Science News

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Press release of issue dated October 2 for New Scientist, the international science and technology weekly newss magazine.

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Good posture is important to somebody besides mothers - namely auto makers. Engineers at Michigan State University are working to give them the tools to make sitting up straight in the car easy.The solution to car seat slouch lies in the mannequins used to represent people in the seats automakers design. MSU engineers are working to design mannequins that sit like real people.

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Boston University joins research partners across the nation in an alliance to build the infrastructure that will link many of the world's most advanced computers into a network that will allow researchers to solve complex problems in fields such as cosmology, molecular biology, nanomaterials and environmental hydrology. In anticipation of this effort Boston University has added 128 processors to its Silicon Graphics (SGI) Origin2000TM system, giving it a total of 192 processors, and making it one of the most powerful systems available on any US university campus.

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Nine months ago, New York City and the upstate New York towns in the New York City watershed formally settled their differences over environmental restrictions in the watershed region, but close to a third of the upstate residents don't know about the agreement, according to Cornell University rural sociologists.

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Rensselaer researcher Michael Savic has developed an electronic device that acts as an early warning system for leaks and explosions in pipelines and storage tanks. Savic's patented system extends his earlier work to detect problems in underground pipelines.

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Technology developed in Minnesota will radically change water quality testing and monitoring across the world. RUSS, a Remote Underwater Sampling Station, can remotely gather, measure, analyze, chart, store and report water quality data. RUSS does the work of several scientists within a matter of minutes and has the capability to operate continuously from a remote location.

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A new book from Cornell University Press, "Rethinking Home Economics," reviews the history and evolution of the home economics professions.

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A very thin coating developed at Sandia National Laboratories improves sensor sensitivity 500 times in detecting the lethal gas Sarin,improves more usual environmental monitoring, helps separate molecules in oil refining and drug manufacturing -- and barely increases the size of the sensor.

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A Purdue University animal scientist has figured out why livestock have trouble gaining weight on a diet of tannin-rich sorghum. His work eventually may help livestock, and people, get more nutrition out of lower-cost, tannin-rich grains.

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Neurosurgical specialists, reporting at the 47th annual meeting of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) next week, will describe how the Digital Holographyô System from VoxelÆ (NASDAQ:VOXL) is helping them plan and perform complex neurosurgical procedures.

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Newborn babies may avoid lifelong vision problems thanks to a discovery in rhesus monkeys at the Yerkes Primate Center at Emory University. Scientists there have found that a dramatic reorganization of brain cells occurs in infant monkeys in the first three weeks of life, corresponding in humans to the first three months. These neural connections turn out to be the building blocks of a healthy visual system, allowing for a baby's sudden ability to see three-dimensionally, and as the years go by, to avoid a series of irreversible visual defects.

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Biographies of John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry, inventors of the first digital computer.

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ISU officials today (Oct. 8) unveiled and operated a full-scale replica of the first electronic digital computer, the Atanasoff- Berry Computer (ABC) at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The replica is a working model of original ABC, built in 1939 - 42.

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Tips from the National Science Foundation--9/26/97: 1) University of Miami Joins Suny Buffalo to Study Airborne Contagions; 2) Skeletal Muscle May Repair Heart Damage, 3) President's Budget Continues Shift to Civilian R&D

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Thanks to the confluence of a new technology in virology and a recent patent in rearing insects, scientists at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research Inc. (BTI), located at Cornell University, have found a better way to produce commercial quantities of pharmaceutical proteins out of insect larvae.

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A team of Miami University researchers has discovered another part of the process that allows certain reptiles and amphibians to freeze solid and then thaw back to healthy life. Glucose, key to preserving wood frogs when they freeze during winter, is not flushed out of a frog's body when it thaws, but is reabsorbed into the bloodstream through the frog's urinary bladder, according to research by Drs. Jon Costanzo, Phyllis Callahan and Richard Lee, professors of zoology, and Michael Wright, research associate, all at Miami.

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Experimental psychologists have discovered that babies as young as 8 months are quite good at learning and remembering words.

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When you're upset, putting the hurt into words is probably the best thing you can do to get over it, says a Purdue University expert on communication.

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A Purdue University study sheds new light on the old practice of marrying for money. "Marriage has a lot to do with wealth accumulation," says Janet Wilmoth, assistant professor of sociology. "Getting and staying married appears to provide institutional benefits that greatly impact long- term economic well-being."

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Press release of issue dated 27 September for New Scientist, the international science and technology weekly news magazine

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The process of photosynthesis -- the way in which plants convert water and carbon dioxide into oxygen -- is much clearer now, thanks to research by two Michigan State University chemists. While other researchers have been able to hit upon only "bits and pieces" of the process, these two scientists were able to bring it all together.

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Three tips from Los Alamos: 1) Embedded computer data protects secrets, 2) 60 Tesla magnet packs a wallop, 3) Computer model for molten alloys

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Iowa State University and Ohio State University will manage the newly established Airworthiness Assurance Center of Excellence announced Sept. 23 by the Federal Aviation Administration. AACE will identify and solve critical technology challenges related to national aircraft safety, including research in the areas of aircraft inspection, maintenance and repair; crashworthiness; propulsion; advanced materials; and landing gears.

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The Space Shuttle Atlantis, scheduled for launch on the STS-86 mission on Sept. 25, will support the third and final flight of KidSat (short for Kid's Satellite program), NASA's pilot education program that uses an electronic still camera aboard the Shuttle to bring the frontiers of space exploration to a growing number of U.S. middle school classrooms via the Internet.

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A University of Delaware research scientist says the zero emission car plugged into your garage could make large, expensive, centrally located utilities obsolete.

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A Cornell study finds student evaluations of teachers invalid; ratings on many measures soared when the professor simply used a more enthusiastic tone of voice in teaching the same material.

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Heavy rains hit Atlantic City, N.J., with new records in August, while many parts of the Northeast region remained dry, according to the climatologists at the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University. The Atlantic City rain event of August 20-21 deluged the area with 13.52 inches. Atlantic City's daily precipitation total of 11.2 inches on Aug. 20 more than surpassed their all-time daily rainfall record of 6.46 inches set on July 10, 1949.

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If ever there was a clinching argument for meandering evolution, it is the process of symbiotic nitrogen fixation. Beautiful though it is, such a process could not possibly be the result of straightforward design. We need nitrogen desperately, as do all living things, for nitrogen atoms are a key component of many important biological molecules, including DNA, RNA and proteins. And proteins, as they say, are us.

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The only signature Michelangelo da Caravaggio ever put on one of his paintings appears as a flow of blood oozing from the neck of a partially decapitated St. John in Caravaggio's greatest work, "The Beheading of St. John the Baptist." Why the newly knighted Baroque artist chose this bloody dedication is a key question that David Stone, assistant professor of art history at the University of Delaware, says he hopes to solve as a winner of the 1997-98 Rome Prize Competition.

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Five times tougher and 16 times more extensible than a human tendon, the leathery, yet amazingly stretchy collagen threads produced by marine mussels might someday suggest strategies for developing better artificial skin and other biomimetic materials, say University of Delaware researchers. In the Sept. 19, 1997 issue of Science, they describe byssal threads as containing "the first known protein [with] both collagenous and elastin-like domains."

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Hog farmers who hope to boost pig production by giving each of their healthy sows a single, massive shot of vitamin A are probably wasting their money, according to Purdue University research.

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The Gore Hammer Award, given to partnerships that make a contribution to the nation, was presented to the Louisiana Sea Grant Program at LSU and other members of the national Sea Grant Alliance, for promoting the safety of U.S. seafood.

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Paul Cloutier, Rice University professor of space physics and astronomy, is a co-investigator on the Mars Global Surveyor team that announced Wednesday that the red planet has a magnetic field.

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A new counterfeit-deterrencsystem has been developed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The technology is based on a non-chemical tagging agent that is difficult to duplicate but easy to scan using a simple optical scanner.

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When young children are interviewed suggestively over a long period of time, they begin to believe the fictitious events questioned about. Experts can't distinguish between children telling false or true accounts.

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Young fathers, barely more than children themselves, are learning how to be good dads thanks to a Purdue University Cooperative Extension Service class on fathering called "It's My Child, Too."

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Some airline passengers visiting the main security checkpoint at the Albuquerque International Airport this week are being asked to try out tomorrowís technology for combating terrorism ó an ìexplosives-detection portalî under development at Sandia National Laboratories for the Federal Aviation Adminstration (FAA). The ìportalî is intended to help prevent airliner hijackings and bombings by identifying passengers and airport visitors and employees who have recently been working with any of a wide variety of explosive chemicals.

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A new product invented by an Auburn University professor and being developed at West Virginia University may change the way disinfectants are applied in fighting diseases such as tuberculosis and Legionnaires' disease.

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University of Wisconsin-Madison physicists have created a model that seeks to explain a conundrum of modern astrophysics -- the origin of mysterious bursts of gamma rays that appear uniformly across the sky on an average of once a day. (Embargoed until Sept. 19, 1997.)

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Press release of issue dated 20 September for New Scientist, the international science and technology weekly news magazine

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The realization that atomic gas clusters could serve as part of a sort of ìlight bulbî that emits extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light when laser-heated has inspired a recently patented invention at Sandia National Laboratories. This light source enables research development of EUV lithography to pattern faster, more memory-dense microchips.

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Fish are an important global resource, yet scientists do not know how to predict how many fish will be produced in a given year. Scientists from around the world will meet at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore beginning Sept. 22 to discuss factors affecting the production rates of vital ocean fisheries.

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Two icebreaking ships will depart Tuktoyaktuk, Canada around September 18 to establish Ice Station SHEBA in the Arctic Ocean, launching the largest and most complex science experiment ever supported in the Arctic by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

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The beauty of the Internet is also a beast. The Internet is a global network of networks -- mostly private, and often competing among themselves. While the diffuse structure of the Internet is one of its strengths, the competitive environment has made collaboration on operational and engineering requirements difficult, and has made research on the metrics of the Internet virtually impossible.

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The earliest existing mound complex built by humans in the new world has been identified in Louisiana by a team of archaeologists and researchers from around the United States. Details of the discovery appear in tomorrowís (Sept. 19) issue of the journal Science. The complex of 11 mounds was built between 5,000 and 5,400 years ago and predates other known existent mound complexes by 1,900 years.

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The most frequently seen birds at feeders across North America last winter were the Dark-eyed Junco, House Finch and American goldfinch, according to the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, which released its Project FeederWatch Top 10 Birds List. Project FeederWatchers also reported large numbers of downy woodpeckers, blue jays, mourning doves, black-capped chickadees, house sparrows, northern cardinals and european starlings.

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Results from the first two years of a four-year study on skillful mediation will be presented at the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy conference Sept. 18-21 in Atlanta. "The crux of this research is to define what is skillful mediation," according to Margaret Herrman, a senior associate at the University of Georgia Vinson Institute of Government. "You can have mediation that's close to therapy and you can have mediation that's close to lawyering. Both styles can be highly successful, but is it mediation? We want to identify skillful practices that are common throughout mediation styles."

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Thanks to clean-up and pollution prevention efforts, San Diego Bay is cleaner and attracting more marine life. Among the increasing population are borer worms that dine on the wooden pilings and fenders that support many of the piers along the Bay. One solution may be a new design created at UC San Diego and approved by the San Diego Unified Port District : pilings are made from molded hollow tubes of advanced composite materials including glass fiber and vinyl ester resin.

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Science tips from Iowa State: 1) Unveiling of authentic working replica of the first computer on Oct. 8, 2) SEM lab hits the road for high school students, 3) Research projects focus on tissue regeneration, 4) Automating nuclear plant inspections.

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"You shouldn't wear lipstick when you're drinking a glass of champagne." That unique reporting style of Joe Palca, science correspondent for National Public Radio, has earned him the top chemistry reporting award from the world's largest scientific society.