Friday, 9 December 1988
1.
NSF ANNOUNCED 11 SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY CENTERS ON MONDAY
at a
total funding level of $24.7M, which amounts to about 70% of what
was called for in the 11 proposals. The remaining $0.3M will
fund 10 planning grants, which will be announced in about 2
weeks. It would be difficult to find fault with the selection,
but in paring down such a large list it is inevitable that many
equally deserving proposals went unfunded--which merely comments
on the underfunding of science. Recognizing that some Centers
involve several collaborating institutions, the winners are:
- California (Berkeley) Particle Astrophysics $1.825M
- California (Santa Barbara) Quantum Electronics Structures 2.1
- Cal Tech Integrated Protein & Nucleic Acid Biotechnology 3.05
- Illinois High Temperature Superconductivity 4.25
- Michigan State Microbial Ecology 1.1
- Northwestern Advanced Cement-Based Materials 1.75
- Oklahoma Analysis and Prediction of Storms
0.9
- Rice Research on Parallel Computation 4.1
- Rochester Photoinduced Charge Transfer
1.65
- Rutgers Discrete Mathematics and Computer Science
1.825
- Virginia Polytechnic Polymeric Adhesives and Composites 2.124
2. THE "RHODES REPORT" ON OPENNESS OF SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION
was approved by the National Science Board last Friday. The
report, prepared by a committee chaired by Frank Rhodes, strikes
the first public note of warning by a high-level panel of the
dangers inherent in some of the hastily-devised remedies to our
failures in global competitiveness. The panel asserts that the
"...clash between openness and national security has abated for
the time being," but goes on to warn that, "United States trade
policies that restrict the international flow of basic scientific
information...fail to recognize the international character of
scientific information or the growing research capabilities of
other nations." Moreover, "the federal government's attempts to
develop and disseminate new technologies for private sector use
have generally been less successful than the efforts carried out
by the private sector itself." The federal government, it
concludes, "is not the most appropriate agent for developing
commercial products and processes." The panel believes that
federally sponsored research should emphasize generic scientific
and technical information. The report also urges professional
societies to develop codes of ethics for each discipline.
3. PERSONAL COLLECTIONS OF PHYSICS JOURNALS ARE AN ANACHRONISM,
less as a consequence of increasing cost than as a result of
finite shelf space. You can delay the inevitable by donating old
journals to less well-to-do countries. The International Physics
Group of the APS will help. Write to M. Grimsditch, Materials
Science Div., Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Il. 60439,
listing the years and volumes of the journals you wish to donate.
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