News: AAAS News & Notes
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HUMAN
RIGHTS
Ukrainian Researcher Honored at AAAS Reception
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Sergey
Piontkovski
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On 15 June, Sergey Piontkovski attended a reception given in his honor by AAAS in Washington, D.C. But it was only a few months ago that Piontkovski, a marine biologist from Ukraine at the Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas in Sevastopol, faced charges that could have resulted in 8 years imprisonment and heavy fines. Piontkovski's troubled journey began in October 1999, when the Ukrainian security police raided his office and those of several of his colleagues, searched their computer files, and confiscated their passports. Piontkovski was accused of revealing state secrets and illegal currency transactions. What Piontkovski had done was to publish his unclassified research on plankton and accept grants from foreign funding organizations.
AAAS sent out
several alerts on the AAAS Human Rights Action Network (AAASHRAN), helping to
coordinate an international response by the scientific and human rights communities
on behalf of Piontkovski. According to AAASHRAN, the action taken against Piontkovski
and his colleagues, "based solely on scientific collaborations that they
have undertaken with Western partners and grants received to undertake such
projects, constitutes serious interference with scientific freedom and could
seriously jeopardize scientific collaborations with the West."
"These activities
are central to the conduct of science as an international activity resting on
a strong foundation of openness and shared information," said Audrey Chapman,
director of the AAAS Science and Human Rights Program.
Piontkovski warned
that the actions of Ukraine against scientists accepting foreign grants could
present a real threat to the advancement of science in the country. "Scientists
manage to survive today on grants from Western foundations," Piontkovski
said. "Chances to get grants in our own country are slim because funds
allocated for academic research are miserable."
At the AAAS reception,
Piontkovski received a plaque from the AAAS Science and Human Rights Program
"in recognition of the contribution he has made, through both action and
example, to the promotion and protection of human rights in Ukraine." The
plaque was originally presented to him in absentia at the 2000 AAAS Annual Meeting
in February in Washington, D.C.
Piontkovski is
not the only scientist from the former Soviet Union to face similar charges.
Aleksandr Nikitin was arrested in Russia in 1996 and held for 10 months in a
former KGB prison after he co-authored a report for the Norwegian environmental
group Bellona that exposed the hazards posed by aging nuclear submarines in
the Russian Northern Fleet. The Russian Supreme Court in April affirmed the
December 1999 judgment of a St. Petersburg court, acquitting Nikitin of all
charges. Nikitin received in absentia the AAAS Award for Scientific Freedom
and Responsibility at the 2000 AAAS Annual Meeting.
The charges against
Piontkovski stemmed from grants he received from INTAS, a European organization
supporting international scientific cooperation, and from a British government
agency. Piontkovski's work involved analyzing and digitizing a wealth of data
on plankton distribution and bioluminescence, collected over the past 30 years
in the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean and Black seas. The grants called
for making the information, a measure of the ocean's plankton biomass and species
biodiversity, available to the scientific community on CD-ROM.
The international
scientific community, human rights advocates, and friends and colleagues organized
letter-writing campaigns, shared information on a Web site created for the purpose,
and raised funds for Piontkovski's legal defense. The authorities eventually
dropped all charges and returned his passport. Piontkovski is now living in
the United States, where he is associated with the Marine Sciences Research
Center at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Chapman commented
that "the positive outcome of the Piontkovski case underscores the importance
of mounting international appeals to support scientists whose human rights are
being violated."
AAASHRAN uses
e-mail to inform subscribers of cases deserving special attention and to coordinate
scientists' efforts to appeal to governments on behalf of their colleagues whose
human rights have been violated. An individual case is circulated at regular
intervals, with the information necessary to take action provided in a succinct
bulletin. Visit the Web site at http://shr.aaas.org/aaashran.
ELECTIONS The 2000 AAAS
election of general and section officers will be held in September. All members
will receive a ballot for election of the president-elect, members of the Board
of Directors, and members of the Committee on Nominations. Members registered
in one to three sections will receive ballots for election of chair-elect, member-at-large
of the Section Committee, and members of the Electorate Nominating Committee
for each section.
Members enrolled
in the following sections will also elect Council delegates: Anthropology, Astronomy,
Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Geology and Geography, Mathematics, Neuroscience,
and Physics.
Candidates for
all offices are listed on pages 2383–2384. Additional names may be placed in
nomination for any office by petition submitted to the Executive Officer no
later than 14 August. Petitions nominating candidates for president-elect, members
of the Board, or members of the Committee on Nominations must bear the signatures
of at least 100 members of AAAS. Petitions nominating candidates for any section
office must bear the signatures of at least 50 members of the section. A petition
to place an additional name in nomination for any office must be accompanied
by the nominee's curriculum vitae and statement of acceptance of nomination.
Biographical information
on the following candidates will be enclosed with the ballots mailed to members
in September.
Board of Directors:
Sylvester J. Gates, Univ. of Maryland, College Park; Karen A. Holbrook, Univ.
of Georgia, Athens; Victor Rabinowitch, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,
Chicago; Lydia Villa-Komaroff, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL.
Committee on
Nominations: Robert M. Cook-Deegan, National Academy of Sciences; Andrea
K. Dupree, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA; M. R.
C. Greenwood, Univ. of California, Santa Cruz; Henry W. Heikkinen, Univ. of
Northern Colorado, Greeley; John P. McTague, Montecito, CA; Carol L. Rogers,
Univ. of Maryland, College Park; Anna C. Roosevelt, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago,
and Field Museum of Natural History; Linda S. Wilson, Walpole, ME.
Section Elections
Agriculture,
Food, and Renewable Resources Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Dennis T. Avery, Center for Global Food Issues,
Churchville, VA; Alan B. Bennett, Univ. of California, Oakland.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Shawn M. Kaeppler, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison; Anne
Kapuscinski, Univ. of Minnesota, St. Paul; Susan R. McCouch, Cornell Univ.;
John J. Obrycki, Iowa State Univ., Ames.
Anthropology Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Leslie C. Aiello, Univ. College London; Nina Jablonski,
California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Steven R. Leigh, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana; William
C. McGrew, Miami Univ., Oxford, OH; Richard R. Wilk, Indiana Univ., Bloomington;
Linda D. Wolfe, East Carolina Univ., Greenville, NC.
Council Delegate:
Cynthia M. Beall, Case Western Reserve Univ.; Robert W. Sussman, Washington
Univ., St. Louis.
Astronomy Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Marcia Bartusiak, Sudbury, MA; Caitlin Ann Griffith,
Northern Arizona Univ., Flagstaff.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Helmut A. Abt, Kitt Peak National Observatory, Tucson,
AZ; Steven Federman, Univ. of Toledo; Gerald J. (Jerry) Fishman, NASA Marshall
Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL; William F. Hoffman, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson.
Council Delegate:
Richard Conn Henry, Johns Hopkins Univ.; James M. Moran, Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA.
Atmospheric
and Hydrospheric Sciences Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Russell R. Dickerson, Univ. of Maryland, College
Park; Richard C. J. Somerville, Univ. of California, San Diego.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Kenneth Caldeira, Lawrence Livermore National Lab.;
Alan D. Chave, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Barbara J. Turpin, Rutgers
Univ.; Andrew J. Weaver, Univ. of Victoria, BC, Canada.
Biological
Sciences Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: John T. Longino, Evergreen State College, Olympia,
WA; Robert J. Marquis, University of Missouri, St. Louis.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Hope Hollocher, Princeton Univ.; Timothy S. McClintock,
Univ. of Kentucky, Lexington; Dennison Smith, Oberlin College; Billie J. Swalla,
Univ. of Washington, Seattle.
Council Delegates:
Mary Mennes Allen, Wellesley College; Mary E. Barbercheck, North Carolina State
Univ., Raleigh; Barbara Bentley, Noetica Naturalists, Salt Lake City; Mary Alice
Coffroth, State Univ. of New York, Buffalo; John J. Ewel, Institute of Pacific
Islands Forestry, Honolulu; Rachel Fink, Mount Holyoke College; Joseph L. Graves
Jr., Arizona State Univ. West, Phoenix; Matthew H. Greenstone, USDA-ARS, Stillwater,
OK; Alan Hastings, Univ. of California, Davis; Kenneth L. Heck Jr., Dauphin
Island Sea Lab., AL; David W. Inouye, Univ. of Maryland, College Park; Harry
Itagaki, Kenyon College, Gambier, OH; Brian Mulloney, Univ. of California, Davis;
John C. Ogden, Florida Institute of Oceanography, St. Petersburg; Esther C.
Peters, Tetra Tech, Inc., Fairfax, VA; Sidney K. Pierce, Univ. of South Florida,
Tampa; Arthur N. Popper, Univ. of Maryland, College Park; Gene E. Robinson,
Univ. of Illinois, Urbana; Teepu Siddique, Northwestern Univ. Medical School,
Chicago; David Ucker, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago.
Chemistry Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Mostafa A. El-Sayed, Georgia Institute of Technology,
Atlanta; C. Dale Poulter, Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Dale L. Boger, Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla,
CA.; Maurice Brookhart, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Gregory C. Fu,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Larry E. Overman, Univ. of California,
Irvine.
Council Delegates:
Jon Clardy, Cornell Univ.; F. Fleming Crim, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison; George
L. Kenyon, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Laura L. Kiessling, Univ. of Wisconsin,
Madison; Douglas C. Neckers, Bowling Green State Univ.; Kathlyn Parker, Brown
Univ.; Douglas J. Raber, National Research Council; Robert J. Silbey, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
Dentistry Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Keith E. Alley, Ohio State Univ., Columbus; Mel
L. Kantor, Univ. of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Newark.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: James A. Lipton, National Institute of Dental and
Craniofacial Research; S. Petter Lyngstadaas, Univ. of Oslo; Grayson W. Marshall
Jr., Univ. of California, San Francisco; James E. Melvin, Univ. of Rochester.
Education Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Marvin Druger, Syracuse Univ.; Henry W. Heikkinen,
Univ. of Northern Colorado, Greeley.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Jean Beard, San Jose State Univ.; Diane M. Bunce,
Catholic Univ. of America; Arthur Eisenkraft, Bedford Public Schools, Ossining,
NY; Molly Hand Weinburgh, Georgia State Univ., Atlanta.
Engineering Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Maria Karpati Burka, National Science Foundation,
Arlington, VA; Ward O. Winer, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Cristina H. Amon, Carnegie Mellon Univ.; Lawrence
A. Kennedy, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago; Joel Moses, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology; Leo Young, Baltimore, MD.
General
Interest in Science and Engineering Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Gregory P. Andorfer, Maryland Science Center,
Baltimore; Sharon Dunwoody, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Frank Blanchard, Whitaker Foundation, Arlington, VA;
Richard D. French, American Welding Society, Miami, FL; James M. McCullough,
National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA; Susanna Hornig Priest, Texas A&M
Univ.
Geology
and Geography Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Farouk El-Baz, Boston Univ.; Carolyn S. Shoemaker,
U.S. Geological Survey and Northern Arizona Univ., Flagstaff.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Katherine Klink, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis;
Maureen E. Raymo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Carol M. Tang, Arizona
State Univ., Tempe; Kenneth L. Verosub, Univ. of California, Davis.
Council Delegate:
Lee De Cola, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, VA; Jere H. Lipps, Univ. of California,
Berkeley.
History
and Philosophy of Science Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: James R. Fleming, Colby College, Waterville, ME;
Kathryn M. Olesko, Georgetown Univ., Washington, DC.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Douglas Allchin, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis;
Michael A. Dennis, Cornell Univ.; Manfred D. Laubichler, Princeton Univ.; Karen
Hunger Parshall, Univ. of Virginia, Charlottesville.
Industrial
Science and Technology Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Philip W. Hammer, American Institute of Physics,
College Park, MD; Robert E. Schafrik, GE Aircraft Engines, Cincinnati.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Anthony Fainberg, U.S. Dept. of Defense; Neil E. Paton,
Howmet Corp, Whitehall, MI; Allison Rosenberg, Univ. of California, Oakland;
James C. Tsang, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY.
Information,
Computing, and Communication Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Jesse H. Poore, Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville;
Mark J. Stefik, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Peter A. Freeman, Georgia Institute of Technology,
Atlanta; Lois F. Lunin, New York City; Daniel A. Reed, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana;
Stephen S. Yau, Arizona State Univ., Tempe.
Linguistics
and Language Science Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Cecile McKee, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson; Keren
Rice, Univ. of Toronto.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Barbara Abbott, Michigan State Univ., East Lansing;
Osamu Fujimura, Ohio State Univ., Columbus; Ray Jackendoff, Brandeis Univ.;
Barbara H. Partee, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Mathematics Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Richard Durrett, Cornell Univ.; Martin Golubitsky,
Univ. of Houston.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Kenneth L. Cooke, Pomona College; John Guckenheimer,
Cornell Univ.; Deborah F. Lockhart, National Science Foundation, Arlington,
VA; Ruth Williams, Univ. of California, San Diego.
Council Delegate:
Amy Cohen, Rutgers Univ.; Joshua Leslie, Howard Univ., Washington, DC.
Medical
Sciences Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Phyllis Gardner, Stanford Univ.; Elaine S. Jaffe,
National Cancer Institute.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Thomas F. Boat, Univ. of Cincinnati and Children's
Hospital Research Foundation; Ann E. Kelley, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison; John
Mendelsohn, Univ. of Texas, Houston; David H. Perlmutter, Washington Univ.,
St. Louis.
Neuroscience Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Ann M. Graybiel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
Story C. Landis, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Mahlon R. DeLong, Emory Univ.; Howard L. Fields, Univ.
of California, San Francisco; Jane Macpherson, Oregon Health Sciences Univ.,
Portland; Peter L. Strick, Univ. of Pittsburgh.
Council Delegate:
Marjorie E. Anderson, Univ. of Washington, Seattle; Dora E. Angelaki, Washington
Univ., St. Louis; Joseph T. Coyle, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA; Irwin
B. Levitan, Univ. of Pennsylvania.
Pharmaceutical
Sciences Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: John H. Block, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis;
Ellen N. Cheung, Dynamikos Consulting, Encinitas, CA.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Jeff L. Cleland, Genentech, Inc., So. San Francisco;
Jindrich (Henry) Kopecek, Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City; Rich B. Meyer Jr.,
Genelabs Technologies, Inc., Redwood City, CA; Wei-Chiang Shen, Univ. of Southern
California.
Physics Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Beverly K. Hartline, Los Alamos National Lab.;
Steven E. Koonin, California Institute of Technology.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Arthur Bienenstock, Office of Science and Technology
Policy, Washington, DC; Aviva Brecher, U.S. Dept. of Transportation, Cambridge,
MA; Bunny C. Clark, Ohio State Univ., Columbus; Chris Quigg, Fermi National
Accelerator Lab., Batavia, IL.
Council Delegates:
Michael Lubell, City Univ. of New York; June L. Matthews, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology; Claire Max, Lawrence Livermore National Lab.; Paul S. Peercy,
University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Psychology Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: James S. Jackson, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor;
Mary C. Potter, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: C. Sue Carter-Porges, Univ. of Maryland, College Park;
Morton Ann Gernsbacher, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison; George Sperling, Univ.
of California, Irvine; Molly V. Wagster, National Institute on Aging.
Social,
Economic, and Political Sciences Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Harvey M. Sapolsky, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology; T. Paul Schultz, Yale Univ.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Gary L. Albrecht, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago; Wendy
Baldwin, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; Howard Leventhal,
Rutgers Univ.; Ronald R. Rindfuss, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Societal
Impacts of Science and Engineering Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Radford Byerly Jr., Boulder, CO; Pilar N. Ossorio,
Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: Ann Alpers, Univ. of California, San Francisco; Adrienne
Lusin Dziak, Case Western Reserve Univ.; Rachel E. Levinson, Office of Science
and Technology Policy, Washington, DC; Anna C. Mastroianni, Univ. of Washington,
Seattle.
Statistics Member-at-Large
of the Section Committee: Sally C. Morton, RAND, Santa Monica, CA; John
A. Rice, Univ. of California, Berkeley.
Electorate
Nominating Committee: James E. Gentle, George Mason Univ., Fairfax, VA;
Agnes M. Herzberg, Queen's Univ., Ontario; George P. McCabe, Purdue Univ.; Scott
L. Zeger, Johns Hopkins Univ.
AAAS Annual Election: Preliminary Announcement
General
Elections
President-Elect: Floyd E. Bloom, Scripps Research
Institute, La Jolla, CA; Ralph J. Cicerone, Univ. of California, Irvine.
Chair-Elect: Ronald L. Phillips, Univ. of Minnesota, St. Paul; Sue A.
Tolin, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Univ., Blacksburg.
Chair-Elect: Lynne Goldstein, Michigan State Univ., East Lansing; Henry
C. Harpending, Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City.
Chair-Elect: Alan W. Harris, Jet Propulsion Lab., Pasadena; Stephen S.
Holt, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD.
Chair-Elect: Anthony J. Broccoli, Princeton Univ.; Rana A. Fine, Univ.
of Miami.
Chair-Elect: C. Ronald Carroll, Univ. of Georgia, Athens; Marjorie L.
Reaka-Kudla, Univ. of Maryland, College Park.
Chair-Elect: Daniel J. Auerbach, IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose,
CA; Gary B. Schuster, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta.
Chair-Elect: Adele L. Boskey, Hospital for Special Surgery, New York
City, and Cornell Univ.; John J. Sauk, Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore.
Chair-Elect: Audrey B. Champagne, State Univ. of New York, Albany; Susan
Phillips Speece, Fresno City College.
Chair-Elect: Denice D. Denton, Univ. of Washington, Seattle; James J.
Duderstadt, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Chair-Elect: Sheila D. David, H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics,
and the Environment, Washington, DC; Elizabeth Hafen, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology.
Chair-Elect: Kevin Burke, Univ. of Houston; Maryellen Cameron, National
Science Foundation, Arlington, VA.
Chair-Elect: Lindley Darden, Univ. of Maryland, College Park; Rosemary
A. Stevens, Univ. of Pennsylvania.
Chair-Elect: William A. Golomski, W.A. Golomski & Associates, Algoma,
WI; Barry G. Silverman, Univ. of Pennsylvania.
Chair-Elect: Douglas B. Lenat, Cycorp, Austin, TX; Clifford Lynch, Coalition
for Networked Information, Washington, DC.
Chair-Elect: Sheila E. Blumstein, Brown Univ.; Ellen F. Prince, Univ.
of Pennsylvania.
Chair-Elect: H. B. Keller, California Institute of Technology; Jean E.
Taylor, Rutgers Univ.
Chair-Elect: Rebecca H. Buckley, Duke Univ. Medical Center; June E. Osborn,
Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, New York City.
Chair-Elect: Jack L. Feldman, Univ. of California, Los Angeles; Lynn
T. Landmesser, Case Western Reserve Univ.
Chair-Elect: Daniel L. Azarnoff, D.L. Azarnoff Associates, So. San Francisco;
Duane D. Miller, Univ. of Tennessee, Memphis.
Chair-Elect: Martin Blume, American Physical Society, Ridge, NY, and
Brookhaven National Lab.; Louis J. Lanzerotti, Bell Labs., Lucent Technologies,
Inc., Murray Hill, NJ.
Chair-Elect: Charles G. Gross, Princeton Univ.; Patricia K. Kuhl, Univ.
of Washington, Seattle.
Chair-Elect: Gary King, Harvard Univ.; Edward O. Laumann, Univ. of Chicago.
Chair-Elect: Rachelle D. Hollander, National Science Foundation, Arlington,
VA; Judith P. Swazey, Acadia Institute, Bar Harbor, ME.
Chair-Elect: Nancy Flournoy, American Univ., Washington, DC; Jerome Sacks,
National Institute of Statistical Sciences, Research Triangle Park, NC.
