IRANIAN SCIENCE: Iranian Women Hear the Call of Science

Despite institutions such as separate reading rooms for each sex, women are a growing presence at Iran's universities, making up nearly 60% of incoming classes, almost double their share in 1978. But as in many other countries, some female academics in Iran point to a glass ceiling that keeps their representation among university professors low.     

IRANIAN SCIENCE: Earthquake Researchers Prepare for the Next Big One

When a devastating earthquake rocked the Manjil region in Iran on 20 June 1990, the tremors also shook seismology research in that country. That night, Mohsen Ghafory-Ashtiany rolled out of his bed in Tehran and headed to the danger zone in northwestern Iran, where 13,000 persons perished and 60,000 were injured. He and his then-tiny staff surveyed the damage and mapped out a plan for bolstering earthquake research and preparedness.     

PLANETARY SCIENCE: Solar System Scientists Look to Find an Edge

For several years, ever-improving telescope technology has allowed astronomers to peer farther and farther beyond Neptune to discover a rapidly increasing number of bodies littering the outer reaches of the solar system. Now many researchers agree that an end is in sight, although some remain skeptical.     

COMPUTER SCIENCE: Flushing Out Nasty Viruses in the Balkans

Bulgaria created a pioneering center in late 1990 to tackle the threat that its homegrown computer viruses posed to the world; according to experts, it has been a major force in reining in that threat. Now the lab is struggling to stave off obsolescence on a budget of roughly half of what a single Western whiz kid fresh out of college might earn in a year.     

MATERIALS SCIENCE: Long-Wavelength Lasers Sniff Out New Uses

Just a few weeks after two physicists won the Nobel Prize for figuring out how to make lasers out of semiconductors, researchers announced that they have made those lasers much more useful. A new technique permits the lasers to shine light in regions of the infrared spectrum previously inaccessible to similar devices. The advance may open the door to cheap devices to sniff explosives and other robotic sensors.     

SURFACE SCIENCE: How to Power a Nanomotor

A successful nanotechnology will require nanomotors that can perform functions from switches to pumps and actuators. In their Perspective, Besenbacher and N?rskov discuss the study by Schmid et al., who show that tin islands on a copper surfaces propel themselves forward on the surface, drawing energy from alloy formation with the surface below. The system has about the same power-to-weight ratio as a car and may provide a paradigm for future nanomotors.     

ESSAYS ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY: Selling Science to the Public

In this essay, Highfield reflects on his personal experiences as science journalist and editor at the British broadsheet the Daily Telegraph. Highfield believes that scientists can learn from journalists' dialogue approach to science communication. Highfield believes that readers are "ignorant but smart," and are sufficiently sceptical not to believe all the hype that they read. What is most important is that a dialogue is created. For example, large-scale experiments performed by the Daily Telegraph together with the BBC allow the public to get a glimpse of the scientific method that is often ignored.     

NUCLEAR SCIENCE: DOE Drops Plan to Restart Reactor

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has abandoned the idea of restarting a controversial nuclear reactor at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state. Some biomedical researchers are applauding the decision to pull the plug on the Fast Flux Test Facility, which they feared would drain scarce resources from other DOE research programs.     

民事执行中对自然人执行难的原因及对策探析

本文就我国法院普遍存在的对自然人的执行难问题，通过对执行难原因的分析，从立法与司法的角度提出了解决这一问题的构想，即在执行措施中增设对自然人的限制消费制度和民事管制制度，以期对法院解决对自然人的执行难问题有所裨益。     

SPACE SCIENCE: Europe Set to Work on Hubble's Replacement

NASA scientists and engineers working on the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) got a boost from across the Atlantic last week. On 15 September in Paris, the European Space Agency's top science advisory committee recommended that the agency become a major partner in the project. The recommendation puts NGST--along with a handful of other missions the committee also endorsed last week--one short step away from officially becoming part of Europe's space program.