Science News

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New Scientist Tip Sheet for 12-31-97

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President Clinton today presented the nation's most prestigious science and technology honors, awarding nine National Medals of Science and five National Medals of Technology.

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Purdue researchers have demonstrated a new method for using lasers and semiconductors to more accurately measure the velocity of a moving object.

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Industry and government policy initiatives, coupled with growing federal recognition for the need to retain and expand the role of clean energy sources, significantly shifted policymakers' attitudes toward the world's nuclear energy programin 1997.

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We know next to nothing about what effect increased ultraviolet-B radiation will have on forests as the stratospheric ozone shield continues to disintegrate over the next century. Also, since global processes do not operate in isolation, how will the UV-B effect on forests affect their ability to cope with anticipated global warming?

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The world's most advanced search for the basic building blocks of matter -- a quest begun in ancient Greece -- will be conducted with the help of physicists from the University of Iowa and Iowa State University.

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Instruments on the Lunar Prospector -- a NASA mission slated for launch Jan. 5 -- will provide information bearing on a major question impacting the future of space colonization: Does the moon have water?

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1- Conceiving and creating manufactured goods in a day, 2- a microtransmission as small as a grain of sand, 3- a 75-million-year-old dinosaur's call recreated, and 4- removing landmines-- the left-behind scourge of past wars.

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A physics professor who plays her trumpet and guitar in class to explain the principles of physics and who was named Teacher of the Year by Alpha Sigma Nu at Fairfield University last spring, has become one of the first recipients of a grant under a bew National Science Foundation's program for women in research and education.

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November capped a cool autumn in the Northeast, making it the fifth month in a row of average temperatures below the 30-year normal, according to Keith Eggleston, a senior climatologist at the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University. The region's area-weighted monthly average temperature was 2.9 degrees cooler than normal, making it the 21st coolest November in the last 103 years.

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Rates of atmospheric mercury deposition in Maine appear to have reached a peak in the early to mid-1970s and to have declined significantly by 1982, according to a report by University of Maine geologists published in the December issue of the journal Water, Air and Soil Pollution (v. 100: 271-186, 1997). Stephen A. Norton, Gordon C. Evans and Steve Kahl of the UMaine Department of Geological Sciences used archived cores from Sargent Mountain Pond and Big Heath in Acadia National Park on Mt. Desert Island to determine historical trends in mercury deposition from the atmosphere to the Maine landscape. The cores were collected in 1982 and 1983.

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Four Tips from Los Alamos * Record-setting atomic trapping * Wee little boreholes for oil reservoir searches * Lasers and powderscombine under computer control for product making * Chemical reaction for removing actinides from the environment

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Scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago have found an important molecular clue to genetic diseases caused by expansions of repeated DNA segments. The lengths of the segments and the status of protein synthesis in a cell affect their replication.

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 -- An estimated 70,000 to 90,000 scientists emigrate from Russia every year, according to an article published in the Dec. 22 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. Because they are in the 30- to 45-year-old range, almost an entire generation of scientists has been lost to one of the world's largest countries.

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Research based on space technology is helping improve crop management decisions for rural farmers.

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A "drum-thunker" and a high-temperature electric torch are helping a Mississippi State University lab develop ways to reduce and safely store nuclear wastes.

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ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMISTRY TIP SHEET - January 1998 1. Pure as the Driven Snow? Tracking Pollutants on Snowflakes 2. Getting the Lead out May Mean Cleaning up the Outdoors 3. What Is the Source of Atmospheric Mercury Contamination in Remote Areas?

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Nuclear Industry comment on DOE Energy Information Administration report, " Annual Energy Outlook 1998."

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Cornell University astronomer Joseph Veverka and a team of scientists are releasing humanity's first close-up images of a little-known c-class asteroid 253 Mathilde to be published exclusively in the journal Science on Friday, Dec. 19. Scientists didn't expect to find the minor planet so densely pocked with craters and so porous. It is made mostly of carbonaceous chondrite.

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Los Alamos metallurgists adapting technology for spraying molten metal to national security applications have also found a use for the technology as a new tool for sculptors.

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Imagine if your old chemistry textbook could suddenly come to life. You could see chemical reactions or an interactive representation of the periodic table.

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Leptin, a hormone that appears to play an important role in body metabolism and obesity, has been found for the first time in human breast milk.

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New Scientist Tip Sheet for 12-16-97

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Astronomers will release today (Dec. 17) the clearest Hubble Space Telescope images yet of zesty and mysterious cosmic spouts - known as FLIERs -- emanating from distant objects that once were stars like our sun.

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The renovation of Vassar College's Carol and James Kautz Admission House has garnered awards for renovation and design from leading construction and architectural organizations.

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Rolla, Mo. -- Recent tests of steel from the Titanic reveal that the metal was much more brittle than modern steel but the best available at the time, a metallurgical engineering professor at the University of Missouri-Rolla says in a paper to be published in the January 1998 issue of Journal of Metals.

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If you have a phobia about "Friday the 13th" then 1998 isn't going to be a good year for you. There are three "Friday the 13ths" in the upcoming year: February 13, March 13 and November 13. Thomas Fernsler can discuss triskaidekaphobia--fear of the number 13.

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Science tips for December include ISU research on: 1.) Shuttle bus to space; 2.) Satellite sticky tape; 3.) Homegrown plastics; 4.) ISU physicists help build 'discovery engine'; 5.) Pure cooling power.

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Between January 2 and 9, 1998, Louise Hose, the country's leading female cave explorer and a geology professor from Westminster College in Missouri, will lead a team of scientists into an almost unknown worldówhere they will study living creatures so bizarre that for centuries no one realized they were alive. Hose's team will travel to southern Mexico to delve into the Cueva de Villa Luz, or "The Cave of the Lighted House" and the rare sulfur-based life there.

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Scientists have discovered a bacterium with the same insect-thwarting properties as the widely-used Bacillus thurengensis. The bacterium, Photorhabdus luminescens, contains a toxin proven effective against a broad array of insects, and promises to become a potent, safe and environmentally benign weapon in the war against insect pests.

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As winter finches move south across the Canada-U.S. border in what may be record numbers, ornithological scientists are getting their best-ever look at a massive bird 'irruption,' thanks to thousands of citizen scientists using BirdSource, the interactive World Wide Web database for bird information operated by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society. The online database records bird sightings -- by casual backyard bird-watchers as well as serious bird enthusiasts.

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Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and the James A. Baker Institute for Animal Health at Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine are reporting the development of a framework reference map of the canine genome. The map covers most of the canine genome. It was constructed from 150 microsatellite markers developed by the Seattle group and typed on pedigrees developed by the Cornell team.

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A 'dispatcher' gene--described in the Dec. 12, 1997, issue of Science--seems to juggle assignments for many `sentry' genes in a model plant system and may ultimately help researchers design hardier, more disease-resistant food plants, a University of Delaware scientist says.

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Food Chemistry Tip Sheet: 1. Soy-Based Infant Formulas Contain Beneficial Isoflavones 2. Sunflower Pectin Can Be Used for Low-Calorie Jellies 3. Epoxy from Can Copatings Found in Infant Formula Liquid Concentrates 4. Canadian Cured Meat Shows Little Decline in Nitrite Levels

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President Clinton will present the nation's highest science and engineering honor, the National Medal of Science, to Marshall N. Rosenbluth, a nuclear physicist at the University of California, San Diego. Rosenbluth is one of fourteen oustanding scientists, inventors and business leaders being honored by the President on December 16 at a ceremony in the Old Executive Office Building.

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The Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University has released this year's statistical probabilities chart for a white Christmas for major metropolitan areas and other selected cities in the Northeast. It is not a forecast.

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Nashville, Tenn. - Two Vanderbilt University mechanical engineering professors are developing a tiny insect-like robot, about a third the size of a credit card, which will have applications for military and intelligence-gathering missions.

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A really compact disk, the size of a penny, that packs as much information as 30 current CDs could be on the horizon if technology developed by Stephen Chou becomes commercialized. The University of Minnesota electrical engineering professor has found a way to store 400 billion bits (or 400 gigabits) of information in a square inch of CD space; this is 800 times the storage capacity of current CDs, which carry only half a gigabit per square inch.

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Only one area of the continental U.S. has not been mapped --the Everglades. Now a team from the U.S. Park Service and the University of Georgia are in the final year of a mapping project.

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It used to be a rule that a thick envelope from a college was good news and a thin envelope was bad. That's no longer the case. Smaller schools are trying to keep the process as personal as possible.

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Many high schools and colleges prepare lists of books and plays that they recommend students read in order to be better prepared for a college curriculum. Here are some suggestions for a literary hot sheet from colleges and universities around the nation.

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New computer modeling suggests that global warming might not be entirely a product of human activity. The research shows that carbon and sulfur emissions can have the reverse effect, serving to cool down the planet.

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Got milk? Yes, you do. Those television commercials in which some poor dupe gets too little milk too late are working well. A Cornell University study to be published in December indicates that thanks to heavy doses of advertising, more and more American consumers are buying fluid milk.

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East Lansing, Mich. -- Someone call Tom Cruise. Based on safety belt use in the top movies of 1996, buckling up on the silver screen seems like "Mission: Impossible."

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Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are creating and studying aerogels, substances so porous they are more air than solid material. When used as insulators on computer chips, these porous materials could more than double computing speeds.

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Researchers have answered a fundamental question about how G proteins, the cell's message relay switch, coordinate and control signals that determine cell activities. By looking at the crystal structure of one type of G protein (Gs-alpha) bound to its target, an enzyme found in heart tissue, UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas scientists also uncovered a possible target for cardiac drugs.

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A new "DNA" biochip developed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory could revolutionize the way the medical profession performs tests on blood.

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The decline in political party loyalty and the influence of newspapers versus television are influencing political elections, making the results more volatile than in the past.

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Air-pollution-related hydrocarbon emissions from vegetation are much higher than expected over the African savanna (flat tropical grasslands), while those coming from the rain forests are somewhat lower than prior estimates, according to scientists. The National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research team is mapping natural and human-caused trace gas emissions across the African continent in a project is called EXPRESSO, the Experiment for Regional Sources and Sinks of Oxidants.

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New ultra-high speed computer software can simulate the effects of solar surface eruptions on the Earth's magnetosphere. 3-D models of eruptions are created far faster than real time---meaning the simulation might some day predict the effects of space weather phenomena on Earth in ample time to prepare for them.