News of the Week:

Secondary Smoke Carries High Price

Nonsmokers exposed to secondary smoke suffer 20 percent more damage to their arteries than those not exposed.

Sources:

George Howard
Wake Forest University
Department of Public Health Sciences
Winston-Salem, NC 27157-1063

Thomas A. Pearson
University of Rochester School of Medicine
Department of Community and Preventive Medicine
601 Elmwood Avenue
P.O. Box 644
Rochester, NY 14642

Female flies pick mates with sexy eyes

Among some species of stalk-eyed flies, the male with the longer eye stems gets the female.

Sources:

Michael J. Ryan
University of Texas at Austin
Department of Zoology
Patterson 140
Austin, TX 78712

Gerald S. Wilkinson
University of Maryland
Department of Zoology
College Park, MD 20742

Tick, tock, enzyme rewinds cellular clock

Forcing cells to make an enzyme called telomerase apparently makes them practically immortal.

Sources:

Calvin B. Harley
Geron Corporation
230 Constitution Drive
Menlo Park, CA 94025

Woodring E. Wright
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience
5323 Harry Hines Boulevard
Dallas, TX 75235-9039

Unsaturated fats play yin-yang cancer role

Whereas diets rich in monounsaturated fats appear to offer protection against breast cancer, polyunsaturates may increase a woman's chance of developing the disease.

Sources:

Canola Information Service
ASA 116 103rd Street, East
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 1Y7
Canada
E-mail: canola@sk.sympatico.ca

Leonard A. Cohen
American Health Foundation
1 Dana Road
Valhalla, NY 10595

Lenore Kohlmeier
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
School of Public Health
Departments of Nutrition and Epidemiology
2105e McGavran-Greenberg Hall
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7400

Alicja Wolk
Karolinska Institute
Department of Medical Epidemiology
S-171 77 Stockholm
Sweden
E-mail: alicja.wolk@mep.ki.se

Planet posts temperature record for 1997

Globally averaged temperatures continued to rise last year, capping a string of record warm years.

Sources:

John R. Christy
University of Alabama at Huntsville
College of Atmospheric Science
Huntsville, AL 35899

James Hansen
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
2880 Broadway
New York, NY 10025

Thomas R. Karl
National Climatic Data Center
151 Patton Avenue
Asheville, NC 28801-5001

Engineered blood vessel is only human

A replacement blood vessel made completely of cultured human cells has the strength of a natural artery.

Sources:

Francois A. Auger
Laval University
Department of Surgery
Faculty of Medicine
Quebec City, Quebec G1S 4L8
Canada

Lucie Germain
Laval University
Department of Surgery
Faculty of Medicine
Quebec City, Quebec G1S 4L8
Canada

Nicolas L'Heureux
University of California, San Diego
Department of Bioengineering
9500 Gilman Drive
EBU1, Room 6405
La Jolla, CA 92093-0412
E-mail: nheureux@bioeng.ucsd.edu

Anthony Ratcliff
Advanced Tissue Sciences
Research and Development
10933 North Torrey Pines Road
La Jolla, CA 92037

Stuart K. Williams
University of Arizona
Department of Surgery
1501 North Campbell Avenue
Tucson, AZ 85724
E-mail: skwill@u.arizona.edu
Web site: http://www.ahsc.arizona.edu/surgery/stu.htm

Black hole acts as cosmic 'Old Faithful'

Fluctuations in X-ray emissions from the vicinity of a suspected black hole appear linked to jets of hot matter hurled from the object every 30 minutes.

Sources:

Jean H. Swank
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Mail Stop Code 662
Greenbelt, MD 20771

Self-destruction may run lethal gamut

Risk factors for suicide, such as emotional instability and conduct problems in adolescence, also play a role in accidental deaths.

Sources:

Glyn Lewis
University of Wales
College of Medicine
Department of Psychological Medicine
Cardiff CF4 4XN
United Kingdom

Jan Neeleman
University of Groningen
Department of Social Psychiatry
P.O. Box 30.001
9700 RB Groningen
Netherlands

Research Notes

Behavior

To dream, perchance to scan

A brain-scan investigation of sleeping men offers clues as to how various aspects of the neural system make dreaming possible.

Sources:

Allen R. Braun
National Institutes of Health
National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
Voice, Speech, and Language Branch
Language Section
Bethesda, MD 20892

Earth Science

El Nino shifts Earth's momentum

The El Nino warming has speeded up atmospheric winds and slowed down Earth's rotation.

Sources:

John M. Gipson
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD 20771

David A. Salstein
Atmospheric and Environmental Research
840 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02139

Did humans scorch Australia's outback?

Fires set by people tens of thousands of years ago may have altered the Australian climate.

Sources:

Gifford H. Miller
University of Colorado
INSTAAR and Geological Sciences
Boulder, CO 80309-0450

Science & Society

Year of the troubled oceans

As the United Nations launches a 12-month focus on oceans, 1,600 biologists call for immediate action to address growing harm to life in the seas.

Sources:

International Year of the Ocean
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission
1 rue Miollis
75732 Paris Cedex 15
France
E-mail: i.oliounine@unesco.org
Web site: http://www.unesco.org/ioc/iyo/iyohome.html

Elliott A. Norse
Marine Conservation Biology Institute
15806 N.E. 47th Court
Redmond, WA 98052-5208

SeaWeb
1731 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., 4th Floor
Washington, DC 20009
E-mail: seaweb@seaweb.org
Web site: http://www.seaweb.org

Curtis Weldon
U.S. House of Representatives
2452 Rayburn
Washington, DC 20515

Millennium bug bites?

A Web site tries to sort fact from fancy among rumors of impending disasters because computers may not recognize that a year given as 00 refers to 2000, not 1900.

Sources:

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
P.O. Box 717
Palo Alto, CA 94302
Website: http://www.cpsr.org/home.html

Norman Kurland
110 Salisbury Road
Delmar, NY 12054
Website: http://crisny.org/users/kurlandn/

Articles:

Instant Transport
Achieving quantum teleportation in the laboratory

Researchers successfully transfer a photon's polarization state to another, remote photon.

Sources:

Charles H. Bennett
IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598

Francesco De Martini
Dipartimento de Fisica
Universita degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza
Piazzale Aldo Moro 2
I-00185 Roma
Italy

Tony Sudbery
Department of Mathematics
York University
Heslington
York Y01 5DD
United Kingdom

Anton Zeilinger
Institut fuer Experimentalphysik
Universitaet Innsbruck
Technikerstrasse 25
A-6020 Innsbruck
Austria
Web site: http://info.uibk.ac.at/qo

Genes of Silence
Scientists track down a slew of mutated genes that cause deafness

Genetic studies provide insight into how the human ear works.

Sources:

Thomas B. Friedman
Michigan State University
Department of Zoology
203 Natural Science Building
East Lansing, MI 48824

Eric D. Green
National Institutes of Health
National Human Genome Research Institute
Genome Technology Branch
Bethesda, MD 20892

John T. Hinnant
Michigan State University
Department of Anthropology
East Lansing, MI 48824

Mary-Claire King
University of Washington
Departments of Medicine and Genetics
Seattle, WA 98195

Pedro E. Leon
University of Costa Rica School of Medicine
Center for Research in Cellular and Molecular Biology
San Jose 506 (GMT -6)
Costa Rica

Eric D. Lynch
University of Washington
Departments of Medicine and Genetics
Seattle, WA 98195

Robert F. Mueller
St. James' University Hospital
Molecular Medicine Unit
Leeds LS9 7TF
England

Christine Petit
Institut Pasteur
Unite de Genetique des Deficits Sensoriels
CNRS URA 1968
25 rue du Dr. Roux
75724 Paris Cedex 15
France

Karen P. Steel
Medical Research Council
Institute of Hearing Research
University Park
Nottingham NG7 2RD
England

The Z Machine
Powering up a miniature accelerator to target nuclear fusion

The world's most powerful generator of X rays provides a unique environment for studying interactions of radiation and matter.

Sources:

David A. Hammer
Laboratory of Plasma Studies
Cornell University
369 Upson Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853

M. Keith Matzen
Inertial Confinement Fusion Program
Sandia National Laboratories
Albuquerque, NM 87185-1187

Jeffrey P. Quintenz
Inertial Confinement Fusion Program
Sandia National Laboratories
Albuquerque, NM 87185-1191

Table of Contents - 1/17/98

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Science Service