher and mentor, is not able to share the honor with him, as well as witness the latest discoveries in the field of high-temperature superconductivity. Maple, 50, says his appointment to the chair named for his former thesis adviser means as much sentimentally as it doe

Crosscurrents In Environmentalism The environmental movement is now divided into three parts, Sierra Club Chairman Michael McCloskey told participants at a symposium on "two decades of environmentalism." And science may be, in part, to blame for the split. Once a fairly coherent campaign, with different groups adopting similar strategies, environmentalists have gone their separate ways as the movement gains steam. In one camp are such mainstream groups as the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, a

Wraparound Video The Small Business Innovations Research program is funding a project that could revolutionize the way people watch video images: the Alternate Reality Vision System (ARVIS), developed by an engineering firm in Conway, Wash. According to Bob Dyer, an electronics engineer at Concept Vision System, ARVIS is a stereoscopic image projection device that occupies the viewer's entire field of vision. Conceived by company president John Webster, a registered-nurse- turned-inventor who i

Beautiful Science We may not know art, but we know what we like - in this case a 100,000 French franc (about $16,000) prize offered by Mo=89t-Hennessy-Louis Vuitton, the French luxury products firm, for a "study, or innovative technical process, related to the application of materials on surfaces, to achieve aesthetic effects." One of last year's winners of the "Science Pour L'Art" competition was physicist Jerzy A. Dobrowolsky, of the National Research Council of Canada. Dobrowolsky's work has

Biotech And The President's Budget Despite President Bush's fiscal 1991 budget request of $3.6 billion for biotechnology research and development, a 6% increase over 1990, the Industrial Biotechnology Association is displeased by at least one aspect of the plan. The thorn in the side of the IBA is the budget's inclusion of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration user fee, which would be assessed to any company applying for a product review. The budget calls for these fees to provide the FDA with $

A Novel Way To Support Your Work Need money for research? Got some time on your hands? Try writing as many as 100,000 words on how to save the planet. It's not a research paper, but rather fiction set in the not-too- distant future. Turner Broadcasting System Inc. and Turner Publishing Inc. have established the Turner Tomorrow Award, which plans to give $500,000 for the best novel with "themes ensuring the survival and prosperity of all life on our planet," according to the program announcement

Volume 4, #6The Scientist March 19, 1990 PEOPLE BRIEFS Date: March 19, 1990 James S. Langer has been appointed director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A specialist in condensed matter theory and statistical physics, Langer is a professor of physics at UC-Santa Barbara and has been a member of the school's staff since 1982. Langer has advanced scientific understanding of how melting and freezing processes produce intricate

In "Scientists Should Spend More Time Communicating With The Public" (The Scientist, Jan. 8, 1990, page 15), John Wilkes offers some good reasons why scientists should spend more time communicating with the public, but does not mention one major reason why they do not: There is little financial reward for doing so. This is not a forceful reason for abandoning regular small tasks in communication, but it severly discourages any major project. In my own case, a successful book aimed at explainin

As Jeffrey Mervis reports in "U.S. Officials Defend Animal Research" (The Scientist, Jan. 8, 1990, page 1), the number of people joining the animal protection movement has indeed increased. This explosive growth can be attributed to the fact that the movement embraces goals that are shared by compassionate citizens who abhor cruelty to animals as well as people. The increasing number of scientists, physicians, and scholars who are speaking out against the many questionable activities that come

Author: PETER D. MOORE Department of Biology King's College London, U.K. Analyses of lake sediments in Panama have provided evidence of the earliest recorded human impact on the forest environment of Central America. In layers dating to 11,000 years ago, there is a sudden appearance of carbon, together with phytoliths of weed species, such as Heliconia. These features indicate the onset of disturbed conditions that may well have been caused by human management of the contemporaneous low biomas

Harvard, Hopkins, Stanford -- these are names that immediately spring to mind when one thinks of top-flight biological and biomedical research institutions in the United States. But it is important to remember that smaller institutions also contribute significantly to scientific knowledge. In fact, according to data from the Institute for Scientific Information's Science Citation Index (SCI), a few small independent research institutes in the U.S. carry just as much clout (or more) as do the "m