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Who are the brightest young biologists in Europe? Everyone would like to know the answer, but there is no infallible method for spotting rising stars - as even Holly-wood can [...]

Nottingham, England--WHEN RICHARD Thomas, an expatriate American who heads the DNA laboratory at the Natural History Museum in London, planned a workshop on the recovery of DNA from archeological material [...]

BERLIN--NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH? Try this. Replace one 75 watt incandescent lightbulb in your home or office with a modern 15 watt compact fluorescent tube. You get [...]

The European Community's fusion program stresses continuity--and it's about to belly up to the window and lay down a bundle on the next generation of fusion reactors Nuclear fusion offers [...]

A remarkable new instrument devised at Oxford University can magnify a speciment and analyze its elemental composition at the same time IMAGINE AN INSTRUMENT WITH THE analytical power of a [...]

Molecular Biology Lies Down with the Lamb JOHN ANSELL HAS HIS OWN IDEA about why Edinburgh has become a world center for research on transgenic animals: the city's water. 'We [...]

The Fringe of the Ocean--Under Siege from Land WHAT WAS THE LARGEST peacetime maritime operation in the history of Norway? An attempt to save salmon from foul-smelling phytoplankton. Although U.S. [...]

Greenpeace and Science: Oil and Water? NICHOLAS RIDLEY, Britain's then Minister of the Environment, must have thought he was onto a winner when he was informed that nuclear energy did [...]

Last week, European epidemiologists launched in London a study billed as 'the world's largest-ever in-depth investigation into diet and cancer.' It will run for at least 5 years, involve seven [...]

IT'S A LITTLE LATE BY TODAY'S HIGH-SPEED standards for computer development, but Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2 will at least be complete in time for his 200th birthday later [...]

Geneva--IN THE TIME-HONORED TRADITION of vaccine developers, immunologist Andre Capron is about to become a human guinea pig. In the next few weeks, he plans to inject himself and a [...]

The Science and Engineering Research Council is the latest agency to be hobbled by a financial shortfall A wave of red ink is washing over British science funding--with dire results [...]

It will provide massive supplies of fertilizer - and to some it sounds like a repeat of mistakes made in the 1970s Rome - Food Production in Africa is in [...]

Some agencies in the U.K. are experimenting with an electronic system that helps make funding decisions Are you faced with a hundred innovative grant proposals, of which you can fund [...]

The chemical messengers underlying the complex morphogenetic movements of the embryo are beginning to come to light Heidelberg, West Germany - In one sense embryology hasn't advanced much in the [...]

Following an anti-beef shopping panic in Britain, Europe and the United States are taking steps to guard against a brain disease of sheep that has been afflicting British cattle. A [...]

Fang Lizhi: 'Thinking' His Way to Freedom 'IF WE LOSE THE PHYSICS, we feel unstable.' Professor Fang Lizhi, astrophysicist and China's most famous dissident, was reflecting on science and survival, [...]

BERLIN--FROM THE TOP OF THE TV TOWER in Each Berlin, 365 meters above the city, you can see the past, and it is dirty. A shroud of haze veils the [...]

Malaria Vaccines: The Failed Promise '1990--TROPICAL SCOURGE CONQUERED. The first human malaria vaccine reaches clinical use. Developed at New York University, the preventative is made from a gene-cloned protein from [...]

All over Europe this year, gourmets with a taste for the subtle flavors of fresh autumn mushrooms have been returning from their collecting trips with the same complaint: Where have [...]

London--In a move that will be closely watched by the pharmaceutical industry, British diabetics are preparing to sue suppliers of the genetically engineered 'human' insulin that keeps them alive. Ironically, [...]

London--THE HUNT FOR THE ULTIMATE genetic source of masculinity is over. Scientists in Britain confidently announced yesterday that they had ended the 30-year search for the gene that switches mammalian [...]

Despite an international outcry, Britain's Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) is to shut down its Nuclear Structure Facility (NSF) at Daresbury near Manchester at the end of 1992. About [...]

Brussels - European physicists, looking enviously across the Atlantic at the $638-million high-speed computing initiative proposed by the Bush Administration, are pushing for an even more ambitious European effort. Last [...]

Introduced alien species can wreak havoc: Kudzu vine smothered the American South, rice grass made Britain's salt marshes mushier, prickly pear blanketed parts of Australia. The invaders drive out native [...]

British scientists, who have been squeezed by tight budgets for the past several years, got more bad news last week. The Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC), the chief source [...]

A virus strain that formed the basis of one of the first diagnostic tests for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in blood--and the most widely used such test in Britain--may be [...]

Plant taxonomists from around the world are gathering at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, just outside London, this week to examine two entities. In doing so they face the [...]

Last August, Caltech astronomer Andrew Ingersoll sent an urgent letter to his fellow planetary scientists: The next planned mission to the outer solar system is in serious budgetary trouble. In [...]

Chronic Fatigue as Chameleon London--As scientists from the Wistar Institute were announcing that HTLV-II might be linked to chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), the Royal Society was holding a meeting to [...]

U.K. Science Responds to Terror Swansea, Wales--Over the past few years, while an escalating campaign of animal rights terrorism has engulfed British science, the scientific establishment here has largely remained [...]

Europe: Bovine Growth Hormone in a Political Maze Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is touting the safety of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rbGH), in Europe the hormone faces [...]

U.K. Vaccine Trial: Stalking Horse for the Future The trials of a new AIDS vaccine are set to begin in London next month. And the world will be watching--not just [...]

Two Bomb attacks on Scientists in the U.K. TWORESEARCHERS IN THE WEST of England narrowly escaped injury last week in linked bomb attacks. The Animal Liberation Front, a nebulous grouping [...]

A European Superlaser? Five European countries are quietly considering a proposal to build the world's most powerful research laser. Next month, senior officials from the central funding organizations of France, [...]

British Museum in Turmoil Britain's venerable Natural History Museum is in turmoil over a plan to scrap some of its research activities. Feelings are running so high that the museum's [...]

The Practical Chemistry of Boom and Bust SET ABOVE THE OLD SPA TOWN of Buxton, some 150 miles northwest of London in England's beautiful Peak District, sprawls an odd estate [...]

Will Protests Derail AIDS Meeting? A condemnation of U.S. immigration policies by one of the groups that sponsor the yearly international AIDS meetings by jeoparidize the future of those meetings--particularly [...]

Stretching the Point HIDDEN IN EVERY GORE-TEX PARKA is a most remarkable material: expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE, or Teflon). Everyone knows this stuff keeps liquid water out but lets water vapor [...]

Virus-Like Agent Blamed for Mad Cow Disease ABOUT 600 HEAD OF CATTLE a month in the United Kingdom are coming down with a mysterious new disease. The affliction, which seems [...]

University Restructuring Based on False Premise? BRITISH UNIVERSITIES have recently been bracing for some radical restructuring by the Thatcher government, guided by the notion that large science departments are of [...]

Fossils and British Pride What is the difference between the most important paleontological discovery made in Britain during this century and a lump of coal? None whatever--at least according to [...]

Feathers Fly in Grouse Population Dispute IN MID-DECEMBER, a covey of ecologists, parasitologists, and ornithologists descended upon Silwood Park, Imperial College's rural outpost near the famous English racecourse of Ascot, [...]

New Weapon in the War Against Schistosomiasis THE U.S. ARMY is about to start testing an antipenetrant with a difference. Instead of keeping armor-piercing projectiles out of tanks, the Army [...]

Britain's Lords Debate Embryo Research URGED ON by anti-abortion groups, Britain's Parliament is considering an outright ban on all research involving human embryos. Unlike the U.S. ban, which covers only [...]

Science Gives Ivory a Sense of Identity FOR MONTHS NOW, ELEPHANT TUSKS have sat center stage during an acrimonious debate: how might the community of nations reconcile its desire to [...]

Etienne-Emile Baulieu: In the Eye of the Storm FOR THE PAST FEW YEARS, Etienne-Emile Baulieu has been on a crusade. Ever since the drug he helped create, popularly known as [...]

Hope for AIDS Vaccines Pessimism about the prospects for a vaccine against HIV infection is giving way to guarded optimism. That, at least, is the opinion of Gordon Ada, chairman [...]

New Physics, Old Rivalries LAST WEEK, the theoretical underpinnings of high energy physics got simpler, but the politics got more complicated. Physicists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and [...]