Friday, 17 January 1992 Washington, DC
1. FORMATION OF JOINT U.S./JAPAN SSC WORKING GROUP EXPECTED
SOON.
The President's FY 93 budget request will call for $650M for the
SSC, up from $484M in the current year. The first question that
Congress will ask is, "What is the foreign commitment?" There is
not much to point to. The Working Group, agreed to during Bush's
visit, is not scheduled to complete its work until next January,
too late to influence congressional consideration of the FY 93
request. Japan's new fiscal year begins on April 1, and no SSC
funds are included. Before the Working Group can get around to
discussing yen, it must first "consider how SSC can be formulated
as an international project." In order to show some progress, SSC
is reportedly buying parts from foreign suppliers below domestic
market price and claiming the savings as foreign contributions.
2. HOW MUCH WILL DEFENSE BE CUT? AND WHERE WILL THE MONEY
GO?
The prospects for the SSC might be helped by cuts in defense; the
President is calling for $50B over five years; Senate majority
leader George Mitchell says $100B. Whatever the amount, it will
just go to deficit reduction, unless the provision of the Budget
Enforcement Act forbidding transfers between defense and domestic
programs is modified. The White House has moved up the date of
President Bush's budget submission to Congress from the statutory
3 February deadline to 29 January, the day after his State of the
Union Address. The budget has already gone to the printers.
3. CANCER RATES ARE UNAFFECTED BY CONSUMPTION OF ELECTRIC
POWER!
A group called Trial Lawyers for Public Justice filed suit last
week against two power companies on behalf of a 19-year-old brain
cancer victim. The suit alleges her cancer resulted from exposure
to 60 Hz electromagnetic "radiation" from power lines. (So what
do lawyers know about the near-field? In a Washington Post story
last June, an "environmental lawyer" warned of the dangers of "60
Hz radioactivity.") A new study by physicist J.D. Jackson, how-
ever, compares cancer mortality and incidence to the per capita
consumption of electric power. Per capita power generation in
the US has risen roughly exponentially since 1900, with per
capita residential consumption up by a factor of 20 since 1940.
When respiratory cancers (due largely to smoking) are subtracted,
cancer mortality has actually declined in that period.
4. ASTRONOMERS URGE AID FOR TOP SCIENTISTS OF FORMER SOVIET
UNION
to collaborate with American colleagues. The plight of leading
scientists in what was the Soviet Union was recognized by the
Council of the American Astronomical Society at their meeting in
Atlanta Monday. The resolution adopted by the Council emphasizes
the opportunity to enrich American science at a modest cost. The
monthly salary of most Russian scientists amounts to only
$10-20.In an insiders-only meeting at the White House recently,
Yuri
Ossipian, the former science advisor to Gorbachev, warned of the
imminent collapse of science under the Yeltsin government.
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