Articles in 1997

Researchers have good reasons to be nervous of proposals that all life science research grant applications to Brussels be scrutinized for their potential implications. But careful handling could produce benefits for all.

london

More than a hundred members of Britain's Parliament have criticized the government for failing to develop a policy for managing plutonium removed from dismantled nuclear weapons.

Exposure of preprints on servers does not preempt their submission to this journal.

canberra

Tension has been running high at the Australian National University in Canberra, where efforts to absorb a 14 per cent cut in government funding over four years have included a move to change the management of its renowned Institute of Advanced Studies.

london

Cheating remains widespread among students at US universities, according to the results of a survey of 4,000 students at 31 institutions.

washington

NASA hopes to begin scientific balloon flights of up to 100 days duration as a way of conducting near-space research at a fraction of current launch costs.

Clues to our past climate can be found in marine sediments. The ratios of different oxygen and carbon isotopes within the buried shells of marine creatures depend on water temperature, among other things. But it now seems that they also depend on the total concentration of carbonate in sea water. For many periods, these palaeoclimatic codes will now have to be deciphered again — lowering our estimate of temperatures during the last ice age, for example.

paris

The European Commission is to tighten a directive first issued in 1991 covering the deliberate release of genetically modified organisms into the environment.

moscow

The Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, has expressed concern that the continued exodus of scientists from Russia has become a threat to national security.

This week Daedalus wonders how to make an artificial solar eclipse, and concludes that it should be possible to do so by obscuring the Sun with a high-flying circular shutter. His ‘Eclipsat’ will orbit the Earth at a height of 1,000 km, producing a solar eclipse every 105 minutes along a track 5 km across and up to 8,000 km wide. It should also be able to generate an ‘anti-eclipse’, reflecting the Sun down onto a narrow track on the dark side of the Earth.

munich

The ‘internal market’ ministers of the member states of the European Union last week approved the latest draft of the European Commission's directive on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions, which allows the patenting of human genes as well as transgenic plants and animals.

Josef Albers aimed to neutralize all elements bar one in his paintings, leaving colour as the only variable. The concept has strong parallels with scientific experiments to test theories.

london

Latin American governments have clashed with environmentalist groups over the application of the United Nations biodiversity convention to forestry policy.

london

Britain's six research councils are to keep a close eye on the relative success of men and women applying for grants and fellowships.