Research Funding Bodies Research Articles

Filling the gaps: identifying nursing research priorities through the analysis of completed systematic reviews

Executive summaryBackground This report describes the results of a study designed to identify research priorities in nursing arising out of the analysis of 22 systematic review reports published by the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) from 1998 to 2002. A feature of the systematic review of evidence is the noticeable lack of high‐quality evidence to support a large proportion of nursing interventions and activities. Systematic review topics are selected as areas of concern about practice by nurses comprising the individual and corporate membership of JBI at Professional Advisory Forums and meetings held annually throughout Australia and internationally in conjunction with JBI's collaborating centres. Such selection prioritises nurses’ views about what ‘matters in their daily practice’.Objective and Methods The study comprised a content analysis of the 22 systematic review reports and set out to: • identify any striking gaps in evidence for frequently used practices; • generate research questions to address the gaps; and • suggest research approaches appropriate to the research questions generated. Results The results of the analysis identified in excess of 200 important gaps in the evidence base available for nursing practice in relation to the 22 discrete areas of practice examined. Recommendations included the wide dissemination of this report to promote the results of systematic reviews as an important resource in setting research priorities. Policy makers, the Commonwealth Government, State and Territory Governments, research funding bodies, organisations and individuals involved in decision‐making and the funding of research in health care have received little substantive direction in setting priorities for nursing research. This lack of well founded advice is evidenced by the incredibly low level of support for nursing research in Australia and the large number of gaps in evidence for nursing practice.Conclusions Knowledge transfer – of evidence into practice – has the potential to improve health outcomes, but the delivery of ‘best practice’ care based on sound evidence is dependant upon the generation of evidence to fill systematically identified gaps.

Disciplinary Differences in Academic Web Presence – A Statistical Study of the UK

The Web has become an important tool for scholars to publicise their activities and disseminate their findings. In the information age, those who do not use it risk being bypassed. In this paper we introduce a statistical technique to assess the extent to which the broad spectrum of research areas are visible online in UK universities. Five broad subject categories are used for research, and inlink counts are used as indicators of online visibility or impact. The approach is designed to give more complete subject coverage than previous studies and to avoid the conceptual difficulties of a page classification approach, although one is used for triangulation. The results suggest that Science and Engineering dominate university Web presences, but with Humanities and Arts also achieving a high presence relative to its size, showing that high Web impact does not have to be restricted to the sciences. Research funding bodies should now consider whether action needs to be taken to ensure that opportunities are not being missed in the lower Web impact areas.

Vaccine therapies for the prevention of type 1 diabetes mellitus.

Type 1 diabetes mellitus results from immune-mediated destruction of pancreatic beta-cells, leading to loss of insulin production. Strategies to prevent or reverse diabetes development include beta-cell protection, regeneration, or replacement. Recent advances in our understanding of the autoimmune process leading to diabetes has generated interest in the potential use of immunomodulatory agents that may collectively be termed vaccines, to prevent type 1 diabetes. Vaccines may work in various ways, including changing the immune response from a destructive (e.g. Th1) to a more benign (e.g. Th2) response, inducing antigen-specific regulatory T cells, deleting autoreactive T cells, or preventing immune cell interaction. To date, most diabetes vaccine development has been in animal models, with relatively few human trials having been completed. A major finding of animal models such as the non-obese diabetic (NOD) mouse is that they are extremely sensitive to diabetes protection, such that many interventions that protect mice are not successful in humans. This is particularly evident for human insulin tolerance studies, including the Diabetes Prevention Trial-1, where no human protection was seen from insulin despite positive NOD results. Further challenges are posed by the need to translate protective vaccine doses in mice to effective human doses. Despite such problems, some promising human vaccine data are beginning to emerge. Recent pilot studies have suggested a beneficial effect in recent-onset human type 1 diabetes from administration of nondepleting anti-CD3 antibodies or a peptide from heat shock protein 60. Given past experience, however, large multicenter, double-blind, controlled confirmatory studies are clearly required and longer term toxicity issues of drugs such as anti-CD3 need to be addressed.Diabetes vaccine development would benefit greatly from the development of reliable surrogate markers of immunoregulation. These would allow faster and more efficient screening of vaccine candidates, and would also assist in the translation of vaccine doses from animal to human studies. Unfortunately, research funding bodies desperate to find a cure are embarking on expensive clinical trials without first addressing important underlying issues such as animal-human dose translation and possible mechanisms of action. No doubt this is due to pressure from their constituency to rapidly find a cure, but unfortunately this approach may slow rather than speed the development of an effective vaccine cure. However, despite the significant hurdles that remain, vaccines remain one of the most promising strategies to prevent type 1 diabetes, with major advantages including convenience, safety, and long-lasting protection.

Teleneurology in Northern Ireland: a success.

In March 1998 two neurologists and a professor of telemedicine met to solve a clinical problem - how to get neurological expertise to patients admitted acutely to hospitals which had no resident neurologist. Four years later, two new consultant neurologists were appointed in Northern Ireland with sessions in telemedicine, possibly the first such appointments anywhere in the world. This feat was achieved by combining science with politics. First, we chose the most appropriate telemedicine equipment and bandwidth for our needs. Second, we altered our neurological consultation to use the technology efficiently. Third, we were able to show scientifically that teleneurology was reproducible, feasible in practice, safe, acceptable and cost-effective. This required money to pay for a research fellow and equipment, which was obtained initially from some departmental research funds and a local hospital. Conventional research funding bodies were, on the whole, unhelpful. It was serendipitous that a review of neurology services in Northern Ireland was set up by the Department of Health. This identified our original problem as one that it wanted solved and we were in the fortunate position of being able to offer telemedicine as a tested solution. One final political push was required to get the money released. The result of this juxtaposition of science and politics should bring benefit to our neurological patients and will perhaps help others trying to establish similar projects elsewhere.

Epidemiological research on peripheral vascular disease

During the latter half of the 20th century, billions of US dollars were spent worldwide investigating the epidemiology of cardiovascular diseases. Not surprisingly most of this research has been focused on coronary heart disease given the high morbidity and mortality associated with this condition. Research on other manifestations of atherosclerosis, notably peripheral vascular disease affecting the lower limb arteries, has been more limited. Most epidemiological investigations of peripheral vascular disease have been adjuncts to studies on coronary heart disease in which a questionnaire on intermittent claudication has been applied to the study sample. Undoubtedly the study of peripheral vascular disease is not so attractive to epidemiologists. The condition does not conjure up images of glamour or urgency and is of little concern to the public, nor indeed to many research funding bodies and journal editors. Rather, peripheral vascular disease is considered to be a chronic disease of old age, of gradual deterioration and, although sometimes leading to amputation, is non-life threatening. Despite these attitudes, during the last 15 to 20 years, a few cardiovascular research groups have pursued epidemiological research on peripheral vascular disease. In this brief commentary I discuss whether such research has been worthwhile and identify some of the unresolved issues that have emerged. Note that it is not a comprehensive review of the epidemiology of peripheral vascular disease [1].

The Role of Funding Bodies in the Creation and Diffusion of Management Fads and Fashions

Previous authors have questioned the notion of scientific rationality and method in understanding the ways in which knowledge is produced through academic research. These critiques make clear that the production of academic knowledge cannot be separated from the context in which it is produced. In this paper, we focus on the ways in which the meso-level context, in particular in terms of relations between a research funding body and a research team, shapes this process of knowledge construction. It is argued that the logics used by funding bodies to promote knowledge creation and diffusion are not only at times unrealistic and inappropriate but also contradictory and conflated. Using two case examples of academic management research, this paper argues that, instead of stimulating innovation, the policies of funding bodies may at times encourage the creation and diffusion of just those types of management fads and fashions that academics tend to be very critical of. This is especially likely where research is carried out in multidisciplinary and multinational teams.

University administration

first, but what about the little spot that spilled on the floor that I walked in and tracked all over the campus? Oh, I forgot, nothing is ever ever supposed to spill in the lab, because we are all perfectly safe. Whew! I feel better knowing that. Let's be honest. We don't think that any of the organisms we modify in the lab are harmful, or we wouldn't be bathing in them daily when we do our five-litre preps. We count on natural selection and competition with the ‘wild type’ to quickly destroy any such organisms that might stick to our shoes inadvertently. Luckily for us, this seems to work. Otherwise, I guarantee that none of us scientist types would be around any more, and the world would be teeming with even more mutants than are already employed at my university. Of course I realise that this entire rant is a big fantasy- we will always have to deal with administrators and rules and forms, and it really doesn't matter that we find them ridiculous! In some cases, although I find this very hard to admit, some of this stuff probably does do some good. But, as always, the important question is ‘Is there anything that can be done about any of it?’ Firstly, we can at least try to take our rants out of the coffee room and say what we think to a lot more people. One of the problems with scientists is that we are so busy - we run meetings, review papers, give talks, supervise students, give lectures, and some of the lucky ones even do experiments! By making our schedules so full, and demanding so much of each other, we prevent ourselves from having the time to get involved in government or university policy. We keep our heads down and just try to avoid those committees. A few of the superhuman ones among us who don't need to sleep manage to get involved in science policy and do the rest of us a huge service. However, I don't think that we will change this pattern unless some rewards are given to scientists who make administrative and policy contributions. Those rewards could be from research funding bodies, who could fund projects to improve relations between scientists, government and administration. Rewards could also come from the government(!) to universities to promote an active role of scientists in making policy. Scientists also need some power to deal with administrators. These ‘rules’ that take away the money from our grants and make us write ridiculous job descriptions should not come into effect - they are harmful to us and to universities. Until some big rewards are offered, however, I am firmly resolved to hide in my office and avoid all “situations that require thought or choosing solutions.”

Trust and inter-organizational networking

Inter-organizational and multi-functional networking are increasingly portrayed as new and potentially more effective forms of organization, especially where innovation is important. This is as true for academic work undertaken within universities as it is for business organizations; multi-disciplinary and inter-institutional collaboration being specified as highly desirable by the major research funding bodies. Integrating mechanisms are essential if such networks are to be effective in co-ordinating the work of a diverse range of partners. Importantly, they are required for the development of trust. Thus, the literature stresses that trust between the parties is central to the effective operation of such networks. This paper explores the evolution of trust within a particular inter-university, multi-disciplinary research team, and develops a model depicting the development and interrelation of different types of trust within this network. The difficulties this research network experienced in developing trust raise a more general question about the effectiveness of interdisciplinary research.

AN ASSESSMENT OF FUNDING TO SUPPORT RURAL AND REMOTE HEALTH RESEARCH IN AUSTRALIA

A systematic search was undertaken to ascertain the nature, source and extent of funding awarded to research projects that were directed specifically at aspects of rural health over the past decade. Comment is also made on the challenge of obtaining such information directly from databases. The sources investigated were the conventional research funding bodies, hospital trusts and foundations, university funding schemes and government sources. The results of these searches revealed a crude average of 3 million dollars per year from conventional research funding with the remaining sources adding a similar amount in total. Analysis of the data using a framework modified from the Strategic Review of Health and Medical Research in Australia shows that funding is concentrated in the health services and public health areas with a preponderance of funding being directed towards the description of conditions and interventions. Significant levels of funding have been directed towards the National Health Priority Areas.

An Assessment of Funding to Support Rural and Remote Health Research in Australia

A systematic search was undertaken to ascertain the nature, source and extent of funding awarded to research projects that were directed specifically at aspects of rural health over the past decade. Comment is also made on the challenge of obtaining such information directly from databases. The sources investigated were the conventional research funding bodies, hospital trusts and foundations, university funding schemes and government sources. The results of these searches revealed a crude average of 3 million dollars per year from conventional research funding with the remaining sources adding a similar amount in total. Analysis of the data using a framework modified from the Strategic Review of Health and Medical Research in Australia shows that funding is concentrated in the health services and public health areas with a preponderance of funding being directed towards the description of conditions and interventions. Significant levels of funding have been directed towards the National Health Priority Areas.

Use of consensus development to establish national research priorities in critical care

Objectives: To test the feasibility of using a nominal group technique to establish clinical and health services research priorities in critical care and to test the representativeness of the group's...

Introduction and background: interpretations of landscape change

Research into the origins of landscape has a long and distinguished tradition. In America, landscape studies form the core of physical geology while elsewhere the study of landscape development has spread beyond the confines of geology to develop a firmer foothold in the geographical tradition, particularly in geomorphology. The development of ideas in landscape study has, however, been neither steady nor sequential. It has been characterized instead by several major conceptual shifts interspersed with periods of reinforcement or neglect. Within geomorphology, and certainly within the English-speaking world, the most important of these shifts occurred in the early 1960s with the move from denudation chronology of landscapes as a core activity to an emphasis on process-based investigation of individual landforms. In geology, the 1960s also marked an important change in perspective. Publication of plate tectonic theories (sea-floor spreading, continental drift, subduction and mountain building) had far-reaching consequences for all earth science. In particular, plate tectonics made the study of apparently ancient processes (billions of years old) applicable to the present-day with, for example, application to earthquake studies. Whilst the initial shift towards process studies was a response to the desire for a better understanding of the mechanisms driving landscape change, it was not long before this goal became relegated in the eyes of many of its practitioners. As a consequence, process study became an end in itself, rather than a means to an end. This movement has been reinforced in recent years by a demand for greater 'relevance' from, for example, research funding bodies resulting in an emphasis on problem solving and wealth generation that has moved away from studies at the landscape scale. Consequently, within geomorphology, process studies and applied geomorphology have come to dominate the literature a dominance reinforced by the increasing division and separation of the discipline into process domains such as fluvial and glacial studies. This has reached the point where many researchers would now naturally identify themselves as specialists in a particular process rather than as geomorphologists. A similar trend can be identified within geology, whereby studies of uplift, erosion and stability clearly fall into pre-plate tectonics and post-plate tectonics generations. In the 1920s, studies of denudation were popular, as evidenced by the volume of work conducted in southern England and based largely on observations of palaeovaUeys, tilted strata and unconformities. Sediment provenance became important in the 1920s and 1930s and early works on the use of heavy minerals in studies of past erosion were developed. By the 1960s geologists were standing back and viewing many processes in terms of their global plate tectonic significance. However, this emphasis on processes inevitably led to the development of more labour-intensive analytical methods, as a consequence of which, the wider perspective began to be neglected. Through the 1970s and 1980s, therefore, studies of uplift developed using methods that determine heating or pressurization of the uplifted rocks. Thermal estimates of uplift, including spore or conodont alteration indexes, fluid inclusion studies and diagenetic models were developed, together with estimates of pressurization including studies of mineralogy and sonic borehole logs. However, perhaps the most significant advance in the determination of uplift rates and amounts has been in the field of apatite fission track analysis (AFTA) (Carter 1999). The widespread use of AFTA in the oil industry has provided large datasets that encompass the offshore basins formerly ignored by those concerned with land erosion (Buchanan & Buchanan 1995). Studies of erosion and palaeoerosion have also developed from the study of derived clasts to clay minerals and heavy minerals, requiring increasingly labourintensive, and hence specialist, methods to derive local or even regional perspectives. Specialization clearly has many advantages. If, however, it is allowed to proceed unchecked, these advantages eventually come to be outweighed by the effects of an increasingly reductionist approach whereby concentration on small-scale studies and the pursuit of ever greater detail detracts from appreciation of the largescale picture and ultimately fragmentation and loss of the subject core. Clearly, the longer this reductionist/segregationist approach persists the more difficult it is to define and to justify the existence of the original parent discipline.

Review could speed up German grants

munich Germany's main university research funding body is to undergo its first ever external evaluation.

Institutions and the map of science: matching university departments and fields of research

It is an increasingly common practice within universities to use departments as units of research funding and there exists in the form of the extensive British Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) a national funding system which is essentially tied to departments as units of analysis. Yet the interdisciplinary nature of modern scientific research, where researchers in departments publish in journals across a range of fields outside their nominal disciplinary affiliation, is an acknowledged `norm' in the university research community. This paper uses complete data for all Australian universities to explore the correspondence between the designations of departments and the designations of the fields and subfields to which members of these departments contribute through their publications. Previous studies of this aspect of knowledge production have centred primarily on micro-level data relating to particular specialities and departments. We suggest that the use of performance indicators at the level of university departments inevitably obscures important features of modern research. Any attempt to introduce a system-wide evaluation of research based on the university department would have particular disadvantages for interdisciplinary research and for those newer institutions which have not organised their academic structures along traditional departmental lines. We suggest in relation to research funding bodies, either internal or external to the university, that there should be an increased use of field-coded research information.

Suzanne Cory: from a table to the top

Suzanne Cory has recently been appointed to the directorship of Australia's premier biomedical research facility, the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne where, together with her husband Jerry Adams, she has headed the Molecular Biology Unit for the past 24 years. Their introduction of molecular biology into an environment with great strength in cell and animal biology resulted in a very exciting and productive era at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (affectionately known as WEHI, pronounced ‘wee-high’).Figure 1Figure 1Suzanne Cory.View Large Image Figure ViewerDownload Hi-res image Download (PPT) Suzanne Cory began her career at Melbourne University, trying to juggle her combined interests in the arts and sciences. After an inspiring lecture by the current Director of the WEHI, immunologist Sir Gustav Nossal, and an exposure to research during her Masters degree, she decided to pursue a career in scientific research and set off to Cambridge to work in Francis Crick's department at the Medical Research Council's Laboratory for Molecular Biology. Having obtained one of the few scholarships then available to women for doctoral research overseas, Dr Cory used the new techniques developed by Fred Sanger for sequencing RNA to establish the primary structure of the elongator methionine tRNA molecule. While in Cambridge, two very significant things happened to Dr Cory; her passion and dedication to scientific research became firmly established and she met her husband, Jerry Adams, who was doing his postdoctoral research on functional studies of the initiator methionine tRNA molecule. Both these things made a return to Australia, to which Dr Cory is very attached, more unlikely. However, when they visited Australia to get married, she enticed her husband with the Australian beaches and they discovered that WEHI provided an environment in which they would both like to work. They returned to Europe to postdoctoral positions in Geneva, where they established their close working relationship while studying R17 bacteriophage RNA as a model for messenger RNA. During this time, they approached Gus Nossal on one of his European visits and were able to convince him that the newly emerging techniques of molecular biology could be used to solve many of the fundamental problems of immunology.Figure 2 In 1971, having secured three years' funding from the Amercian National Institutes of Health (WEHI investigators are not eligible for funding from Australia's research funding bodies), Drs Cory and Adams walked into WEHI ready to study immunoglobulin mRNA. What greeted them was an empty storeroom containing only a table. At the end of three years, however, they had discovered the peculiar methyl-cap structure found at the beginning of eukaryotic mRNAs — now known to be essential for ribosome attachment. From this point on, their research has gone from strength to strength. They discovered that the characteristic chromosomal translocations observed in certain tumours, such as Burkitts' lymphoma, can result in oncogene activation. This paradigm paved the way for the identification of many other oncogenes, including bcl-2, which is translocated in follicular lymphoma. It was in Dr Cory's laboratory that David Vaux, then a PhD student, discovered that the function of bcl-2 is to enhance cell survival. Unravelling the biochemical basis for the activity of bcl-2 and its cousins in regulating cell survival will remain the main focus of Dr Cory's research as she assumes the directorship of WEHI. The decision for Drs Cory and Adams to return to a very uncertain research future in Australia was counterbalanced by the attractive lifestyle that was promised. Dr Cory has always had a very strong attachment to Australia and a profound love of the natural wilderness, as well as close family ties. To satisfy these desires, every year she and Dr Adams head into the Australian desert in their red four-wheel drive vehicle to enjoy its immense natural beauty and solitude in the company of her extended family. The magic of these times combined with her undeniable success as an internationally recognized research scientist confirm that the decision to return was the correct one.

The practical implications of a critique of traditional science.

Patti Lather writes of the convincing critique of traditional science that has amassed in the past 2 decades. The displacement of the assumptions of traditional science makes space for some interesting and exciting developments in the human sciences. However this theoretical rearrangement is not matched in practical spheres. While Lather is referring to education research I would include nursing when she writes, '...positivism retains its hegemony over practice'. There is ample evidence of the effects of this domination in nursing. Nurses work closely with the medical profession, which is still predominantly influenced by 'scientific' research, and health administrators who are in organizations which are bureaucratic and preoccupied with rationally. Medical practitioners control research ethics committees and funding bodies, which have relatively few nursing representatives and continue to judge proposals for qualitative projects by applying standard 'scientific' criteria. The administrators control budgetary matters and impose standards in the organizations. The dominance of traditional science needs to be challenged if nurses wish to make a place for different ways of knowing in their practice.

Evaluation activities in the Nordic countries

There has been extensive experience with evaluations in the Nordic countries. The paper gives a brief overview of work related to: evaluations of research fields, bibliometric studies, evaluations of research programmes, performance of research institutes, evaluation of bodies supporting research, evaluation of universities, indicators and databases. Evaluations of whole areas of research started in the Nordic countries in the early 1980's. Another Nordic speciality is the evaluation of research-funding bodies. These evaluations comprise the Swedish Council for Planning and Co-ordination of Research, the Norwegian Research Council for Science and Humanities, the Academy of Finland and the Technology Development Centre (TEKES). Many research programmes, research institutes and more narrow research fields have been evaluated in the Nordic countries. The evaluations have covered the tasks, performance and structure of these organisations. Lately, whole universities have been evaluated. A number of theoretical and methodological studies on evaluation have been published. Indicators of scientific, technological and educational performance and output have been developed in the Nordic countries. The paper deals mainly with ex post and to some extent also mid-term evaluations. However, ex ante evaluation, including peer review, has actively been developed and applied in the Nordic countries, though these developments lie outside the scope of this paper. Typical for many Nordic evaluations is the use of foreign evaluators. Others have been based on surveys with potential users of research results and the scientists involved. Some of the evaluations have combined these approaches. Bibliometric studies have been performed parallel with some of the evaluations. Other bibliometric studies have compared the performance of the Nordic countries in an international perspective. In most cases the results of the evaluations are actively made public. Many of the evaluations combine an assessment of quality and relevance. According to Nordic experiences important conditions for useful evaluations are: credibility implying the use of impartial and recognised experts and professionally done surveys; careful timing; active publicising of evaluation results; transparency of evaluation procedure; concrete measures and action following the evaluation. When possible data required for the evaluation should be collected already in connection with the application or the report of the projects.

The Cochrane Collaboration: Oral Health Group

Twenty years ago, in Effectiveness and Efficiency, Archie Cochrane emphasized the importance of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in guiding decisions about health care (Cochrane, 1972). Randomized trials are not always required to assess the effects of health care (the good and bad effects of some forms of health care are obvious), and sometimes trials are not feasible. But, for many forms of care, trials involving sufficient numbers of participants are essential to distinguish reliably between the effects of care and the effects of biases or chance. Just as important as conducting the trials, though, is disseminating the results through systematic reviews of the findings. Such reviews depend on the difficult task of identifying all relevant trials, and several ef f orts are going on internationally to coordinate this work. If people are to benefit from the results of trials, all the steps between research and practice must be accomplished effectively. Trials must be properly designed, conducted, analyzed, and reported. Their results must be assembled in systematic, up-to-date, and accessible reviews. The results of these reviews must be taken into account by decisionmakers, and finally, based on these decisions, there must be effective systems to audit how well local or national guidelines for health care are followed. Currently, weaknesses exist at all these steps. Cochrane drew attention to a particular weakness, however, when he criticized the medical profession for not having organized a system for producing up-to-date reviews of the results of RCTs. Experience gained over the past decade provides a useful basis for developing such a system (Chalmers, 1991). In particular, it has become clear that the same scientific principles that are applied to the design and conduct of primary research must also be applied to the process of reviewing that research (Mulrow, 1987; Haynes, 1991). Impressive examples now exist of the power of systematic reviews to provide reliable answers to important questions-for example, the effects of treatment on early breast cancer (Early Breast Cancer Trialists' Collaborative Group, 1992). Recent studies have shown that if systematic reviews, updated periodically, had been started at the beginning of a series of related trials, reliable recommendations for treatment would have been made earlier (Lau et al., 1992). Unsystematically conducted reviews in journals and textbooks have sometimes taken more than a decade to recommend treatments that a systematic review of trials would have shown to prevent premature death; in addition, other treatments have been endorsed long after evidence from trials had suggested that they were useless or actually harmful (Antman et al., 1992). The usual, unsystematic approach to reviewing the effects of care also increases the probability that resources will be wasted. For example, a systematic review of RCTs a decade ago would have shown that a short course of corticosteroids given to mothers expected to give birth prematurely substantially reduces the risk of neonatal morbidity and death (Crowley et al., 1990). Repeated failure to conduct, and apply the results of, systematic reviews of these trials has not only resulted in the unnecessary suffering of tens of thousands of babies but has also meant that neonatal care has been more expensive than it need have been (Mugford et al., 1991). Similarly, research funding bodies and ethics committees should be concerned about the extent to which resources are wasted on unnecessary research-for example, in repeated demonstrations of the protective effects of prophylactic antibiotics for some forms of surgery (Baum et al., 1981).

Report on the NATO advanced workshop ‘research networking in central and eastern Europe’

The starting point of the Workshop was the recognition of the fact that it would be beneficial to the global research community to gain access — via telecommunication networks — to the excellent research establishments and scientists present in Central and Eastern European Countries. Policy makers, research networking service providers and funding bodies were brought together to discuss possibilities to contribute to this goal. Short reports on the (research) networking situation of the participating countries were presented, the aims of funding programmes of CEC (PHARE), NATO (Outreach programme) and UNESCO's Intergovernmental Informatics programme were discussed, user requirements were identified and the possible role of RARE and EARN in providing support, counselling and training coordination for the NATO Central and Eastern European Network project was outlined.

Dutch probe chemical way to raise their coast

Two Dutch scientists have won government and industry support to explore the possibility of raising the level of the ground in coastal areas of their lowlying country by converting subsurface limestone to gypsum with waste sulfuric acid. The scheme centers on the fact that gypsum, CaSO 4 · 2H 2 O, occupies twice the volume of a corresponding amount of calcium carbonate. Olaf Schuiling, professor of earth sciences at Utrecht University's geochemistry department, and Jan D. Nieuwenhuis, who heads the research division of Delft Geotechnics, a consulting firm, will oversee a three-and-a-half-year feasibility study of their patented idea. The $640,000 anticipated cost of the study will be provided through Technical Research Foundation of the Netherlands, a research-funding body. The work will focus on laboratoryscale experiments and computer modeling. Students from Delft University of Technology and Utrecht University will be taking part in the work. ...