Nearly every discipline in the humanities appears to have been touched by computers is the consensus from a conference on computers and the humanities held in Toronto. Computerized concordances, studies on language evolution, identifying archaeological finds, video images and audio in databases are discussed. (MLW)

A Washington doctoral candidate in sociology is jailed for contempt of court for not revealing conversations with animal-rights activists in a grand jury investigation of a research laboratory raid at his institution. The graduate student refused to breach an American Sociological Association pledge of scholarly confidentiality. (MSE)

In sciences, postdoctoral fellowships have become the terminal academic credential for a research career. Positions are supposed to be temporary, but amount to a holding pattern for many unable to find permanent jobs in research or needing to assemble the required publishing record. Some institutions are beginning to acknowledge this problem and…

The director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute (North Carolina) is committed to making better use of patient information for medical research, and is building a database from the institute's clinical trials. His approach is to provide biomedical researchers with daily involvement in medicine rather than management. (MSE)

Academic and research-oriented psychologists are discontinuing membership in the American Psychological Association in increasing numbers, feeling it no longer serves thir interests. Major reorganization of the association to stem polarization is being considered. (MSE)

Two federal agencies proposed conflict-of-interest guidelines that would require scientists supported by government money to file financial-disclosure forms and universities to review those forms and eliminate conflicts of interest. The National Institutes of Health and the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration proposed the…

Twelve proposed priorities, drafted by the Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement, will dictate the aims and lines of inquiry of research centers whose contracts will expire next year. The new competition is especially large because the contracts for 14 of the 21 present centers expire. (MLW)

Participants in the January 1999 Internet World Conference on Biomedical Sciences will meet and communicate solely in cyberspace. In many respects, the conference will be traditional, with 56 symposia on 15 biomedical subjects, but participants avoid registration fees and travel costs. Japanese universities conducted four previous conferences,…

Social scientists, who frequently complain that the federal government spends too little on them, are passing up what scholars in the physical and natural sciences see as the government's best give-aways: free access to supercomputers. Some social scientists say the supercomputers are difficult to use; others find desktop computers provide…

Intense competition for federal research funds in some areas of science is generating more narrow research training, conflict between research and teaching responsibilities, and alienation and frustration among young scientists, who must scramble for tenuous research positions that lead nowhere. (MSE)

Woman scholars at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians called for a new "multi-cultural approach" that would weave the lives of Hispanic, Black, Asian-American, and American Indian women into women's history and into United States history. (MLW)

As Internet 2 takes shape, the university administrators and researchers behind it are taking care to address the political and economic challenges experienced by the original Internet. The new, privatized system will be faster and more powerful, but some fear privatization has shifted the balance of power toward profit-making instead of meeting…

University researchers, campuses, federal agencies, and legislators are debating issues of disclosure of researcher interests in profits from research results, in order to avoid situations in which profitability may threaten the quality and conduct of scientific and medical research. Proposed National Institutes of Health guidelines are highly…

Interest in quantifying the results of state economic development programs, most involving financial support to colleges and universities, in creating jobs may raise new questions about the appropriate relationship of campus researchers and business leaders. (MSE)

Data on foreign scholars at United States research institutions include information on leading countries and regions of origin, the 12 institutions with the most foreign scholars, gender distribution, leading fields of specialization, and their scholarly activity (research and/or teaching) in the United States. (MSE)