Science News

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ATHENS, Ga. -- Managing for a single endangered species may put other species at risk and is no longer a reasonable policy option, according to a paper published today in the journal Science. Knowing which species are most vulnerable and which human activities threaten them is crucial to saving species, according to an article by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt and Dr. Ron Pulliam, director of the National Biological Service and science advisor to Secretary Babbitt.

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Throughout the 12-state Northeast region, temperatures were well above normal during December. The region reported an average temperature departure of 6 degrees above normal, which was warm enough to make it the fourth warmest December on record, according to the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University. The normal average temperature for the region is 27.5 degrees, while weather observers measured 33.5 degrees this year.

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An unlikely tool to save tropical forest biodiversity may be the chainsaw, according to conservationists attending a forest diversity workshop, organized by the Wildlife Conservation Society, headquartered at the Bronx Zoo. With worldwide logging regimes owning more forest land than all national parks combined, conservationists are looking toward forest departments and their production forests to complement existing reserves. PHOTOS AVAILABLE

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COLLEGE STATION -- The pathway in legumes -- such as soybeans and alfalfa -- that controls the formation of nitrogen-packed nodules on roots has been identified by researchers at Texas A&M University. The finding, reported in today's issue of Science magazine, could help scientists better understand how to manipulate the growth of such unique plant organs which are vital to the Earth's ecological health.

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Researchers from Resources for the Future in the United States and Chulalongkorn University in Thailand today announce the start of their collaborative investigation of a proposed dam's impact on local forest communities -- an impact that is often not accounted for in development planning in Southeast Asia.

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Johns Hopkins geophysicists have developed a model that may explain recent findings suggesting that the Earth's solid inner core rotates faster than the rest of the planet.

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The plastic bottle you throw in the recycling bin today may be in your gas tank tomorrow. That type of reclamation of waste material is now possible, according to Dr. Joseph Shabtai of the University of Utah. The results of his work appear in the January/February issue of Energy & Fuels, a bimonthly publication of the American Chemical Society.

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Four tips from Los Alamos: * four-color laser * a membrane reactor for ultrapure hydrogen * new method for forming metallic glasses * high-precision carbon monoxide sensor

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The Pinatubo eruption has helped validate a Los Alamos 3-d computer model of Earth's atmosphere, which accurately modeled the cooling and impact on Arctic ozone and the polar vortex caused by the volcano's infusion of aersols into the upper atmosphere.

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An endocrinologist and reproductive in Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine, has been studying the dramatic seasonal cycles that profoundly alter the groundhog's reproductive activity, food intake, basal metabolism, body fat and total body weight from season to season. Groundhogs have more dramatic annual biological rhythms than nearly all other mammals and may provide key clues into better understanding cancer and cancer treatment, blood cell functions, brain activity and mental health.

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Unless the world's food-growing nations improve their resource-management practices, life in the 21st century will be as tough as it is now in the 80 countries that already suffer serious water shortages, a new Cornell University study warns. As a start, governments should end irrigation subsidies that encourage inefficient use of water and instead reward conservation.

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Cornell University researchers, using non-linear laser-microscope technology developed at Cornell, have produced images displaying the neurotransmitter serotonin in live cells in real time, and they have for the first time measured the concentration of serotonin in secretory granules. Embargoed: 01/23/97 4 p.m.

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New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, which collects statuary, has teamed with scientists from Sandia National Laboratories, concerned with preserving the nation's security, to produce an inorganic coating that increases by a factor of ten the longevity of powdered calcite -- the basic component of limestone -- when calcite is submerged in a solution similar to mildly acid rain.

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This week's "Science" magazine features a major article by Washington State University Professor of Biochemistry Norman G. Lewis and co-workers on their discovery of the first member of an apparent new class of proteins. These proteins help explain how nature controls free- radical chemistry, something scientists in laboratories have had difficulty doing.

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Researchers at West Virginia University have developed a computer-based flight data recorder (FDR), commonly called a "black box," they say would cost a fraction of what new proposed FDRs with extended recording capabilities would cost the nation's airlines.

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More than 40 experts on risk management, land use and the nation's nuclear weapons complex gathered at Resources for the Future to discuss the challenges faced in assuring protection from risks to human health and the environment posed by hazards remaining at the nation's nuclear weapons production sites once the United States Department of Energy completes its major cleanup activities.

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Powerful winter storms that strike the U.S. West Coast often occur in series, like the ones that recently raked Washington, Oregon, and California. These storms have their counterparts in the North Atlantic Ocean, and scientists supported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) are hot on their trail.

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Landmarks in Mechanical Engineering compiles 135 inventions and other technological achievements set apart for their contribution to scientific growth, industrial development and human progress. The new book is announced jointly by ASME International (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) and Purdue University Press, the publisher.

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Wildlife Conservation Society African-born biologist acts as a wildlife traffic cop outside of Nairobi National Park.

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The scientific battle against the devastating fungal strain Phytophthora infestans -- commonly known as potato late blight -- has been elevated on international fronts, according to a report released this month by the Cornell-Eastern Europe-Mexico (CEEM) International Collaborative Project in Potato Late Blight Control. P. infestans, the fungus blamed for the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, is currently staging a resurgence . Scientists agree the new strains are far more aggressive than the original outbreak 150 years ago.

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Acting as the world's most powerful telescopic tandem, the Hubble Space Telescope and the W.M. Keck Telescope are starting to unravel the evolutionary histories of galaxies dating back to when the universe was just 10 percent of its current age. Embargoed * For release at 9:20 a.m. EST Thursday, January 16, 1997, in conjunction with the presentation of paper #103.05 at the American Astronomical Society meeting.

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U-M computer model detects "fingerprint" of massive black holes in three nearby galaxies.

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People called upon to sit on juries for capital crimes often do not understand the language of the law, the factors they are supposed to weigh in considering a sentence, or even that they have final responsibility for imposing punishment. New research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) seeks ways to improve the judgment of jurors who literally make life and death decisions.

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Powerful winter storms that strike the U.S. West Coast often occur in series, like the ones that recently raked Washington, Oregon, and California. These storms have their counterparts in the North Atlantic, and scientists are hot on their trail. A major field program involving NCAR, UCAR and researchers from 11 countries is straddling the Atlantic from Newfoundland to Ireland to study fierce oceanic winter storms.

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The first international conference on computational molecular biology will be held at the Eldorado Hotel in Santa Fe, N.M., from January 20-23, 1997. Among the expected 200 participants are Nobel laureate Rich Roberts and Turing Award winner Richard Karp. If that werenít enough reknown, "Interestingly, some of the scientists involved in this conference are so famous in their fields that they were tapped to testify at the O. J. Simpson criminal trial," said Sorin Istrail, a Sandia National Laboratories scientist and one of the conference organizers.

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Giant balloons floating around the Antarctic helped UAH scientists gather what may be the first evidence of specific sources of cosmis rays, especially the cosmic rays which carry the most energy

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Image-guided software developed at The University of Alabama in Huntsville may help doctors better diagnose cancer and plan surgery by allowing the more effective use of information collected from computerized axial tomography (CAT) scanned images.

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A slightly cooler than normal December ended a slightly cooler than normal year. December's Global Temperature Report includes a special advisory relating to a new analysis of satellite data.

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A new approach for manipulating laser light on the microscopic scale was announced Jan.2 in the journal Nature in a cover story by Yale University applied physicist A. Douglas Stone. It could expand traffic on fiber-optic networks, speed up computers, improve video displays and lead to better laser printers.

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Fewer sunspots will erupt on the sun's surface during the next decade, indicating an unexpected decrease in the activity of magnetic fields that churn the sun's hot gases, Yale University and NASA astronomers predict. The milder "space weather" -- marked by a decrease in magnetic storms, cosmic rays and ionspheric disturbances -- could bring cooler temperatures on earth, fewer power blackouts and less interference with radio waves. Embargo: Jan. 14, 1997, 10 a.m. edt

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Called sonoluminescence, the enigma has intrigued scientists since it was discovered in the 1930's. Today, researchers are trying to harness the process for possible commercial applications ranging from broad-band underwater sonar to pollution-free energy. A Yale mechanical engineer challenged colleagues around the world to come up with new experiments to test the growing list of theories.

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Yale University has entered a dark horse in the international race to find dark matter, the 90 percent or more of the universe's mass that is unseen and unknown but exerts a profound influence on the distribution and shape of visible galaxies. Theories about the composition of this missing matter range from exotic new kinds of subatomic particles to black holes, burned out stars or intergalactic dust and gas.

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An array of new ideas are being explored by the Yale Center for Computational Vision and Control ranging from a three-dimensional computer mouse that can control the motion of a robotic arm to a visual tracking system that can superimpose a clown face over a human face on a television monitor.

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now determining whether mercury emissions should be regulated under the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. If the decision is made to regulate mercury emissions from electric power plants, what's the best way to control the emissions? Do methods exist to accurately measure the type and amount of mercury in exhaust gases emitted from power plants?

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Today, at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Toronto, Canada, astronomers Kurt Slinglend, David Batuski, and Chris Miller of the University of Maine, presented evidence for what appears to be the longest single structure yet seen in the universe, a supercluster of galaxies about one billion light-years in length.

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Platynus indecentis, a "bog beetle" misidentified for 85 years, has been discovered in a Cornell insect collection and given proper species identification.

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Student ethnobotany expeditions to the Venezuelan Amazon and Mexican Yucatan are identifying plant-based medicinals used by indigenous peoples for centuries. Potential antibiotics, contraceptives and insect-bite remedies are among the chemical compounds under analysis by Cornell University students, whose expenses are paid by the Minority International Research Training Program of the National Institutes of Health.

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What educators can teach young parents about becoming good parents is the topic of a new and revised curriculum from Cornell University.

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Many quasars, the most luminous objects in the universe, are swaddled by galaxies containing ordinary stars that lie at the same distances from earth as the quasars themselves, according to new research that used the Keck Telescopes in Hawaii.

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A high-engery power source hidden inside a galaxy 660 million light years from Earth has provided new evidence supporting a theory that all such "active galaxies" harbor quasars in their nuclei. The findings are being released Jan. 13 at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE AT 9:20 A.M. EST ON MONDAY, JAN. 13, 1997

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According to recent measurements by Purdue University physicists, an electron may not be a simple negative point charge, as scientists often describe it. "Science and engineering students have learned for years that the electron has a constant electronic strength, but now we've seen that this may not be the case," says David Koltick, professor of physics at Purdue.

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Wildlife Conservation Society researcher develops a new trawl net that drastrically reduces the number of undersized fish caught in the high-volume commercial pollock fishery -- the world's largest trawl fishery. In the U.S. alone, pollock catches $6 billion in 1994. This new net will affect this industry with in the next year.

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Johns Hopkins chemist David Draper says he works in an "RNA world." He considers DNA "this monotonous double helix," and has chosen instead to focus on the multi-folded, complex, and important shape and structure of RNA.

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Chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood of UC Santa Cruz, a nationally recognized biologist, spokesperson for higher education, and an experienced voice in the arena of national scientific policy, has been chosen by her peers as the next president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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The new Intel Pentium MMX microprocessor may lure buyers because a new study shows a majority of current World Wide Web users have begun to experience hardware and software problems when attempting to test new innovations.

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National tax reform may have a substantial impact on the environment as well as on economic growth, researchers at Resources for the Future and Stanford University suggest. They have recently launched a study of the environmental implications of three alternative tax plans -- the flat tax, the national sales tax, and the unlimited savings account tax -- now under discussion in Congress.

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A University of Minnesota entomologist has found that a line of "hygienic" bees can defend their hives against the huge Varroa mite and also against two common honeybee diseases, a finding that spells hope in the face of a 100 percent Varroa infestation rate in hives nationwide. The work is published in the current Apidologie.

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ASME International (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) is contributing 12 technical sessions and symposia at National Manufacturing Week, to be held March 10-13, 1997, in Chicago, Ill. The sessions will explore energy conservation, asset management, problem solving and other issues impacting the safety, reliability and maintenance of plant facilities and their systems. Speakers include members of the ASME Plant Engineering and Maintenance Division.

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Dr. John Lienhard, the MD Anderson Professor of Mechanical Engineering and History at the University of Houston, invites those attending Energy Week to travel with him down "The Highways of the 30's," on Wed., Jan. 29, at 6:00 p.m., at the George R. Brown Convention Center, 3rd Level. An honorary member of ASME International, Dr. Lienhard will describe how engineering advancements in automotive technology, fuels and service have changed our society.

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ATHENS, Ga. -- The steady warming of the Earth's atmosphere, along with increased concentrations of carbon dioxide, could one day bring cataclysmic changes to the planet, some scientists believe. They have suggested global warming could cause anything from the widespread elimination of species to the melting of polar ice caps. But new studies in USDA's Southern Global Change Program indicate there is at least one hidden advantage to increased CO2 concentrations: much better tree growth due to improved photosynthesis.