March 1992

Strong academic-industry links are deemed essential to the resuscitation of math's ability to attract and retain top-notch students Mathematicians are looking at the numbers, and some don't like what they see. Despite a spate of recent reports and studies urging greater support for the mathematical sciences and math education, academic funding levels and student retention rates are still far below what math practitioners believe is warranted. A follow-up study to a 1984 National Research Cou

Date: March 16, 1992 Revamping of the biology directorate and creation of a social sciences unit aims to accommodate new trends in life sciences When Cora Bagley Marrett assumes full duties in May as the first assistant director of the new social, behavioral, and economic sciences division (SBE) of the National Science Foundation, she will give social scientists something for which they have long lobbied: their own voice in high-level NSF decisions. NSF announced the new directorate last Oc

When Christine Benally was a high school student in Shiprock, N.Mex., on the easternmost edge of the Navajo Reservation, her educational goals went no further than getting a vocational degree--as her father, a mechanic, did before her and as many of her friends would do, as well. "I figured something like that would do me," recalls Benally. "Get a technical degree, get out fast, start earning money." Yet some 15 years later, Benally has a doctoral degree in environmental toxicology under her b

The newly appointed chief executive officer of the New York Academy of Sciences says he hopes to guide the academy to a leadership role in the national and international arenas as well as locally. "One of the academy's central functions must continue to be serving the science and engineering community itself," says Rodney W. Nichols, named to the CEO post late last month. "But the function of serving society, which has always been tacit, really has to rise to equal priority." Nichols, a forme

As American Indians continue to join the ranks of U.S. scientists, many seek to remind their peers that native cultures have been contributing to Western science for half a millennium. "Indians were first-rate geneticists and agronomists," says Hopi tribal member Frank Dukepoo, an associate professor of genetics at Northern Arizona University. "If we'd been able to evolve [without European contact], we'd have had Indian scientists," he argues. "But as they evolved into being scientists, they

Immunoassay technology, a quick and cost-effective method of detecting and measuring minute quantities of substances in the human body, has now transitioned from the clinical and biological research arenas to environmental investigations. The technique, which exploits the capacity of a mammalian antibody to latch onto a particular chemical with great specificity, is used in at-home pregnancy tests, workplace drug-screening programs, and AIDS testing. Within the last year, however, several immun

At the NAS meeting, Linda Wilson's remarks indicated that she deplores competitive machismo in science, which she sees as a male WASP style and one that women can and should change. At the same meeting, MIT astrophysicist Bernard Burke disputed this point, saying, "I think that's a ridiculous idea. That would be a terrible thing to happen for all of science. Above all, we must retain quality. . . . You don't get to do the best science by being a nice guy. Opportunism and competitiveness are esse

When East VGermany fused with West Germany, the state support of science in the former communist sector came to an end. However, despite some inevitable job insecurity, it appears that East German scientists will, for the most part, be able to go on working as the fusion of the two nations continues. Some of them will be displaced, of course, by job-hungry young scientists of West Germany; but others will be able to hang on to their university positions. For a while, their salaries will be a fr

R.R. Schrock, R.T. DePue, J. Feldman, K.B. Yap, et al., "Further studies of imido alkylidene complexes of tungsten, well-characterized olefin metathesis catalysts with controllable activity," Organometallics, 9:2262-75, 1990. Richard R. Schrock (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge): "In the olefin metathesis reaction, carbon-carbon double bonds are `chopped in half' and re-formed at random. In this paper we report well-defined metal complexes for this reaction that are relatively s

J.C. Campuzano, G. Jennings, M. Faiz, L. Beaulaigue, et al., "Fermi surfaces of YBa2Cu3O6.9 as seen by angle-resolved photoemission," Physical Review Letters, 64:2308-11, 1990. Juan Carlos Campuzano (Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Ill.): "Originally, the high-temperature superconductors were expected to have an electronic structure akin to that of the ceramic insulators from whence they are derived. Insulators do not have free electrons to carry the current, and thus any electric field i

B.F. Pugh, R. Tjian, "Mechanism of transcriptional activation by Sp1: evidence for coactivators," Cell, 61:1187-97, 1990. Franklin Pugh (Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, Berkeley): "The story of eukaryotic transcriptional coactivators has provoked a new way of thinking about how sequence-specific activators communicate with the basal transcriptional machinery. "The prevailing thought prior to this work was that the TFIID component of this machine was a single protein

T.J. Schall, M. Lewis, K.J. Koller, A. Lee, G.C. Rice, G.H.W. Wong, T. Gatanoga, et al., "Molecular cloning and expression of a receptor for human tumor necrosis factor," Cell, 61:361-70, 1990. Thomas Schall (Genentech Inc., South San Francisco, Calif.): "The biological effects of the protein known as tumor necrosis factor (TNF) have puzzled inves- tigators for years. Though binding studies have revealed that virtually all mammalian cells possess TNF receptors, the molecule's biological activit

The process of translating an idea into a tangible invention may seem daunting at first. Budding inventors, however, can draw on a host of resources for information and support. Here are just a few: American Intellectual Property Law Association 2001 Jefferson Davis Highway Suite 203 Arlington, Va. 22202 (703) 415-0780 This organization can provide assistance with patent, trademark, copyright, intellectual property, technology transfer, invention, and innovation. It offers a book and suppleme

Great ideas for a new technology or innovation excitedly scribbled on the backs of envelopes or on cocktail napkins may have lots of potential. But that promise will never be realized unless the ideas are transformed from scribbles to effective prose that can convince investors, technology licensing officials, or patent attorneys of their value. Why bother? These lean economic times may seem like the worst time to start trying to sell ideas--especially to investors. Not so, says Len Vernamont

AVERAGE ANNUAL SALARY OF FEDERAL CIVILIAN SCIENTISTS* Occupation Total Male Female Minority Health Physics $45,790 $47,562 $38,983 $40,483 Physics 54,191 54,769 44,527 50,817 Geophysics 48,469 49,840 37,423 46,636 Hydrology 41,580 43,160 32,331 38,501 Chemistry 44,804 47,040 38,307 40,726 Metallurgy 52,426 52,754 45,935 50,565 Astro./Space 58,463 58,955 51,404 59,565 Science Meteorology 43,157 43,727 35,656 45,538 Geology 44,954 46,919 36,260 40,437 Oceanography 47,917 49,832 37,

Average salaries for government scientists kept pace with inflation between 1988 and 1990, according to the latest published data from the Washington, D.C.-based Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology. Yet according to the findings, based on material compiled every two years by the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the average pay for women and minority government scientists was lower than the average for all men. The findings indicate that pay increased as a

George A. Olah, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and holder of the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Chair in Organic Chemistry at the University of Southern California, is the winner of the American Chemical Society's Richard C. Tolman Medal. The award honors those who have made outstanding contributions in chemistry and have accomplished a major portion of their work while living in Southern California. Olah will receive the medal and a citation on March 20. Olah, 64, is the discoverer

Robert Krucz, an astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., has received the University of Arizona's 1992 George Van Biesbroeck Award. The annual award recognizes an astronomer whose contributions to the field have been unselfish and unrecognized. Krucz was honored for developing and distributing--without compensation--computer programs useful to astronomers. For 25 years, Krucz has been developing computer programs for studying the atmosphere and c