and Dr. Tamplin. Dr. Gofman says that he has been censored and that the sharp cutback in Dr. Tamplin's work as well as curbs in time off and expenses paid for attending meetings to present their data are clearly retaliatory measures. Moreover, Dr. Gofman says he is yet to get a single refutation of his and Dr. Tamplin's findings. Both men, who are in LRL's biomedical division, insist that they have no intention of resigning but both expect to be fired.
ACADEMIC DEGREES:
Nationwide System U.S. academic degrees should be rationalized into a single, nationwide system based on simplicity, ease of transfer among schools and programs, and validity of each degree as a terminal step along the way. This recommendation is embodied in "Academic Degree Structures—Innovative Approaches," written by Dr. Stephen H. Spurr, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, for the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. Dr. Spurr suggests: • Six basic academic degrees: associate, bachelor, master, licentiate in philosophy, Ph.D., and doctor of natural philosophy. An L.Phil, fulfills all Ph.D. requirements except research and dissertation; a doctorate of natural philosophy is awarded after two years' postdoctoral work. • Speeding progress to doctorates. The current average age of 32 for Ph.D. winners is too old, he feels. • Reduction of numbers of degrees. Dr. Spurr would cut from 1600 to about 60 the number of degrees. • Mandatory passage of each degree level by everyone along the way. • More transfer options among programs. Too early specialization should not reduce chances to enter graduate school in a field other than that of the undergraduate degree. Some of Dr. Spurr's proposals are already in effect at some schools where their effect on chemical education can be gauged. Yale University, New Haven, Conn., has awarded 37 master of philosophy degrees to chemistry students in the past three years. Asked about careers open to people with a terminal M.Phil., he says, "I would worry about mobility more than anything else. There would be many career activities open to a degree like that, but there would be many closed doors/' The M.Phil, has not been much used as a terminal degree at Yale, however. Only two or three students have sought it for a scientific career outside research, says Dr. Lyons, whereas the others have gone on for a Ph.D. 14 C&EN JULY 13, 1970
Associate degrees are awarded in chemical technology rather than chemistry, and students usually don't come to college to be technicians. Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, Ind., offers an associate degree in chemical technology with pharmaceutical and engineering options, says Dr. Theodore H. Cutshall, a chemistry staff member. Transfer to chemistry is difiBcult, he says, because of differing chemistry courses offered in each program. About 20 students have graduated in this program in the past five years. El Camino College, Torrance, Calif., has a chemical technology program with chemistry courses the same as the chemistry bachelor program, with an instrumental analysis course added, says natural science division dean Sam Schauerman. Students don't think of being technicians, he says, and generally use the associate degree to work in case of need for money to finish a bachelor's, says Mr. Schauerman.
NATURAL GAS:
Italy Goes Dutch The Netherlands and Italy have signed a 120 billion cubic meter natural gas agreement. Under terms of the contract, simultaneously released in The Hague and Rome, Italy's state-owned oil company Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI) will buy natural gas from the Netherlands over a period of 20 years starting in early 1974. Value of the contract has been fixed at 5 billion Dutch guilders (or about $1.4 billion). Dutch natural gas sales are expected to reach an annual maximum of 6 billion cubic meters three years after the beginning of the delivery. Unit cost of the Dutch gas has been fixed at 1.15 cents per cubic meter, the regular price asked by the Netherlands for former and similar agreements. Details of the deal have not been fixed, and in particular the road that the Dutch gas will follow to reach the ENI natural gas pipeline network in Italy has not yet been decided. However, as the gas will be delivered at the Belgium-Netherlands border, the pipeline will probably go through Belgium, Luxembourg, and France, an ENI spokesman tells C&EN. The Netherlands has already signed similar agreements with other European countries during the past five years. Presently West Germany is buying annually 10.5 billion cubic meters of Dutch natural gas. Also, France currently is buying 3.2 billion cubic meters per year of Dutch gas (up to 7.5 cubic meters per year by 1975), and Belgium gets 7 billion cubic meters per year.
THE CHEMICAL WORLD THIS WEEK Italy has recently signed a similar agreement with the U.S.S.R. (C&EN, Dec. 22, 1969, page 9 ) . The ItalianSoviet deal calls for the sale of 100 billion cubic meters of Soviet natural gas to ENI over a period of 20 years, starting by 1974. During the next three years, ENI will build a 250-milelong pipeline through Austria to move the Soviet gas to the Italian border and connect it to the Italian natural gas network. Italy is also producing its own natural gas. ENI is currently producing some 15 billion cubic meters of natural gas in the Po Valley, and expects to exploit very soon the natural gas field that it has recently discovered in the Adriatic Sea. In addition, ENI signed a natural gas agreement with Libya last year which calls for the annual sale of 3 billion cubic meters of Libyan gas over a period of five years. And ENI has been negotiating for many years with the Algerian government for the purchase of natural gas from the Hassi R'Mel fields, in the northeastern Sahara.
POLLUTION:
Burn Coal, Save S02 Until last week, electric power companies could consider two routes to fight sulfur dioxide pollution from their coal-burning plants: use of relatively expensive low-sulfur coal or removal of the corrosive pollutant from stack gases. Boston Edison opted for the latter course earlier this month (C&EN, July 6, page 19). Now comes word of a third approach: a coal combustion process that produces heat but not sulfur dioxide. Black, Sivalls and Bryson, Inc., disclosed that its applied technology division, located in Pittsburgh, Pa., has received an initial contract of $892,000 from the National Air Pollution Control Administration to develop a new type of coal-burning system that BS&B refers to as the "submerged coal combustion process." As described by Dr. Paul J. LaRosa, R&D manager for the applied technology division, coal is injected with air under pressure into a mass of molten iron in a furnace called a "combustor." As the coal dissolves, sulfur is released and immediately combines chemically with iron. In this form sulfur rises to the surface, where slag from added limestone removes sulfur from the iron. Portions of the slag are periodically removed and sent to a slag desulfurizer for recovery of elemental sulfur by conventional techniques.
