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Date:      Fri, 10 Apr 92 12:48:12 PDT
To:        wtu@psuvm.bitnet
From:      "CHRISTINE REES" <VP.APS@STANFORD.BITNET>
Subject:   What's New for April 10, 1992

WHAT'S NEW, Friday, 10 April 1992                  Washington, DC

1. THE APS PLANS TO ASSIST PHYSICISTS IN THE FORMER SOVIET UNION!
Ernest Henley, APS President, issued an appeal for donations to a
special fund for FSU physicists.  The action was recommended by a
task force convened at Henley's request. The task force will draw
on the fund to help provide physics journals to FSU institutions
and to establish a program of small research grants. The APS task
force also is considering shipment of donated equipment to FSU
physicists.  It was physicists who led the democratic movement in
the Soviet Union during the darkest years of the Cold War.  They
earned the admiration of the world.  Now they need our help.

2. SCIENTIST SHORTAGE? NSF CREDIBILITY IS DAMAGED BY BLOCH HEADS.
When former NSF Director Erich Bloch argued for doubling the NSF
budget, he waved an internal study projecting a 625,000 shortfall
of scientists in the next two decades. The author, who headed the
Division of Research and Analysis, told a House Investigations
Subcommittee on Wednesday that the study was not a forecast, but
a "depiction of a hypothetical situation."  Current NSF Director
Walter Massey told the subcommittee that he was instituting new
internal procedures to prevent any recurrence of such episodes.

3. CLAIMS THAT SSC IS "ON TIME AND UNDER BUDGET" WERE CHALLENGED
by House critics Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) and Howard Wolpe (D-MI)
in hearings yesterday.  But a scripted dialogue between Boehlert
and Victor Rezendes of the General Accounting Office, intended to
expose overruns and delays, was blunted by the questioning by Joe
Barton (R-TX), whose district includes Waxahachie; overruns were
shown to be under 5% (that would be a small miracle in DOD), and
the project is potentially ahead of schedule.  The next charge
was that a $10K Christmas party drained the $600M yearly budget.
The most serious accusation was that the SSC had attempted to
conceal a $50M cost overrun.  Boehlert agreed that, "The project
is good science," but said "we must go with projects giving the
biggest return for America. It won't be a difficult vote for me!"

4. AN ENGAGING DEBATE: IF A PATRIOT AND A SCUD "PASS IN THE SKY,"
is that an intercept?  That's how General Drolet of the Missile
Command defined "intercept" in a congressional hearing Wednesday.
In some engagements the Army reported more Scuds destroyed than
Patriots fired, according to the GAO.  But when the Congressional
Research Service applied the Army's own methodology, it turned up
only one hit.  Rep. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) wondered why the hearing was
being held: "We all saw the Patriot work on CNN."  But Physicist
Peter Zimmerman challenged Ted Postal's use of conventional video
to draw conclusions about high speed events (WN 3 Apr 92).  An
Israeli Air Force expert said his study found no evidence that a
Patriot ever took out an al Hussien warhead: "by that definition,
the Patriot was a failure--and in a populated area there can be
no other definition of success."  And yet, Israel is accused of
selling Patriot technology to China.  Now that's a sale!

Francis Slakey  OPA@AIP.bitnet      The American Physical Society

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