News of the Week:

Year-2000 Chip Danger Looms Large

With less than a year left to avert failures, computer experts and engineers are finding that year-2000 computer chip and software problems may be much more severe than anticipated.

Water comes clean with new purity test

A sensitive, antibody-based technique rapidly assesses bacterial contamination in ultrapure water used by drug and computer-chip manufacturers.

Good and bad news for migrating monarchs

Chemical tags in monarch wings are giving scientists a way to trace butterflies from their wintering sites in Mexico back to their birthplaces across eastern North America.

Unconscious problem-solving insights among grade-schoolers often set the stage for later academic advances.

Global temperatures in 1998 were the highest in 140 years of meteorological record-keeping.

Sand piles harden as water makes links

Inside a pile of wet sand, water molecules may slowly build bridges that cause grains to stick more tightly together with time.

Entering orbit later this month about from 1,000 kilometers from the asteroid 433 Eros and eventually coming to within a few kilometers of its surface, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous spacecraft will determine the composition, shape, and density of Eros to an unprecedented                  accuracy.

Women who douche frequently and then become pregnant appear more likely to have a low–birth-weight baby than women who don't douche.