October 7, 1980

VALDEZ, Alaska, Oct. 6 The sea was rough as the cruise ship Prinsendam plowed through the Gulf of Alaska on the third day of a monthlong cruise that was to take more than 300 passengers, most of them elderly Americans, through the glacial waters of Alaska's Inside Passage across the Pacific to Japan, China and the sun-drenched islands of Indonesia.

A NUMBER of radiation specialists are becoming increasingly concerned that the most damaging exposure of some Americans to radioactivity occurs in their own homes from accumulations of radon, a short-lived decay product of radium that seeps sometimes infinitesimally and at other times significantly from stone walls and soil.

ITHACA, N.Y. IN an age of narrowing specialization, Thomas Gold never seems to settle into one neat scientific slot. The centrifugal force of a quick, ranging mind keeps him in perpetual intellectual motion. He goes where his ideas take him, and they take him soaring on some original and controversial trajectories (some say tangents) through science.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 The United States has quietly tightened its procedures for granting visas to Japanese citizens who are sent by their companies to work in the many Japaneseowned installations in the United States, such as Honda plants in Ohio and Bank of Tokyo offices in New York.