September 1992

Controversy centers on whether and how the elite science body should deal with members whose behavior is questionable For the first time in its 129-year history, the National Academy of Sciences has sent a letter to one of its members hinting that he should resign. The unprecedented move has called into question the academy's role as an ostensibly apolitical body. The ensuing debate has focused on, among other issues, whether NAS should censure its members whose activities are offensive to a l

Although funding has been restored for the superconducting supercollider, the skies have not cleared over the Dallas-based project, as well-founded fears of another budget wrangle next year persist, say SSC officials. The Senate voted on August 3 in favor of continued SSC funding after the House voted the project down on June 17, but physicists associated with the SSC say they are still wary. They are concerned over a Congress that will have as many as 130 new members after this fall's election

With knowledge gained, surgeons and researchers in Pittsburgh proceed with ambitious plans for xenotransplantation Clinicians and medical researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center are pressing forward with plans for a series of four baboon-to-human liver transplants, even after the death earlier this month of the first human recipient of a baboon liver. Despite the recipient's death, and despite strong opposition from animal rights groups, the transplant team hopes interspecie

In an effort to cope with hurdles posed by the post-Cold War "new order," National Science Foundation director Walter E. Massey is looking to a 15-member special panel to assist NSF with charting out a "new strategic plan" to the year 2000 and beyond. Massey says he is hopeful that the newly formed Special Commission on the Future of the NSF, which he announced during an August 13-14 presentation before the National Science Board (NSB), will serve to complement the "long-range planning process"

The award ceremony will take place in Toronto on October 23; the winners will divide the foundation's largess, which totals $220,000 Canadian.

Soap opera star Susan Lucci has been nominated for an Emmy Award 13 times for her portrayal of Erica on ABC-TV's "All My Children," but has never walked away with the statuette. Research!America also knows what it feels like to leave an Emmy ceremony empty-handed. The group, which promotes public awareness of the benefits of medical research, received an Emmy nomination this year for "Eddie Butler," a public-service announcement on Alzheimer's disease, but lost out to a spot on steroids by the

The National Endowment for the Arts, administering a paltry budget of $176 million, has been under congressional attack over the past few years. Various works of art--from Robert Mapplethorpe's homoerotic photographs to Holly Hughes's sexually provocative performance art--have caught our lawmakers' attention. In some cases their interest may well have taken the form of contemplative appreciation; in others, though, the reaction was one of moral outrage. Earlier this year, John Frohnmayer, NEA's

An ongoing debate within the United States science community pits those who favor government funding of manned spaceflight against those who believe that such funding is appropriated at the expense of smaller scientific research projects. The argument is treated on both sides as a zero-sum game, in which an absolute choice must be made between supporting, on one hand, a lot of small science programs and, on the other hand, a few large, manned space programs. Those who would protect disciplines

The American landscape has undergone tremendous alteration and devastation; 90 percent or more of its prairies, wetlands, and virgin forests have been consumed by development. And now many parts of the developing world are feeling the bite of the chain saw and bulldozer. But in counterpoint to this depressing scenario, restoration ecology--the science of rehabilitating degraded ecosystems--is growing. The field is attracting many new scientists, more funding is becoming available, and a new jou

P. Langacker, M. Luo, "Implications of precision electroweak experiments for mt, r0, sin2 qw, and grand unification," Physical Review D, 44:817-22, 1991. Paul Langacker (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia): "This paper presents a systematic analysis of the implications of all high-precision electroweak experiments, including those at the new e+e- collider LEP at CERN in Geneva. It shows that our present `standard model' correctly describes nature down to a distance scale of 1/1000th the s

A new breed of mathematical software brings computing power formerly reserved for mainframes to personal computers, allowing scientists with desktop machines to pose and answer problems of greater complexity than ever before. Those taking advantage of the increased availability of such sophisticated analytical support for their work include--perhaps expectedly--many physicists and engineers, but also biological researchers studying such phenomena as fish population cycles and the foraging habit