Friday, 5 Nov 1993 Washington, DC

1. JOHNSTON DELIVERS CLEAR MESSAGE: "BIG SCIENCE" MUST BE GLOBAL.
At her confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Martha Krebs, picked four months ago to replace Will Happer as head of the DOE Office of Energy Research, listened stoically as Senator Bennett Johnston (D-LA) did most of the talking. Still smarting from the clobbering the SSC took from the House, he warned scientists that mega-projects are going to have to be international, and singled out magnetic fusion as a case in point. Johnston wants action on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) before going ahead with Princeton's Tokamak Physics Experiment (TPX). If ITER is an example, international cooperation won't come easily. It took 18 months longer than expected to get agreement between the US, Japan, Russia and the European Community--and they only agreed then by putting off the tough stuff like picking the site. When they couldn't agree on where to put a design center either, the Solomonic solution was to build three centers. The one in San Diego must be headed by a Russian, the one in Garching by an American, and the one in Naka by a European. You get the idea.

2. ALPHA MAY NOT BE SCIENCE, BUT IT'S BIG AND IT'S INTERNATIONAL.
The US and Russia agreed on a plan to graft Alpha, a scaled-down version of Space Station Freedom, onto Mir-2, a scaled-up version of Space Station Mir. The hybrid is being called "Ralpha." It will be assembled in the same orbit as the present Mir. The plan will be discussed with the other international partners next week in Montreal. They are nervous about Russian participation, but not nearly as nervous as the aerospace industry, which does not seem at all thrilled by the prospect of the US saving $4B.

3. JOHN PEOPLES WILL TAKE OVER AS DIRECTOR OF THE SSC LABORATORY,
replacing Roy Schwitters, who bailed out last week (WN 10-29-93). Peoples will continue to serve as director of Fermilab. "What we need now are some lawyers, not physicists," according to Shelton Smith, the new head of the Texas National Research Laboratory Commission. The TNRLC is responsible for protecting the state's investment in the SSC, which Texas figures at more than $400M.

4. "THE GREAT POWER-LINE COVER-UP": BRODEUR DISCOVERS CLUSTERS!
Well folks, Paul Brodeur has done it again. "Calamity on Meadow Street" and "The Cancer at Slater School" have moved from the New Yorker to hard cover. But now, Brodeur has the mechanism figured out--power-line fields stimulate production of a growth hormone that promotes development of brain cancers and stuff. And there are new cases. Between 1990 and 1992, two students at a private elementary school on East 76th Street in Manhattan, which is next to a Consolidated Edison substation, developed leukemia! Magnetic fields in the school measured 10 milligauss! Actually, you have to stand in the middle of a field to get much less than that. But that just shows how ubiquitous the problem is. A new pocket-size EMF monitor at just $99 will help you to avoid such hazards.



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.