Bioethics. Financial conflicts get more scrutiny in clinical trials

At a national conference on clinical research last week, the incoming head of the federal government's new Office for Human Research Protections, Greg Koski, surprised his audience by suggesting that some conflicts should be avoided. His support for the idea that scientists should have no financial ties to companies whose products they are testing hints at an upcoming shift in government rules that govern the relationship between scientists and the pharmaceutical industry. But most of the discussion at the conference revolved around questions of how to "manage" conflicts rather than do away with them.     

SCI收录的高影响因子水产学科期刊简介

对2003年底公布的被SCI收录、影响因子在1.0以上的13种水产学科期刊的名称、影响因子I、SSN号、出版周期、出版者及可获取全文的数据库等情况进行了介绍,为从事水产学科及相关学科研究的人员查阅文献、投稿及订阅提供帮助。     

NUCLEAR ESPIONAGE: Report Details Spying on Touring Scientists

A congressional report released this week details dozens of sometimes clumsy attempts by foreign agents to obtain nuclear secrets from U.S. nuclear scientists traveling abroad, ranging from offering scientists prostitutes to prying off the backs of their laptop computers. The report highlights the need to better prepare traveling researchers to safeguard secrets and resist such temptations, say the two lawmakers who requested the report and officials at the Department of Energy, which employs the scientists.     

Prime tests and keeping proofs secret

Stanford, California. On 29 July through 2 August, a group of computer scientists, mathematical physicists, and mathematicians met at Stanford University for a conference on Mathematics and Computers. It was a varied meeting-the talks ranged from the mathematics of chaos to a talk by the peripatetic Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos on number theory problems that might be interesting to work on. In addition, software vendors set up shop, inviting investigators to bring their problems and try them on different systems. On the last day of the conference, when the talks were in the field of computational complexity-the difficulty of doing certain computer calculations-two new computer science tricks were presented and are recounted here.     

Astrobiology. Ames's proposal for lab triggers battle at NASA

Officials at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, would like to trade the use of part of their land for a new building largely dedicated to NASA's nascent astrobiology program, the core of which is a 2-year-old virtual institute based at Ames. Although some scientists applaud the idea, others say that it undermines the idea of a virtual institute and that operating costs would take money away from higher priorities. Two panels have offered conflicting opinions, which may be aired at a meeting next week.     

PLANETARY SCIENCE: Imaging Spat Pits Amateur Against Pros

A long-running dispute over who should get credit for first reporting landmarks on Mercury's uncharted hemisphere burst into public view on 26 May, when a Boston University press release claimed honors for a BU team without mentioning the contributions of an erstwhile collaborator, amateur astronomer Ron Dantowitz. The row, which has left both sides bitter and unwilling to work with each other, "was the opposite of how a collaboration between amateurs and professionals should be," says one of the scientists involved.     

Ecology. Can science rescue salmon?

At a press conference on 27 July, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) released a long-awaited plan to save the Columbia River's endangered salmon by restoring fish habitat, overhauling hatcheries, limiting harvest, and improving river flow. What the plan did not do, however, was call for immediate breaching of four dams on the Snake River, the Columbia's major tributary--an option that has been the subject of a nationwide environmental crusade. The NMFS will hold that option in abeyance while it sees whether the less drastic measures will do the trick. Responses from both sides were immediate and outraged.     

Public health. Grand Challenges in Global Health

This week an international panel announces a list of 14 Grand Challenges in Global Health, and scientists throughout the world will be invited to submit grant proposals to pursue them with funds provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We describe the characteristics of these challenges and the process by which they were formulated and selected after receiving over 1000 responses to a "call for ideas" from the scientific community.     

Paleontology. New feathered dino firms up bird links

Last week, Chinese scientists presented evidence from a new specimen dug up in Liaoning Province that they say strengthens the case for the bird-dinosaur link. The finding, one of several fossils displayed at a meeting here, is the third known specimen of a strange creature known as Caudipteryx which, unlike any other known dinosaur fossil, shows the unmistakable imprints of feathers. The researcher who described the new specimen at the meeting has identified 16 characteristics of the new fossil that are more similar to dinosaurs than to early birds, reinforcing the views of most Western scientists.     

ESSAYS ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY: The Nature of Evidence

In his essay, U. S. science writer Boyce Rensberger analyzes whether there is any truth behind the assertions that U. S. citizens are particularly ignorant about science and that the press is to blame for the high interest in pseudoscience. He concludes that many Americans are very interested in science, but cannot distinguish between good and bad science because they do not understand the standards that scientific evidence must meet. Rensberger urges scientists and science writers to pay more attention to the communication of the methods by which results have been achieved. See also the related essay by Roger Highfield.     

German science. Max Planck charts new path

Germany's premier basic research organization, the Max Planck Society, released a long-awaited blueprint for change during its annual meeting this week, recommending that the society's nearly 3000 scientists embrace more interdisciplinary and international projects in a range of new research priorities. The report, called Max Planck 2000-Plus, is the product of an 18-month-long internal review. Its recommendations were formulated by some two dozen Max Planck researchers and administrators, who sought input from every institute.     

Marine environment. Clinton creates huge Hawaiian coral haven

President Bill Clinton last week signed an executive order creating the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve. Marine scientists say that the megareserve, which holds nearly 70% of the nation's reefs, will help protect some of the globe's most pristine ocean habitats.     

University Isotope Separator at Oak Ridge: The UNISOR Consortium

The UNISOR cooperative project, envisioned more than 3 years ago, is now successfully working. Research problems that involve a full range of experiments on nuclei far from beta stability are being investigated jointly by groups of scientists from several institutions. Some of the first work reported (16) included the identification, half-lives, and decay schemes of three new isotopes, (186)T1, (188)T1, and (116)I; the first or new decay schemes of (189)T1, (190)T1, (117)Xe, and (117)I; and the results of the perturbed gamma-gamma directional correlation work in (126)Xe. UNISOR is already stimulating international interest. A report (1) on the new research being planned with an isotope separator on-line to ORIC was presented at a Soviet Academy of Sciences meeting on nuclear structure in 1971. At an international nuclear physics conference in Munich in August 1973, Academician G. N. Flerov, director of the heavy-ion laboratory in Dubna, said the UNISOR project had inspired his laboratory to secure funds for a new, much improved isotope separator which is now installed on-line to their heavy-ion cyclotron to be used for detailed studies of nuclei far from stability. The UNISOR model for research has inspired a second such project, the Atomic Physics Consortium at Oak Ridge (APCOR). After an exploratory conference at Oak Ridge, scientists from ten institutions met in November 1973 to form an organizing committee for APCOR. As with UNISOR, the universities and the AEC will each provide a significant portion of the capital and operating costs. Heavy ions have opened up much new research in atomic physics, but such accelerator-based research represents a real "shift from traditional approaches concerning how, where, and on what time scale atomic physics experiments should be done" (17).     

NASA life sciences. An improvement in vital signs

Last week a hefty Russian module with living and working quarters for astronauts docked with the pieces of the international space station already in orbit, a critical step in creating a full-time orbiting laboratory. Meanwhile, NASA bureaucrats put the finishing touches on a realignment of the agency's struggling biology effort that should bolster fundamental research and allow scientists to make better use of the facility, scheduled to be completed in 2005. The two events raise the hopes of U.S. academic space life scientists that their discipline is at last on the ascent at NASA.     

U.K. funding. New program supports facilities, stipends

British scientists are celebrating a $1.7 billion windfall, announced last week by the U.K. government, to shore up deteriorating facilities and raise stipends for Ph.D. students. The 2-year spending boost is intended to keep the pool of British science well stocked, both by attracting more talented students into the field and stemming the flow of scientists out of the country. But the benefits are not spread evenly across the research spectrum.     

Chemistry with a thousand faces: new ways to play with clay

Like a species that has moved into open niches, evolved, and diversified, chemistry can no longer be seen as a discrete scientific field. Its methods, concepts, and practitioners are penetrating virtually every nook and cranny of science and technology. That message came through clearly 2 weeks ago in New York City at the Fourth Chemical Congress of North America-a week-long conference organized by the American Chemical Society, the Chemical Institute of Canada, and the Chemical Society of Mexico and attended by some 10,000 scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. In roughly 4200 papers, participants explored such topics as borrowing from nature to improve industrial processes and electronic devices, and controlling the molecular architecture of clays and polymers.     

MILITARY RESEARCH: Researchers Target Flaws in Ballistic Missile Defense Plan

More than three dozen scientists journeyed to Washington, D.C., this week to warn lawmakers that a proposed $60 billion U.S. missile defense system, designed to knock incoming warheads out of the sky, is technically flawed because it can't pick out real warheads from decoys. Pentagon officials heatedly deny a new report by one scientist that contractors have rigged trials to hide the problem, although they admit that some tests were simplified to save time. In the wake of these events, a leading Democrat is urging President Bill Clinton to delay a pending decision on building the system.     

浅谈农业科研单位的会务工作

农业科研单位的会务工作是农业科研事业的重要组成部分,对农业科研事业的发展有着非常重要的作用,近年来我国农业科研单位的会务工作也日益受到人们的重视。该文结合实际工作的具体情况,分析了农业科研单位会务工作的重要性和背景,系统阐述了农业科研会务工作的管理要点,提出了新时期会务工作的创新思路,对于今后农业科研单位的会务管理具有一定的参考意义。     

IMMIGRATION POLICY: Growth in Visas Boosts NSF Education Programs

Last week Congress rushed through an immigration bill that gives a big boost to education programs at the National Science Foundation (NSF). The measure, which almost doubles the number of skilled foreign workers eligible for high-tech U.S. jobs under so-called temporary H1-B visas, marks a hard-fought victory for high-tech companies scrambling for talent. In addition, it provides more than $100 million to help NSF tackle what policy-makers say is the real problem: the need for more homegrown scientists and engineers.     

French science. New CNRS chief hopes to deliver on science

For years, French research ministers have prodded the nation's scientists to make their research pay off for society. But that message has been slow to sink in. Last week, the government gave the assignment to a biologist who has done exactly that, but who believes that the carrot works better than the stick.