Science News

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Scientists from Johns Hopkins and elsewhere will meet in Bethesda, Md., March 6-7 to discuss the latest research into climate change and its potential for triggering outbreaks of disease.

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The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME International) and the board of directors of the International Gas Turbine Institue (IGTI) have named Ann E. McClure, a certified association executive, as managing director of IGTI in Atlanta, Ga., starting in April.

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Since the devastating floods of 1972 that took nearly 500 lives, the human toll has declined in the United States, thanks in part to advances in science and technology as well as better partnerships among local, state and federal agencies working together to provide advance warnings to citizens.

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The first experiments of a collaborative U.S./Russian space science program were successfully launched recently aboard two Russian Meteorological MR-12 sounding rockets from Kapustin Yar, near Volgograd, Russia, a test range similar to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

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A national study on adolescent mothers who complete high school debunks a number of stereotypes, according to a University of Georgia researcher. Using data obtained from the National Survey of Family Growth, Velma McBride Murry, an associate professor of child and family development in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, examined the adult life experiences of 1,666 African-American women who had graduated from high school at least five years ago to determine how their lives were affected by their decisions concerning sex

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The discovery of the electron 100 years ago launched the modern era of science, according to a Central Michigan University physicist who plans to commemorate the discovery with a symposium featuring four of the nation's leading scientists, including a past Nobel prize winner.

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Purdue University researchers have found evidence that may explain the phenomenon of the smoke-filled barroom. In a study of regular smokers, the researchers found that consuming alcohol increased the physical craving to smoke.

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A natural disaster increases blood pressure in patients with high blood pressure, medical researchers confirmed in a landmark study published in the current issue of the American Journal of Hypertension.

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An Alliance of major research and technology enterprises based in San Diego, and administered by the University of California, San Diego, has been created to foster and expand the region's global leadership in science and technology.

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A new cooperative team of researchers at Cornell University and the North American Ginseng Association is going to find out if cultivating ginseng will be an economic boost. Ginseng, the herbal remedy used by Chinese healers for more than 4,000 years, grows wild in New York, where growers are beginning to see a blossoming industry.

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Imagine an air bag system that can sense and react to the location and force of an impact, and take into account the sizes and positions of the passengers in the car. The technology for just such a system has been created and demonstrated at Boston University's Photonics Center by Dr. James E. Hubbard, Jr., senior systems engineer and Dr. Shawn E. Burke.

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Scientists are puzzled by humans' ability to focus on one voice amid the clutter of background voices and sounds. Now, Johns Hopkins psychologists are finding that birds also can overcome the "cocktail party effect."

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A Purdue University animal waste expert is working to help swine producers take the stink out of community relations. He is looking at a method that may help reduce odor at the initial source ã the hog.

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This spring will mark the 25th anniversary of the U.S. Department of Energy's designation of the Savannah River Site as the nation's first National Environmental Research Park. A publication out this week celebrates the occasion with colorful photographs and important information on what has been accomplished in the past quarter of a century.

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Acadia National Park has been awarded grants for a pioneering genetic diversity study of wildlife to be conducted by The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor and the federal Cooperative Park Studies Unit at the University of Maine.

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With 1997 designated as the International Year of the Reef by marine scientists and conservationists, coral conservationissues have taken center stage. Recognizing the importance of these reef systems as one of the world's greatest habitats, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) targets coral conservation in both hemispheres, coupled with the Aquarium for Wildlife Conservation's coral breeding lab in New York.

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Press release of issue dated February 22 for New Scientist: 1) Web Bank Robbers Poised To Pounce; 2) A Cheeky Little Powder And It Travels Well; 3) Go On Then, Have The Broccoli If You Must; 4) Did Lax Officials Let Britons Drink A Deadly Pint?; 5) Jaws Bids For Olympic Glory; 6) Cracking The Code Of Custom Drugs; 7) Planes At Risk From Space Intruders; 8) Mighty Mouse Takes On Hepatitis; 9) Best Noses In Town ; #10: An Awfully Deep Adventure; 11) Australia's Giant Lab; 12) Welcome To Clusterworld

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When the National Geographic Society hunt for living giant squid sends sperm whales with video cameras to the ocean depths this month off New Zealand's South Island, the camerawhales will be tracked by the Cornell University Bioacoustics Research program. Distinctive click sounds produced by diving sperm whales will reveal their whereabouts to an array of hydrophones hanging vertically in the water, using Cornell equipment that pinpoints sound sources.

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A set of 15 awards in a new $10 million program led by the National Science Foundation -- Speech, Text, Image and Multimedia Advanced Technology Effort (STIMULATE) -- will fund university researchers investigating human communication and seeking to improve our interaction with computers.

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Conservation advocates may be overstating the promise of biodiversity prospecting -- the search for new products among genes found in wild organisms that may be of potential commercial value -- as a mechanism for financing the conservation of biological diversity, according to a new article published in Resources, the quarterly publication of Resources for the Future.

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Los Alamos scientists have developed a simple, environmentally friendly test that can spot flaws in concrete long before visible signs of failure become apparent. The test, which involves special chemical dyes, could replace a current one that uses uranyl nitrate with its special environmental headaches.

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Silicaon is one of the most common elements on earth, yet its surface structure is probably the most complicated of all --- a three-layered geometric construction of atoms with tiny holes at the peaks. Researchers at Northwestern University and the NEC Corporation in Japan have made the clearest images to date of this complex surface.

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Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) will unveil a new strategy for conserving tigers at the Zoological Society of London symposium, "Tigers 2000." The meeting, scheduled for February 20-21, will bring together many of the world's top tiger experts.

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Men with dependent personalities are more likely to have a significantly higher grade-point average than men with non-dependent personalities. That's according to research on the topic by Robert F. Bornstein, professor of psychology at Gettysburg College, PA.

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Just as virtamin C protects humans and many animals from environmental stress, researchers at Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research Inc. at Cornell have found that mutant plants lacking vitamin C had shriveled leaves, and when grown in an ozone-contained environment, they were not able to cope with the environmental stress, and were hypersensitive to sulfur dioxide and ultraviolet B radiation.

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The Northern Hemisphere's coldest month in more than 18 years may in part be due to a persistent low pressure system over the northwestern Atlantic Ocean, according to Dr. John Christy, an associate professor of atmospheric science in the Earth System Science Laboratory at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

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By the late 1980s, Thompson had developed the geographic mosaic theory of coevolution, which argues that the long-term dynamics of coevolution occur over large geographic areas rather than within local populations. Much of his current research is directed toward evaluating this theory, his work on Greya moths and the plants they pollinate, for example.

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When did time begin? Physicist Joel Primack argues that science can answer the question. It's a fantastic scenario, involving the Big Bang, inflation, and "eternal inflation." He'll explain it all at the AAAS meeting in Seattle.

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The influenza virus reproduces itself by pushing out a portion of a cell's outer membrane and pinching it off --- creating a new viral paricle than can go on to infect another cell. Just how the virus succeeds in pushing out the membrane has been clsarified by researchers at Northwestern University

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Are the oldest stars in the galaxy more ancient than the universe itself? That's the embarrassing conundrum facing astronomers today. At the AAAS meeting in Seattle, astronomer Michael Bolte will discuss solid evidence that stellar ages won't fall below 15 billion years.

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Los Alamos researchers have devised a scheme and algorithms to correct errors in quamtum computers, proposed machines that would manipulate the quantum states of individual atoms to perform calculations.

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A micro-chip designed at the University of New Mexico's Microelectronics Research Center is at the heart of an upgrade unit being installed on the hubble Space Telescope next week.

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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has nominated two documentary films produced with support from the National Science Foundation for an Academy Award.

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In the next century, a personal computer could know from the inflection in your voice -- or by a smile or frown -- what you want it to do. Basic research in multimedia technology funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) is moving us much closer to that reality.

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China and Indonesia suffered the deadliest and most destructive earthquakes in 1996, while the U.S. remained relatively quiet according to scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, Department of the Interior. The last deadly earthquake in the U.S. was the 1994 Northridge, Calif., quake that took 60 lives.

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Symmetries are evident everywhere in nature, even at the smallest scales of subatomic particles. At the AAAS meeting in Seattle, physicist Michael Dine will describe the latest work toward a theory of supersymmetry, which could round out the Standard Model of particle physics.

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One of the most comprehensive World Wide Web sites for amateur bird-watchers and professional ornithologists, BirdSource, opened for business Feb. 14 by accepting data from participants in Project FeederWatch at http://www.ornith.cornell.edu/CS/PFW/main.html. Co-managed by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society and constructed by the Cornell Theory Center, the Web site was demonstrated at the Seattle annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Embargo Date: 02/14/97

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A half-million-year record of some deep-water cousins of crabs called ostracodes provides some of the strongest evidence yet that global climate change can reduce the variety of life forms on Earth, according to a report released Thursday (Feb. 13, 1997).

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ATHENS, Ga. -- Last August, a group of scientists stunned the scientific world with evidence that life may have once existed on Mars. Their analysis of a Martian meterorite concluded that microscopic life may have been the source of "apparent" fossils it held. In the six months since then, several studies have questioned their interpretations. In a speech today (SATURDAY, 2/15, EMBARGOED) at the annual meeting of the AAAS, a key researcher in the original project called dismissals of the claims entirely premature.

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Tensegrity structures that bounce back to shape after being deformed require complicated mathematics, a Cornell expert told an audience at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Embargo Date: 02/14.97

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Life on Mars probably did and may still exist, a Cornell astronomer says. Mars, like Earth, has a "deep, hot biosphere" teeming with microbial life well beneath the surface, Tom Gold told the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Embargo Date: 02/13/97

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The onion bulb mite -- Rhizoglyphus robini -- has begun to attack some of New York's prized onion fields. Cornell University scientists are studying management techniques to control it.

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Hundreds of students in schools across the United States are helping biologists research questions about birds, a Cornell University ornithologist told an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) session on classroom science Feb. 16. When scientists and school children collaborate, everyone gains, said Andre Dhondt. Embargo Date: 02/16/97

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Some of the same evolutionary "predispositions" that held together extended families for our hunter-gatherer ancestors -- and even prototypical nuclear families until recently -- are partly to blame for today's dysfunction, conflict and violence within fractured families, Cornell University biologist Stephen Emlen reported Feb. 14 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Embargo Date: 02/14/97

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Thirty years after the first Green Revolution, Cornell researchers want to kick-start another one. This time, they want to add micronutrients to staple crops, making the food we eat even more nutritious. Embargo Date: 02/18/97

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From upstate New York and Massachusetts Bay to Puget Sound and the Pacific shoreline, thousands of grade-school students are collecting data on Monarch butterfly migrations, songbird populations, astronomy, and environmental science. Professional researchers will use this data to advance scientific knowledge.

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"There is mounting evidence that Mars is a water-rich planet that may have experienced warmer climates, and therefore, life, in the past,"according to Michael Carr, an astrogeologist with the U.S.Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in Seattle, on Thursday, Feb. 13.

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Water quality and quantity on Earth and the possibility of water on Mars are the topics of presentations by scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey at this week's annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) at the Seattle Convention Center.

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Astrophysicist Douglas Lin of UC Santa Cruz will discuss the dramatic evolution of models of planetary formation in an invited talk at the AAAS meeting in Seattle. New models must account for the wide variety of planets found since November 1995.

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Only 10 percent of children with attention deficiet hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) receive any kind of therapy to help them modify their behavior. A Purdue University expert on ADHD says that figure should be near 100 percent.