Friday, 4 Dec 92 Washington, DC
1. POLITICS MUDDIES THE WATER SURROUNDING A NEW NEUTRON
SOURCE.
Beginning with the 1984 Seitz-Eastman Report, one
advisory panel after another has complained that the US lags far
behind Europe in neutron sources. In the meantime, the cost of a
full-service Advanced Neutron Source has zoomed to (gulp!) $2.8B.
That led Will Happer, DOE's research director, to ask if it
wouldn't make sense for the ANS reactor to stick to low energy,
with a separate spallation source for energetic neutrons. A DOE
advisory panel thought so--until Senator Domenici (R-NM) issued a
press release calling for conversion of LAMPF at Los Alamos to a
pulsed spalla-tion source (PSS), replacing ANS! (Domenici also
claims credit for securing defense funds to keep LAMPF alive in
'93--something his office denied in July (WN 7 Aug 92)). Domenici's news release
prompted a sharp memo from Walter Kohn, chair of the DOE Neutron
Source Panel, stressing that a PSS is NOT an alternative to ANS.
2. RESEARCHERS QUESTION VALUE OF GROWING CRYSTALS IN
MICROGRAVITY
Ten years of work at stupendous cost has
produced "no significant breakthrough in protein crystal growth,"
according to a comment in Nature by a team of Americans that grew
protein crystals on Mir. Their results are about the same as
those on the Shuttle: microgravity has no effect on most
proteins; if it does, crystals are as likely to be worse as
better. No protein has been reported to crystalize in
microgravity that does not crystalize on Earth.
3. SALLY RIDE IS PICKED TO HEAD SCIENCE/SPACE TRANSITION
GROUP.
The former astronaut, a physicist, is currently
director of the California Space Institute at UCSD. In the next
few weeks, Ride's "cluster group" is expected to review NASA,
NSF, and the FCC.
4. HIGH-TECH HARD SELL: THE NATIONAL TECHNOLOGY
INITIATIVE
wound up 15 "town meetings" with a conference in
Baltimore this week. The goal was industry/government
partnerships; the approach was high pressure. DOE head James
Watkins led off--"We're trying to get YOU to come in and take a
look." Then came flacks represent-ing the labs: "Need intricate
machining? A circuit designed? Make your business all it can
be; contact the Army labs," one exhorted. "You name the problem,
DOE will be of service," another promised. You can even shop by
phone! Dial 1-800-678-NTTC and a friendly operator can put you
in touch with 700 Federal labs.
5. BEAM US UP, SCOTTY. WE HAVE THE DILITHIUM FOR THE WARP
DRIVE.
Iowa State University officials today stressed the
"speculative character" of a prediction by two ISU physicists of
a metastable resonance state of an electron and a positron, which
they call "photonium." Their work, published two years ago and
quite open-ly discussed, seeks to explain an odd positron peak in
heavy-ion collisions. The university acted after the Des Moines
Register carried a story yesterday with the headline "ISU seeks
to patent element photonium, which someday might fuel space
travel."
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