WHAT'S NEW, Friday, 3 November 1989 Washington, DC
1.
THE NATIONAL SCIENCE BOARD HAS BEEN ASKED BY APS TO EXAMINE
the circumstances surrounding NSF involvement in a closed meeting
on cold fusion (WN 20 Oct 89). In a letter to NSB chair Mary
Good, APS president James Krumhansl requested that the Board's
findings be made available before the 12 Nov 89 meeting of the
APS Council. The APS has consistently affirmed its support for
the unfettered communication of scientific information. Pons and
Fleischmann, however, have refused to make public the helium
content of their used cathodes, including results from several
laboratories of a recent round-robin assay, which proponents of
cold fusion describe as "inconclusive." Translation: no helium
was found above background. You might think that would settle
things at last. Not quite. Pons had wiped the palladium rod with
a cloth before it was cut into pieces. At the NSF/EPRI meeting
there was speculation that cold fusion may occur only in surface
dendrites--which might have been removed by the wiping. While
the world is waiting breathlessly to learn all this, estimates of
the total expenditure on cold fusion research start at $50M.
2
. THE DOE COLD FUSION PANEL'S FINAL REPORT WILL BE MORE NEGATIVE
than the interim report it issued in July (WN 14 Jul 89). The
interim report held out the hope that interesting physics might
be found in the very low levels of fusion products reported by
Steven Jones, but in a joint report to the panel this week, Jones
and Moshe Gai of Yale agreed that no indications of fusion were
found in a collaborative experiment conducted in August. The DOE
panel met this week in open session to discuss its final report,
which is due on 15 Nov 89. The panel was clearly annoyed that
the organizers of the closed NSF/EPRI meeting plan to issue their
own report at about the same time, an obvious end run. One of
the co-chairs of the NSF/EPRI meeting, Paul Chu was in Washington
to testify on superconductivity. He declined to meet with the
Cold Fusion Panel, however, citing conflict of interest.
3. "THE NATIONAL SUPERCONDUCTIVITY ACTION PLAN" WAS NOT READY
in time for hearings on Tuesday. OSTP is required to submit the plan
by a law passed last year. The House hearings went on anyway, but
without the star, Allan Bromley. Witness after witness testified
that Japan is moving more aggressively than the US to exploit
high Tc technology. Bromley, whose office is still understaffed,
has nominated the final two associate directors: Eugene Wong, the
Chairman of Electrical Engineering at UC Berkeley, for Physical
Sciences, and William Phillips, President of Missouri Advanced
Technologies Institute, to cover Technology. The next priority
is to recruit the President's Council on Science and Technology.
4. DAVID A. SANCHEZ WILL BE THE NEW ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF NSF
for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, replacing Richard Nicholson,
who became Executive Officer of AAAS. Sanchez, a mathematician,
is currently Vice President and Provost at Lehigh University.
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