Notebook

Far Seeing, Yet Short Sighted Bush Honors 66 Top Managers Gender Gap In Manned Space Travel NSF Told To Create New Directorate Cheaper By The Dozen? ( Thanks to a special $75 million appropriation from Congress, the National Science Foundation is moving ahead quickly with an updated replacement for its radio telescope in Green Bank, W. Va., which collapsed in November 1988. Last month NSF awarded a $55 million construction contract to Radiation Systems Inc. of Sterling, Va., for a state-of-the-art, 100 meter telescope to be ready by 1995. NSF will spend another $10 million on software and equipment for the telescope. But its existing radio telescope facilities aren't so lucky. NSF is unable to care properly for them, says astronomy division director Julie Lutz. "[Funding] the base program gets worse every year," says Lutz. "We keep trying to get a special allocation for everything we need, but so far we haven't succeeded." For some agencies of the federal government, it pays to have a bad year. That's one way to look at this year's Distinguished Presidential Rank Awards, a $20,000-per-person bonus given to 66 of the government's top scientists and administrators. Although 1990, in some respects, was sort of a bummer for NASA -- with its flawed Hubble Telescope, leaky space shuttles, budget cuts in the moon- Mars mission, and congressional orders to pare down the hugely expensive space station Freedom -- the space agency reaped seven such awards, more than any department except the U.S. Navy. Among this year's crop of awardees are: NASA's John Klineberg, director of Goddard Space Flight Center, and Arnold Aldrich, associate administrator for aeronautics, exploration, and technology NlH's Carl Kupfer, director of the National Eye Institute; the Navy's Gerald Schiefer, director of naval laboratories, and Robert Winokur, technical director of the Office of the Oceanographer; Eileen Claussen, EPA's director of the Office of Atmospheric and Indoor Air Programs; and the Air Force's Robert Barthelemy, director of the National Aero-Space Plane office. A December report on NASA's future, which recommends that the agency make space science its highest priority, also endorses continued human exploration of the solar system. And panel cochairwoman Laurel Wilkening, provost of the University of Washington and a planetary scientist, wants to make sure that everyone is eligible. At last month's hearing on the report before the House Science, Space, and Transportation Committee, Wilkening reminded her mostly male audience of NASA's plans to "to send a person to Mars and return her safely." An outside task force plans to recommend that NSF spin off its support for the social and behavioral sciences into a directorate separate from biology. Paul Magee, chairman of the 20-member panel asked to look at the future of the disciplines, says that "we've come to a virtual consensus" on the need for a new directorate. Biology, which now consumes about three-quarters of the present directorate's annual budget, will also be strengthened by the split, says Magee, who concedes that the hardest decision will be "where to draw the line" on separation. The task force is finishing up a draft report, says Magee, dean of biological sciences at the University of Minnesota. Its final report is due in April. The Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government is a five-year effort to look at ways to improve how society uses the scientific knowledge and personnel available to it. Created in 1988 by the Carnegie Corporation and chaired by Nobelist Joshua Lederberg and businessman William Golden, the commission has spawned 11 task forces and committees to investigate issues such as energy and international cooperation. Two panels just getting started, for example, are a Task Force on Science and the States, headed by former Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste, and a Task Force on Long-Term Priorities in Science, led by H. Guyford Stever. And there could be more. A December briefing by Lederberg before the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology generated suggestions for several other topics, including population growth and biodiversity.

Notebook

The Scientist Staff

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