March 29, 1997
I enjoyed and was heartened by the endeavors to protect our marble and limestone heritage, as addressed in "Consolidating the Stone" (SN: 1/25/97, p. 56). I was somewhat baffled, however, by the photo that purports to show the Mundo Maya Ruins in Mexico City.
Did the researchers relocate both the Temple of the Warriors and the Temple of Kukulcan, which normally reside at Chichén Itzá, to Mexico City to see how Yucatán limestone weathers in a different clime? Excellent job of landscape reconstruction as well.
Bill Preston
San Luis Obispo, Calif.
As you -- and several other readers -- point out, the ruins are not in Mexico City.
-- The Editors
"1996: Year of warmth and weather reversals" (SN: 1/18/87, p. 38) includes a map and caption that, taken together, boggle the mind. The map purports to show that the near-polar regions are warmer than the area between the tropics.
Surely, either the map is wrong or the caption is.
Russell Ward
Clover, S.C.
The caption should have read: Surface temperature anomalies, with cooler-than-normal regions in blue and warmer-than-normal regions in red.
-- R. Monastersky
J. Koudy Williams of the Bowman Gray School of Medicine wishes to clarify a statement in "Hormone Therapy: Issues of the Heart" (SN: 3/8/97, p. 140). In terms of protection from heart disease, he says, the widely prescribed progesterone MPA "appears to lessen the beneficial effects of estrogen."
Seymour Cray is erroneously spelled Clay in the Books listing (SN: 3/1/97, p. S9).
Three members of the Science News staff have been honored recently for journalistic achievement.
David Lindley, associate editor, won a Phi Beta Kappa award for outstanding contributions to humanistic learning. He was recognized for Where Does the Weirdness Go? Why Quantum Mechanics Is Strange but Not As Strange As You Think, published last year by Basic Books.
John Travis, who writes about biology, received honorable mention in the Evert Clark Award for Science Journalism. The award was announced at the meeting last month in Seattle of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Julie Ann Miller, editor, was selected to receive the University of Wisconsin's Award for Distinguished Service to Journalism and Mass Communication. The award, which recognizes outstanding career accomplishment, will be presented in Madison next month.
Table of Contents -- March 29, 1997
