News of the Week chemical arsenal, including the number of chemical warheads, is still undetermined. A team of about 70 inspectors will return to Samarra in September and remain at the 25square-mile site for up to two months. Two other teams are expected to go this month to other declared chemical weapons facilities. Plans for destroying the munitions and chemical agents cannot be set until the arsenal's size and composition are known, Ekeus adds. Lois Ember
University management of national labs assailed Another major institution has come under the gun on charges of mishandling federal research funds, following in the wake of Stanford University and other schools. The University of California was raked over the coals last week at a House subcommittee hearing. It was accused of mismanagement, negligence, and waste in its role as contractor to the Department of Energy to operate the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. The hearing was chaired by Rep. Howard Wolpe (D.-Mich.), chairman of the Investigations & Oversight Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science, Space & Technology. Members of Congress from both parties cited findings of the General Accounting Office, the inspector general's office at DOE, and internal DOE review panels. The basic problem, Wolpe charges, is DOE's "least interference, limited accountability" approach, exercising little oversight, abandoning standard accounting practices, and signing contracts limiting its authority at the labs. For example, GAO has found that $18.6 million worth of inventoried equipment is missing from LLNL. The facility lacks adequate accountability controls and has insufficient physical controls to monitor use of high explosives and of millions of dollars worth of precious metals. And GAO has found that LLNL is missing 9279 classified documents addressing such matters as nuclear weapons design, x-ray laser design, 6
August 5, 1991 C&EN
and plutonium and other nuclear materials. Moreover, the university has billed DOE for "excessively high, undocumented, and possibly unwarranted legal costs." For instance, in 1989-90, DOE reimbursed it for more than $226,000 for outside legal counsel retained to represent university officials during a Congressional investigation by the House investigations subcommittee chaired by Rep. John D. Dingell (D.-Mich.). In addition, the university makes no detailed accounting for indirect costs of doing research, which amounted to more than $350 million for LLNL in fiscal 1987, more than 35% of its total funding. Subcommittee members also assailed the university for placing its private interests over those of the government when processing patent applications for technologies developed at the labs; billing DOE for high-priced outside patent attor-
neys; awarding overly generous early retirement and leave programs to employees; and using lab resources and DOE money to seek research grants from other federal agencies for the university's benefit. The contracts for management of the two labs expire in September 1992. DOE recently initiated negotiations to extend them five years. Subcommittee members urge DOE to radically revise them to beef up DOE oversight and require strict contractor accountability. However, the university—which declined to testify at the hearing— says such revisions would "undercut the flexibility the university needs to conduct world-class research," and subject it to financial risk. Wolpe counters that "the pattern of waste, abuse, and mismanagement . . . puts the science performed at the labs in jeopardy, and threatens to undermine [their] credibility." Richard Seltzer
Versatile method yields oriented materials Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, have devised a simple, general method for growing a wide variety of molecular materials in highly oriented form. Such oriented materials are in great demand for technological applications because they offer mechanical, electronic, and optoelectronic properties superior to those of their unoriented versions. The UCSB technique involves growing crystalline films of materials on a highly oriented thin film of poly(tetrafluoroethylene), or PTFE, better known by the Du Pont tradename Teflon. In 1972, two scientists in the U.K. reported that drawing a bar of PTFE across a smooth glass surface leaves behind an ultrathin, highly oriented film of the polymer. According to Richard Friend of Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, U.K., this film was found to align molecules of a liquid crystal. UCSB polymer scientists Jean Claude Wittmann, on leave from CNRS Institut Charles Sadron in Strasbourg, France, and Paul Smith of the materials department now have gone a step further: They have
shown that a wide range of materials can be oriented on PTFE f i l m s including polymers, monomers, liquid crystals, and small organic and inorganic molecules. The oriented materials can be grown from solutions, melts, or vapors. Details appeared last week in Nature [352, 414 (1991)]. Scientists have devised many m e t h o d s to promote oriented growth. But nearly all "either produce only a limited degree of order, or are restricted to a limited range of materials," Wittmann and Smith point out. Their technique is "particularly versatile," and can be applied to "a wider range of materials than previously possible," notes Friend in a commentary in the same issue of Nature. Friend explains that being able to align molecules is key to developing new materials for molecular electronics. Oriented molecular materials also are crucial for making liquid crystal displays, superstrong synthetic fibers, and devices based on conducting polymers. The UCSB researchers are pursuing some of these applications. Ron Dagani
