RUSSIANS TEST ACCELERATOR  —  Russian scientists reported the first results of experiments with their atom-smasher, the world’s largest, to the 1958 Annual International Conference on High Energy Physics in Geneva, Switzerland. Their studies showed the hard core of a proton, a fundamental particle of the atomic nucleus and a building block for all matter, shrinks at high energies. Using their atomic accelerator at close to its full power of ten billion electron volts, they bombarded a target of protons with a beam of protons…. None of the Russians in the 19-man delegation would comme...

From the July 19, 2008 issue of Science News

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

Readers share their thoughts on "Down with carbon" (SN: 5/10/08, p. 18), which describes carbon dioxide sequestration: Complex schemes The article repeatedly mentions liquid CO2, which has to be under high pressure to become a liquid. Has the CO2 released from burning fuel to run the necessary compressors and pumps been considered, or would those be powered with wind or solar energy? If so, why not just use those sources directly to replace fossil fuels and make less CO2 to begin with? Why keep devising complex technological schemes to fix problems rather than simply avoiding the technolog...

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...