Friday, 10 April 1992 Washington, DC

1. THE APS PLANS TO ASSIST PHYSICISTS IN THE FORMER SOVIET UNION!
Ernest Henley, APS President, issued an appeal for donations to a special fund for FSU physicists. The action was recommended by a task force convened at Henley's request. The task force will draw on the fund to help provide physics journals to FSU institutions and to establish a program of small research grants. The APS task force also is considering shipment of donated equipment to FSU physicists. It was physicists who led the democratic movement in the Soviet Union during the darkest years of the Cold War. They earned the admiration of the world. Now they need our help.

2. SCIENTIST SHORTAGE? NSF CREDIBILITY IS DAMAGED BY BLOCH HEADS.
When former NSF Director Erich Bloch argued for doubling the NSF budget, he waved an internal study projecting a 625,000 shortfall of scientists in the next two decades. The author, who headed the Division of Research and Analysis, told a House Investigations Subcommittee on Wednesday that the study was not a forecast, but a "depiction of a hypothetical situation." Current NSF Director Walter Massey told the subcommittee that he was instituting new internal procedures to prevent any recurrence of such episodes.

3. CLAIMS THAT SSC IS "ON TIME AND UNDER BUDGET" WERE CHALLENGED
by House critics Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) and Howard Wolpe (D-MI) in hearings yesterday. But a scripted dialogue between Boehlert and Victor Rezendes of the General Accounting Office, intended to expose overruns and delays, was blunted by the questioning by Joe Barton (R-TX), whose district includes Waxahachie; overruns were shown to be under 5% (that would be a small miracle in DOD), and the project is potentially ahead of schedule. The most serious charge was that the SSC had attempted to conceal a $50M overrun. Boehlert agreed that, "The project is good science," but said "we must go with projects giving the biggest return for America."

4. AN ENGAGING DEBATE: IF A PATRIOT AND A SCUD "PASS IN THE SKY,"
is that an intercept? That's how General Drolet of the Missile Command defined "intercept" in a congressional hearing Wednesday. In some engagements the Army reported more Scuds destroyed than Patriots fired, according to the GAO. But when the Congressional Research Service applied the Army's own methodology, it turned up only one hit. Rep. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) wondered why the hearing was being held: "We all saw the Patriot work on CNN." But Physicist Peter Zimmerman challenged Ted Postal's use of conventional video to draw conclusions about high speed events (WN 3 Apr 92). An Israeli Air Force expert said his study found no evidence that a Patriot ever took out an al Hussien warhead: "by that definition, the Patriot was a failure--and in a populated area there can be no other definition of success." And yet, Israel is accused of selling Patriot technology to China. Now that's a sale!



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.