WHAT'S NEW, Friday, 7 April 1989 Washington, DC

1. THIS MAY BE THE YEAR WE LEARN TO SPELL SEQUESTRATION.
Some members of Congress are thinking about abandoning the effort to develop a FY 90 budget and simply allow sequestration to occur. With little more than a rough outline of a budget from the White House, Congress feels it has been left to them to do all the dirty work required to comply with the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Act. GRH provides for a completely mechanical reduction in the budget to meet the established guidelines in case Congress fails to reach an agreement. The expectation was that Congress would find this prospect too awful to contemplate and thus seek agreement. But the mindlessness of sequestration can be appealing--no one's fingerprints show up on the axe. An informal Office of Management and Budget estimate predicts a 9.7% across-the-board cut of non-exempt, non-defense discretionary spending. That, for example, would cost the NSF nearly $200M.

2 . COLD FUSION PAPERS WERE SCHEDULED FOR THE SPRING APS MEETING
in Baltimore, May 1-4, weeks before the University of Utah began contacting financial publications. These include an invited paper on Wednesday morning by Steve Jones of Brigham Young University, titled "Cold Nuclear Fusion: Recent Results and Open Questions." The paper is part of a symposium organized by the Topical Group on Few-Body Systems and Multi-Particle Dynamics. This may lead to speculation of pre-cognition by the organizers. A special Monday evening session for presentation of new results on cold fusion is also being arranged. It could be the denouement. A quick survey of laboratories late today turned up no support for either the Utah or Brigham Young claims. A report in the press that Brookhaven scientists had evidence of fusion was incorrect.

3. THE FIRST COLD FUSION SHOOT OUT WILL TAKE PLACE AT HIGH NOON
in Dallas next week at the American Chemical Society Meeting. Stanley Pons will be there in person at a special session on Wednesday, but a news conference planned for Wednesday has been cancelled. Two well-known electrochemists will speak in the session along with Harold Furth, who heads the hot fusion effort at Princeton. Meanwhile, copies of the paper submitted to the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry by Pons and Fleischmann have been spewing out of FAX machines all over the country.

4. A BARBED WIRE CURTAIN HAS DESENDED OVER TEXAS.
Super collider supporters in the Lone Star State are kicking up a ruckus over foreign participation. Last week it was Rep. Bryant of Dallas. "If this is worth $5 billion to us, then the innovative technology that would flow from it should be used to benefit Americans and not be given away to other countries," he said. Today, Texas Governor Clements is meeting in Washington with National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and Defense Secretary Cheney to request an investigation of the national security implications of foreign participation in the super collider!



Bob Park can be reached via email at whatsnew@bobpark.org
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the University, but they should be.