DEVICE PAGES DOCTORS — A pocket radio that whistles to let you know somebody is trying to reach you by telephone is part of a page-you-anywhere telephone system undergoing tests in the Allentown-Bethlehem, Pa., area. Doctors, lawyers and other persons who must maintain immediate and economical contact with their offices can be signaled anywhere in the two-city area, C. R. Kraus, Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania, told scientists at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers meeting in Buffalo, N. Y. The system … was described as an improvement over similar services now in use or p...

Get the real life In the article “Scientists get a second life” (SN: 5/24/08, p. 20), I take exception to Joanna Scott’s statement that “Second Life is real life.” In fairness, one could debate what she means by “life,” but the statement is just too strong to ignore. As technical director at a major theater, I spend part of each day making certain that the crews, performers and audiences are safe from the real-life, negative consequences of physics. To do this I use the senses of sight, hearing, touch and smell. (Taste isn’t often involved. Who wants to lick a hundred years o...

July 9–10 New Energy Symposium in New York. Visit www.neny.org/nes/2008/home July 22–25 Smithsonian’s Franzini Family Science Circus explores gravity, inertia and balance with hula hoops and balls. Visit discoverytheater.org August 16–20 Human Proteome Organisation’s Seventh Annual World Congress to be held in Amsterdam. Visit hupo2008.nl

New Shock Treatment — Neither electric stimulation nor convulsion may be necessary components in the electroshock treatment of certain types of mental illness…. A group of 97 mental patients … were assigned at random to one of five treatment groups: 1. conventional electroshock therapy (EST); 2. a combination of EST and the drug, anectine; 3. EST and truth serum (pentothal); 4. pentothal alone, and 5. laughing gas (nitrous oxide) alone…. All types of treatment led to marked improvement in the patient as measured by psychiatric evaluations and psychological tests. There were no statisti...

June 30–July 3 The Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition. Visit www.summerscience.org.uk/ July 6–10 Growers and researchers gather in Romania, for the European Association for Potato Research’s four-day congress. Visit www.eapr2008-brasov.com August 1 Total solar eclipse visible in parts of Canada, Greenland, Russia and China. Visit eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse.html SN Online www.sciencenews.org

June 15 Baseball as America opens at the Boston Museum of Science. Visit www.mos.org/exhibits_shows. June 29–July 3 The Ninth International Conference on Permafrost at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Visit www.nicop.org July 27/28 Southern δ-Aquariids meteor shower peak. Visit www.imo.net/calendar/2008

Carbon dioxide changes undifferentiated cells