Friday, 2 November 1990 Washington, DC

1. WALTER E. MASSEY HAS RESIGNED AS VICE PRESIDENT OF THE APS,
citing his nomination to be the director of the National Science Foundation. Ernest M. Henley, who was just elected to follow Massey, will therefore move directly to President-Elect. Henley is director of the Institute for Nuclear Theory at the University of Washington, where he has been chair of the Physics Department and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. A Berkeley PhD, he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and recipient in 1989 of the APS Tom W. Bonner Prize in Nuclear Physics. A special election will be held to select a new Vice President.

2. MASSEY'S FIRST YEAR ON THE JOB WILL NOT BE AN EASY ONE; NSF's
FY 91 appropriation suffered a devastating last-minute cut! As What's New reported (19 Oct 90), a House/Senate Conference agreed to an 8.9% increase for NSF research. Conference agreements are usually final--not this time. The budget summit gave OMB final say on scorekeeping. To salvage as much of the defense budget as possible, OMB refused to let logistical support for the Antarctic Program be charged to the DOD. One consequence was to eliminate any real growth in NSF research, which now goes up by only 6.2%.

3. AND THINGS ARE GOING TO GET WORSE BEFORE THEY GET BETTER.
The five-year budget agreement limits domestic discretionary spending in FY 91 to $182.7B and $191.3B in FY 92, a growth rate of just 4.7%--and it drops to 3.7% the following year. The "zero sum game" is no longer a hypothesis. Yet, even as it claps a lid on discretionary spending, Congress continues on a wild earmarking binge that is funding some of the world's wackiest projects.

4. CONSIDER AN ALASKA SENATOR'S PROJECT TO HARNESS THE AURORA.
Sen. Ted Stevens proposes to capture the gigawatt or so of energy in the electrojet formed by the interaction of the solar wind with Earth's magnetic field. Is this really practical? Is it ever! The Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska is getting about $10M per year in pork-barrel research funds and now Stevens has tossed in a $25M supercomputer center. Actually, the Geophysical Institute director seems to think they are developing a new communications system in which the aurora borealis would serve as a gigantic antenna for low-frequency radio transmission. But why straighten the Senator out? Let the good times roll.

5. GORDON & BREACH CASE DISMISSED BY GERMAN APPEALS COURT. APS,
AIP and Henry Barschall were sued by G&B over a survey of cost effectiveness of physics journals. G&B, which came out on bottom, claimed the survey was biased. A lower court dismissed the case, but G&B appealed--and lost again. Martin Gordon, G&B Chairman, claimed moral victory, but must have had difficulty with German. Harry Lustig, APS Treasurer, who represented APS and AIP at the Frankfurt hearing, observed that "we wish them the same success in Switzerland and France," where G&B has filed similar suits.



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.