Science News

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Press release of issue dated April 5 for New Scientist, the international science and technology weekly news magazine

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Cornell nutritionists examine links between body weight and dating attitudes, marriage and marital satisfaction.

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Insects as entrees will be a featured attraction at Purdue University's annual Bug Bowl, April 18-20. That's where the vendors rattle off a menu that includes chocolate chirpy chip cookies, mealworm chow mein and a trail mix called "caterpillar crunch."

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LSU researcher's study says the probability of a catastrophic hurricane striking anywhere along the northern Gulf of Mexico is once in an average of 400 years.

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A researcher at Louisiana State University has developed a prototype of a hand-held device that analyzes air to detect the chemicals, including those found in bombs. Edward Overton, director of the LSU Institute for Environmental Studies, developed the environmental detection device that can also be used for explosive and chemical war fare agent detection.

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A multi-center partnership led by the University of California, San Diego has been named as one of two awardees for the National Science Foundation's new Parterships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI) program.

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Since December, the nation has been inundated by a series of floods unusual in their scope and severity, with more on the way. Here is a list of experts, related Web sites, and background information on U.S. flood risk from a new report by NCAR political scientist Roger Pielke, Jr.

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Four automotive researchers from Sandia National Laboratories have received special recognition from Vice President Al Gore for their work in connection with a multi-player initiative aimed at developing a new generation of fuel-efficient, low-emission vehicles.

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Scientists are becoming increasingly concerned about the mysterious decline of coral reefs throughout the world and are recommending more extensive research into the potentially serious problem. Two Johns Hopkins biologists are publishing an overview of the problem of declining coral reef health in an April issue of the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health.

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Three tips from Los Alamos: 1. Atomic tags give unique signature to industrial processes. 2. High-speed cameras from nuke tests now spotting watermines. 3. New ion beam improves coating, other material processing.

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Press release of issue dated March 29 for New Scientist, the international science and technology weekly newss magazine

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On March 30, Dr. Anne Schiller, NC State University assistant professor of anthropology, will be featured in Ntional Geographic Explorer's "Borneo Beyond the Grave," a documentary about how the Nagju Dayak people, once legendary head-hunters, prepare the remains of deceased family members for the afterlife in the festive and complex ritual call tiwah. Since 1983 Schiller has been traveling to Central Kalimantan Province in Indonesian Borneo to study tiwah. She has published a book on nine years of research, also to be released on March 30.

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Volcano expert Stanley Williams of Arizona State University in Tempe barely survived an eruption that killed several of his colleagues while taking gas samples on the side of a Colombian volcano named Galeras.

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Someday you'll be able to get behind the wheel of your car, sit back, and relax for a four-hour trip. "You may be able to go as fast as 200 miles per hour without touching your steering wheel, accelerator or brake pedals," says a professor who is working on intelligent transportation systems (ITS).

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One-paragraph summaries of science news at Sandia National Laboratories, including an instrument sent to collect Artic weather data, the resurrection of order in a local high school, a virtual reality game for cops against hostage-takers, and a new use for Sandia's Prosperity Games.

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Weekly Tip Sheet from the Agricultural Research Service, USDA: 1-New Way to Grow Broccoli Cuts Chemicals, Saves Water and Protects Soil; 2- Formulas to Help Microbes Clean Up Toxic Waste; 3- New Technique Extracts Potential Cancer-Fighting Agent From Citrus; and 4- Dumping on House Flies

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In a unique, real-world test of the theory of evolution, a National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported research team has demonstrated that animals can adapt to sudden changes in their environment with surprising speed. Itís a finding that challenges current methods of evaluating evolutionary changes through the fossil record.

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University of California, San Diego seeks Public Information Representative.

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ATHENS, Ga. -- Biochemists at the University of Georgia have for the first time described the crystal structure of an enzyme crucial to an important class of organic chemicals called aldehydes. The discovery will help researchers understand better how aldehydes are metabolized in both plants and animals. EMBARGOED UNTIL MONDAY, MARCH 31 AT 5 P.M. EST The research was published today in the British journal Nature Structural Biology and was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

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Using a combination infrared spectrometer and camera designed and built by Cornell University researchers and attached to the 200-inch telescope at Palomar Observatory, Cornell and NASA scientists have made ground-based measurements in an effort to learn what kind of stuff Comet Hale-Bopp is sloughing off as it approaches perihelion, to learn more about the makeup of the celestial visitor and, perhaps, the origins of the solar system.

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Cornell scientists have achieved a "Holy Grail" of materials science -- pure, single crystal growth of any film on a semiconductor substrate, a technique that holds promise to revolutionize electronics.

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Imagine the effect on scientific literacy if every college teacher could turn at will to a Pulitzer Prize-winning expert on biodiversity and gifted lecturer to explain biology fundamentals to undergraduates.

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A yearlong series of Hubble Space Telescope observations of comet Hale-Bopp has revealed surprising new information about comet structure. The findings will be described in the March 28 issue of "Science." Embargoed until 4 p.m. EST on March 27.

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A new material developed at Virginia Tech has the potential to strengthen structures such as airplane wings and fuselage as well as the armor in cars and tanks.

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Resources for the Future today releases the first in a series of briefing papers on key issues in the debate over global climate change. As decisionmakers prepare for domestic policy debates and the ongoing international negotiations under the Framework Convention on Climate Change, RFF's briefs provide topical, timely, and non-technical information and analysis.

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This is a trick question. Until now, the only way to be sure of the answer would be to violate confidentiality laws and track down the individual students.

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Computer scientists at Regis University in Denver are working with the Denver Police Department to make the stressful art of police dispatching into a more exact--and a cheaper-- science.

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Most rural areas of the United States are catching on with the national "information revolution," as the gaps between cyber "haves" and "havenít yets" are lessening, according to a new study funded by NSF. Recent legislation to restructure the nationís electric energy systems industry also contained some high-performance challenges, which NSF is helping the industry to meet. The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DOE) have agreed to jointly fund a program to explore fundamental processes in plasma science and engineering.

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Trinity College in Hartford, Ct., will sponsor its fourth annual Fire-Fighting Home-Robot contest--the largest public robotics contest held in the United States (participants range from ages ten to 65)--on Sunday, April 20.

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The U.S. must play a key role in saving central Africa s tropical forests, now in sudden peril due to an unprecedented land rush by high-volume logging companies, according to Michael Fay, a conservation biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) headquartered at the Bronx Zoo.

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A chocoholic Johns Hopkins graduate student working in a computer vision lab has figured out how a computer can tell the difference between the kind with the creamy middles and the bumpy peanut clusters. It may sound like a silly exercise, but, actually, teaching a computer to distinguish among curved objects -- not just those with straight, hard edges -- is quite an advance.

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Highlights of March 22 New Scientist.

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The FAA and NCAR explore a new detection and warning system for Juneau, Alaska, and tackle remote sensing and forecasting problems. Meanwhile the U.S. Navy seeks NCAR's help with choppy winds on high- speed vessels

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A pilot school security program between Sandia and Belen High School (N.M.) is being credited for an impressive decline in the number of incidents that typically distress school administrators and students alike -- violence, theft, and drug and alcohol use. In a recent letter sent to President Clinton, Belen

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While the controversy continues over whether a martian meteorite bears evidence of ancient life on mars, a Purdue University scientist says the rocky fragments can tell us something about the early life of the planet itself.

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Modern movie superheroes rescue hostages by evading hailstorms of bullets and harming only evil-doers who resist. In the flesh-and-blood world, people who sign on to be cops -- whether city, state or FBI -- need extensive training to make the split-second judgments that would protect themselves, rescue the innocent, and disarm or disable hostage-takers. To widen access to such training, lessen its cost yet broaden its focus, a virtual reality simulation that allows two-person law enforcement teams to grip guns, don virtual reality glasses, and burst into the harsh environment of hostage-takers and their victims has been created in prototype by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories.

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The federal government has made substantial progress recently to improve America's food safety system by adopting a new regulatory framework that focuses on prevention and clearly defines the roles industry and government must play. But reform of the system must go further and assign responsibilities more clearly, make better use of scarce resources, and prepare for future challenges, including those posed by persistent foodborne illnesses and the globalization of the food economy, according to a new article authored by the former head of USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service. The article appears in the current Food and Drug Law Journal.

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The Biotechnology Information Institute is now offering the Federal Bio-Technology Transfer Directory as an online Internet Web database. Besides being the largest specialized database of licensing opportunities in the biomedical, biotechnology and pharmaceutical areas, it is the only source for information about federal bio-technology transfers and related commercialization activities.

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What do boiling-hot fissures in the earth's crust, the insides of airplane fuel tanks, vast expanses of ice in Antarctica and the parched sands of baking deserts have in common with environments on other planets?

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The International GovNews Project has announced a special government category on the Internetís Usenet news system. The creation of this new category lays the groundwork for the wide, cost-effective electronic dissemination and discussion by topic of large amounts of public government information.

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The 25 million acres of land entrusted to the U.S. military may now benefit from more than 50 years of study in conservation and land management. A new 500-page publication called ≥Conserving Biodiversity on Military Lands: A Handbook for Natural Resource Managers≤ is now available for the U.S. Department of Defense. The bookπs publication is due in part to the efforts of Dr. Gary Meffe, a senior research ecologist with the University of Georgiaπs Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. He wrote the book with Michele Leslie, Jeffrey Hardesty and Diane Adams, all with The Nature Conservancy.

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As the United States Congress considers legislation that would restrict the trading of municipal solid waste (MSW) among states, researchers at Resources for the Future have found that, under certain circumstances, limits placed on the volume of MSW shipped by one state to another state may actually increase the number of interstate waste shipments as well as increase disposal costs for some regions of the country. Embargoed March 20

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The Northeast survived the 11th warmest February in 103 years of record -- warm enough to shatter six all-time temperature records for the month and set or tie 47 daily high-temperature records, according to climatologists at the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University.

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The community around York, NY will hear a report on the feasibility of a central plant that would remove manure odor, recycle manure for value-added products, improve dairy waste management and perhaps provide energy back to the community. All this, and it would more than pay for itself, too, according to a Cornell professor of agricultural and biological engineering.

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A team of Los Alamos National Laboratory and Caltech scientists have made important breakthroughs in applying a powerful new technique that marries two existing technologies to probe materials at a microscopic level. EMBARGOED until Mar 19, 1997 at 1:30 p.m. Central Time

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LAWRENCE -- Another match has been set in a long-running academic debate about whether birds descended from dinosaurs. At issue, said Larry Dean Martin, curator of paleontology at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum, is whether these dinosaurs had feathers.

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When the anti-nausea drug Thalidomide came out on the market in the late 1950s, one molecule in the drug caused terrible birth defects. That molecule was what chemists call a "chiral" molecule. Chiral molecules are molecules which are chemically and structurally the same, but are mirror images -- one is right-handed and the other is left-handed. Until now there has been no reliable way to separate right- and left-handed chiral molecules. But that is changing.

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Discoveries by a team of LSU researchers could lead to control of the destructive Formosan termite.

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Background information relating to the accuracy and reliability of global climate monitoring by microwave sounding units aboard NOAA satellites has been posted on the UAH web site. The address is: http://www.atmos.uah.edu./essl/msu/background.html

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Professionals involved in the research, design, operation and regulation of America's 114 waste-to-energy plants and more than 400 facilities around the world, will meet at the Fifth Annual North American Waste-to-Energy Conference (NAWTEC V) this April 22-25, at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel and Convention Center in Research Triangle Park, N.C.