The scientist community in South Africa has heaved a giant sigh of relief. the National Accelerator Centre (NAC), the country's largest research facility and the highest energy cyclotron in the southern hemisphere, located near Cape Town, has been spared the axe, at least for the time being. Researchers have been seriously concerned about the future of the institute because many in the Nelson Mandela government view it as a luxury in a country with 75 per cent of its citizens living in poverty.

NAc has an annual operational budget of about us $9.7 million. Talks were reportedly in progress debating whether it should be revved down altogether. A recent report by the Royal Society of South Africa hinted that the centre might be sacrificed in view of other pressing needs. But a new full-time director, John Sharpey-Shafer of Britain's Liverpool University, has now been appointed after a gap of 3 months without a head. "The opportunity to do good science here is tremendous," he says.