Issues in Science and Technology articles from March 1994

Issues in Science and Technology archives from March 1994

Scientists as science educators.
March 22, 1994... Scientists are always eager to let the public know how our research and college teaching can serve the nation's interests. But I believe that we also have a major role to play in precollege science education, starting in kindergarten. Accepting...

Why AIDS prevention programs don't work.
March 22, 1994... Although government's response to the AIDS epidemic may have been tentative at first, its funding of AIDS programs has mush-roomed since the mid-1980s. In 1992, the federal and state governments spent $4.9 billion on medical research, HIV...

Where have all the fishes gone? (overfishing)
March 22, 1994... Beginning in the late 1960s, fishing vessels from Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, East Asia, and other distant nations began arriving in force near the coast of North America. Equipped with the finest electronic fish-finding gear and able to...

Retargeting the weapons laboratories.
March 22, 1994... Some essential defense work still must be done, but the labs are also finding ways to serve broader national interests. For 50 years the Manhattan Project and the Cold War pushed the three Department of Energy (DOE) defense laboratories--Los...

What we don't know about health care reform.
March 22, 1994... Better data is needed to provide a clearer picture of what will result from major changes in health care policy. The numbers are flying as the United States enters the critical stage of the debate on the direction of health care reform. Players...

A prescription for better prescriptions. (prescription drugs and increased health care costs)(includes related article)
March 22, 1994... Physicians cannot remain dependent on the drug companies as the primary source of information about pharmaceuticals. Among the factors regularly blamed for skyrocketing health care costs are the price of prescription drugs and the large profits...

Safeguarding the ingredients for making nuclear weapons.
March 22, 1994... With thousands of bombs being disassembled, the U.S. and Russia must tighten controls to prevent theft of fissionable materials. In the current state of the world, nuclear weapons are destined to play a decreasing role. The nuclear arms...

Restoring contaminated industrial sites.
March 22, 1994... By clarifying federal policies and expanding local control, we can stimulate economic development as well as protect the environment. Thousands of factories, mills, and machine shops that once housed thriving enterprises lie abandoned, the...

Breaking the Vicious Circle.
March 22, 1994... Asbestos, dioxin, anthropogenic chlorine, bovine growth hormone, high voltage wires, cellular telephones--are these the symbols of a technological culture run amok or are they among the many civilizing and economically sustaining products of...

Addiction: From Biology to Drug Policy.
March 22, 1994... Less than a month after Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders made headlines by suggesting that the government "actively examine" the legalization of illegal drugs, the Clinton administration announced a new anti-drug policy that emphatically rejected...

The Children's Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer.
March 22, 1994... Seymour Papert presents a sprightly and highly readable vision of education in The Children's Machine. His aim is to provoke readers by confronting them with opportunities to change their minds about school as we know it, and about computers as...

The Endangered American Dream: How to Stop the United States from Becoming a Third World Country and How to Win the Geo-Economic Struggle for Industrial Supremacy.
March 22, 1994... Facing Up and The Endangered American Dream have been received by fans and critics alike as straightforward public-affairs books. Actually, for all of their statistics and projections and hundreds of pages of policy analysis, they are better seen...

Atomic Harvest: Hanford and the Lethal Toll of America's Nuclear Arsenal.
March 22, 1994... Last November, the Albuquerque Tribune reported that in the early years of the nuclear age scientists had injected 18 people with plutonium without their knowledge to study how the substance travels through the human body. The Tribune stories...

Working With Congress: A Practical Guide for Scientists and Engineers.
March 22, 1994... This intelligent and readable guide on how to work with the U.S. Congress does much to demystify "the people's branch" of government. William G. Wells, Jr., offers a sound understanding of the constitutional roots, historical experience, and...

The devil you know. (science investments)
March 22, 1994... Many U.S. scientists have their backs up about what Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) is saying about "strategic research." As she said in a speech at the National Academy of Sciences earlier this year, "We must focus our science investments more...