n e w s of t h e w e e k m^ Robert C. Smith (R-N.H.), and Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.)—all of whom have some say over Superfund programs—also were irked by the tone of Gore's remarks. "If the Administration is truly concerned about cleanup of our nation's hazardous waste sites, they should work with us, not against us," the senators said in a joint statement. "The vice president's scare tac­tics only serve to jeopardize further pro­gress on this bill."

Chafee's committee approved a Super-fund reauthorization bill (S. 8) along strict party lines in March, and a House bill, H.R. 2727, introduced by Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.) has been approved by the House Subcommittee on Water Re­sources & the Environment, but no further action has been taken on either measure. In view of the current deadlock, observers see little hope either for EPA to get the ex­tra funding or for a Superfund bill to clear Congress before its anticipated October adjournment.

David Hanson

Chemical makers taking precautions in Indonesia

A number of U.S., European, and Japanese chemical companies are taking steps to protect employees and property in Indo­nesia in the wake of widespread civil unrest.

Bank is casualty of Indonesian riots.

As students occupied the country's parliament in Jakarta demanding the res­ignation of long-time President Haji Mo­hamed Suharto, companies such as Dow Chemical, BP, Royal Dutch/Shell, Amo­co, Mitsui of Japan, and the Austrian fiber producer Lenzing evacuated personnel and their families from the country.

Although Suharto stepped aside after a week of rioting and looting that led to widespread property damage and re­ports of 500 deaths in Jakarta, the situa­tion remained tense.

Union Carbide, which does not have any expatriates in the country, has closed a latex emulsion facility on the outskirts of Jakarta and told most of the 90 or so em­ployees to stay home until the situation improves. The company is prepared to re­lease shipments to customers only if the customers themselves arrange to pick up materials, says a Carbide spokesman. A sales office in Jakarta has been closed tem­porarily, too, he adds.

A Lenzing spokeswoman says that fam­ilies of Austrian executives have been evacuated from Jakarta, most returning to Austria. Managers remain, operating a ray­on plant in Purwakarta, about a 90-min-ute drive from the capital. The spokes­woman says the area around the factory is quiet, but delivery of raw material has been a problem, and so only two of three factory lines are operating at the 110,000-metric-ton-per-year plant. Government and private security forces are guarding the plant.

"Ensuring staff safety and security is a primary concern," says a BP spokeswoman. About 100 BP chem­ical and oil employees and their de­pendents were evacuated very re­cently. A polyethylene plant that the company operates in Merak, in western Java, continues to operate with local personnel but at reduced capacity, she adds.

A Dow Chemical spokeswoman says the company has given sales em­ployees in Jakarta the option to work at home to avoid travel in Jakarta. Some continue to work at the office, "but the situation varies from day to day," she says. "Normal" operations continue at the company's polysty­rene and latex manufacturing plants in Merak, where Dow employs 94 people, and at a Dow AgroSciences unit in Medan, where the company employs 42 people. A few expatriates recently left for Australia, and only one remains working in Merak.

Marc Reisch

Postdocs need fair, consistent polices Postdoctoral training is booming. It has evolved into a virtual requirement for ten­ure-track faculty positions in certain scien­tific disciplines. Yet universities haven't developed fair and consistent policies for handling postgraduate education, con­cludes a report released last week by the Association of American Universities (AAU).

"As with the Ph.D. at the end of the 19th century, postdoctoral education is evolving as a series of ad hoc and unsys­tematic responses to varied and often competing interests and pressures," the re­port says. "The lack of clear central over­sight . . . raises serious questions about how successfully institutions are meeting their obligations to postdocs as trainees and professional colleagues."

The report recommends that universi­ties define postdoctoral appointments as temporary research positions viewed as preparatory for a full-time academic or re­search career. It says institutions should es­tablish policies covering minimum salaries, health care and other benefits, publication rights, career advising, and time limits on postdoctoral stints, among other issues.

"It's important we be conscious of what's happening and think through what we're doing," University of Southern Cali­fornia President Steven B. Sample tells C&EN. Sample headed the AAU commit­tee that prepared the report.

"Postdoctoral training isn't the friendly little back-office operation it was in the '50s and '60s," Sample notes. "It involves some 35,000 postdoctoral appointees, costs about a billion dollars a year, is grow­ing rapidly, and is of increasing impor­tance to the larger research enterprise."

The AAU committee surveyed universi­ty administrators and departments in four disciplines—biochemistry, math, physics, and psychology—at a sampling of major universities. Postdocs in those depart­ments said they most wanted to see im­provements in stipends, benefits, career advising, and job-placement assistance.

Most of the postdocs expected to end up in tenure-track faculty positions, but only a quarter of the recent postdocs in their departments had actually won such jobs, the committee found. Given that dis­parity, it's no surprise that postdocs want more than the minimal attention to job is­sues that universities currently provide, the report says.

The situation in chemistry is very simi­lar to the fields AAU surveyed, says David

8 MAY 25, 1998 C&EN