BOILING REACTOR WILL MAKE SUPERHEATED STEAM — An Argonne National Laboratory experimental reactor achieved criticality for the first time Feb. 9 at the National Reactor Testing Station near Idaho Falls, Idaho. The plant, known as Borax 5, was built at a cost of nearly two million dollars. It will test the feasibility of making superheated steam by utilizing uranium fuel. The steam, in turn, would be used to drive a turbine to produce power. Borax 5 is designed to produce 20,000 kilowatts of thermal power at its maximum capacity. Nuclear superheated steam as used in the Borax 5 is expected to... (p. 4)

EFFECT OF WEIGHTLESSNESS — Astronaut John H. Glenn Jr.’s experience in weightlessness during his coming orbital flight will not be long enough to cause him any undue stress such as that suffered by Cosmonaut Titov, a U.S. Air Force expert reported. “Experiments by the Russians with animals and men as well as our own experiments indicate that man can pretty well tolerate, with little, if any discomfort, a period of four to five hours in a weightless or zero-g environment,” Col. John Paul Stapp, U.S. Air Force School of Aviation Medicine, Brooks Air Force Base, Texas, and internationally... (p. 4)

“SPACE WHISKERS” GROWN FOR NEW SPACE MATERIALS — Microscopically small “space whiskers” are being grown by scientists at Rocketdyne, a division of North American Aviation, Inc., Canoga Park, Calif., in search of methods of producing extremely strong new space materials. The fine filament-like crystals are being grown from many materials — lead, tin, copper, graphite, sapphire and even table salt. The tensile strength of the crystals reaches the level of millions of pounds because of the extraordinary perfection of their structure.... Some grow from a base like human whiskers, other... (p. 4)

MOON RACE WILL INCREASE — The race for the moon will become more competitive in 1962 in prestige, military and scientific aspects. Foremost there is developing a national will or desire to explore the moon and put an American landing party on the natural satellite of the earth. This is an objective set forth by President Kennedy last May for an accomplishment of this decade. The U.S. would like to beat the Russians to it. There is a major effort to this end by both National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Air Force. Major space industries are being given large amount... (p. 4)

EARTH AND PLANETS FORMED FROM DUST DRAWN TO SUN — The Earth and all the other planets of the solar system were formed from tiny dust particles accumulating around the sun as it passed through a vast dust cloud in space. This theory on the origin of the solar system was proposed in London by Prof. R.A. Lyttleton of Cambridge University, Cambridge, England.... The sun must have passed through several hundred if not thousands of dust clouds during its lifetime of several billion years. During one of these encounters, the sun’s speed relative to the cloud must have slowed down to a little more... (p. 4)

HORMONES AFFECT NERVES — Add sex hormones to all the other things that can make you feel depressed on some days and elated on others. Evidence that sex hormones can affect the body’s central nervous system in roles unrelated to sexual functions has been reported by physiologists at the University of California, Berkeley. The findings show that a potent female hormone known as estradiol has a marked effect on brain excitability, a fact that may help explain the well-known monthly ups-and-downs of feminine temperament. Contrary effects produced on the brain by male and female hormones also p... (p. 4)

ELECTRONIC COIN TOSSING — An electronic method of tossing coins that determines “heads” or “tails” 200,000 times a second has been devised at the U.S. Navy Electronics Laboratory, San Diego, Calif. The new machine is not a gambling device but is being used to develop automatic signal detection methods for future Navy radar. It promises to have application in civilian communication systems and quality control. In the device, electrical circuits play the part of coins. These electrical circuits rest in either one of two states — these two states represent the heads and tails of the c... (p. 4)

NEW EVIDENCE FOUND OF EXPANDING UNIVERSE — The universe is expanding, then collapsing again after a long time, evidence from photographs taken with the 200-inch telescope atop Mt. Palomar indicate. Dr. William A. Baum of Mt. Wilson and Palomar Observatories, Pasadena, Calif., said that present-day observations are not compatible with a steady-state universe in which matter is continuously being created. The observations were made on very distant galaxies belonging to clusters of galaxies, he told the Royal Astronomical Society meeting in London. The observations are based on the red-... (p. 4)

ARTIFICIAL HEART VALVE — A previously hopeless condition of the heart — a defective heart valve — can now be corrected by successful surgery, it was reported at the American Heart Association meeting in Miami Beach, Fla. Many of the 500 gravely ill patients described by three teams of surgeons who did partial or total replacements of the aortic valve (located at the root of the aorta, the body’s main artery) are still living, 10 to 18 months following surgery.… Another key factor reported was the development of synthetic materials such as Teflon, which can safely be implanted... (p. 4)

‘ALARM CLOCK’ BRINGS SNAKES TO SURFACE — A built-in “alarm clock” apparently helps a brightly-banded little desert snake come to the surface at night after he has buried himself to escape the day’s heat…. It had been noted that these snakes, which remain buried in the sand most of the time, appear to come to surface virtually in unison over a wide area every night. It was thought that they followed a rising heat barrier in the sand which rises as the sand cools off each night. Laboratory studies ... have indicated that there may be a little more to it than this. The inves... (p. 4)