Re: NSF Funding

From
Date
Reply-To

Things are pretty bad in Washington.  Funded federal grants that
were scheduled to start in December or January have not (!), so
universities have had to come up with stop-gap funds.  This even
includes undergraduate grants!  Government furloughs have meant
that government researchers (at museums and agencies, etc.) have
not been allowed to go to their offices for several weeks in the
past 2 months.  And the shutdown affects far more than research.
The waste and delay caused by this political maneuvering is just
colossal.

Meanwhile, the New York Times newspaper has been running articles
about how the Japanese are trying to fix their economic problems
by spending *more* money on basic research.

The following newsletter is distributed by whatsnew@aps.org, a
mailing list to which you can subscribe by sending e-mail to
whatsnew-request@aps.org.  APS is the American Physical Society.
The newsletter is an excellent source of "heads up" information.

	Una Smith

	una.smith@yale.edu

-----------------------------------------------------------------

WHAT'S NEW by Robert L. Park   Friday, 26 Jan 96   Washington, DC

1. NSF: THE "STONY SILENCE" IS BROKEN -- AT LEAST BY SCIENTISTS.
Responding to last week's alert (WN 19 Jan 96), physicists buried
Capitol Hill in a blizzard of calls/e-mail/etc. -- more than 2000
contacts in 4 days.  And it wasn't just the physicists calling;
other societies that issued alerts, such as the American Society
for Cell Biology, report a massive response from their members. 
Surprised Appropriations Committee staff said that no one from
NSF or OSTP had made them aware of the severity of the problem. 

2. TRAIN WRECK V: DISASTER AVERTED -- NEXT COLLISION IS MARCH 15.
The House passed another temporary spending bill last night, but
this one could be described as a compromise -- a word not much in
use in Washington recently. Most agencies, including NSF and NASA
would be funded at the full FY 95 level; programs targeted for
extinction, such as the Advanced Technology Program, are at 75%. 

3. STATE-OF-THE-UNION: SCIENCE FARES WORSE THAN SCHOOL UNIFORMS. 
For the second year in a row, President Clinton delivered a long
(61 minutes) list of concerns to Congress without once mentioning
science.  And for the second year in a row, Robert Walker (R-PA)
issued a statement chastising the President for his omission (WN
3 Feb 95).  But last year, Walker was merely "disappointed"--this
year, he found it "inconceivable."  Walker criticized Mr. Clinton
for continuing "to oppose appropriations bills containing funds
for basic research," which is true, but incidental.  Science is
not under attack, it has simply been left out of the debate. 

4. DOWSED: THE FBI CLOSES DOWN QUADRO AND ARRESTS ITS OFFICERS. 
WN reported on Quadro's high-tech dowsing rods two weeks ago (WN
12 Jan 96).  Saturday, the FBI moved in and charged the company's
officers with fraud in the sale of more than a thousand of its
"Trackers," mostly to law enforcement agencies and schools.  Ace
quack buster James Randi described what the FBI found at Quadro's
"secret research facility" in Harleyville, SC: To "tune" Trackers
to substances such as cocaine, a Polaroid photo of cocaine powder
was repeatedly enlarged with an office copier until the molecular
structure could be seen.  A tiny piece of the final picture was
inserted into the device.  A lawyer for the Quadro Corporation
said "It's clear that the FBI doesn't understand how it works."

5. IBM SCIENCE: BEAM ME UP SCOTTY, IT'S GETTING CRAZY DOWN HERE. 
"Stand by. I'll teleport you some goulash...An IBM scientist and
his colleagues have discovered a way to make objects disintegrate
in one place and reappear intact in another," according to an ad
in February's Scientific American.  Tipped off by a WN reader, I
sent an e-mail to "askIBM" requesting more information.  "Hello
Bob," came back, "This is still under development and no further
information is currently available.  Thank You for using askIBM.
Roseann."  Are they having trouble with the di-lithium crystals?

THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY  (Note: Opinions are the author's
and are not necessarily shared by the APS, but they should be.)