University Briefs

I’d Like You To Know Me Better H. T. Kung, professor of computer science at Carnegie-Mellon, had a good thing going. Instead of asking industry for money to fund his research, he would brashly invite companies to bid for the privilege. In the past, this tactic snared top dollars from General Electric, Honeywell, and Intel. But when Kung recently invited 12 major high-tech firms to join him on his latest project, a computer network, he only received sub-par offers. “We were too optimistic,” Kung says. So now he’s adding a new wrinkle; he’s invited the companies to sit on a committee he’s formed to better inform the firms about his research. And he hopes that they will come back with better offers when he puts the project up for bid again this fall. And The Moon Is Made Of Cheese Fossils are the remains of animals that died in the flood that Noah sat out, cavemen fought off marauding dinosaurs, and human life originated in the Garden of Eden. Or so believe more than one-third of 2,100 college students surveyed by two California scientists on 40 campuses around the country. In addition to the misconceptions about evolution, 45 percent of the students agreed with the statement that some races of humans are more evolved than others. One of the scientists, molecular geneticist John Cronin of the University of California, San Francisco, attributes the students’ remarkable lack of scientific knowledge to the creationist movement. The complete results of the survey appear in the June issue of Current Anthropology (page 520). U.S. Scientists Join Soviet Mars Trip When the Soviet Union launches twin probes to the Martian moon Phobos in July, University of Massachusetts astronomer William Irvine will be following the mission with special interest. Irvine is one of six U.S scientists—the others are geologist James Head of Brown, geologist Bruce Murray of Caltech, planetary scientist Bradford Smith of the University of Arizona, and chemist Anthony Turkevich and physicist Thanasis Economou of the University of Chicago—who are co-investigators in the project. Irvine says his involvement is the result of a long collaboration with astronomer Kari Lumme at the University of Helsinki, who is part of the Martian project. With an endorsement from Lumme, Irvine wrote to Roald Z. Sagdeyev, director of Moscow’s Space Research Institute, and the Soviet official in turn invited the astronomer to help interpret data collected by the spacecraft. Irvine notes that, in principle, the Reagan administration is willing to support U.S. involvement in Soviet missions, “especially if it doesn’t involve American equipment.” The Benefits Of Horse Sense When a horse is infected with the virus that causes equine infectious anemia, it suffers a new bout of illness every time the swiftly-changing virus mutates. Yet while the animal may experience six or more distinct attacks, it will eventually develop immunity to the disease. With a recent $2 million grant from NIH, a team of Louisiana State University scientists, lead by biochemist Ronald C. Montelaro, are investigating this resiliency, an immunological feat that may have implications in battling AIDS. The work—of great interest to the horse industry—has already yielded a genetically-engineered diagnostic test for the equine illness. And there is hope that a vaccine is not far behind. Michigan Shifts Into High Gear The University of Michigan is reving up for a potentially lucrative pay-off following the development of a new type of fluid by materials engineer Frank Filisko. The material, which thickens when an electric field is applied, could be used everywhere from automatic transmissions to shock absorbers and hydraulic devices, and may be worth $20 billion per year, analysts estimate. Last month, the school simultaneously announced the receipt of a patent for the work and the sale of certain exclusive rights to Acustar, a Chrysler Motor Corp. subsidiary.

University Briefs

The Scientist Staff

I’d Like You To Know Me Better

And The Moon Is Made Of Cheese

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