Science News

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Remarkable results lay groundwork to achieve sustainable fusion reactions, and provide data to test US defenses without physically exploding large-scale nuclear devices.

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Preview the products and technologies that will change the way we live and work at ìPhotonics: Driving the Economy of the Future,î an inaugural symposium at the Boston University Photonics Center, on Thursday, October 23, 1997. Experts will represent industries from telecommunications to health care.

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Peering deep into the heart of comet Hyakutake, scientists have found evidence that small, evaporating ice particles in the tail and surrounding the nucleus of the comet are producing most of the water and other gases seen from Earth.--Embargoed For 4 P.M. EDT Release July 31, 1997

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Press release of issue dated August 2 for New Scientist, the international science and technology weekly news magazine

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Technologies developed at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have claimed three of the top 100 slots in R&D magazine's list of the most significant innovations of the past year.

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Michigan State University is putting into action a battle plan to control an invasive wetland weed that has beetles as warriors and children and teachers as generals. The enemy, purple loosestrife, should be quaking in its roots.

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Two technologies developed at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will make it more difficult for smugglers to slip illicit items past border enforcement agents.

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Fusarium head blight, a plant disease also known as wheat scab, has taken aim at America's breadbasket and is now seriously threatening New York State's $30 million wheat-growing industry, according to Cornell plant pathologists. The plant scientists will be speaking on new ways to solving this threat at the American Phytopathological Society annual meeting, in Rochester, N.Y., Aug. 9-13.

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A three-dimensional view of the fine bones, nerves, and hollow spaces in the human ear--from any vantage point inside or outside the organ-- is now possible, thanks to a virtual model constructed by a team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The model--explored using a wand and a special pair of eyeglasses while facing a 20-square-foot screen--allows surgeons to familiarize themselves with the complex spatial relationships of structures composing the ear.

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At a recent conference on "data mining" at the University of Illinois at Chicago, experts from around the world witnessed a first in the use of the next generation of network communications. The demonstration of data mining--the automatic search for patterns, asociations, and changes in large databases--is important because it showed data mining shows data mining can be done over a wide geographic area.

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Disabling sophisticated bombs without getting hurt is what a small team of researchers at Sandia National Laboratories knows how to do best. Now Sandia is sharing its technology and expertise in the occult art of bomb disablement with members of the worldís most elite bomb squads during an eight-day, hands-on training conference in Albuquerque Aug. 11-18.

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Washington, D.C., July 24 -- Four high school chemistry students, representing the USA in the 29th International Chemistry Olympiad, returned home from Montreal, Canada, with four medals-- and one California student earns the highest finish ever for a U.S. student.

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Three Tips from Los Alamos: 1) This Won't Hurt a Bit--new laser analysis of lead poisoning; 2) Taking a Calculated Risk--software program aids emergency response to chemical spills; 3) Another Bright Idea--new type of fluorescent light bulb

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1) Immigrant Scientists And Engineers Decline; 2) NSF & NASA Launch Satellite Assessment; 3) Researchers Recommend Changes In Census' Racial Identifications

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A computer model developed by a Johns Hopkins biomedical engineer mimics the way a heart works, down to the sub-cellular level, and can be used to mathematically "test" drugs for various heart disorders.

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Researchers have discovered that packrats seem to save a little of everything-- including clues in fossilized packrat urine from prehistoric dens--that can help scientists more accurately determine the age of water and other materials.

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Press release of issue dated 26 July for New Scientist, the international science and technology weekly news magazine.

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Remote islands of surreal beauty, the foggy, windswept Aleutians are thousands of miles from heavily populated areas. Even so, the islands harbor a nasty reminder of human activity: Sea otters and bald eagle eggs from the western Aleutians carry potentially harmful levels of DDT and other contaminants.

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Researchers from Southern Illinois University have discovered the oldest African or Asian monkey skull yet found. Their account of their find appears in the July 24 issue of ìNature.î

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UCSD Chemists Create Polymer "Mirror" for a variety of "Time Reversal" Optical Tasks.

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Researchers have found a way of controlling a tailor-made version of a protein that gives the glow to the Pacific Northwest jellyfish. The discovery not only sheds light on the inner workings of the green fluorescent protein (GFP) of the jellyfish Aequorea victoria, it also suggests a potential new way for storing and accessing computer memories in packages the size of a single molecule.

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Using electron-beam lithography, researchers at the Cornell University Nanofabrication Facility have built what they believe are the world's smallest mechanical devices, including a Fabry-Perot interferometer and, for fun, the world's smallest guitar, carved out of crystalline silicon and no larger than a single cell. The technology that could have a variety of uses in fiber optics, displays, sensors and electronics. Mechanical force probes can be made much smaller than a single cell, and forces associated with single biological molecules could be measured.

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El Nino is a warming of surface waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean with far- reaching climatic consequences. This Tip Sheet describes an upcoming scientific meeting on El Nino, the relation between El Nino and global warming, and a new El Nino book, and lists El Nino experts and Web sites.

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Continuing its leadership in optical networking, Lucent Technologies has demonstrated a record-breaking experimental ultra-wideband optical-fiber amplifier that can boost lightwave signals carried simultaneously over 100 or more channels, or wavelengths, of light. The experiment underscores the potential of optical networks to deliver unprecedented network capacity. The optical amplifier spans 80 nanometers of the lightwave spectrum.

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The first ASME Asia Congress and Exhibition, sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), will be held in Singapore, September 30 to October 2, 1997, at the Singapore International Convention & Exhibition Centre. This conference provides a forum for engineers to examine environmental issues and technological advancements relevant to this region's industries, particularly those involved in power generation, offshore technology, oil and gas.

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The M.W. Kellogg Company in Houston has pledged $100,000 to a foundation operated by ASME International (American Society of Mechanical Engineers), a gift which will be put toward programs to enhance science, technology and engineering throughout the world.

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Breeding trees that can be more easily processed into paper, with less harm to the environment, has long been a goal of researchers. Now, thanks to the discovery of abnormal, brown-colored wood in a mutant pine tree, scientists at North Carolina State University may be a step closer to achieving that goal.

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Big-cat expert, Dr. Alan Rabinowitz of the Wildlife Conservation Society, applauds last week's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision to list the jaguar as an endangered species on U.S. soil. Rabinowitz released a report last week on the status of jaguars in the southwest.

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Atlantic City, N.J., was a relative cool spot as it broke five low temperature records and tied another in June, while Baltimore tallied three low temperature records, and Charleston, W. Va., marked its first 90-degree reading in more than a year, according to the climatologists at the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University.

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Elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere benefit some plants by making them more tolerant to cold temperatures. If carbon dioxide levels double within the next century as we are expecting, some plant species should be able to withstand temperatures a few degrees cooler than they can now. Northeastern farmers and home gardeners may be able to plant some crops earlier in the spring. This will also affect the distribution and mixture of species.

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The National Science Foundation has awarded grants for seven new projects to study Martian meteorite ALH84001 in greater depth. The grants are part of a coordinated program with NASA to further investigate possible traces of ancient life in the Martian rock.

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The technology that makes the fastest computers so fast ã parallel processing ã is starting to wend its way from the research community into personal computers, and a Purdue University engineer is helping speed that delivery with a new program that automatically translates conventional computer programs so they can run faster.

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Stopping human cells from committing suicide when their environment changes is crucial to the biotechnology industry, where such cells are used to manufacture pharmaceuticals. A team of engineers and scientists at Johns Hopkins is working to disable the weapons the cells use to kill themselves.

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1) Most nature trails emphasize flora and fauna. This week, though, the spotlight is on the wild and varied climate of Colorado's Front Range; 2) A computer forecasting system for Analysis and Prediction of Storms has won a first prize in the 1997 Discover Magazine Awards for Technological Innovation; 3) Global climate change: A recent modeling study predicts that developed countries--the primary emitters of carbon dioxide--would benefit while underdeveloped countries would suffer.

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Scientists from Cornell University will help the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge in Seneca Falls, N.Y., exact revenge against purple loosestrife, a beautiful but prolific weed that strangles wetlands. More than 20,000 Galerucella pusilla and G. calmariensis -- leaf-eating beetles without a common name -- will be released Thursday, July 17, at 9 a.m. at the refuge.

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Frozen concentrated orange juice generally has the highest vitamin C levels compared to other commercial orange and grapefruit juice products, but even if you favor one of the others, you're probably still getting your daily requirement of the vitamin. That's according to a new, ten-year study reported in the July 16 issue of the American Chemical Society's Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

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Montreal, July 13 -- More than 175 of the world's top high school chemistry students arrive here today for the 29th annual International Chemistry Olympiad, which runs through July 21st. The Olympians, who represent 47 countries, will attempt laboratory experiments and a rigorous exam designed at a level that would challenge most second or third-year college students

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Recent revelations about the cause of a 1979 flash off South Africa point to an ongoing concern for the capability of satellites looking for clandestine nuclear weapons.

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Researchers have shown that radiation from radon gas does not need to hit a cell nucleau -- or even the cell itself -- to create DNA-damaging effects.

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U.S. and Mexican researchers are perfecting methods for sampling volcanic discharges from safe distances.

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Ecologists at the Savannah River Site are finding high levels of heavy metals in animals exposed to coal fly ash left over from burning coal at the federal reservation, and they suspect that the same problems are widespread because gigatons of coal are burned around the world every year.

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In the new movie "Contact," astronomer Ellie Arroway, played by actress Jodie Foster, searches for signs of extraterrestrial life using massive, Earth-bound radio telescopes.

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1) Fusion -- Smooth Skies; 2) Materials -- Letting Off Steam; 3) Space -- Next Stop, Mars; 4) Environment -- A Spreading Problem

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Significant progress in controlling poultry-borne infection was reported recently at a Cornell University meeting, the 69th Northeastern Conference on Avian Diseases. Still, two diseases (avian influenza or AI and infectious laryngotracheitis or ILT) threaten the economic health of the American poultry industry and at least one (Salmonella enteritidis) worries Americans who eat eggs.

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The National Science Foundation (NSF) has asked the science and engineering (S&E) community to contribute its views on two significant agency-wide efforts this year.

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Eight Sandia winners of R&D 100 awards proposed devices -- newly or nearly in use -- in fields ranging from medicine to computers, and from manufacturing to resource exploration to the prevention of widespread power failures.

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The hormones oxytocin (OT) and vasopressin (AVP) play a vital role in influencing complex social behaviors such as affiliation, parental care, territorial aggression and several behaviors associated with monogamy (pair bonding, paternal care, mate guarding). Scientists at Yerkes Primate Center at Emory University are examining these hormones in rodents to eventually help develop treatments for autism and schizophrenia, both of which result in social isolation and detachment.

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A neonatologist in NY, using the internet, saves the life of a premature infant in Argentina.

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A University of Massachusetts graduate is the chief scientist on NASA's Mars Pathfinder mission. Matthew Golombek, who has worked with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the mission since its inception five years ago, studied the geology of Mars, Earth, and the moon while earning his master's and doctoral degrees in geology from the University in 1978 and 1981, respectively.

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Lucent Technologies will receive a Primetime Engineering Emmy Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in ceremonies in Beverly Hills, Calif., Thursday (July 10) for its work on digital television as part of the High-Definition TV (HDTV) Grand Alliance.