WHAT'S NEW, Friday, 21 April 1989 Washington, DC
1.
ALLAN BROMLEY IS THE NEW SCIENCE ADVISOR,
and not a moment too
soon! The appointment, which has been elevated to Assistant to
the President for Science and Technology, apparently does not
require Senate confirmation. A distinguished nuclear physicist
at Yale, Bromley served on the White House Science Council
throughout the Reagan Administration and advised Bush during the
campaign. In the 1986 Packard-Bromley Report, Bromley wrote
that, "Our universities today simply cannot respond to society's
expectations for them or discharge their responsibilities in
research and education without substantially increased support."
2
. THE COLD FUSION PLAYOFFS ARE SCHEDULED FOR 1 MAY IN BALTIMORE
at the Spring Meeting of the APS. The special Monday evening
session will be at 7:30PM in the Baltimore Convention Center.
Invited speakers include both M. Fleishmann and S.E. Jones, as
well as J. Rafelski and S. Koonin. Abstracts of brief contributed
papers will be accepted at the APS office in New York until noon
on Friday, 28 April and at the Registration Desk in Baltimore on
Monday, 1 May, until noon. For those not registered for the
regular meeting, special registration for this session only will
be available for $20, beginning at 5:00PM. Meanwhile, the lead
keeps changing hands. Just as Georgia Tech and Texas A&M were
retracting their confirmations
(WN 14 Apr 89), a researcher at
Stanford claimed more heat from heavy water than from ordinary.
3. MIT WITHHELD A THEORETICAL PAPER ON RADIATIONLESS DD FUSION
in
a lattice by Peter Hegelstein, first citing patent filing and
then the author's desire to have the paper peer reviewed. But
even as scientists were being denied a peek, science journalists
reported receiving unsolicited copies. It is actually 4 papers
submitted to Physical Review Letters. The papers invoke coherent
effects to account for production of He-4, with the excess 23.8
MeV going into the lattice rather than a gamma. Background
radiation is invoked to explain initiation of fusion chains.
4. SEN. JAKE GARN HAS CHARTERED AN AIRLINER TO SALT LAKE CITY
to
give government officials a first-hand briefing on cold fusion.
They will fly out Friday, 28 April, for a demonstration Saturday
morning. They will also meet with university officials and the
Governor. This is not the first trip into outer space for Sen.
Garn (R-UT), who was a passenger on the Space Shuttle in 1985.
5. ED KNAPP RESIGNED AS HEAD OF UNIVERSITY RESEARCH ASSOCIATES
this week to return to Los Alamos--right in the middle of the SSC
budget process. URA operates the SSC and Fermilab. John Peoples
will become Director of Fermilab, replacing Leon Lederman who has
retired to become a Professor at the University of Chicago.
6. ANDREI SAKHAROV HAS BEEN ELECTED TO THE NEW SOVIET PARLIAMENT.
He was nominated by the Soviet Academy to represent scientists.
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