Newsbriefs

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NASA grant ignites FUSE for 
ultraviolet telescope project
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     NASA has accepted a restructured proposal from Hopkins for
an orbiting ultraviolet telescope called FUSE, the Far
Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer. 

     The new proposal reduces the project's cost from its
original $254 million to $100 million and speeds up the mission's
timetable, setting a launch date in the fall of 1998, two years
ahead of the original launch schedule.

     Last year NASA decided to trim the FUSE budget so that the
space agency could put more funding into its lower-cost Medium
Explorers (MIDEX) series of missions.   

     FUSE will probe three broad areas of astrophysics: the
origin and evolution of the lightest elements created in the
embryonic universe; the forces and processes controlling the
evolution of galaxies; and the origin and evolution of stars and
planetary systems.

     The FUSE mission's development and execution is being led by
Hopkins. All science planning and satellite operations will be
done from a control center in the Bloomberg Center for Physics
and Astronomy. Also participating are the University of Colorado,
the University of California at Berkeley, and the Canadian and
French space agencies. The project's principal investigator is
Warren Moos, chairman of the Department of Physics and Astronomy.


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Fun, hard work keys to success 
for WJHU's spring pledge drive 
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     "It was a lot of hard work, but we really enjoyed ourselves
this year," said Dennis Kita, general manager of WJHU, Hopkins'
public radio station. He and his staff raised $127,000 during
their 12-day spring on-air fund-raising drive. The pledges were
up 88 percent over last spring's effort, Kita said, and compare 
to an average 30 to 50 percent increase reported by public radio
stations nationwide.

     I think we had two things in our favor this time," Kita
said. "First, we had a good time doing it. We had a great
attitude about it and that was evident on-air. It's real positive
to get feedback from the community, to meet and talk with
volunteers. It was an energized atmosphere.

     "And second, our need was brought more into focus because of
the battle [for federal funding] on the Hill," he said.

     Although in some ways the station was able to turn the
negative of threatened federal budget cuts into a positive
listener reaction, Kita is concerned about that being a part of
any long-term strategy.

     "When this story disappears from the headlines, we don't
want listeners to feel that the urgency has faded with it," he
said. "Our fund-raising growth will slow, I'm sure. But our need
won't."


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Beach, 18 others selected 
year's top student employees
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     Bryan Beach, a junior from Soldotna, Ala., is this year's
Homewood Student Employee of the Year. Beach, an international
studies major, received a certificate of recognition, along with
a $100 savings bond, at a ceremony Thursday. He has been employed
for the past three years by the School of Continuing Studies.

     Eighteen other students were nominated for the award and
received certificates of recognition. The Student Employee of the
Year award is made annually during National Student Employment
Appreciation Week.

     This year, more than 1,700 undergraduates and 1,400 graduate
students are employed from the schools of Arts and Sciences and
Engineering, working for approximately 500 supervisors across the
entire university.


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Ian Hunter to give Hinkley Lecture                                
on Kant's Defense of the Arts Faculty
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     Ian Hunter, an Australian Research Council fellow in
Griffith University's Faculty of Humanities, will present this
year's John Hinkley Memorial Lecture, The Regimen of Reason:
Kant's Defense of the Arts Faculty. The lecture, which is open to
the public at no charge, will be held at 5 p.m. on Thursday,
April 13, in the Donovan Room, 110 Gilman, on the Homewood
campus.

     The Hinkley lectures were established in 1951 from the
estate of John Hinkley, a senior partner of the firm of Hinkley
and Singley. Hinkley, an 1884 Hopkins graduate, died in 1940.

     Dr. Hunter's talk is a work-in-progress exploring the
relations between self-governance and government in Kantian moral
and political philosophy. His work takes as its central text
Kant's famous Conflict of the Faculties, and his lecture situates
this work in the context of the political and religious conflicts
besetting early modern Prussia.