_id stringlengths 5 10 | text stringlengths 0 2.9k | title stringlengths 0 2.44k |
|---|---|---|
195635_2 | lectures annually for three years at a salary of about $8,800 a year. Stripped of Citizenship At the pub in Swindon, 90 miles west of London, the philosopher said he was invited by Oxford and Cambridge universities in 1980 to give a series of lectures. He traveled to Oxford but said he soon ''realized that I was not welcomed.'' He decided to return to Czechoslovakia, where he had been imprisoned for a total of 15 months as a youth for refusing to serve in the military and trying to leave the country illegally after being refused permission to emigrate. He had also clashed with the authorities as a signer of the 1977 Czech human rights charter. As he prepared to go home, the Czechoslovak authorities stripped him of his citizenship. He has been in Oxford ever since. Dr. Tomin said Oxford had turned down his application for a teaching job. He says he believes he has been excluded from British academia largely because of differences in his view of Greek philosophers. His most controversial theory, that Plato's ''Phaedrus'' was the philosopher's first dialogue rather than a later one, has been rebuffed by other scholars. Dr. Tomin accuses the academics of being unable to properly read and understand Greek. ''That's not an exaggeration but a total falsehood,'' said Dr. David Sedley, director of studies in classics at Christ's College, Cambridge. He is also editor of Classical Quarterly, a century-old journal on classical studies, which has published one paper by Dr. Tomin but turned down several others. ''Every serious scholar working on Plato has a knowledge of Greek and reads Plato in original forms.'' ''In a way, he's trying to put the clock back to the traditional view taken by Plato's followers in later centuries in antiquity,'' he said. ''They didn't have any of the historical perspectives on his development that we have nowadays.'' Some scholars doubt that Dr. Tomin will be offered an academic post in Britain in his field, especially since, in recent years, at least six university philosophy departments have been closed. Nonetheless, the pub philosopher, who also reads in French, Latin, English, German and Slovak, continues to study, spending his days at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. His nights are spent alone in a tiny, cluttered room in the basement of an old house, where he keeps the milk for his tea cool on a window ledge. After | Swindon Journal; The Thinker's Pub, With a Resident Philosopher |
195716_0 | LEAD: After a two-day chase across the Indian Ocean, Indian warships today forced the surrender of a fleeing vessel carrying gunmen who had tried to overthrow the Government of the Maldive Islands, together with more than 20 hostages. After a two-day chase across the Indian Ocean, Indian warships today forced the surrender of a fleeing vessel carrying gunmen who had tried to overthrow the Government of the Maldive Islands, together with more than 20 hostages. However, according to an Indian spokesman in New Delhi, four hostages were killed, apparently by the Maldive rebels and their Tamil mercenaries, and three others were missing. The 20 other hostages were unharmed, the spokesman said. Other Indian defense officials and Maldives leaders said here that the ship was boarded without a fight and there were three to seven injured on board. The capture of the cargo vessel, the 5,000-ton Progress Light, about 60 miles from the Sri Lankan coast, ended what the Maldives' Foreign Minister, Fathullah Jameel, described as ''a nightmare that we never expected in this country.'' during which many Maldivians heard gunshots being fired in earnest for the first time in their lives. In the last eight years, however, there have been at last two unsuccessful coups against President Mamoon Abdul Gayoom. According to Mr. Jameel, several of the captured Tamil mercenaries told interrogators that they were members of a Tamil extremist group in Sri Lanka called The People's Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam, which lost a bloody battle for supremacy last year among Tamil separatist groups to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Curiously, the People's Liberation Organization is believed to have had Indian support in the past against rival Tamil factions. The Associated Press reported from Male that an Indian official, Ramamohan Rao, said the leader of the coup attempt, Abdullah Luthufi, a businessman, and the captured mercenaries were being returned by the Indian Navy to Male. Mr. Luthufi is a former aide to former President Ibrahim Nasir, who has denied involvement in the coup attempt. Mr. Jameel also said that said that the Maldives businessmen who were believed to have organized the coup attempt did not have the resources on their own to train troops and buy the weapons for the attack by the mercenaries. He said the plot was being investigated. President Gayoom met reporters briefly today at his office. He declared that the attackers, who are being | Indians Rescue Maldives Hostages on High Seas |
201653_0 | LEAD: East-West trade picked up markedly this year thanks to the improved political climate and to economic changes in most East European countries, according to a United Nations report. East-West trade picked up markedly this year thanks to the improved political climate and to economic changes in most East European countries, according to a United Nations report. But the report, which was issued on Thursday, projects that the Soviet Union and its six East European allies - Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Rumania - will register a slight overall deficit in 1988 after a combined $2 billion surplus last year. While the volume of exports increased faster than that of imports, the value of imports rose more quickly, it said. The report was compiled by experts of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. Overall figures for the value of the East-West trade were not given. In volume, Soviet exports to the West rose 12 percent in the first half of 1988 while imports rose 10 percent. But a 23 percent rise in the value of imports accounted for what the report called an ''unusually large trade deficit with the West,'' projected to total $2.4 billion by Dec. 31. Last year, the Soviets ran up a $800 million surplus. In contrast, Moscow's six allies were forecast to have a combined $2 billion trade surplus with the West, compared with $1.2 billion in 1987. In volume, exports of the six to the West increased by 6 percent while imports stagnated. In value, exports rose 14 percent while imports were up 11 percent. | East-West Trade Rise |
201538_2 | region cite the woman's lowly place in society for official indifference toward maternal illness and death. Government officials argue that the Roman Catholic Church has prevented a change in the laws to provide safe abortions. But women's groups respond that in other Catholic countries like Italy and France, abortion laws have been liberalized to allow abortion in more instances. What is known about abortion in Latin America is just the beginning, said Dr. Horacio Toro, an official of the health organization who has studied the issue. ''The figures vary,'' he said, ''but in many countries, abortion has increased among those from 15 to 19 and among women over 35.'' Despite its magnitude, abortion remains a largely hidden issue. Far from the impassioned debate about the rights of a woman versus the rights of a fetus that is heard in North America and Europe, governments and the press in Latin America generally avoid dealing with abortion, unwilling to stir political or religious controversy. Emphasis on Education Doctors interviewed almost invariably said that they opposed abortion as a birth control method and argued that governments should give priority to extensive family planning programs and sex education in the schools. ''Legalizing abortion is admitting that all other methods have failed,'' said Dr. Wolf Rotholz, director of the maternity ward at a large Rio de Janeiro hospital. ''We cannot jump over different stages. We must try family planning first and prevention first, and then talk about abortion.'' Prompted by the high rate of septic abortions and the desire to slow down population growth, a few nations like Mexico, Costa Rica and Chile have officially backed family planning programs. But services are said to be deficient. Most other countries have small-scale projects run by private groups often hampered by the view that their support from rich countries is part of a plot to keep down the population of the third world. Nonetheless, physicians and health workers are increasingly troubled by the vast numbers of unwanted and neglected children who roam the streets in many Latin American cities and by the illness and death caused by unsafe abortions. Last month, when doctors gathered here for the World Congress of Gynecology and Obstetrics, conversations with physicians from a dozen Latin American nations evoked the same picture of anguish and pain. Variety of Dubious Treatments Doctors working in public hospitals talked of desperate women who attacked their bodies | Abortions Across Latin America Rising Despite Illegality and Risks |
201552_0 | LEAD: Two months after the Rev. Barbara C. Harris was chosen to become the first female bishop in any branch of worldwide Anglicanism, an intense lobbying effort has been undertaken by her opponents and supporters throughout the Episcopal Church in the United States. Two months after the Rev. Barbara C. Harris was chosen to become the first female bishop in any branch of worldwide Anglicanism, an intense lobbying effort has been undertaken by her opponents and supporters throughout the Episcopal Church in the United States. Some Episcopalians have declared that they will not recognize Ms. Harris if she is consecrated or consider any sacramental acts she performs to be valid. Other members of the church have raised objections to Ms. Harris's political views and theological positions. Committees of clergy and laity in the 118 Episcopal dioceses in the United States are voting now on Ms. Harris's candidacy to become the suffragan or assistant bishop of the Episcopal Church's Massachusetts Diocese. If a majority of diocesan committees approves, her election would be submitted for ratification by a majority of the bishops heading dioceses. Approval Seen Likely Approval of Ms. Harris's election still appears likely, but several groups in the American church have been mounting campaigns against her. One of them is Episcopalians United for Revelation, Renewal and Reformation, which says it has 25,000 members. ''By her past actions and pronouncements, Barbara Harris promises to be a regular source of division in the church,'' said the Rev. John R. Throop, the group's executive director. Ms. Harris, 58 years old, is now associate rector of the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia. A black and a veteran of the civil rights movement, she has bluntly criticized the church for not taking stronger measures in support of racial and economic equality and gay rights. The Witness, a monthly journal she served as publisher, has long been identified with radical political and theological positions. A former public relations executive, she was ordained in 1980 by Bishop Lyman Ogilby of Pennsylvania after completing independent theological study and passing ordination examinations. She has no undergraduate degree. 'A Very Bright Woman' Bishop Ogilby has strongly defended both Ms. Harris and her training. ''She qualified academically,'' he said. ''She's a very bright woman.'' He described Ms. Harris as ''a very energetic, deeply committed Christian'' and ''a good communicator.'' Mr. Throop, by contrast, called Ms. Harris ''rigid and narrow and | Many in Church Oppose Naming Woman Bishop |
197968_0 | LEAD: Financing is nearly complete for the $2.5 billion Times Square redevelopment project, which is believed to be the largest urban renewal effort ever undertaken in this country. But although leases have been signed with the developer that is to build four huge office towers on 42d Street, there is still no guarantee that money will be found to do what the renewal project originally intended: to restore six of the theaters along 42d Street to their former glitzy glory. Financing is nearly complete for the $2.5 billion Times Square redevelopment project, which is believed to be the largest urban renewal effort ever undertaken in this country. But although leases have been signed with the developer that is to build four huge office towers on 42d Street, there is still no guarantee that money will be found to do what the renewal project originally intended: to restore six of the theaters along 42d Street to their former glitzy glory. Plans to transform the theaters on the tawdry portion of 42d Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues into a glamorous performing-arts complex housing theater and dance companies, cabarets, jazz clubs and multi-screen movie houses were made public late last month at a presentation attended by state and city officials. The presentation, which displayed a model of 42d Street's architectural treasures with miniature theater marquees lighted by fiber-optic cables, focused attention anew on the financing of the entire project. The plans for 42d Street now call for the arts groups themselves, not the commercial interests behind the office towers, to shoulder most of the entertainment center's costs. No Longer a Sure Thing Carl Weisbrod, the president of the 42d Street Development Project, the government agency in charge, says he is ''quite confident'' that financing will eventually be raised to restore all of the theaters and put the block into full operation as an entertainment center. But others are disturbed that the restoration of the theaters is no longer a sure thing, that the public subsidies on which the 42d Street redevelopment effort depends will be going mainly toward the construction of office towers, and that privately raised money will have to cover most of the cost of restoring the theaters. ''Where is the money supposed to come from?'' said Brendan Gill, the writer, who is chairman of Reclaim Times Square, a group opposed to the project. ''There are no projections that make | Lack of Money Threatens a Plan To Restore Six Times Sq. Theaters |
197909_0 | LEAD: To the Editor: To the Editor: Public attention has been drawn to the burning of the Amazon rain forest (''Amazon Settlers Turn Forests to Ash in Name of Progress,'' front page, Oct. 11; ''Brazil Acts to Slow Destruction of Amazon Forest,'' news story, Oct. 13). The most viable solution, not yet presented, is economical and does not require dubious governmental intervention. The settlers are burning the Amazon forest because they need profits from farming and cattle raising on the cleared land. Those profits, unfortunately, are only temporary because of the nature of the fragile Amazon soil. The only alternative for these settlers is the development of the rain forest itself, i.e., the lumber industry. Selective tree cutting has never been and never will be a danger for the hardwood forest. For example, large hardwood European forests, where selective logging has been practiced more than two centuries, has resulted in larger oak forests today than 300 years ago. It should be noted that the rain forest cannot be reforested by planting, as practiced in the softwood forests worldwide. Why should selective cutting be implemented? The Amazonian forest contains 20 to 60 trees an acre, but only one or two can be used for industrial purposes. Only these trees can be felled economically because exploration requires heavy, expensive, high-oil-consumption equipment. This machinery can be amortized only by cutting large high-yield trees. The main advantage of selective cutting is that the younger trees get more access to light and water, accelerating the natural growth cycle of the forest. Lumber companies, together with settlers working for the industry, will preserve their source of supply through selective cutting, thus earning the most money per acre. The settlers will then become interested in forest preservation, that is, in not burning their source of supply and their working tools. Additional commercial resources, such as nuts, fruits, medicinal plants and other natural products, can be found in the forest in the course of penetrating for selective cutting. Americans, through misinformation, might reject Brazilian imported lumber and lumber products, thereby involuntarily forcing the settlers to continue their disastrous burning. Acceptance of Amazonian forest products and the resulting economic impact on the producers is the only viable solution. ALLEN FALK New York, Oct. 26, 1988 The writer is head of sales at P.H.F. International Corporation, importer of Brazilian lumber. | Amazon Tree Cutting Better Than Burning |
197964_0 | LEAD: From a low-flying plane, southern Nicaragua's tropical rain forest looks as if it had been subject to saturation bombing. From a low-flying plane, southern Nicaragua's tropical rain forest looks as if it had been subject to saturation bombing. What was once a lush and unbroken green canopy is now a wasteland. The ground is covered with fallen trees and only small green patches dot what is now a vast and muddy brown swamp. This is what Hurricane Joan did three weeks ago. In addition, nearly all crops in the region were lost, and an estimated 70 percent of the fishing boats and canoes either sank or were severely damaged. But residents of this stricken Atlantic coast town have dug themselves out from under the rubble, although many still appear dazed by the scope of the catastrophe. ''It wrecked everything and everyone,'' said Charles Watson, who has lived here for all of his 58 years, as he stood in the ruins of the Moravian Church. ''Bluefields is all gone. Do you think we'll ever get it back?'' Damage 'Apocalyptic' Interior Minister Tomas Borge, who visited today, said the near-total damage to Bluefields was minor compared with the devastation of more than 600,000 acres of forest. ''To rebuild a town of 25,000 is possible with the right amount of aid,'' Mr. Borge said. ''But the ecological damage to our rivers and forests is apocalyptic.'' The deep-water port that Bulgarian engineers have been building off Bluefields was 60 percent destroyed, said Lumberto Campbell, the local Sandinista Governor. Winds that reportedly reached more than 155 miles an hour uprooted the breakwater, pulling 10-ton concrete sections from their moorings. United States officials had expressed concern at military implications of the port project, but Nicaragua maintains that it is strictly a civilian enterprise. Before the hurricane, , Bluefields was a decaying but still quaint and picturesque town. First colonized by the British and populated by former slaves, is still predominantly black, Protestant and English-speaking. Flotsam Piled High Few edifices survived the storm. Today, wrecked furniture, beams, uprooted trees and other flotsam was piled high everywhere. Churches and Government offices were in ruins. Relief workers say the Sandinista authorities did an excellent job of evacuating people from Bluefields and other towns before the storm struck on Oct. 22. Minister of Defense Humberto Ortega Saavedra said later that the Government had used evacuation plans prepared for the | Bluefields Journal; In a Buffeted Land, the Deadliest Blow Is Nature's |
197964_3 | it because we didn't have 50,000 victims,'' Mr. Tefel said. ''The aid from abroad in these cases is always insufficient.'' Cuba is the first country to respond fully to Nicaragua's appeals for foreign help. Mr. Tefel said that of the 25,000 tons of food, medicine and other necessities received so far, half has been Cuban. When Cuba announced a plan to send 300 construction workers to Bluefields for two years to build 1,000 homes, the Sandinistas described the donation as ''heroic solidarity.'' But opposition groups were outraged, and the anti-Sandinista newspaper La Prensa warned in an editorial that the construction workers could ''become soldiers at any moment.'' No U.S. Government Aid ''Fidel's reconstruction plan for us implies a prolonged and massive Cuban presence in the Atlantic region,'' La Prensa said. ''The island dictator's aim is not only to build houses, but to establish a presence for his people there.'' The United States has appropriated no aid for Nicaragua in the wake of the hurricane, although such aid is customary when disasters strike countries in the Caribbean basin. Soviet officals have promised to send shiploads of relief supplies. Diplomats in Managua said several other countries had limited their aid to token sums as a way of showing disapproval of the Government. Minister of Agriculture Jaime Wheelock said at a news conference in Managua that 15 percent of Nicaragua's forested areas had been defoliated by the storm. He estimated that the loss in export earnings would be $124 million, or more than one-fourth of total expected earnings. 'The Nation of Sisyphus' A prominent Sandinista commentator, Sofia Montenegro, said the burden of the hurricane, in addition to Nicaragua's already overwhelming problems, made her believe this was ''the nation of Sisyphus.'' ''Damned country!'' Miss Montenegro wrote in the official newspaper Barricada. ''Once more in ruins! How many times will we have to rebuild what has been destroyed?'' ''This new catastrophe,'' she wrote, ''devastating but above all unfair for a country already worn down by war and enemy siege, gives one a sense that the effort to raise Nicaragua up is futile and hopeless. ''Against the background of aggression, the hurricane seems not a caprice of nature, but rather a joke, a hideous conspiracy by who knows what Indian gods against our absurd mortal efforts. It produces a strange and atavistic rebellion against our apparent destiny to plant again and again, without ever harvesting anything.'' | Bluefields Journal; In a Buffeted Land, the Deadliest Blow Is Nature's |
200639_0 | LEAD: The captain of a United States Navy destroyer that fired a volley of shells near a Japanese patrol boat 12 days ago, touching off a sharp protest from Japan, has been relieved of his command, Navy officials said today. The captain of a United States Navy destroyer that fired a volley of shells near a Japanese patrol boat 12 days ago, touching off a sharp protest from Japan, has been relieved of his command, Navy officials said today. Navy officials said they took the action against the officer, Comdr. Frederick H. Michaelis, the 42-year-old captain of the destroyer Towers, after completing an investigation into the incident. But they said the results of the investigation, which is expected to resolve sharply contradictory accounts of the incident by the American and Japanese authorities, would not be released until ''a higher authority review'' is complete, said Kent Hansen, a spokesman at the Navy's base in Yokosuka, south of Tokyo. Relieving a captain of command of a warship is considered one of the most severe punishments that the Navy can take against an officer short of court-martial, and it happens rarely. But Commander Michaelis is the second captain of a warship in the Seventh Fleet, which covers the Pacific, to be removed from command in the last three months. In August, the same action was taken against Capt. Alexander G. Balian, the skipper of an amphibious transport vessel, for failing to rescue a boat carrying Vietnamese refugees. Although Captain Balian gave the refugees several hundred pounds of food and water, he judged their ship seaworthy and did not take them aboard his vessel. Later, 58 of the 110 passengers died after drifting at sea for more than a month. Towers Incident on Nov. 9 The incident involving the Towers took place Nov. 9 off the Boso Peninsula, southeast of Tokyo. Navy officials said Commander Michaelis took his 300-foot ship into the Pacific to test a recently repaired gun that shoots 5-inch shells. The shells were fired more than 35 miles outside a designated zone where all tests are supposed to be conducted. The Navy has never said why the Towers was shooting the shells, which were filled with sand instead of explosives, outside the test area. Initially the Navy said the Towers fired 10 shots in 30 seconds, after checking to insure that other vessels were ''well clear of the direction of fire.'' | Navy Removes Captain Over Japan Shelling |
200641_6 | mix that scholars say places it among nation's top schools in French history. C. Duncan Rice, N.Y.U.'s dean of arts and sciences, said the acquisition of scholars like Professor Judt ''makes an extraordinary difference'' in ''the liveliness of our own intellectual community.'' Dean Rice, a Scotsman who came here two decades ago, said British scholars tended to be more widely read than American scholars in fields other than their own. One out of every six instructors that N.Y.U. has hired in the arts and sciences has been British in recent years. Six of the 75 faculty appointments that Berkeley has made in the last five years have been of Britons, a far larger number than in previous years. Many universities are capitalizing on Britain's troubles not only to increase their own standing but also out of sheer necessity. A surge of retirements at Columbia University is expected to eliminate 40 percent of the tenured faculty by the year 2000. At the same time the supply of doctoral graduates emerging from American universities has been dwindling. Indeed, some American universities are hiring young British scholars fresh from graduate school. A New Move for Kansas U. Del Brinkman, vice chancellor for academic affairs of the University of Kansas, in Lawrence, said that a few years ago his school would not have thought of searching abroad for a top historian. But when the university wanted a top person to bolster its history department, it hired Professor Kenyon, an expert on European history, from St. Andrews and gave him a salary Mr. Brinkman said was more than $70,000. Like most opportunities in life, American professorships have their tradeoffs. Linda Colley, a historian who left Cambridge for Yale in 1982, enjoys teaching 18th- and 19th-century British history to a foreign audience and has not encountered the discrimination against women she said she found at Cambridge. But she is homesick at times, missing the London theater, the English countryside and her family. That situation has eased somewhat. For six years, her husband, the historian David Cannadine, remained behind at Cambridge. But with the deepening American interest in British professors, he, too, has obtained a job in the United States, at Columbia, only a train ride away from his wife. ''It was much easier for me to get a job to be with her than for her to get a job to be with me,'' he said. | British Brain Drain Enriches U.S. Colleges |
202180_0 | LEAD: In Brazil's great undeveloped Amazon basin, the national Government spent $600 million in tax credits to subsidize the development - between 1965 and 1983 - of 469 cattle ranches averaging 23,000 hectares each (about 57,500 acres). In Brazil's great undeveloped Amazon basin, the national Government spent $600 million in tax credits to subsidize the development - between 1965 and 1983 - of 469 cattle ranches averaging 23,000 hectares each (about 57,500 acres). At first, the land reclaimed from tropical rainforest supported one animal per hectare. But neither the ranchers nor the Government invested in weed control or soil fertility so that within five years the stocking rate fell to one animal on four hectares. With tax incentives available for clearing the land, but not for maintaining its productivity, the ranchers soon abandoned their holdings. As the soil wore out, they moved on to clear the forest for other subsidized ranch developments. The cost was far more than $600 million (of which the Brazilian Government recovered only a fraction). Indiscriminate depletion of forests meant the loss of watershed protection and species habitat as well as potentially valuable forest products; and it vastly increased net emissions into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide -a major contributor to the so-called greenhouse effect that's heating up the earth's climate. Thus, Brazil's ''development'' efforts not only worsened that nation's economic plight and hindered its ability to repay its huge international debt -both matters of concern to the developed world. They also endangered the environment of other nations, including the United States. For many such reasons, some detailed in earlier columns, global environmental problems are a major -perhaps the major - threat to U.S. security, and to the security of mankind. Yet, amid all the talk of President-elect Bush's staff and Cabinet choices and his budget policies, scarcely a word has been heard about the ozone layer, acid rain, deforestation, soil depletion, population control, and other disasters happening or waiting to happen. The world's resources now support five to six billion people. The United Nations projects, however, that world population will exceed eight billion by 2025. That means rising demand for food, firewood and timber, hence more deforestation, soil depletion and erosion. More and more land will become desert and the atmosphere less breathable; millions will move to unmanageably crowded urban areas; poverty and starvation will inexorably stalk their miserable streets. On this vital matter, Mr. | A Priority for Bush |
202189_0 | LEAD: * Cuba will be the location of a $4 million coconut processing factory to be built by Cimmco Ltd., a subsidiary of India's family-owned Birla conglomerate. Cimmco's president, D. K. Goyal, said the plant in the eastern city of Baracoa would produce edible oil and fiber for carpets, curtains and mattresses. * Cuba will be the location of a $4 million coconut processing factory to be built by Cimmco Ltd., a subsidiary of India's family-owned Birla conglomerate. Cimmco's president, D. K. Goyal, said the plant in the eastern city of Baracoa would produce edible oil and fiber for carpets, curtains and mattresses. The factory is to begin operating in June 1990. * South Korea and Poland agreed to open reciprocal trade offices next year. Two other Eastern Bloc countries, Hungary and Yugoslavia, set up offices in Seoul this year, and officials from China's Shandong Province have agreed to open an office. A spokesman for Korea's Trade Promotion Corporation said that the agency's president, Lee Sun Ki, would visit the Soviet Union and Bulgaria next month for talks that could result in further exchanges. * The Soviet Union and the United States could be encouraged to reach a grain agreement if the Soviet harvest declines as much as is now expected, analysts said. The grain talks, which began in March, resume today in Moscow. Pravda reported last month that the Soviet crop would be smaller this year than in 1987, when it totaled 211 million metric tons. American officials say Washington and Moscow have tentatively agreed to extend for two years a five-year pact that expired in September. It calls for minimum annual Soviet purchases of nine million metric tons of grain and oilseeds. * Venezuela's leading presidential candidate, Carlos Andres Perez, will call for the rescheduling of the country's $20.4 billion in foreign public debt if he wins the Dec. 4 election, an aide to the Social Democrat said. Mr. Perez, who was president from 1974 to 1979, has consistently led opinion polls since the campaign began in May. The aide said the current 14-year period for debt repayment should be extended to a period of 25 to 30 years. Mr. Perez has repeatedly said that under current conditions Venezuela cannot repay its debt. | GLOBAL BRIEFS |
202185_1 | navigation units, automatic direction finder, depth sounder, radio, a steering stand, and a console with such readouts as rudder angle and engine revolutions. On one of the bridges, a visual display screen reproduces landmarks you might see while cruising. Twenty computer data bases recreate segments of offshore New York from Sandy Hook, N.J., to Execution Rocks near Port Washington, L.I. You are on a 32-foot powerboat with twin engines. You have been fishing several miles offshore, and now it's time to head back in. The instruments tell you that the Ambrose Light off Sandy Hook is .4 of a mile ahead. You are in 49 feet of water, and your compass heading is 336 degrees. The light tower is easily visible off your bow. On the horizon, you can see the World Trade towers, and in the far distance, about eight miles ahead, is the outline of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Sounds from buoys and other aids to navigation emit the same signals you would hear at sea. What you can't see is your instructor at a computer in the other room, about to move a tugboat and barge into your 120-degree field of vision. And if he wants to, he can tell the computer to fog you in, or he can dump a rain squall on you with varying degrees of intensity. He can switch the tidal current, beef up the wind speed, agitate the seas. He also can play havoc aboard your boat with little more than the tap of a computer key: He can knock out the navigation system, cut your engine, or create an emergency S.O.S. He can turn gremlins loose on the waterway by moving the buoys around; it's his way of finding out if you're relying too much on one element of navigation. ''A lot of it is 'what if,''' says Larsson, a yachtsman and former merchant seaman. ''That's where much of the value in the training comes in. When you're out on the water, you might experience years without a problem. But then comes the time something happens that's different.'' In the last decade, marine manufacturers have produced increasingly smaller and less expensive instrumentation. Pleasure boat owners are buying these units, but many don't have proficiency in using them, says Larsson. Insurance companies are beginning to demand proof of competency with radar. The Seamen's Church Institute of New York and New Jersey has offered | On Your Own; Matching Navigational Skills With a Computer |
202212_1 | that it had been dropped in the Indian Ocean. The ship was anchored in international waters off Singapore, the police here and in neighboring Malaysia said. It arrived in the area early last week. A spokesman for the Port of Singapore Authority, who did not wish to be identified, said the vessel had unloaded its cargo but would not be allowed to enter port to change crews. Holds Appear Empty Reporters who visited the ship Thursday confirmed that its four holds appeared to be empty of the cargo, 28 million pounds of Philadelphia's municipal and industrial incinerator ash. According to a report by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the ash contained aluminum, arsenic, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel, zinc and toxic dioxins. A man who identified himself as Capt. Arturo Fuentes told the reporters visiting the ship that the Pelicano unloaded the ash in port, but he refused to say in what country. ''I do not know what they did with the ash,'' he said. The ship left Philadelphia in September 1986 as the Khian Sea. It was renamed the Felicia in July and the Pelicano earlier this month, according to published reports and shipping officials. Problems of Toxic Dumping After the ship was barred by the Bahamian Government from dumping the ash, it wandered the Caribbean for 18 months, leaving at least 2,000 tons of ash in Haiti before making an attempt to enter Delaware Bay. Its later travels took it to West Africa, the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. It was turned away from ports in at least 11 countries, including the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Costa Rica, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. The freighter is said to have been registered in Liberia, Bahama and Honduras at various times. Earlier this month a lawyer for Joseph Paolino & Sons, a waste disposal concern that contracted the ship's owner to dispose of the ash, said a court document showed that the ash had been dumped. ''We have a concern that it was discharged in the ocean,'' the lawyer said. While many ships carry poisonous wastes, the Pelicano's voyage has come to symbolize the problems of toxic dumping, particularly in the third world. Greenpeace estimates that at least 11 developing countries have accepted waste from the United States and Europe since 1986. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 2.2 million tons of toxic garbage cross international borders each year. | After 2 Years, Ship Dumps Toxic Ash |
194240_1 | rights situation in Iran since 1985, issuing a series of annual reports, all of which have found evidence of widespread absues. The report today drew attention to a ''wave of executions'' that it said occurred in Iran over the summer and were carried out mainly against ''members of various opposition groups'' including the Mujahedeen National Liberation Army fighting the Teheran Government from bases in Iraq and other dissident groups. Telegrams Sent to Iran The report said such executions ''justify international concern'' that the Iranian authorities are in breach of their obligations under the United Nations Human Rights Covenants. It noted that another United Nations human rights official investigating summary and arbitrary executions sent telegrams to the Iranian Foreign Minister in July and August expressing concern about the executions. Officials at the Iranian Mission to the United Nations said that they had not yet received a copy of the report and that they would have no comment at this time. The new report will be debated this month by the third committee of the United Nations General Assembly, which deals with social, cultural and humanitarian questions. The report said 200 Mujahedeen supporters were believed to have been killed in Evin Prison in Teheran on July 28. The bodies of 860 more ''executed political prisoners'' were reported to have been taken from the same prison to the Behesht Zahra cemetery from Aug. 14 to 16. The report lists numerous other executions of Government opponents in the summer. The wave of executions described in the report today came after a series of military sucesses by the Iraqi Army and the Mujahedeen forces that analysts say swung the tide of the gulf war in Baghdad's favor, prompting Iran to accept the cease-fire urged on both sides by the United Nations. But Iran's military setback and its decision to accept a cease-fire also appears to have unleashed a backlash of revenge inside the country against anyone suspected of disloyalty to the Government, diplomats say. The report expressed concern about widespread reports of beatings and torture in Iranian prisons as well as trials at which the prisoner is prevented from offering a defense. It spoke of ''poor and insufficent food,'' lack of medical treatment and ''extremely poor sanitary prison conditions.'' The report also expressed concern at reports that all family visits to political prisoners in Evin Prison and other detention centres have been suspended since August. | U.N. Says Human Rights Abuses Are Continuing Throughout Iran |
194345_0 | LEAD: A panel of prominent Roman Catholic bishops in the United States has issued a scathing rejection of a Vatican document that questions the authority of regional bishops' conferences. A panel of prominent Roman Catholic bishops in the United States has issued a scathing rejection of a Vatican document that questions the authority of regional bishops' conferences. By urging that the Vatican document be completely redrafted, the panel staked out a position in the forefront of a debate over the proper balance of power between the Vatican hierarchy and bishops' conferences, which are active around the world. In the last several years, the American bishops' conference has been particularly energetic in issuing theological pronouncements on such contentious issues as nuclear war and society's responsibility to the poor. Within the church, some critics complain that the 100 conferences of bishops, which represent nations or regions, infringe on the authority of both the Pope and the individual bishops in their dioceses. Defenders reply that the conferences articulate legitimate concerns of nations or cultures and balance the centralized authority of the Vatican in a way that individual bishops cannot. To Go Before U.S. Bishops The United States panel's 4,000-word critique will be presented to a meeting of American bishops that begins on Nov. 14 in Washington. The report must be approved by two-thirds of the approximately 300 bishops who are expected to attend. The panel includes the president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop John L. May of St. Louis, and six past presidents. Bishops' conferences have played an increasingly important role in the Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960's emphasized the idea that bishops had a special collective responsibility in guiding the church., which it called ''collegiality.'' But the conferences' efforts to adapt church practices to local conditions have sometimes created tensions with officials in Rome. The Vatican working paper, which was issued by the Congregation for Bishops last winter, minimized the theological basis for bishops' conferences. While treating them as useful administrative structures, the working paper denied that bishops' conferences were genuine expressions of collegiality. Formal Tone, Unsparing Critique In 1985, after conservative church leaders questioned the growing role of the conferences, a special synod of bishops called for a churchwide examination of the conferences' theological status. The Vatican working paper is an initial part of that study. The American panel's critique of the working | Prominent U.S. Bishops Sharply Assail Vatican |
201380_1 | order described interrogations by security officers whose aim, they said, was to enlist their services as informers. The stepped-up Government harassment is widely viewed here as part of a broader Government drive to curb independent activity. Roman Catholic advocates of change, human rights campaigners and independent political groups have become increasingly active in recent months. But it also reflects the apparent failure of the Government and the Vatican to ease strained relations. Progress appeared to have been made in June when officials of the Vatican and Czechoslovakia agreed on the appointment of three bishops to fill some of the 10 vacancies among the 12 Roman Catholic dioceses in the country. The appointment of new bishops, which the Communist Government seeks to influence, is a principal point of contention. Vatican Talks Postponed This month, the death of the Bishop of Nitra, in Slovakia, Jan Pasztor, put the number of vacancies back at 10. Moreover, talks with the Vatican that were scheduled for early this month were postponed indefinitely, and a further shadow was cast over prospects for an accord when a Vatican envoy attending Bishop Pasztor's funeral, Archbishop Francesco Colasuonno, returned to the Vatican without meeting Czechoslovak Government officials. But foreign diplomats and Czechoslovaks said the Government's intransigence appears increasingly to be at cross-purposes with a new Soviet liberality toward religion. Visiting Hungary earlier this month, Aleksandr N. Yakovlev, a Soviet Politburo member and a close associate of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, paid homage to Hungarian Catholic tradition by meeting the leader of Hungary's Roman Catholic Church, Laszlo Cardinal Paskai, in Esztergom, the traditional seat of Hungarian Catholicism. In Prague last week, people close to the Church leadership said Mr. Yakovlev had expressed interest in meeting Frantisek Cardinal Tomasek, the embattled 89-year-old leader of the Czechoslovak Church. But the Government prevailed on the Soviet official to meet only representatives of the Government-endorsed Catholic organization, Pacem in Terris. Diplomats who attended Mr. Navratil's hearing said that psychiatrists testified he suffered from a kind of paranoia under which, they said, he compulsively criticized Government policy. Courts had committed for psychiatric care twice before. Friends of the religious organizer said the decision was a blow struck against the petition for religious liberty, which the Government has chosen to ignore. Mr. Polansky's crime was the publication of a volume of historical essays on Josef Tiso, a Catholic priest who was the leader of an independent Slovak | Prague Steps Up Harassment of Religious Groups |
201470_1 | is surely coming too late for the millions of Chinese facing starvation this winter. Elsewhere, the deforestation of the earth - at its worst in the developing world -seems to be proceeding inexorably. The World Watch Institute has reported, for example, that ''in less than a decade forest cover within 100 kilometers of India's major cities dropped by 15 percent or more; the area surrounding Delhi lost a staggering 60 percent'' - mostly to firewood cutting. A new publication of the World Resources Institute and the International Institute for Environment and Development notes, moreover, that ''600,000 hectares of closed forests are lost each year'' in Indonesia alone. (A hectare is about 2.5 acres.) Around the world, 11 million hectares of tropical forest and other woodlands are lost annually. With world trade in wood and wood products projected to grow for the next 50 years, and with the world's rapidly growing population in dire need of more agricultural land and firewood - about half the world's population already relies on noncommercial firewood as its sole energy source -the desertifying of much of the earth is a real and present prospect. Deforestation is one of the worst environmental crises facing the nations of the world; but it is by no means the only one. Much has been written about the ''greenhouse effect,'' the ozone layer and acid rain - none of which honor national boundaries or even hemispheric differences. World Resources, 1988-1989, the new publication already referred to, points out in its summary alone that: * Over 60 percent of the world's productive drylands - rangelands, rain-fed croplands, and irrigated drylands - have suffered losses of biological productivity, possibly leading to desert-like conditions. In sub-Saharan Africa, over 80 percent of dry rangelands are desertified already. * A decade from now, the urban population of developing regions will be twice the size of the developed world's urban population; half the earth's population, compared to only 30 percent in 1950, will live in urban areas - the most potent generators of sewage, trash and industrial waste, which few cities in developing areas are properly equipped to handle. * Habitat losses of all types, mostly forest destruction, threaten species diversity, the loss of which endangers the richly intertwined ecosystems of the earth; in Southeast Asia, 68 percent of wildlife habitat has disappeared and in sub-Saharan Africa, 65 percent has been lost. * Worldwide fuel combustion | Battered and Abused |
198927_5 | the huge antenna at the Crab Nebula, a huge region of incandescent gas known to be the remnant of a supernova explosion in the year 1054. At the heart of the Crab, the big radiotelescope detected a rapidly pulsing radio star, clear evidence that the supernova had forged a spinning, super-dense star consisting mostly of neutron particles: a pulsar. Some radiotelescopes, including the 1,000-foot dish antenna at Arecibo, P.R., do not move at all. As Earth rotates, changing fields of view move over the telescope, permitting observation of a continuous swath of sky. Smaller radiotelescopes are supported by movable mounts that can be aimed at any part of the sky. The 300-foot dish antenna at Green Bank could be swiveled from north to south, but was reliant on Earth's rotation for changing its east-west orientation. The Green Bank observatory operates various smaller instruments that were not damaged by the accident. Other major radiotelescopes include one at Effelsberg, West Germany, a fully steerable dish 328 feet in diameter, the 250-foot telescope at Jodrell Bank, England, and a 210-foot dish at Goldstone, Calif. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory operates a system of 27 radiotelescopes near Socorro, N.M., whose images can be combined electronically to yield an image equivalent to one from a single antenna more than 20 miles in diameter. The observatory is also building a system called the Very Long Baseline Array (V.L.B.A) telescope, which will consist of 10 linked antennas, each one 82 feet in diameter, extending across the United States from Hawaii to the Virgin Islands. By merging the output of all 10 antennas, the telescope will form radio images equivalent to one from a single antenna thousands of miles wide. HOW THE RADIOTELESCOPE WORKED The observatory at Green Bank, W. Va., like other radiotelescopes, focused radio waves using a parabolic reflector that served the same function as the light-gathering mirror of a conventional optical telescope. The reflector was a steel framework supporting a mesh of aluminum wires that reflected radio waves to a receiver array at its focus. The array was connected by wires to computers that can produce images on a screen or printouts showing details of areas of relative radiation intensity. The dish, mounted on two support towers and attached to rockers, could be tilted to swing between north and south. The Earth's rotation itself continually shifted the telescope's field of view from East to West. | Giant Telescope Collapses; Big U.S. Research Setback |
198928_0 | LEAD: Radiation from Soviet nuclear reactors in space is hampering the operation of an American satellite designed to measure invisible gamma rays from the Sun, scientists said yesterday. Radiation from Soviet nuclear reactors in space is hampering the operation of an American satellite designed to measure invisible gamma rays from the Sun, scientists said yesterday. Such radiation also threatens the success of a $500 million observatory to be lofted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1990 to study gamma rays produced by stars, galaxies and baffling events that may give clues to the evolution of the universe. American scientists fear that the celestial pollution could grow worse as both the United States and Soviet Union accelerate plans to launch new space reactors. Hundreds of such generators might be needed to power a system of anti-missile weapons. Orbiting nuclear reactors emit a variety of radiation and charged particles that streak across hundreds of miles through the vacuum of space. Some of these have repeatedly hit orbiting gamma-ray telescopes and sensors on spacecraft, producing a host of false readings. 'It's a Big Waste of Time' ''You spend all your time trying to identify if these events are manmade or cosmic,'' said Dr. James M. Ryan, a astrophysicist at University of New Hampshire. It can usually be done, he said, but ''it's a big waste of time.'' Dr. Gerald J. Fishman, an astrophysicist in NASA's Gamma Ray Observatory project, said, ''It's a serious problem for this multimillion-dollar experiment we've been working on for eight years.'' Scientists say that the problem can only get worse as more powerful reactors are launched into space, and as orbiting instruments become more sensitive. Over the years, the Soviet Union has launched 33 reactor-powered spy satellites, and the United States is working on an even more powerful type of space reactor for use by both civilians and the military. However, the new kind of celestial pollution has been seized upon by scientists and public interest groups trying to halt the lofting of reactors for everything but deep-space scientific missions. 'One More Reason to Ban Them' ''It's one more reason to ban them in orbit,'' said Steven Aftergood, director of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a private group, based in Los Angeles, that monitors nuclear space technologies. The Washington-based Federation of American Scientists, another private group, is pointing to the pollution issue as a way to | Soviet Space Radiation Hampering U.S. Satellite |
198950_0 | LEAD: The nation's Roman Catholic bishops sent a powerful message to the Vatican today that they would not sit quietly by while their powers to act as the regional Catholic authority were belittled by Rome. The nation's Roman Catholic bishops sent a powerful message to the Vatican today that they would not sit quietly by while their powers to act as the regional Catholic authority were belittled by Rome. The 305 American church leaders, meeting here as the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, voted to reject a draft Vatican document that would limit their role to conveying Catholic teachings rather than interpreting those teachings to American Catholics. The vote was 205 to 59, just two more than the two-thirds majority needed for passage. The resolution said, ''We do not believe that the working document'' submitted by the Vatican ''is suitable as a basis for discussion,'' adding, ''It should be replaced with another draft.'' The vote of the American bishops, one of the most influential of the regional bishops' groups, sets a confrontational tone in a long struggle about the limits of the authority of the conferences. The Vatican draft, which had been sent for comment to the 100 conferences of bishops around the world, minimized the theological basis for the conferences. While treating them as useful administrative structures, the draft denied that they had an official role in guiding the faithful. In response, the American bishops argued that power in the church has been shared throughout its history, even reaching back, as one bishop did today, to Jesus and the Apostles. The bishops were voting on a document, disclosed earlier this month, that was prepared by a seven-member panel. An Unfixable 'Used Car' Rejection of the Vatican proposal came after a lively debate in which one prelate, Bishop Norbert F. Gaughan of Gary, Ind., compared the proposal to ''a used car that could not be fixed.'' One prelate who disagreed was Bishop Austin B. Vaughan, an auxiliary from the New York Archdiocese, who urged his colleagues not to confront the Vatican on the issue. ''This is not a committee of distinguished ecclesiologists,'' he said. ''This is a committee of foxes.'' Conferences of bishops had the option of accepting the document, proposing amendments or rejecting it as unworkable. The American bishops' action, while couched in respectful terms, was seen as sending the strongest message of disapproval possible to Rome. The American | U.S. Bishops Reject Bid By Vatican to Curb Role |
199023_1 | Rocard, eager to demonstrate rigor at the outset of his term in office, has continued to preach the virtues of a certain austerity. An aide to the Prime Minister noted that public-sector strike settlements have so far involved wage increases of 2.2 percent to 2.8 percent, lower than the private sector and below an inflation rate of about 3 percent. Unease Among Socialists Mr. Rocard's stance has stirred unease within his Socialist Party, which has started to focus on municipal elections that will be held next March. Socialist leaders, several of them potential contenders for Mr. Rocard's job, have been chagrined at the spectacle of the party's constituents striking against their own Government. At a Socialist conclave last weekend, Pierre Mauroy, a former Prime Minister and the party's leader, indirectly criticized Mr. Rocard by suggesting that ''rigor should give way to imagination'' in the governing of the nation. He warned the Socialists that without a broader vision, they risked becoming bogged down ''in day-to-day tactics.'' Mr. Rocard's position has been weakened by a feeble 37 percent turnout for a referendum he called on Nov. 6 on his peace plan for the embattled Pacific territory of New Caledonia. While the plan was overwhelmingly approved by those who bothered to vote, the thin turnout seemed to confirm that the French have grown weary of politics and politicians. The wave of strikes has crested just as Mr. Rocard is poised to push his first budget through the National Assembly on Friday. In parliamentary elections last June, the Socialists fell short of a majority in the lower house, winning only 276 of 577 seats. A loose coalition of 40 centrists - fitfully wooed by Mr. Rocard - has announced it will vote against the budget. Twenty-five Communist deputies are expected to abstain, obliging the Prime Minister to resort to a constitutional clause that makes the issue a question of confidence. A Government can only be toppled by an absolute majority of the National Assembly, which looks most unlikely on the budget issue. Mr. Rocard, however, has so far sought not to use the ''guillotine'' clause to pass legislation, and resorting to it to shove through the budget will amount to something of a moral defeat. The impasse on the budget also suggests that Mr. Rocard's much vaunted ''opening'' to the centrists has badly stalled. 'A Man of Good Will' ''Rocard is not in a | Public Workers' Strikes Jolt French Prime Minister |
201914_1 | the Indian Ocean. The ship remained anchored today in international waters off Singapore, the police here and in neighboring Malaysia said. It arrived in the area earlier this week. A spokesman for the Port of Singapore Authority, who did not wish to be identified, said the vessel had unloaded its cargo but would not be allowed to enter port to change crews. Holds Appear Empty Reporters who visited the ship Thursday confirmed that its four holds appeared to be empty of the cargo, 28 million pounds of Philadelphia's municipal and industrial incinerator ash. According to a report by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the ash contained aluminum, arsenic, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel, zinc and toxic dioxins. A man who identified himself as Capt. Arturo Fuentes told the reporters visiting the ship that the Pelican unloaded the ash in port but refused to say in what country. ''I do not know what they did with the ash,'' he said. The ship left Philadelphia in September 1986 as the Khian Sea. It was turned away from ports in at least 11 countries, including the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Costa Rica, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. The freighter was renamed the Felicia in July and the Pelicano last week, according to published reports and shipping officials. Problems of Toxic Dumping After the ship was barred by the Bahamian Government from dumping the ash, it wandered the Caribbean for 18 months, leaving at least 2,000 tons of ash in Haiti before making an unsuccessful attempt to enter Delaware Bay. Its later travels took it across the Atlantic to West Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean. The freighter is said to have been registered in Liberia, Bahama and Honduras at various times. Earlier this month a lawyer for Joseph Paolino & Sons, a waste disposal concern that contracted the ship's owner to dispose of the ash, said a court document showed the ash had been dumped and that ''we have a concern that it was discharged in the ocean.'' While many ships are involved in carrying poisonous wastes, the voyage of the Pelicano has come to symbolize the problems of toxic dumping, particularly in the Third World. Greenpeace estimates that at least 11 developing countries have accepted waste from the United States and Europe since 1986. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates 2.2 million tons of toxic garbage cross international borders each year. | Philadelphia Ash Gone After 2-Year Odyssey |
202049_5 | of Hopkins and Auden, is used by Mr. Brodsky in a strangely literal sense: the hawk is taken so high by racing air currents that he cannot come down; as he feels his warmth expire in the icy air he utters a scream, ''like some family crockery being broken,'' and his feathers - ''commas, ellipses, spirals, linking / heads of barley, concentric rings'' - come floating down over the children below. Whether this can actually happen, or whether it is Mr. Brodsky's fantasy of the hawk-poet, hardly matters: the vividness and intense detail of the image make its own poem. ''A Martial Law Carol,'' written in English in 1980, is a lament in solidarity with Polish friends caught in the troubles of that time. Mr. Brodsky's international sympathies as a poet are truly moving, but they are never over-simplified or designed solely to move. The same applies to ''Gorbunov and Gorchakov,'' a long poem about two patients in a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Leningrad. Their conversations together are about everything under the sun, full of references to Russian history and literature, to Krylov's fables and Pushkin's knights in chain mail coats from ''Tsar Saltan.'' A charming poem, ''Galatea Encore,'' one of the best in the collection, examines with virtuosity the sublime statue that became flesh and blood and concludes with the surprising line: ''That's what it looks like inside a virgin'' (rhymes with ''gorge on''). In a curious way this is true of Mr. Brodsky's poetics: there is something virginal at the core of his dazzling expertise. I remember with nostalgia a poem from an earlier collection, ''Part of Speech,'' about the funeral of Marshal Zhukov, the general who defeated the Germans at Stalingrad and went on to take Berlin. It was inspired by a funeral ode to the 18th-century Russian field marshal, Aleksandr Suvorov, written by the 18th-century poet Gavrila Derzhavin, and in English it lost both the wonderful complexity and the simplicity of its movement. Even Mr. Brodsky cannot wholly refute Frost's maxim that poetry is what gets lost in translation. But his great achievement is to have put back into our own poetic tradition the richness and gaiety of allusion and the sheer learning that most present-day poets in England and America are too inhibited even to try for. It's a relief to read again a poetic language that is not ''ordinary,'' that dogs and | Not Afraid of Sounding Major |
202075_2 | acidic acid, sells for $650 a ton. I.B.M.'s salt problem is ''no worse than anyone's,'' Mr. Cox said, but ''we are all looking for alternatives to get rid of road salt.'' For the last two years calcium magnesium acetate has been manufactured for the Federal Highway Administration by the Chevron Corporation, following the completion of nearly a decade of study to determine its acceptability as an alternative to road salt. A spokesman for the Chevron Corporation called the difference in price for its product and road salt ''very significant.'' Use of New Mixture Is Rising It ''will not become a widespread substitute for road salt in the short term,'' acknowledged Jeff D. Wyatt, marketing manager for the de-icing chemicals project group at Chevron, in an interview last week. But the use of calcium magnesium acetate in salt-sensitive areas is already increasing, Mr. Wyatt said. This winter, for example, New York City officials plan to use it on the city's badly corroded Williamsburg Bridge. Departments of Transportation in California, West Virginia and Michigan are also planning to use the substance in environmentally sensitive areas, Mr. Wyatt added. Officials of the Adirondack park preserve have told Chevron that they are interested in using the new mixture, Mr. Wyatt said, because they hope the chemical may retard the damage done by acid rain. Calcium magnesium acetate can help raise the alkaline content of the soil, he explained. This growing interest in the product follows the release last spring of the latest study of the mixture. The study concluded that the substance is biodegradable and that it has little effect on the environment. ''CMA actually benefits roadside soils,'' Mr. Wyatt said, ''since it improves permeability and adds calcium and magnesium leached out by road salt.'' He acknowledged that there were ''a couple of open questions'' about the mixture, including its potential to reduce the oxygen content of water. Chevron is sponsoring research on this through the Hydro-Qual Center at Manhattan College, Mr. Wyatt said. Municipal Officials Have Questions The Westchester Association of Municipal Public Works Administrators, whose 89 members include nearly all the public works administrators in the county, have questions about calcium magnesium acetate, as well. Its president, Lawrence S. Black has written to Senator Oppenheimer on behalf of the association, seeking more information about a product that he said he believed has not been thoroughly tested. ''We discussed CMA at our last | A Substitute for Road Salt Faces Its First Test in County |
201950_5 | with elastic cords. ''The worst part is you have a filthy bag to handle when you arrive,'' he said. ''But you don't have filthy skis.'' Beyond covers and bags are pods. That's the official term, but to laymen they're rooftop boxes and in the trade they're known as aerodynamic coffins. These are big glass fiber lockers that can hold skis and much more. The best models are padded inside and have straps to hold down skis, poles, boots and other packable gear. Most are made for easy attachment to the system racks, but it takes two strong men to mount them on the car. Some weigh as much as 75 pounds - empty. Skis shipped on planes or in bus storage compartments undergo entirely different hazards. Baggage handlers usually group skis together for a trip, which means somebody's skis are on the bottom of the pile. Ski bags made of urethane-coated nylon or a tough vinyl offer fairly good protection for travel. Even better protection can be gained by using a padded bag that wraps foam around the skis and poles. With ski bags costing $25 and up, and the padded types from $45 to $100, a more expedient way to protect skis is by packing long johns and other clothing around them. ONE manufacturer has created an all-in-one bag to hold an entire ski wardrobe, plus one or two pairs of skis. The Harrison bag opens flat to reveal zippered compartments for clothing and accessories. With these pockets filled and closed, skis and poles are placed in the center of the bag and the sides folded over. The whole thing is then zipped up and carried with outside handles. Not exactly lightweight, but the multipurpose aspect is appealing. Some airlines charge from $25 to $50 to handle skis as extra baggage, so a couple traveling together might prefer a larger bag that carries two pairs of skis and poles. Some bags also have pockets on the sides for a pair of boots. When skis are shipped base to base in a ski bag or on a car rack, be sure to use a ski tie to hold them together rather than relying on just the ski brakes. If skis scissor at the tip and tail, the rubbing can ruin the base or damage the edges. It's also a good idea to place newspaper between the skis to further protect | A Guide for the Perplexed In the World of Ski Racks |
195245_0 | LEAD: Centocor is just one of a slew of biotechnology companies going through management transition. Following are sketches of several others. Genetics Institute Inc. Scarcely four months after Thomas Maniatis and Mark Ptashne, two Harvard professors, started this company in 1980, they brought Gabriel Schmergel in as chief executive. Centocor is just one of a slew of biotechnology companies going through management transition. Following are sketches of several others. Genetics Institute Inc. Scarcely four months after Thomas Maniatis and Mark Ptashne, two Harvard professors, started this company in 1980, they brought Gabriel Schmergel in as chief executive. Almost immediately Mr. Schmergel, then a 40-year-old Harvard M.B.A. with 14 years of management experience at Baxter Travenol Laboratories Inc., went on his own hiring spree, bringing high-level people in, at a rate of at least one a year. The result of all this hiring, said Peter F. Drake, an analyst at Vector Securities International Inc., is that ''Genetics has the strongest management core in the industry.'' Genetics, a Cambridge, Mass. company whose revenues were under $30 million last year, hopes to be a $200 million to $300 million pharmaceutical company by 1992. It is already run on a large-company model, complete with a formal management committee. What's missing, though, is a stable of fully-owned products. Genetics' first four products were licensed out, a method that brought hefty royalties, but that critics say left Genetics without a base upon which to build. Mr. Schmergel says that is a misperception. ''We have $100 million in uncommitted cash,'' he said. ''We now have proprietary products coming up, and the resources to develop them.'' Included in those products: a blood cell growth factor called M-CSF, several monoclonal antibody-based drugs and a modified drug for dissolving blood clots. Cetus Corporation. Robert A. Fildes, Cetus's 50-year-old chief executive and president, is not exactly unbiased when he speaks of the need for experienced managers at biotechnology companies. He has worked for Bristol-Myers and for Glaxo, the huge British drug company. And he took Biogen, another biotechnology company, from birth pains to manufacturing. ''When Cetus hired me in 1982, they got someone with 15 years of pharmaceutical experience and who had faced the challenge of a start-up company,'' he said. Mr. Fildes, who is British, has brought some big-company ways to Cetus. He has been building a marketing team in Europe, where he expects Cetus's first regulatory approvals to come | AN INDUSTRY OF SCIENTISTS TURNS TO VETERAN MANAGERS |
195488_0 | LEAD: The most controversial issue in the theater today continues to be the reinterpretation or ''deconstruction'' of celebrated classical plays. There is no theatrical activity that more inflames purist sensibilities in criticism and the academy - nothing that stimulates as many caustic generalizations about the debasements of modern culture. The most controversial issue in the theater today continues to be the reinterpretation or ''deconstruction'' of celebrated classical plays. There is no theatrical activity that more inflames purist sensibilities in criticism and the academy - nothing that stimulates as many caustic generalizations about the debasements of modern culture. Perhaps because ''deconstruction'' as an assonant noun if not as a method, is so perilously close to ''destruction'' and ''desecration,'' the standard purist posture is like that of Switzers before the gates of the Vatican, defending sacred texts against the barbarians. The paradox is that both sides are really devoted to the same esthetic purpose, which is the deeper penetration of significant dramatic literature. The difference is in the attitude. Is classical reinterpretation a reinforcing or a defiling act - a benign or a malignant development in the history of modern theater? My own position is a qualified vote of support for conceptual directing. I have long believed that if dramatic classics are not seen with fresh eyes they grow fossilized - candidates for taxidermy. Even the most harebrained textual reworking may open up new corridors into a play, while the more ''faithful'' version is often a listless recycling of stilted conventions. That is why I continue to echo Artaud's call for ''No More Masterpieces'' - great plays can be ''desecrated'' by excessive piety as much as by excessive irreverence. Although I champion a radical auteurism in directing, however, not all examples of this process have the same integrity of purpose. One can support the idea of classical reinterpretation without defending all its forms or ignoring the fact that what passes for originality is sometimes merely another kind of ego-tripping. Let me refine my position by distinguishing between two common methods of reworking the classics - one that depends largely on external physical changes and another that changes our whole notion of the play. It is a distinction that can be illustrated through analogies with figures of speech - the prosaic simile and the poetic metaphor. Directors who are fond of similes assume that because a play's action is like something from a | Reworking the Classics: Homage or Ego Trip? |
195501_3 | Bordeaux, where the dye was used in the production of French cottons. In a remarkable feat of scholarship, Baumgarten published in 1982 a book in which some 250 different species of tree were studied, together with a vast body of local customs. Quite apart from being a monumental read, the book had a large number of illustrations. Many of them were black-and-white photographs, taken in situ, that are notable for their unposed look. Others range far and wide, as when Baumgarten documents a parquet floor, laid down in Dusseldorf in 1913, that was made up of wood from the selfsame South American redwood tree. This reader also treasured the color photograph of a place setting, set up in a restaurant in Rome, in which feathers and porcupine quills doubled as flatware. What we see at the Marian Goodman Gallery draws upon all this knowledge, as well as upon month after month of walking, sojourning and participating in everyday life as a licensed intruder. It is not, however, a ''realistic'' diorama of the kind that we might find in an ethnographical museum. It has the form of a coded three-dimensional diagram, in which the constituent elements are four in number. They are, respectively, some long, thin fragments from shattered redwood trees, some lengths of electrical wiring, some electric lamps that shed either blue or yellow light, and some heavy white dinner plates on which runic drawings have been made. To get the point, we must realize that the electric wiring stands for the rivers that wind and loop their way in and out of what remains of the forest. Without those meandering, self-repeating curlicues, the landscape would die. Anyone who went to the Venice Biennale in 1984 is likely to remember Baumgarten's contribution to the West German pavilion, in which the names of Amazon, Tapajos, Xingu, Vaupes, Orinoco, Tocantins and Purus were engraved in marble and filled with colored resin until they seemed to toll like funeral bells beneath our feet. The broken and splintered pieces of wood tell a story of destruction that is amply borne out by the three photographs on the gallery wall. These are forests, long left untouched, that are now being mined without scruple. The blue points of light stand for the moment when the vegetation that forms the floor of the forest takes on a phosphorescent glow, more akin to the sea at twilight than | LOTHAR BAUMGARTEN'S DISCREET PROVOCATIONS |
195511_3 | banquettes, perfect spots for an exchange of nautical gossip. A one-armed bandit, patronized primarily by the young, stands by the bar. The ship's informality is evident from the second day at sea when last names are abandoned, and many passengers choose to go barefoot. ''Call me captain or call me Bob,'' the master of the vessel orders, and he means it. Long skirts, flashy jewelry and elaborate hairdos (there is no beauty shop) are rarely in evidence, even at the captain's party. The officers, always highly visible, are also willing, even eager participants in games and sports, accessible for a drink or a chat, endlessly patient with passengers' endless questions. The entertainment policy appears to be to provide the option of organized games (quoits, Scrabble, darts, checkers) along with late-evening dancing to tapes, costume parties, even a hilarious spoof of ''Cinderella'' performed by the officers. There is also an Anglo-American Trivial Pursuit contest. The ship's bar, though well-stocked - a Scotch is 45 pence (roughly 85 cents) - does not cater to American tastes. There is no bourbon, and a vodka martini has been known to arrive with three parts yellow vermouth to one of vodka. The port of Tenerife, however, conveniently solves any liquid disparities. Noilly Prat and Jack Daniels are available at duty-free prices, and the ship's bartender will cheerfully shift his cocktail measurements. As on all ships, eating comprises the primary entertainment and time-killer. There are two sittings for meals. An electronic gong summons those for second-sitting breakfast at 9, with lunch at 1 and dinner at 8. The captain, the chief engineer and the purser preside over rectangular tables of eight. The doctor's table seats four. The food, advertised as Continental but really British, is plentiful, simple and quite good. Porridge and scones are on the menu at breakfast, a savory at the end of dinner. After dinner coffee is served in the lounge astern. (Those allergic to pipe, cigar and cigarette smoke, however, beware!) Three choices are offered per course, and a typical dinner might consist of avocado stuffed with prawns, iced cucumber soup, grilled butterfish and lemon crepes. South African and French wines make up the wine list at an average price of about $5 a bottle. South Africa's popular Bellingham Premier Grand Cru (white) and a Roodeberg red are among them. Moet & Chandon Champagne is usually on hand, but most of the | By Freighter To the Island Of St. Helena |
195259_4 | was the second signpost. Images of the components of words, the letters, were now seen by the occipital lobes, but these symbols could not stream forward into the nearby language centers in the left brain, where word recognition takes place. People with an acquired alexia often write and speak quite well, but cannot read what they wrote even moments after they put a verbal message on paper. This dam or disconnection in the flow of information between the occipital lobes and left brain had re-opened by the time the paramedics arrived. Why weren't these ordinarily distressful events more disturbing to her? She simply had not recorded and remembered any of it. The event was more of an ordeal for the hairdresser than for the client. The explanation for this odd behavior could rest in only one location, the part of the brain that briefly serves as a way station for memory heading toward more permanent storage. The inner temporal lobes on each side of her brain, especially the hippocampi, ordinarily store working memory just a few minutes. The grandmother's hippocampi had shut down, so she could not even recall the time of day from one minute to the next. Other people with so-called transient global amnesia will go about their business, driving a car, jogging and chatting for hours, and never remember a thing they did or said. They may seem a bit passive, but their loss of ongoing memory is not noticed unless they must draw upon what was just said or done. ONCE THE HAIR-dresser pointed to these signposts within the brain, any neurologist worth a reflex hammer would know that what their topography had in common was their lifeline, the two vertebral arteries. The vessels are unlike any others because they punch through the neck bones as they wind up to the brain from the heart and then penetrate the skull. There they become part of the system that nourishes the brain stem, which carries all messages for feeling and movement and contains the nerve cells that keep us conscious and breathing. So this irrigation system to the brain stem is vital. We were especially interested in two posterial cerebral arteries that feed the hippocampi, the way station for working memory, and, further along their course, the occipital lobes. The grandmother's misadventure most likely came about when not enough vertebral artery blood reached certain communities of nerve | A Mind Lost and Found |
195232_0 | LEAD: Four years ago Centocor Inc., then a fledgling biotechnology company, put the finishing touches on its first product, a blood test for gastrointestinal cancer. Its scientists and managers went into the Food and Drug Administration with a plethora of arrogance but a paucity of tightly documented manufacturing procedures, and their request for regulatory approval was summarily turned down. Four years ago Centocor Inc., then a fledgling biotechnology company, put the finishing touches on its first product, a blood test for gastrointestinal cancer. Its scientists and managers went into the Food and Drug Administration with a plethora of arrogance but a paucity of tightly documented manufacturing procedures, and their request for regulatory approval was summarily turned down. ''No question, we botched it,'' conceded Hubert J. P. Schoemaker, Centocor's co-founder and chief executive. Last year, Mr. Schoemaker messed up again - and paid with a sizable chunk of his company. After deciding that Centocor had grown large enough to go it alone, he pressured the FMC Corporation to let Centocor take full control of Immunorex Associates, their joint venture to conduct research on the immune system. FMC sued. The case was settled: Centocor got the joint company, but FMC wound up with 11.7 percent of Centocor's stock. ''I should have just sat down with them and worked this all out,'' Mr. Schoemaker said. These are trying times for Centocor. This year, the nine-year-old company will have revenues of about $40 million from research contracts, but only about $20 million from product sales. Its goal, however, is to be a billion-dollar pharmaceutical business by the early 1990's. And it is discovering that to become a big-league player, management expertise is every bit as important as entrepreneurial gutsiness and scientific ability. That realization is rippling throughout the biotechnology industry, which uses such exotic biological processes as gene splicing to solve medical, agricultural and environmental problems. Across the country, biotechnology companies are looking closely at their corporate structures and at the curricula vitae of their executives (see box). In many, founders are taking a back seat to high-powered outsiders hired from the giant drug companies to run the show. Others are sticking with existing managers, but reorganizing their management systems, all in hope of finding that magic balance between creative leeway and formalization. That balance is particularly critical in the biotechnology industry. A hula-hoop maker - or even a maker of computers - can | Staying Alive In Biotech |
195397_2 | by organizing villagers to protect trees and wildlife. A Losing Battle Yet, the task of saving the country's forests is a big one, and despite the best efforts of the Government and the volunteer groups it appears to be a losing battle. Officials and environmentalists say that corrupt officials, politicians and loggers flout new protection laws. Taxes on the sale of forest produce comprise one of the biggest sources of revenue for state governments. ''If you want economic development, then we have to bear these losses,'' said one senior official. ''The basic problem is caused by a shortage of fuel and fodder supplies,'' said another forest official, pointing out that India has 2 percent of the world's forests but 15 percent of its livestock and 17 percent of its people. The World Bank noted in a report that the spurt in the prices of timber meant that small farmers would switch from traditional cash crops like cotton to trees such as bamboo, teak, pine and eucalyptus. The Government has encouraged farmers and others to develop tree plantations for commercial use, especially trees like the eucalyptus, as part of its strategy against environmental damage. But environmentalists say that the eucalyptus has no use as cattle feed, that it ruins the soil and depletes water resources, and that it is not a source of firewood and other energy because of the good prices it fetches from paper and pulp mills. Eucalyptus also is used for medicines, perfumes and flavoring. Alternative Fuels Too Expensive The demand for wood continues to rise because most Indians, even in the cities, cannot afford to have cooking gas connections and firewood is cheaper than kerosene and coal. The houseboat hoteliers in Srinagar are cutting back on repairs and plans to build new boat-hotels on the Dal Lake. ''The logs are our backbone,'' Ghulam Kadir Khar, the vice chairman of the Houseboat Owners Association, said in an interview. Mr. Khar said the cost of a two-room houseboat these days was about about $21,000. This is nearly 150 times the cost 40 years ago. The Government is also trying to reduce the use of wood in packaging for fruits and vegetables. ''Every year, 600,000 trees are chopped to build wooden packing crates for apples,'' said Kamal Meattle, an industrialist involved in producing plastic packaging. The Government is encouraging the plastics industry as part of its effort to save trees. | India Strives To Safeguard Its Woodland |
195249_12 | and the flight attendants expected Lorenzo to show appreciation for the 20 percent wage concessions they had made and to focus on the machinists, who had given up nothing. ''Instead, he started pushing all of us and wouldn't let up,'' says Jack Bavis, head of the pilots' union. ''He left no room. He gave us no hope.'' So the battle was joined. Some of the pilots began to burn more fuel than necessary. A stringent safety campaign was instigated in which pilots scrutinized every aircraft, looking for what they considered safety problems. When one was found, a scratched windshield, for example, the pilot filled out four postcards detailing the problem. They were sent to Congressional committees, and to officials at the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration. There was a flood of postcards to Washington. Pilots also used their discretionary powers as aircraft commanders to insist that backup navigation or safety equipment be replaced if it was found to be inoperative, thus taking airplanes out of service and often causing flight cancellations. In other times, the pilots might have gone ahead with many of these flights. Such tactics increased passenger complaints. Unruly passengers besieging an Eastern ticket counter after the cancellation of a flight became a familar airport sight. Passengers began defecting to other airlines. Union members undertook an intense lobbying effort, writing hundreds of letters and buttonholing Congressmen and their staff members, urging an investigation into Texas Air. Finally, the unions went before the National Mediation Board claiming that Texas Air was operating its Eastern and Continental units as a joint airline, despite separate names, schedules and work forces. The issue is far from settled, but if the board agrees with the unions' contention, it could lead to Eastern's unions representing Continental. Lorenzo fought back. Eastern began massing capital with which to weather a possible strike by the machinists, and struck a deal with nonunion Continental in which the sister airline is to supply 500 pilots to fly Eastern craft in the event of a machinists' strike and a decision by the pilots not to cross picket lines. It also made agreements with airline service companies to provide necessary ground support in case of a strike. Last February, Lorenzo, ever the adroit corporate maneuverer, announced a plan whereby Eastern would spin off its lucrative shuttle operation, selling it to Texas Air for $225 million. The unions went | TEARING APART EASTERN AIRLINES |
195453_0 | LEAD: WHEN their environmental bills are blocked in the State Legislature, New Jersey governors have found a detour around the obstacle: They reach for the pen to accomplish by fiat what they have been unable to do through negotiation. WHEN their environmental bills are blocked in the State Legislature, New Jersey governors have found a detour around the obstacle: They reach for the pen to accomplish by fiat what they have been unable to do through negotiation. Last month, Governor Kean signed a ''certificate of imminent peril'' that had the effect of temporarily stopping all development along the ocean and the rivers and bays that feed into it. The action sent lawyers and developers scrambling to assess its impact and legality. Mr. Kean's order, which said that uncontrolled development threatened public health and the environment, stopped the construction of an estimated 1,600 housing units and could delay another 800 over the next six months. The Governor acted after waiting two years for the Legislature to pass his bill creating a 15-member New Jersey Coastal Commission with the power to control development, protect beaches and clean up ocean pollution. He based his action on a little-used 1914 Waterfront Development Act that was enacted to control development along the Hudson River. Competing forces have delayed his bill. Environmentalists want to slow growth. Business interests want more development. Others see a new layer of government eroding local control. Legislators are seeking a compromise. Coastal commissions already have been established in other areas, such as New England, California and some Southeastern states, including North and South Carolina. Six developers in Cape May County have filed a constitutional challenge to the Governor's action, and last week they asked the New Jersey Supreme Court to take up the case directly, bypassing the lower courts. Richard M. Hluchan, a Trenton attorney representing the developers, said the 1914 act was not meant to extend more than 1,000 feet inland, while Mr. Kean's action affects many building sites more than a mile from the water. As in all fights over development controls, the stakes are high. New Jersey is the most densely populated state, and desirable building sites are becoming scarcer. At the same time, uncontrolled development can harm or destroy environmentally sensitive estuaries, overload sewage systems and pollute waterways. With 35 percent of the state's 7.6 million residents living along the coast and the state's $8 billion tourism | KEAN PLANS TO CURB GROWTH, WITH OR WITHOUT THE LEGISLATURE |
195163_1 | would have been dependent on others. For example, 46-year-old Stephen W. Hawking, the brilliant Cambridge University physicist with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (a progressive motor-neuron disorder often called Lou Gehrig's disease), lost even his limited ability to make sounds three years ago when doctors performed an emergency tracheotomy to save his life. Today he can ''speak'' clearly (albeit with an American accent rather than the British one he would prefer) for the first time in 20 years with the aid of a computerized speech synthesizer he controls with a hand switch. He is no less profoundly disabled, but the technology has profoundly increased his independence. In Texas, a bright, handsome 6-year-old smiles. Working with a computer, he has for the first time recognized and sounded out a new word without guessing or giving up - and without a teacher's becoming impatient or distracted. His smile marks a quiet breakthrough. Before the computer, his learning disorder and his inability to keep up with his classmates frustrated him, causing frequent tantrums and other behavior problems, and battered his self-esteem. The issue for educators is not the extent of a student's physical or learning disability. ''The issues, no matter what the disability, are access and expectations,'' said Alan Brightman, who founded the special-education office at Apple Computer Inc. in Cupertino, Calif. Access has several meanings. Just as the motorized wheelchair gives a paralyzed student physical access to the world, the computer and related technologies give the student access to the vast electronic universe and the unbounded realms of the mind. ''Before, these kids were pushed into a closet at school,'' said Kathleen M. Hurley, a former special-education teacher and now vice president of Mindscape Inc., a software company in Northbrook, Ill. ''Today, with computers, they're happy, they're learning and they're doing things in regular classrooms. There's a kid with cerebral palsy in one class who is writing his first novel. And he could never write before; he couldn't even talk.'' Word processing is perhaps the greatest breakthrough for disabled students. Conventional writing is difficult if not impossible for many such students. However, with word-processing software writing and revision are easier. A student unable to grip a pencil can press the ''e'' key and have it print a perfect e every time. That takes us to another level of access, in which researchers are striving to make computers more physically accessible to students with special | A Great Equalizer For the Disabled |
193485_7 | professionals will study all those cases by detailed research at the scene to see what cause and effect can be proved. In this study the scientists will be looking at all cancer deaths, but will be particularly interested in leukemias, because they are the most easily induced by radiation. Leukemias are uncommon enough that any that actually result from nuclear plant emissions may stand out prominently as an excess over the expected number for the age group and the community. Furthermore, leukemias can appear relatively quickly after exposure. The experience of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki indicates that the first cases occur within two years and that the numbers peak at about seven years; trends that would be easier to detect than excesses of other cancers that may naturally be more common in a community and may take several decades to develop to the point of detection. ''If you can't see leukemia, you are not likely to see anything else,'' said Mr. Jablon. Studies in England, illustrate this, and also show another unexpected complexity in this kind of medical sleuthing. In the vicinities of two major nuclear installations, scientists found a total of 11 cases of leukemia in people under the age of 25 in a population that statistically should have had less than two. The evidence suggested that radiation might have contributed to the cancers, but the scientists who did the studies said the known emissions of radiation did not seem to be large enough to produce such effects. Studies at Individual Sites In the United States there have been a substantial number of studies seeking to correlate radiation and cancers at individual sites and regions. Some have found suggestive evidence, others have not. Some have produced data with implications that may be explained in more than one way. For example, the scientist at the cancer institute said, a study in the vicinity of the Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Massachusetts found 13 cases of adult leukemia, where only about 5 cases would have been expected. But there apparently were no excess cases of childhood leukemia, which would have been expected since children are believed to be particularly sensitive to such radiation effects and all of the adult cases were in males, while some would have been expected in females. All this leads experts to wonder what exposures to other potential causes of cancer the people may have had. | Major New Studies Near Nuclear Plants Seek Health Effects of Radiation Leaks |
199147_4 | birth control pills, which mimic the hormonal effects of pregnancy. Dr. Kimura also hopes to study women who take drugs to combat endometriosis, a condition in which uterine tissue migrates elsewhere in the abdomen. These drugs artificially reduce estrogen. Dr. Kimura said men might also experience fluctuations in cognitive skills along with daily fluctuations in key male horones. Testosterone, the primary male sex hormone, is higher in the morning than evening, she said, but no one has yet looked at how this might affect male thinking skills. ''The basic intellectual pattern of human male and female brains is probably present before birth,'' she added. ''There is a tendency for males to be better at spatial tasks while women are better at certain kind of motor tasks and verbal fluency.'' Dr. Kimura stressed that these differences are based on averages. Although there is a male brain pattern and a female brain pattern set before birth, she said, individual men and women vary widely in their cognitive abilities. Women as a group, however, are affected by monthly fluctuations in hormone levels. ''We wondered,'' Dr. Kimura said, ''if these changes might affect cognition.'' Dr. Kimura and her colleagues first tested more than 150 young women. On high estrogen days, Dr. Kimura said, the women performed well on verbal tasks. When asked to say, ''A box of mixed biscuits in a biscuit mixer'' five times in a row, as fast as possible, they can do it in 14 seconds, as against 17 seconds on days of low estrogen levels. Similarly, they can complete a series of hand and finger manipulations more quickly when estrogen is high. Solving Spatial Problems On days of low estrogen levels, on the other hand, women are relatively better at solving spatial problems, the psychologist said. They might correctly complete 40 problems in three minutes on low estrogen days, and only 35 on high estrogen days. Over all, Dr. Kimura said, women seem to close about half the gap between average male and female spatial abilities in their low estrogen days. Dr. Kimura has also tested nearly 50 postmenopausal women who are taking estrogen replacement therapy. In such programs, women take estrogen for about 25 days of the month. Early findings indicate that such women experience similar monthly fluctuations in their cognitive abilties. Women who do not take artificial hormones after menopause have not been systematically tested, Dr. Kimura said. | Female Sex Hormone Is Tied To Ability to Perform Tasks |
199207_2 | women between estrogen and their ability to perform verbal and spatial tasks has been demonstrated for the first time by two Canadian psychologists in two studies involving 200 women. A1 A move to support the falling dollar was made by the United States and 10 allies as they intervened in currency markets, but their coordinated effort brought mixed results. A1 The assassination of John Kennedy occurred a quarter-century ago, but investigators, scientists and the public seem as far as ever from a consensus about its circumstances. D21 The spotted owl is endangered, a Federal judge ruled in a decision that could prevent further logging of the last virgin stands of coniferous trees left on 13 national forests in the Pacific Northwest. A16 The Wild and Scenic Rivers System in the United States, protected under Federal law, would be more than doubled in size under a proposal announced by three major Federal land management agencies. B6 The deportation of 15 Cubans, among the first to go through a new review for Cuban detainees in prisons, was announced. The review was created as part of an agreement that ended prison rioting last November. A16 A Sacramento landlady was arrested late Wednesday and charged with murder after the police discovered seven bodies buried in her yard. The authorities said a man had recognized her from photographs. A16 Ten years after Jonestown's suicides in Guyana under Jim Jones, Hyacinth Thrash, the one survivor, is still haunted. She speaks out about Jonestown to ''keep somebody else from falling into the same trap.'' B5 Washington Talk B6 Regional B1-5 Mayor Koch assailed Richard Green for his handling of the arrest of a school principal on drug charges. Mr. Koch said Dr. Green's supportive comments for the principal was ''ridiculous.'' A1 Four bodies were found in a sunken car in the Mill River in New Haven. A nationwide search began when four teen-agers went on a night out last Saturday. B1 Grief strikes East Lyme B4 The twin brother of Donald Manes, the Queens Borough President who committed suicide, apparently tried to kill himself the same way his brother did, by stabbing himself in the chest, the police said. B3 Corrupt New York City inspectors ''put their fingers in the air'' in restaurants to show how much of a payoff they wanted; two fingers meant $200, a Federal prosecutor said at the trial of six health inspectors. | NEWS SUMMARY |
199980_0 | LEAD: To the Editor: To the Editor: In your Nov. 2 news story on China's admission that it has eased restrictions on new births, the head of the United Nations Fund for Population Activities in Beijing is quoted as calling China's recent urbanization rate ''fantastic.'' It appears that the urban population has jumped from 21 percent to 43 percent of the total population in only five years, an accomplishment this official calls ''something unheard of.'' He suggests that ''such a demographic shift might be a major factor in controlling population growth.'' But China's breakneck urbanization rate is indeed largely fantasy, as its own statistical yearbooks are careful to point out. The official criteria for the formation of towns were changed back in 1984. Under the new rules, for instance, areas with fewer than 20,000 residents of whom 2,000 are nonagricultural can be declared ''towns'' if they are seats of township governments. Even areas with fewer nonfarmers can be designated towns if they are in national minority regions, sparsely populated outlying districts, mountainous regions, small industrial and mining regions, etc. Thus, by a stroke of the pen many rural villages otherwise unchanged have transformed themselves into ''towns'' since 1984. CARL RISKIN New York, Nov. 2, 1988 The writer is adjunct professor, East Asian Institute, Columbia University. | China's Urbanization Is Bureaucratic Fantasy |
200094_2 | ''that Doctor Kane of the Arctic Seas loved Maggie Fox of the spirit rappings.'' In that direction, at least, Kane had no illusions; Miss Fox produced her effects by cracking her double-jointed toes. Far from the world of spirit rappings, there is the Norwegian, Roald Amundsen, finally navigating the Northwest Passage in 1903 with a minimum of fuss. What drove these disparate characters to high latitudes? Mr. Berton sensibly does not give an answer pat. He does give one hint in the title of the book. The symbolism of the Holy Grail is connected with the power of illusion in driving men on. Mr. Berton also implies that an obsessive personality may be part of the pattern. In the background, more easily identifiable motives lurk. For the first half of the 19th century, Arctic exploration was virtually a British preserve. Most expeditions were naval ones. Partly, it was to find work for redundant officers after the Napoleonic wars. Partly, too, it was to promote the westward march of Empire, for the Northwest Passage lay largely in the Canadian Arctic. Above all, it was to keep Russia in check. For Russia held Alaska then and, whatever her regime, was proceeding, as usual, with her organic drive to expand. The Royal Navy secured British and, later, Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic. It was accompanied by staggering ineptitude and unnecessary loss of life. That holds the moral of this book. The Royal Navy stumbled from one debacle to the other because it clung to unsuitable methods and refused to adapt to an unfamiliar environment. ''Badly and hastily organized with a smugness and an arrogance that in hindsight seem almost criminal,'' Mr. Berton writes of one naval expedition, ''this band of amateurs set off blithely, as so many had before it, without any real idea of what they were facing.'' In half a century, the Navy learned almost nothing in the snows, repeating the same old mistakes. There was no attempt to learn from the Eskimos, who clearly had learned how to survive in a barely habitable environment. Dogs were not used, and man-hauling was the order of the day. Clothing was tight, stiff, unsuitable and made of broadcloth and wool instead of fur. Innovation was despised. Mr. Berton quotes one member of a naval expedition who brought snowshoes and suffered ''laughter and derision from the gallant but very inexperienced officers.'' Scurvy ravaged expedition | GOING TO EXTREMES |
199998_0 | LEAD: Richard Selzer describes the ferocity of a mother elk's desperate struggle to protect her calf from three predatory coyotes, in his article ''A Mother's Fury'' (Oct. 23). Richard Selzer describes the ferocity of a mother elk's desperate struggle to protect her calf from three predatory coyotes, in his article ''A Mother's Fury'' (Oct. 23). The idea that nature in the raw is cruel and must not be interfered with is affirmed by the author's naturalist guide, who says, ''To choose sides would be to stop all nature in its tracks.'' Actually, this type of thinking has been disputed throughout history. Charles Darwin, in ''The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,'' draws a parallel between the emotional life of human beings and that of animals. Philosophers like Albert Schweitzer, religious leaders like Saint Francis of Assisi, writers like George Bernard Shaw and Leo Tolstoy have taken a position favoring kindness to animals as a principle of human kindness. JULIUS J. PORTNOW Great Neck, L.I. | A MOTHER'S FURY |
200042_0 | LEAD: INTERNATIONAL/3-22 INTERNATIONAL/3-22 A Canadian sense of national identity that differs markedly from the United States' is at the core of opposition to a trade agreement with Washington. Page 1 A new Sony walkman is being tested in Japan by the Sony Corporation. It is a miniature television and video-cassette recorder. Sony says it is revolutionary. Critics say it is a souped-up, tiny television set. 1 Andrei Sakharov will lead a panel investigating prison conditions in the Soviet Union, the United States and Sweden and examining other human rights issues. 17 Washington was close to a trade war with the 12-nation European Community over the Community's ban on use of growth hormones in beef cattle. The ban restricts about $145 million in trade each year. 22 South Africa is likely to back a plan for regional peace in southern Africa that Angola and Cuba approved Friday, signs indicate, but Pretoria says publicly that it is still studying the plan. 14 Nicaraguan leaders hope Bush aides in the United States' next Presidential Administration will make fresh efforts to resolve conflicts in Nicaragua and elsewhere in Central America. 20 A new strategy for Central America is being prepared by aides to President-elect Bush, they said. It would shift emphasis from military aid to to diplomatic efforts on finding political solutions. 20 Serbs against Albanian nationalism in the Kosovo province of Yugoslavia turned out by the hundered of thousand in Belgrade in what a press agency said was the biggest demonstration in the nation's history. 16 China will no longer keep secret the new national laws that local citizens and foreigners are obliged to obey, China's official newspapers said. The new laws will be printed and publicly distributed, they said. 21 ##q Iran-Iraq feuding holds up OPEC price accord 4 U.S. units in Seoul tighten security 6 Graduates worry about jobs in an Argentina built on illusions 11 U.S., mellowing toward Haiti, releases some aid money 13 NATIONAL/24-37, 50-52 A directive on nuclear emergency planning by President Reagan has come too late to affect licensing efforts at the Seabrook and Shoreham nuclear power plants, analysts and government officials said. 1 President-elect Bush has indicated with his staff appointment of John Sununu that his Presidential style will be more energetic and more deeply involved than that of his predecessor, Ronald Reagan. 1 The staff in a Bush White House will be filled with ''talent'' | NEWS SUMMARY |
199615_5 | to assess microwave exposure needs to be addressed further.'' He said that ''although there are potentially large errors inherent in analytical methods, the fact is that assessment can be accomplished to any degree of accuracy provided one is willing to spend enough money.'' Omissions Criticized Another panelist, Dr. William E. Morton, head of the University of Oregon's Institute for Advanced Biomedical Research, in Portland, Ore., criticized the report for what he called its omissions of panel activities, statistical information, misleading reporting and lack of references. He wrote that the draft report's epidemiologic analysis of the high incidence of birth defects in Vernon was inaccurate. Dr. Morton wrote that epidemics peak and are cyclical. ''Without actually saying so, your presentation apparently assumes that the incidence of such defects is relatively constant over time,'' he wrote. ''This is not true.'' He wrote that clusters of defects could occur periodically and that ''the 1979-80 peak could recur in the near future.'' Dr. Morton wrote that strained feelings between members of Citizens Against the Towers and the New Jersey Department of Health officials were not reported but had ''seriously impeded progress'' of the study. He wrote that the organization's members, at Dr. Ziskin's suggestion, had written to him of their dissatisfaction. He wrote that they asked for more intense and effective case-finding efforts, control participants from outside Vernon, more adequate description of the earth station radiowave emissions and direct radiowave intensity measurements at the homes of case and control participants. 'A Breach of Faith' Dr. Morton described ''major disagreements over the conduct of the study,'' researchers' approach to the community and ''one-sided technical expertise'' on the panel, but wrote that not a clue of that discussion was reported. ''It is my belief that the failure to complete the study is a breach of faith with the community, with those who agreed to serve as cases and controls and with the scientific panel members,'' he wrote. ''This report should be reorganized and rewritten to conform to usual scientific standards before utilization.'' Another panelist, Maureen C. Hatch, assistant professor of public health and epidemiology at Columbia University, although critical of ending the study and of the draft report, commended state health officials for their professionalism, but disagreed with the decision to halt the study. ''I do not believe that a determination about the effect of measurement error on a proposed epidemiologic investigation is properly theirs to | Criticism on Halting Of Microwave Study |
199931_5 | Japanese should catch up to this country soon, and we should get still worse. But the puzzle remains. Dr. Stanley G. Korenman of the University of California at Los Angeles has tried to embrace many aspects of risk with his ''estrogen window'' hypothesis. It holds that unopposed estrogen - that is, estrogen whose adverse effects are not counteracted by a balancing hormone - increases risk once it circulates to the breast, estrogen being a promoter that enables carcinogens to do their work. Estrogen does circulate in the body between puberty and menopause, and it becomes low during breast-feeding. And antiestrogen therapy does help fight cancer after it appears. Thus, the hypothesis that unopposed estrogen is directly implicated in breast cancer has considerable elegance; add the fact that fat cells can make estrogen, and it even subsumes obesity. There are inconsistencies; it remains controversial. But few argue about the importance of the risks related to the reproductive life cycle. GALEN'S CLAIM NOTWITH-standing, the natural history of breast cancer - the course of the illness without modern treatment -was and is devastating. In a typical hospital in Middlesex, England, during the 19th century, half of all patients died within 3 years, and 80 percent in 5. The cancer would typically spread through the lymph ducts draining the breast to the nodes under the arm, and from there to the rest of the body, attacking vital organs. Treatment today is vastly more hopeful. If caught early enough and treated surgically - in many early cases, only part of the breast need be removed - more than 90 percent of patients will survive 10 years. New evidence strongly suggests that chemotherapy following surgery improves survival still further. And even for advanced cases, judiciously combined surgery, radiation and chemotherapy provide survival statistics that the women of Middlesex would have envied. Also, the frontier is moving. New methods for distinguishing the rapidly growing tumors from the slower ones in early stages are coming into use, and other approaches are on the horizon; they will enable more rational assignment of women to treatments and open more specific paths of research. Other studies are directed to finding out what it is about early first pregnancy that seems to oppose cancer; if it can be bottled, you may be able to postpone motherhood without increasing your risk. And current research suggests that some types of breast cancer may be | Civilization's Cancer |
198565_2 | last few years hammering out declarations against the spread of nuclear weapons and in support of more assistance to the poor. The procedures on resolving differences between bishops and theologians were set out in a document called ''Doctrinal Responsibilities,'' developed by a committee headed by Bishop Raymond W. Lessard of Savannah, Ga. The document asked bishops to follow due process in handling these disputes rather than dismissing or publicly reprimanding the theologian. It called for four steps to be taken in such disputes: gathering facts, discerning their meaning, evaluating whether they were consistent with church teaching and examining the practical implications. The document also recognized the bishops' limitations to act decisively in these cases. In most instances, a bishop can exercise only moral suasion over theologians in his diocese. While a bishop might have the power to remove a dissenting professor at a local seminary that trains priests, for example, he would be virtually powerless to discipline a tenured faculty member at a Catholic college or a secular university. Many of the bishops face these situations every day in their dioceses. On numerous campuses around the country, there are Catholic theologians who argue that the bishops should change their opposition to birth control, abortion or the ordination of women as priests. Procedure Was Voluntary Recognizing the limitations of the bishops to discipline these scholars, the procedure was completely voluntary. Both the bishop and the theologian involved would have to agree to participate. It was thus designed for theologians who want to be consistent with church teachings rather than for those who want to remain in dissent. The procedures could have been invoked, for example, in the 1986 case of the Rev. Charles E. Curran, whose license to teach theology at Catholic University in Washington was revoked by the Vatican because of his positions on reproductive rights. It is unlikely, however, that they would have been resolved on the level of the local bishop because Father Curran continued to articulate his positions after he was disciplined by the Vatican. While the procedures might have seemed benign to the American bishops, accustomed to following due process, it apparently rankled the Vatican. ''The Vatican is inclined to think that these kinds of procedures are not necessary,'' Father Reese said. ''They would be as inappropriate in the church as they would be in a family. There is no due process for children who misbehave.'' | At Vatican's Bidding, Bishops Set Aside Dispute Procedures |
195011_0 | LEAD: The electronic networks that distribute mail between computers are as vulnerable to sabotage as the Postal Service. The letter bomb of the computer age is a program that clogs up or damages recipient computers. This week, one closed down thousands of computers at universities and Government laboratories from coast to coast. The electronic networks that distribute mail between computers are as vulnerable to sabotage as the Postal Service. The letter bomb of the computer age is a program that clogs up or damages recipient computers. This week, one closed down thousands of computers at universities and Government laboratories from coast to coast. A hacker's pastime has become a peril. The current wave of destructive programs are known as computer viruses, which is what they spread like inside computers - and then outside, through computer networks. The copies can consume so much memory that the infected computers slow down or even shut out their users. The perpetrator of the latest virus, The Times has been told, is a Cornell University graduate student who meant to infect but not disrupt an academic computer network sponsored by the Defense Department. Through an error, the program copied itself far faster than intended. Unlike military networks, which can be accessed only from guarded terminals, academic computer networks are designed for ease of access. The price of openness is vulnerability. The Cornell virus exploited an error in the network's software that has now been patched. But persistent programmers can doubtless find other entry points. What can be done to avoid widespread disruptions like this week's, or the worse calamities that might result from sabotage? One possibility is to screen the programs submitted for transmission. But with reason, the operators of public networks do not relish the idea of reading their users' mail. A sentinel program that looked for rapid duplication of the same message among network users would find it hard to discriminate between virus propagation and a legitimate mass mailing. Even if a virus could be identified, it might have done much of its damage by the time it was detected. It's probably the responsibility of computer owners to protect themselves. Some systems pass all communications through a filter. Carnegie-Mellon University inoculated its computers five years ago with a program that recognized and fended off the Cornell bug. A score of anti-viral programs or ''vaccines'' are commercially available. But the vaccines may only induce | Letter Bomb of the Computer Age |
194027_0 | LEAD: A Chinese official acknowledged today that the country is not strictly applying a policy limiting each couple to one child, and that as a result it will not meet its target for restraining population growth. A Chinese official acknowledged today that the country is not strictly applying a policy limiting each couple to one child, and that as a result it will not meet its target for restraining population growth. At the same time, a United Nations official said the rapid urbanization that China has undergone in this decade might prove to be a more effective rein on population. China, which now has about 1.08 billion people, said in 1980 that it wanted to limit its population to 1.2 billion by the end of the century. Peng Peiyun, who heads the state Family Planning Commission, said in an interview published today that the country would surpass that goal by 70 million people. ''It probably did not reflect a realistic picture of our population situation,'' Miss Peng said of the original goal in an interview in China Daily, an English-language newspaper here. Flexible Application of Policy Although China's publicly stated policy on family planning calls for one child per family, Miss Peng acknowledged that in fact the policy did not apply uniformly to all Chinese couples. ''More than half of the families have more than one child, and rural couples who have a daughter as a first child are allowed to have a second baby,'' she said. ''As for the ethnic minority people, they enjoy even more freedom.'' About 7 percent of China's population is made up of non-Chinese minorities. China's stated program to enforce limits on family size has been a major issue of dispute between Beijing and Washington, which has withheld funds from United Nations population programs that it says support coerced abortions in China. Those violating the one-child limit, at least in urban areas, have been subject to fines and even dismissal from their jobs. It has long been known that exceptions were made for rural and minority residents, but the official acknowledgment today was unusual. Zhou Boping, vice chairman of the China Family Planning Association, told China Daily that the stated policy of one child per couple was not a permanent one and should be applied flexibly. ''The one-child concept cannot possibly be accepted in every part of China because of the imbalanced development in economy | Beijing Admits Easing of Birth Limits |
193817_5 | loath to use preservatives and still define their food as fresh, preservatives do protect against stores or shippers that fail to keep fresh foods at the proper temperatures. The Orval Kent Food Company in Wheeling, Ill., sells prepared salads to supermarkets and restaurants. It has seen sales increase to $175 million last year from $40 million in 1982. The salads, which last up to 42 days, contain potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate, common preservatives. ''You really use the preservatives as an insurance policy against mishandling,'' said Jon Talbot, the company's director of public relations. Technology is being developed to make handling easier too. The temperature in refrigerator and freezer cases, for example, can vary by as much as 8 degrees over the course of a day, said Edward Lucas, product manager for a computerized system made by Margaux Inc. in Fremont, Calif., that he said can keep refrigeration more constant. Temperature variations hurt quality and compromise nutrition. Vitamins are not inherently stable; those in frozen food are lost when it is thawed and then refrozen during distribution and storage. But fresh food has its own problems. It loses vitamins during shipping and storage, especially if it is cut up, as it is for salad bars. David Reid, a professor of food science and technology at the University of California at Davis, said it was impossible to generalize about the nutritional quality of fresh produce because ''you don't know how its been handled.'' But he suggested that consumers judge to some extent by paying attention to the food's appearance. ''If it's nice and green and crisp, it's probably been well handled,'' he said. ''If it's gone all yellow and limp, it's probably lost some of its vitamins.'' While some experts believe that fresh food is likely to be the most nutritious, some studies show that frozen and canned foods are just as good. Ruth Matthews, chief of the nutrient-data research bank at the United States Department of Agriculture, said the agency had found that nutritionally, ''there isn't a great deal of difference'' among fresh, frozen and canned foods once they are cooked in the home. And that is where the greatest nutritional losses often occur. Any food can lose up to half its vitamins and minerals if cooked for too long in too much water or stored at too-warm temperatures, according to the Institute of Food Technologists, a professional group in | Fresh Food: Today It Has Staying Power |
195806_1 | members would be regarded as trespassers if they continued to use the Chapel for Ms. Fageol's services. Ms. Fageol celebrated Communion last week in a parking lot outside St. Benet's, the chapel of Queen Mary's College of London University, using a folding table as an altar. Attempts to open the Church of England's priesthood to women have threatened to splinter the denomination. The church allows women to be ordained as deacons and earlier this year took a preliminary step toward ordaining women as priests, a development that has been bitterly opposed by segments of its laity and clergy. The American church, meanwhile, has ordained more than 1,200 women as priests since 1976. Though all 70 million Anglicans worldwide recognize the Archbishop of Canterbury as their spiritual leader, the church organization in each country has wide latitude to set its own canon laws, including those for ordination. In July, the annual General Synod of the Church of England, which brings together bishops, clergy and laity, approved a draft of legislation that would admit women to the priesthood but also provide those opposing such an action the right to exclude them from serving in their parishes and dioceses. The draft legislation is subject to approval by a majority of dioceses throughout the country before it is returned to the General Synod in 1992. At that point, it will need the assent of two-thirds of the Synod to gain approval. Bishop Leonard, a leading opponent of the ordination of women, wrote in a letter to Ms. Fageol that his move against her had nothing to do with his personal views. ''I greatly deplore the use of the Sacrament for the purposes of protest and for promoting a cause,'' the Bishop wrote. ''I regard it as an unworthy and improper use of the Sacrament.'' Ms. Fageol, who is in Britain preparing a doctorate, said in an interview that her understanding of the Eucharist was that it had never been apolitical, but that she had conducted services primarily in response to a request from people who wanted to experience women in the priesthood. Some Anglicans suggest that the case could set back the movement to ordain women by increasing apprehension among those who are uncertain about what having women in the priesthood would involve. But Ms. Fageol believes the conflict could enhance prospects for change. ''This brings the issue clearly out into the open,'' said | Anglican Church Bars U.S.-Ordained Woman |
195749_1 | milestone. Guided by the system, a missile traveling to the opposite side of the world could hit within a few dozen feet of its target, Pentagon officials say. The system could infallibly lead an assault team through trackless jungle to an enemy stronghold, a bomber to a single enemy building or a boat to a gap in a dangerous shoal. Critics point out that the satellites are vulnerable to enemy attack, and that the system would not survive long in a major war. But civilian applications may greatly outweigh military uses. Commercial pilots, locomotive engineers, surveyors, weekend boaters and probably even casual backpackers are likely to begin using the system soon. Col. Marty E. Runkle of the Air Force, director of the Joint G.P.S. Program Office in Los Angeles, said the new satellite system is expected to create a huge commercial market for G.P.S. receivers. The organization Colonel Runkle heads includes not only the armed services but representatives of the Department of Transportation and of the governments of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Australia. Relatively bulky receivers, sensors and computers have already been installed experimentally in a large variety of military and civilian vehicles. The satellite system has already been used to help surveyors improve the accuracy of maps and to guide polar explorers, said a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, The Burlington Northern railroad line recently equipped 17 of its locomotives with experimental receivers as a means of tracking the exact positions of moving trains. A Burlington Northern spokesman said the system continuously informs locomotive engineers of their positions to within 150 feet, an accuracy superior to that of any other system. Ships, airliners and even road vehicles are likely future users of the receivers. Colonel Runkle disclosed in an interview that his interagency group will soon solicit bids from companies interested in building a Small Lightweight G.P.S. Receiver, called S.L.G.R. or ''Slugger.'' The group has not specified who might receive the device, but it would be useful for guerrillas, naval landing boats and downed fliers. With such a device tucked into a pack, a traveler need never lose his or her way again in a storm-tossed ocean or trackless wilderness. Without landmarks, sextant, star almanac, dividers or the other paraphernalia of conventional navigation, the user of a portable G.P.S. receiver can effortlessly read off the direction and exact distance along a great circle of | New Space Beacons Replace the Compass |
202721_0 | LEAD: Sugar futures prices surged yesterday despite a lack of news, a sign of the market's increasing concern about the possibility of a supply shortage, analysts said. Sugar futures prices surged yesterday despite a lack of news, a sign of the market's increasing concern about the possibility of a supply shortage, analysts said. Sugar for delivery in March settled 0.33 cent higher, at 11.30 cents a pound, the contract's highest close since Aug. 8, which also was the last day March sugar closed above 11 cents. During the session, the March contract traded as high as 11.33 cents a pound, challenging the previous day's intraday peak of 11.34 cents, a four-month high. Since falling below 9 cents a pound in late September, sugar futures have risen fairly steadily on indications that world sugar production in the current crop year may fall short of consumption, reducing already-low inventories to critical levels. The United States, China and the Soviet Union all are rumored to be looking for more sugar in the September-through-August crop year, yet Cuba has reportedly asked China to accept deferred delivery of scheduled shipments, analysts said. Energy futures settled mixed on the New York Mercantile Exchange as the markets began consolidating the sharp gains of recent sessions. After the close of trading, the American Petroleum Institute released figures showing a 2.7-million-barrel draw-down in United States crude oil stocks and a 2.5-million-barrel decline in the nation's gasoline stocks last week. Stocks of petroleum distillates increased by 1.76 million barrels, according to the institute. West Texas Intermediate crude settled 11 cents lower to 15 cents higher, with January at $14.92 a barrel; heating oil was 0.86 cent lower to 0.80 cent higher, with December at 47.79 cents a gallon; unleaded gasoline was 0.01 cent lower to 0.70 cent higher, with December at 46.87 cents a gallon. Wheat, corn and soybean futures finished mostly higher on the Chicago Board of Trade in a late flurry of buying by traders who had sold contracts earlier in the session. FUTURES/OPTIONS | Sugar Prices Rise on Fear Of a Developing Shortage |
202713_2 | attention to our cause.'' Of course, the threat is still terrorism. In 1970 he took part in the hijacking of three airliners that were kept in the Jordanian desert for a week and then blown up. He notes that there were no casualties, and says his role was to explain the cause to the passengers. Bassam says a New York rabbi told him very seriously, ''If I were in your place, I'd probably do the same.'' That dramatic incident provoked world headlines and led to open fighting between P.L.O. and Jordanian forces in ''black September.'' The P.L.O. fighters were driven out and established themselves in Lebanon, where again they did what they could to build a ''state within the state.'' It was an important factor in bringing on the Lebanese civil war. Bassam was in his Beirut office in 1972 when a big envelope came containing a book, ''the size of Webster's, with Che Guevara on the cover. It was a nice, cultural, explosive book.'' The bomb, evidently sent by Israelis, ripped several fingers off his hands, disfigured his face and nearly left him deaf and blind. A friend says he had been ''very handsome, like a movie star.'' Now he is scarred and has eye trouble, a dark, stubby but surprisingly relaxed man. He was in a hospital for a month. ''I had a lot of time to think. I decided I would continue working for the cause in whatever way possible, but contrary to expectations, it didn't turn me into a man who wants revenge. I refused to fall into the vicious circle.'' After what he calls ''a lot of discussion'' in the P.F.L.P. that year, he says the Habash group decided to quit international terrorism because it was counterproductive. But gradually he moved toward the less radical Arafat line, chafing under Syrian influence when his group moved to Damascus, where I first met him. In 1979 he was expelled for shaking hands with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, and openly joined Mr. Arafat. ''My view is if there is a chance for self-determination and a state, we should do it,'' he says. He is an example of thoughts catching up with realities, and he criticizes colleagues who cling to ambiguities. ''They speak in Arabic though the words are in English. But the opportunity is clear for people who are serious about peace.'' Denial of a visa to | Talking of Terror |
202769_0 | LEAD: Two health advocacy groups petitioned the Food and Drug Administration today to ban the use of hormones and drugs for stopping milk production and breast engorgement that is sometimes painful in women who do not breast feed after giving birth. Two health advocacy groups petitioned the Food and Drug Administration today to ban the use of hormones and drugs for stopping milk production and breast engorgement that is sometimes painful in women who do not breast feed after giving birth. The Health Research Group, which is affiliated with Ralph Nader's Public Citizen consumer organization, and the National Women's Health Network said the drugs are only marginally effective and can cause serious side effects in some of the estimated 700,000 women who receive them each year. ''Breast discomfort is a condition that rapidly resolves on its own, or with the help of mild painkillers,'' said Dr. Lynn Silver of the Health Research Group. Because of the benign and self-limited nature of lactation after birth, she said, no incidents of serious adverse reactions in drugs used to treat it is acceptable. F.D.A. Study Planned Susan Cruzan, a spokeswoman for the F.D.A., said the agency could not comment on the petition because it had not had a chance to review it. However, she said, an agency advisory committee had been looking into the use of drugs to curb lactation and planned to examine the issue again next spring. Last June, Ms. Cruzan said, the Advisory Committee on Fertility and Maternal Health Drugs made no recommendation on the safety and effectiveness of bromocriptine, the drug most often used to stop milk production. The committee decided to await the completion of a current study on the drug. Sandoz Pharmaceuticals Corp., of East Hanover, N.J., the principal manufacturer of bromocriptine, which it markets under the trade name Parlodel, said the drug had been used by up to five million women since 1980, with few major side effects reported. ''We feel that the current labelling on Parlodel is up-to-date and that the drug is a safe alternative for women who need relief,'' said Dr. Joseph Romano, a Sandoz spokesman. Bromocriptine, which is not a hormone, stops milk production by suppressing hormones that cause lactation. The health advocacy groups said the drug can cause sharp drops in blood pressure, nausea and dizziness. | Ban Sought on Drugs to Halt Flow of Milk After Childbirth |
202729_1 | and present, as well as scientists, environmentalists and other experts interviewed in recent months generally agreed that the effort to clean up the environment has made some progress and certainly has held the line against what would have been much worse environmental degradation in the face of population growth and expanding economic activity. But they also acknowledged that the the task of cleaning and protecting the environment now seems much more complex, daunting and urgent than it did 20 years ago. ''No nation in the world has grappled so successfully with these issues as the United States,'' said Russell E. Train, a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency who was chairman of President Nixon's Council on Environmental Quality. ''Without these accomplishments where would we be today? We would be like Mexico City or Sao Paulo.'' But ''the problems hitting us now, problems like toxic wastes, acid rain, and global warming, are hellishly more complex and difficult, not only technically but politically and economically,'' Mr. Train said. An inventory of those problems and the gains that have been made follows: Air The Clean Air Act of 1970 singled out six pollutants - sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, ozone, lead and solid particles - considered especially troublesome to the nation's health and environment and set maximum permissible levels for those pollutants in the air of any given community. There has been measurable success, ranging from impressive to negligible, in curbing these pollutants. After the release of studies in the early 1980's showing relatively high levels of lead in the blood of most Americans and showing that the learning ability of children was impaired by lead in their systems, dramatic gains were made in removing lead from the air by retiring its use as an octane-booster in gasoline. The soot that darkened the skies at midday in industrial cities has been largely removed. Much more modest gains have been made in reducing other air pollutants. Most major urban areas fail to meet the mandated levels for ozone, a major component of smog, or carbon monoxide or both. Nitrogen oxide levels have been reduced only slightly and in some areas are starting to rise because of increased vehicular traffic. The law also authorized the Government to regulate the toxic air pollutants emitted by industry, many of which can cause cancer or cause other serious illness or injury. But relatively little has been | Minor Gains in Ecology And Major Challenges |
202716_1 | The first 10 winners, who can be either individuals or teams, will be announced March 15. Those who came up with the winning program will receive $5,000 awards. Reader's Digest will donate an additional $10,000 to the school to help carry on the award-winning project or program. Only programs that have proved effective are eligible for the awards. Wide Impact Is Sought ''We're not looking for a teacher of the year,'' said Scott D. Thomson, executive director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, one of the sponsors. ''We're looking for a teacher or a princial who makes a school wide or district wide impact.'' Other sponsors include the National Federation of Teachers, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. After the winners of the awards are announced, the educational groups will distribute information about the winning initiatives to school districts around the country. The sponsors said they hoped the contest would help schools in different cities to share more information and make communities aware of problems and solutions within their own school systems. ''What excites us about the program,'' Mr. Trachtenberg said, ''is what we do with the information beyond awards to the winners.'' Mr. Trachtenberg said the variety of school districts responding to the contest had provided ''a wealth of ideas which people are experimenting with.'' Integration of Handicapped One application, from a school he identified only as ''in the Southwest,'' discussed a district's trouble in combining a special school for physically disabled students with a traditional junior high school. Parents and teachers affiliated with both schools panicked at the idea. But a principal decided to slowly integrate the two schools and not run separate programs under the same roof, and slowly converted community opinion. The school now uses the nonhandicapped students as volunteers to help the disabled students. The result, said Mr. Trachtenberg, is a greater awareness by the non-handicapped students of the needs and styles of life of their physically disabled friends. In another application, a guidance counselor in an East Coast school was praised for a program designed to keep students from dropping out. The counselor developed a ''buddy system'' that matched children new to the town with students who were longtime residents. When the counselor noticed that students who had only one parent faced additional stress, she persuaded a group of mental health professionals to visit the school and counsel | Education; School Trouble-Solvers To Win Cash Awards |
202353_3 | find and track speeding missiles and warheads. A key question is whether it can sort warheads from hundreds of thousands of decoys and bits of debris, which an attacker would scatter to try to defeat any defensive system. While Boeing is the project's main contractor, the 5.5-ton sensor was built by the Hughes Aircraft Company. Packed with 38,400 detectors, it is to look for faint infrared rays emitted by relatively warm objects in space, such as warheads and missiles. Col. Gary M. Stewart of the Army, the project manager at the Army's Strategic Defense Command in Huntsville, Ala., said it was ''inherently challenging'' to try to make the diverse pieces of the giant sensor work together. Flights of the aircraft are to occur around Hawaii and Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific. It will track missiles, launched from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in Calif., whose mock warheads land at Kwajalein Atoll. It might also observe submarine-launched missiles. Of all the Star Wars experiments planned for next year, critics say this one comes closest to violating the A.B.M. treaty, since it might actually serve as the basis for an anti-missile sensor used in war. Pentagon experts deny this, saying the sensor is highly experimental research and not a prototype system. PARTICLE BEAM. The $45 million Beam Experiment Aboard Rocket, or B.E.A.R., is a project of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in which a small, 1.25-ton particle accelerator will be launched from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. It will travel 125 miles above the earth in a short flight that will not put it into orbit. The test is expected to pave the way for applications as a highly discriminating sensor. The experiment is scheduled for April. The booster will be a 40-foot-long Aries rocket, a reconditioned Minuteman intercontinental missile. The accelerator, housed in a cylinder about 14 feet long and 3.5 feet in diameter, is to shoot neutral hydrogen atoms unaffected by the earth's magnetism as ''atomic bullets'' into space. ''While particle beams have been fired in controlled laboratory condition on the ground, B.E.A.R. will be the first time the technology has been tested in space,'' Kenneth McKenna, deputy director of the project at Los Alamos, N.M., said in a statement. ''We believe it will work well, but in the case of any experiment, there are unknowns.'' Planned for this spring, the experiment will last 200 seconds, | The Star Wars Program Prepares for a Year of Reckoning |
202417_3 | compounds - a servant of life - to act as an agent of destruction under certain circumstances. Something necessary to life turns into a murderous agent.'' The new research builds on the accepted model of how neurons communicate with one another. Neurons are cell bodies with long extensions, called dendrites, that lie adjacent to one another in a gigantic web. To send a signal, one neuron squirts out a chemical, called a transmitter, that crosses the synapse or gap between adjacent dendrites. The receiving dendrite has receptors that recognize the chemical transmitter and propagate the signal through the neuron. In a series of complicated steps, the receptor changes shape and opens a channel. Information, in the form of electrically charged molecules, then passes through the channel and into the neuron, which can either store it or pass it along by firing off its own glutamate. At the same time, the first neuron emits substances that terminate the tranmission and reabsorb any excess transmitter left in the synapse. Each neuron has an average of 10,000 synapses, each with a multitude of different receptors. Almost half the brain's neurons use glutamate as a primary transmitter, according to Dr. John Olney, a neurobiologist at Washington University in St. Louis who is a pioneer in the field of excitatory amino acids. Dr. Olney was one of the first researchers to study the effects of glutamate on the brain. His work, involving animal studies that found that large doses of glutamate can damage some brain cells, led the Food and Drug Administrationn to remove MSG from baby food in the mid-1970's. Some people experience a flushed feeling and other discomfort after eating MSG, a condition not known to be hazardous and sometimes called ''Chinese restaurant syndrome'' because MSG is commonly added as a flavor enhancer to Chinese food. Most scientists supporting the new theory about glutamate toxicity do not suggest that MSG in the diet is dangerous. Rather, they focus on the role glutamate naturally plays in the brain, and how it can be disrupted. Studies Began in 1980's Researchers began to study glutamate activity in detail in the early 1980's, Dr. Choi said, when specific drugs that block its action were found and glutamate receptor molecules were discovered. The best known receptor is NMDA, named after a synthetic form of glutamate (N-methyl-D-aspartate) used in research. By the mid-1980's, there was an explosion of interest | Pervasive Chemical, Crucial to the Body, Is Indicted as an Agent in Brain Damage |
200753_3 | thoughtful air more appropriate to graduate scholars than to third graders. ''How do you know that?'' Maia Steward challenged Karl Hilton when he said his desk was real. ''I disagree and I agree!'' declared Kim Perillo when Karl offered his reason. At one point, Karl argued that his desk was real because ''you can put your hands on it, you can put your books inside it.'' But Chris Oldi pressed him to make a more precise logical distinction. ''Are you saying that anything you can put your books in is real?'' he asked Karl. ''You can't put your books inside you, but you're real?'' The questions before Mrs. Letts's classes, Mr. Vallone said, are ones that young students naturally wonder about and may argue over in the playground or at home, but seldom get a chance to debate in class. The 'Fourth R' In the age of back to basics, philosophy may seem a frill, but Mr. Lipman, who operates the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children at Montclair State College in Upper Montclair, N.J., argues that ''reasoning is like the fourth R.'' ''It is essential to all work and all disciplines,'' he said. Since 1975, Mr. Lipman's institute has published stories, teaching manuals and other curricular materials for students in the first grade through high school. The institute, though, spurns the publication of formal textbooks because it believes ideas should be generated by students. ''That's how Western philosophy started,'' explained Mr. Vallone, who uses the institute's program. ''Socrates went around questioning the youth of Athens, examining what they thought and examining their thought processes. There weren't any textbooks.'' A second philosophical program for children, Touchstones, was developed by professors at St. John's University in Annapolis, Md. The program centers discussion on excerpts from classical philosophers and is used in the Pittsburgh schools and other systems. There are also 30 other published programs aimed at cultivating ''critical thinking,'' said Ron Brandt, executive editor of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. The Educational Testing Service evaluated the Lipman philosophy program in 1981, Mr. Lipman said. Tests on a cross section of 4,500 fifth and sixth graders in Newark public schools showed that those exposed to the program gained as much as a half year in reading, mathematics and and reasoning skills over those who did not take the philosophy program. One distinctive feature of philosophy classes is that | Newest Incubator for Philosophers Is Third Grade |
200768_2 | containers to store nuclear wastes, which can generate high temperatures, and as laser shields in ''Star Wars'' space-based systems where the heat of high-powered laser beams would be used to destroy satellites and other space vehicles. The substance's strength and the benign behavior of carbon in the body might also make carbon-carbon suitable as a bone replacement, instead of the stainless steel now used. The aircraft brakes produced by Goodrich's aerospace and defense division, which has its research and development laboratories here, start out as woven polymer cloth that has been heated to drive off all elements but carbon. Because of the orientation of the crystal structure, this graphite weave is quite stiff in some directions, a feature that designers can use to give the needed structural characteristics to the final part. The cloth is coated with resin so the layers adhere to each other and can be cut and shaped into the form of the final part - a partly hollowed disk in the case of the aircraft brake rotors. Then the layers are clamped together and heated to several thousand degrees to carbonize the resin. What emerges is fine mesh held together by the carbon residue of the resin. It is two-thirds to three-quarters empty space, however, and must be filled in with more carbon to achieve full strength. Some fabricators repeatedly immerse the part in resin or pitch and heat it to drive off all but the carbon. Goodrich uses a process called chemical vapor infiltration. The brake rotors are loaded into a large oven and methane gas is pumped in. The heat of the oven splits the gas into carbon and hydrogen atoms and the carbon gradually - over hundreds of hours - fills in the empty space. The built-up carbon acts as the glue to hold in place the fibers, which provide the material's strength. One problem with this method is that if the part's exterior fills in faster than the interior, the gas is blocked and the process cannot be completed. One solution is to make the part slightly oversize and then machine off the filled-in surface so the carbon atoms can fill in the interior. Ultimately, about 90 percent of the structure is filled with carbon. Jerry S. Lee, director of research, said the resulting rotors are about one-fifth the weight of a comparable steel part, an attractive saving for an aircraft manufacturer. | Withstanding 3,000-Degree Heat |
177074_0 | LEAD: Two of the wealthiest foundations in the United States are starting multimillion-dollar programs to curb unwanted population growth in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Two of the wealthiest foundations in the United States are starting multimillion-dollar programs to curb unwanted population growth in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The undertakings come as United States Government expenditures for population programs abroad are sharply curtailed and as more third world nations seek help in related areas like arresting the spread of sexually transmitted disease and maternal mortality. The MacArthur Foundation of Chicago said it would spend $23 million in the next two and a half years on family planning and maternal health, up from $1.5 million last year. The California-based David and Lucile Packard Foundation, enriched by a $2 billion commitment from Mr. Packard, is reshaping its population undertaking, and will expand from less than $1 million a year to $10 million. Before the new commitments, total financing for family planning abroad by American philanthropies was $30 million to $35 million annually. In recent years, population programs abroad have lost United States Government funds totaling about $60 million annually. ''Admirable as foundations' work is, it does not make up for the loss of government funds,'' said Dr. Joseph Speidel, president of the Population Crisis Committee in Washington. He said that around the world, 20 million new couples a year enter the reproductive ages. ''We have less money for more people,'' he said. Washington's program for developing countries is conducted through the Agency for International Development, which administers foreign aid abroad; it is a major supplier of contraceptives to third world countries. Agency funds for family planning were cut to $230 million from $290 million in 1985, the last year the agency contributed to the United Nations Population Fund and International Planned Parenthood Federation. The move, which helped limit the Federal budget deficit, was also influenced by attacks from organizations that oppose abortion. ''Having prestigious foundations like MacArthur and Packard take initiatives shows there is still concern among serious thinkers,'' said Dr. Duff G. Gillespie, the agency's director for population. While Government expenditures are much larger, private philanthropy has greater flexibility, he added. The United Nations Population Fund assists 134 countries and is grappling with growing requests from governments once reluctant to accept aid in curbing births but now eager for assistance, said Dr. Nafis Sadik, the fund's executive director. The agency | Foundations Expand Family Planning Aid Abroad |
177120_3 | therapies for menopausal women. Most young women shy away from this possibility, and rightly so, because estrogen replacement opens up the possibility of side effects. Little is known about side effects in young women, but in menopausal women estrogen replacement therapy has been associated with endometrail and breast cancer, although the validity of research findings about this remain highly controversial. The latest work by Dr. Cann's group has found that significantly increasing daily calcium intake can replace some of the lost bone in female athletes who exercise at high levels. The researchers studied 220 female athletes between the ages of 20 and 45, measuring their spinal bone loss with CT scans. Bone loss was about 20 percent in women with a long history of amenorrhea, which is not overly serious in itself. But coupled with a natural bone loss of 1 percent a year due to aging, a woman could have a 40 percent loss by middle age, a serious loss. Moreover, women in the study whose menstrual cycles had returned to normal after a period of amenorrhea 10 to 15 years earlier, still had a bone loss of about 12 percent, remaining from those earlier years. The San Francisco researchers found that consuming about 1,500 milligrams of calcium daily over the two-year life of the study, either through increased consumption of dairy products or use of calcium supplements, augmented bone replacement about 3 percent. ''So if you lost 20 percent and you are replacing 3 percent, that's a good start,'' Dr. Cann said. There also is research showing that exercise alone is not the cause of the amenorrhea. Changes in diet, a weight loss, being excessively underweight or stress may be related. A new study by a Seattle team earlier this year reported finding increased levels of the hormone glucocorticoid among a group of women in their 20's who ran about 30 miles a week. The study did not seek to specifically relate the higher levels of glucocorticoid to stress in the lives of the women with amenorrhea. But the researchers noted in their paper, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, that the increased glucocorticoid levels might be ''perhaps due to the marked physical and emotional stress that a rigorous training life style entails.'' An obvious therapy, particularly if the amenorrhea has only recently begun, is to induce the menstrual cycle to start up again by cutting back | Heavy Workouts Can Be Damaging |
177102_6 | Fay has asked the jury to rule on issues in the sailing instructions that he hasn't been able to resolve with the San Diego Yacht Club. Among them is disagreement over the penalty for violating a racing rule, and a question about the way the crew on Stars & Stripes tacks the hard sail during a race. Conner conceded that he might rein in the boat, but not for that reason. ''If I was ahead, and if I had to race the boat to be farther ahead, it doesn't pay off any more than just to win the race,'' he said. Holding back isn't unusual if it means saving wear on gear, or preventing a breakdown, he added. In a cup trial race during the 1986-87 series in Australia, Conner sailed without a spinnaker in a downwind leg against the 12-Meter Eagle, knowing that he was beating the boat by a wide margin. ''We're going to do what is in the best interests of America to keep that trophy here, based on the conditions we have during the race,'' he said. ''And if we're behind, and we have to push the boat to the limit, that's what we're going to do at the risk of breaking.'' Gear breakdowns are a concern for both sides. The catamaran, a fragile waterbug compared with New Zealand's whale, is particularly susceptible. Its hard-sail rig cannot be lowered except on land, and it cannot be made smaller by reefing if the wind kicks up. During a practice race last week, Stars & Stripes lost the tip of its bowsprit. The catamaran limped back to shore with the crew running a small outboard behind it in reverse to slow it. ''I have to run scared all the time,'' Conner said. ''That's my job. My job is to work as hard as I can in preparation for a very close race. The conjecture is that we'll be faster off the wind. But talk is cheap.'' New Zealand Overall length: 132 ft. Beam: 26 ft. Draft: 21 ft. Mast: 150 ft. Sail area: Upwind: 6,300 sq. ft. Downwind: 15,000 sq. ft. Total weight: 60,000 lbs. Crew (The 40 people it takes to run the boat fit into these basic positions.) Skipper Bowman Foredeck boss Foredeck hand Starboard tailer Port tailer Grinders Mainsheet grinder Mainsail trimmer Traveler trimmer Navigator Tactician Running backstay operator Rail crew Below deck (above right) | Tradition Makes Way For an Unorthodox Series |
182115_1 | * Encourage recycling and the reduction of wastes at the source on a national level, and assist states and regions to establish stable national markets for recycled material. We must manage Federally-owned lands in the long-term public interest. This means protecting national forests and grazing lands from excessive grazing and cutting. It means conserving wilderness areas, old growth forests and fragile wildlife habitats. And it means managing national parks in the interest of all the people. The current Adminstration has tried to turn the public lands of the national forests into opportunities for private profit. As President, I would end this giveaway. I would: * Work with Congress to designate the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a wilderness area. * Halt below-cost timber sales in national forests. * Direct the forest service to take immediate measures to protect old growth forests. I will continue to oppose offshore drilling in critical environmental areas and productive fishing grounds, as I did for Georges Bank off the New England coast. Pending lease sales in environmentally critical areas must be stopped. We must not only protect existing wetlands, but restore part of the vast endowment of wetlands that America has lost. I support strong enforcement of the wetlands protection provisions of the Clean Water Act, the cornerstone of an effective national policy on wetlands management. Preserving our nation's farmlands is not only an environmental issue but an economic issue. In Massachusetts, we've invested in one of the most aggressive farmland protection programs in the nation. Congress has made progress towards conserving America's farmland and reducing soil erosion and wetlands filling by passing the Sodbuster, Swampbuster, and Conservation Reserve provisions of the 1985 Farm Bill. I strongly support these programs. Environmental problems do not respect national boundaries. Acid rain, global warming from the greenhouse effect, stratospheric ozone depletion, the destruction of tropical rain forests and the pollution of the ocean are problems which require cooperative, international solutions. As President, I will immediately call for an international environmental and conservation summit to bring together world leaders to confront these urgent problems. I would immediately rescind the current Administration's misguided Mexico City policy, which forbids private organizations receiving Agency for International Development funding from providing a full range of family planning services to families who need them. Uncontrolled population growth in developing countries contributes to desertification, deforestation, climatic disruption and the destruction of plant and animal habitat. America | From Afar, Both Candidates Are Environmentalists . . . |
179923_5 | ones that compete in the Indianapolis 500, have the engine mounted near the middle of the car, driving the rear wheels. The Challenge of Braking Weight transfer has the opposite effect on braking. When the brakes are applied, weight shifts to the already heavily loaded front wheels. The lightly loaded rear wheels cannot do much in the way of braking without locking up. ''Front-wheel-drive cars tend to be harder to stop, particularly under slippery conditions,'' said James H. Kennedy, the chief engineer on the Thunderbird/Cougar program. Indeed, it was Federal charges that the brakes on the X-body cars, G.M.'s first line of small, front-wheel-drive models, were unsafe that resulted in their early retirement. G.M. eventually refuted the charges, but the adverse publicity had cut sales so greatly that production was ended earlier than planned. Engineers say that most of the handling problems of front-wheel drive can be contained through careful development of power trains and suspension. Fred Schaafsma, the chief engineer for the Chevrolet division of G.M., said his group had developed a front-wheel-drive car with a 325-horsepower engine - more power than most Corvettes have - that had no torque steer problem and was almost as fast in turns as rear-wheel-drive models. However, G.M. executives decided not to pursue the project because of its cost. Increasing Sophistication Today's rear-wheel-drive cars are considerably more sophisticated than their predecessors. In place of the once-common solid rear axle, which made handling difficult on all but the smoothest surfaces, the new Thunderbird has a rear suspension that allows each wheel to move independently of the other. This makes it able to absorb bumps that would send a car with a solid axle bouncing across the road. Meanwhile, some technologies are being developed to minimize the disadvantages of front-wheel drive; these technologies may be increasingly used as the current horsepower race heats up. One is traction control. Like the anti-skid braking systems that are becoming more common, a traction control system uses sensors that detect when a wheel is about to start spinning. Then the brakes are pumped on and off rapidly to prevent the spin without stopping forward motion. ''We are really excited about traction control,'' said Robert Dorn, chief engineer of Cadillac. ''It is a big advantage for front-wheel-drive cars and makes them almost as good as four-wheel drive.'' The Four-Wheel-Drive Option The other option is four-wheel drive. Converting cars that were | A Revival for the Rear-Wheel-Drive Car |
178298_10 | The three companies are locked in a tangled patent infringement litigation with suits piled upon countersuits. But when a letter signed only ''Pimpernel'' arrived at Genetics' Cambridge, Mass., offices in June, containing secret Amgen information and promising more in return for $150,000, or 10,000 shares of stock, Genetics immediately turned the letter over to Amgen. Genetics also supplied F.B.I. agents with a company letterhead used to respond to the letter, setting up what became the first biotech ''sting'' operation. The undercover agents took a quick course in biotech talk from Amgen's chief executive, George Rathmann, so they could act as officials of Genetics Institute with some credibility. Still, they had trouble pronouncing erythropoietin (a-RITH-ro-PO-etin), and avoided using the term during negotiations with the mysterious Pimpernel. Their seven-week investigation culminated on Aug. 11, when they arrested John Stephen Wilson at a Ventura County restaurant. Mr. Wilson, a 33-year-old researcher who had left Amgen voluntarily in July, was charged with one count of interstate transportation of stolen property, and if convicted could be sentenced to as much as 10 years in prison and fined up to $250,000. He pleaded not guilty. Amgen said the briefcase the F.B.I. recovered contained more than 500 pages of photocopied documents, a virtual blueprint of the company's process for producing EPO. The company estimated the documents' value at about $50 million. The documents would probably have been of little value to Genetics Institute. According to Amgen's patent infringement suit, Genetics and Chugai are already producing EPO by the same recombinant method Amgen uses. But the same cannot be said for other potential competitors who might have been offered the secret information. ''If the material had fallen into the hands of someone not advanced in the art, it could have been of substantial value to them,'' said Lowell Sears, Amgen's treasurer. AT A GLANCE: Amgen All dollar amounts in thousands, except per share data. Three months ended June 30 1988 1987 Revenues $19,447 $12,581 Net Income 305 494 Earnings per share $.02 $.03 Year ended March 31 1988 1987 Revenues $53,325 $34,722 Net income 1,725 1,137 Earnings per share $.10 $.08 Total assets, March 31, 1988 $192,835 Current assets 118,961 Current liabilities 12,788 Long-term debt 16,503 Book value per share, March 31, 1988 $9.80 Stock price, Sept. 8, 1988 NASDAQ close 31 1/4 Stock price, 52-week range 37 1/2-16 Employees, Sept. 8, 1988 420 Headquarters Thousands Oaks, Calif. | Breaking Out of the Biotech Pack |
178277_1 | family income since 1980. Government hasn't filled the gap. Adjusted for inflation, aid has fallen by 6 percent and more is in loans, forcing more students and families to take on big debts. Washington could increase aid above the current $15 billion level, offering more grants to the poor and easing eligibility restrictions on subsidized loans. Or it could follow George Bush's preferred approach, providing special tax relief to those who save for college. In any case, in this era of Federal budget deficits, the money would have to come from other programs or from other taxpayers. Who says college subsidies have priority over, say, Headstart or AIDS research? And who says middle-income taxpayers should be asked to subsidize the tuition of children in other middle-income families? Governor Dukakis's solution: a system of generous loans for college, repaid from the lifetime incomes of the beneficiaries. Under this ''pay-as-you-went'' system, anyone could borrow for higher education. Loans would be made by banks directly to students; the Federal Government would assume full responsibility for repayment. Washington would get all its money back through lifetime payroll deductions from the borrowers. Ballpark estimates suggest that a borrower of $16,000 would pay about four percentage points of income. Thus, a nurse earning $20,000 might owe $800. An architect earning $40,000 would pay twice as much. For fairness, the income base would be limited; the winner of a million dollar lottery would not pay an extra $40,000. High-income earners would be able to buy out of their obligations with single penalty payments. This plan contains notable advantages over conventional college loans. Collection would be as simple as Social Security deductions. Evasion would be extremely difficult. More important, borrowers would have less incentive to evade because payments would be tied to their ability to pay. Expensive private colleges would become plausible alternatives for moderate-income students, freed from the prospect of crushing debts on graduation. Students who did borrow heavily would not be forced to make career choices under financial pressure. There are loose ends. The actuarial calculations needed to make the system self-financing could prove tricky. Little thought has been given to the question of adjusting the tax surcharge to changing interest rates. But the conceptual triumph is clear: Government can make college affordable, and can do it without demanding sacrifice from non-beneficiaries. No matter who wins the election, this idea is too good to pass up. | On College Costs: A Presidential Idea |
178270_7 | tree whose great trunk is used as a local form of communication. (A whack to its side makes a noise that can be heard nearly a mile away.) And by cutting and slicing palm fronds, he showed us how our lodge's own roof had been made. One afternoon, however, I passed up both expeditions in order to remain alone in the lodge. I took a chair on the veranda and for nearly an hour sat surrounded by a torrential tropical downpour. (Our visit fell during the rainy season, roughly from December to May; though warm and humid, it was less oppressive than, say, August in New York.) The rain beat down on the lake, making it look like a giant sheet of stucco. The sound was deafening. And then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped, leaving a disquieting silence. After several minutes Alfredo began to splash somewhere in the waters around me. Then, in the distant forest, monkeys began to howl, almost in unison. It was a sound you would swear, if you did not know better, was the low roar of a faraway lion. Our stay also allowed us to meet the local river people, or caboclos, who are of mixed European and Indian heritage. Dwelling in small, wood-frame cottages, they earn their living by hunting, fishing and farming. And if enough live near one another to make the expense of a generator feasible, they have electricity for at least some part of the day. (The Amazon Lodge uses solar energy for cooking and candlelight the rest of the time.) On our last day at the lodge, we sipped beer on the porch and awaited the arrival of the noon boat that would return us to Manaus. There was a light rainfall. When the boat bearing that day's arrivals came into view, we began to wave. In a few minutes a soaked and overdressed party of four disembarked, sporting ponchos, raincoats and even umbrellas. We welcomed them, standing bare-headed in the rain. For more information on the Amazon Lodge, contact the operator, Transamazonas Turismo (Rua Leonardo Malcher 734, Centro, Manaus, Amazonas 69010; 232-1454, area code 092) or the Brazilian Vacation Center, 16 West 46th Street, New York, N.Y. 10036; 212-840-3733, 800-848-2746 in New York State, 800-342-5746 elsewhere. Transamazonas Turismo quotes a price of $250 a person for a three-day, two-night stay, including meals, transfers from Manaus and excursions. | Under a Roof Of Thatch In the Jungle |
178245_1 | But his and other studies of adoptees are reaching some surprising conclusions about the ramifications of being adopted. Even people like my geometry student, adopted as infants, go through troubled periods in their lives when they grieve for the unkown parents who gave them away. ''A lot of the behavioral problems seen in adopted children are nothing more than a grief reaction,'' Brodzinsky says. ''For adoptees, part of them is hurt at having once been relinquished. That part remains vulnerable for the rest of their lives.'' Adopted children (excluding those adopted by members of their own families) make up about 1 to 2 percent of the total population of children. The majority of them were so-called ''early adoptions'': adoptions arranged before or shortly after birth, completed during infancy, and most often accomplished by adoptive parents who are white and middle class or upper-middle class. But even though most of these children are raised in privileged environments, adoptees are overrepresented in places where trouble occurs. They make up about 5 percent of the children in outpatient mental-health facilities; 10 percent of the children in inpatient mental-health facilities; 6 to 9 percent of the children identified by school systems as either perceptually, neurologically or emotionally impaired. Some of these numbers might be a statistical artifact. In many adoptive homes, parents seek professional help at the first sign of trouble, and most of them can afford it, so their children may make it onto the patient rolls of mental-health centers more quickly than other children in similar distress. ''People who adopt are accustomed to using the helping professions,'' writes Lois Ruskai Melina in ''Raising Adopted Children.'' If they are infertile, as many adoptive parents are, they may have grown accustomed to inviting medical personnel into the most intimate parts of their lives. And once they decide to adopt, they have to enlist the help of doctors, lawyers, counselors and social workers. ''While some people have no idea who to call for needed therapy,'' Melina writes, ''the adoptive parents may know a social worker by name.'' Some of this higher risk can be traced to genetics, or to the intrauterine environment. Adopted children run a higher-than-normal chance of having been exposed to a prenatal environment that would be considered deprived. If a pregnant woman plans to place her baby for adoption, she is more likely than a typical pregnant woman to be a teen-ager | Chosen and Given |
181845_1 | anthropological meditation on the roles that women play in the Roman Catholic Church and in secular society. In a long-awaited document on women's issues, Pope John Paul II will reaffirm his opposition to the ordination of women as priests, Vatican officials said today. The text is to be issued next week. The Pope also offers a vigorous defense of women's dignity as equal to men's, the officials said. The document was described by the officials as a theological and anthropological meditation on the roles that women play in the Roman Catholic Church and in secular society. ''This is a highly personal text that sets out the Pope's own views on the meaning of Christian womanhood,'' an official said. Some Catholic groups and a few bishops, especially in the United States, have publicly called for women to be given greater responsibility in the church and in some cases have insisted that women should be made priests. John Paul categorically rules out women's ordination in a theological and biblical analysis on the origins of the priesthood, the officials said. Rather than break new ground, the document reviews a line of argument for the male priesthood by noting that Jesus chose only men as his apostles, the Vatican officials said. Critics' Arguments Rebutted Critics have assailed this view by contending that Jesus was responding to the customs of the day in a male-dominated society and that the church should adapt to modern realities. Apparently in rebuttal of this argument, the Pope argues that Jesus acted freely and not in adherence to traditions of His time because He also upheld the dignity of women, the officials said. ''Certainly some women's groups will not be pleased,'' a Vatican official said, ''but the Pope is addressing these issues from a very broad, long-term perspective.'' Over the last few months, John Paul has mentioned the coming document on several occasions and has emphasized the importance he attaches to it. Vatican officials said they expected the Pope to examine specific issues relating to the role of women in the church in another future document based on the deliberations of the 1987 Synod of Bishops. American delegates to the Synod called for women to be given more jobs in the Vatican's male-dominated offices, and earlier this year a draft of a pastoral letter to be issued by American bishops encouraged a greater pastoral role for women in the church. | POPE TO KEEP BAN ON WOMEN PRIESTS |
177696_0 | LEAD: A bill to limit the growth of imports of textiles, clothing and shoes cleared a major hurdle in the Senate today, virtually assuring its passage and setting the stage for another election-year trade confrontation between Congress and the Reagan Administration. A bill to limit the growth of imports of textiles, clothing and shoes cleared a major hurdle in the Senate today, virtually assuring its passage and setting the stage for another election-year trade confrontation between Congress and the Reagan Administration. The Senate voted, 68 to 29, to restrict debate on the measure, which would allow imports of textiles and clothing to increase 1 percent a year, compared with the 16 to 17 percent annual increases of most of this decade. The bill would also freeze imports of non-rubber footwear at present levels. The vote on the motion to limit debate, or invoke cloture, was large enough to override a potential veto by President Reagan, if Senators maintain their positions. A slightly different version of the bill has already been approved in the House. More Rigid Curb Was Vetoed President Reagan has not indicated his position on this measure, but he vetoed an earlier and more rigid curb on textile imports. That veto was sustained. The current bill has been criticized by seven Cabinet members and other senior Administration officials, who assert that it would provoke retaliation against American exports, hurt consumers and violate international obligations. Under the cloture motion, the Senate is limited to 30 hours of debate. That means the bill could be voted on Thursday or Friday. Should the bill pass the Senate with a majority bigger than the 67 needed to override a veto, President Reagan could face a decision similar to one he faced on another piece of legislation that he strongly opposed, the bill requiring companies to provide for 60 days' notice of factory closings and large-scale layoffs. Last month, the President agreed to let that bill be enacted without his signature. He declined to veto the plant-closing measure because it had popular support and a veto could have hurt the election chances of Vice President Bush. Neither Presidential candidate has endorsed the textiles legislation, which its sponsors have tried to make more palatable to critics. The modified bill does not mandate restrictions against individual countries, permitting greater flexibility in carrying out its terms. 'Least Persuasive Case' Nonetheless, the Cabinet members who oppose it | Move to Curtail Textile Imports Gains in Senate |
183921_0 | LEAD: President Francois Mitterrand told the United Nations General Assembly today that a wide range of international trade sanctions should be imposed on any nation using poison gas or other chemical weapons against its own citizens or another country. President Francois Mitterrand told the United Nations General Assembly today that a wide range of international trade sanctions should be imposed on any nation using poison gas or other chemical weapons against its own citizens or another country. The French President also endorsed President Reagan's call to the General Assembly this week for a special conference to strengthen the Geneva Protocol of 1925 on chemical weapons, saying that Mr. Reagan had spoken ''in lofty and urgent terms that echoed our concerns.'' Mr. Mitterrand urged participants in such a meeting to make ''a solemn reaffirmation'' of their resolve to renounce chemical weapons, halt their spread, encourage more countries to sign the protocol and improve procedures for investigating allegations that chemical weapons have been used. Eager Acceptance In Washington later in the day, Mr. Reagan met with Mr. Mitterrand and asked him to be the host of such a meeting in Paris. The French leader immediately accepted, although no date was set. Separate negotiations are under way in Geneva on a new treaty to ban the possession and manufacture of chemical weapons. After declaring France's support for such a ban, Mr. Mitterrand told the General Assembly, ''Let us create a situation which would make it impossible for any state to use chemical weapons with impunity to settle its external or internal problems.'' ''If any state does use them,'' Mr. Mitterrand said, ''I think it would become necessary, among other measures, to impose an embargo on all products, technologies and, more generally, weapons to that state. I appeal to the supplier countries in this respect.'' Custom-Tailored Language Although Mr. Mitterrand did not name any country, his call for an embargo was carefully worded to cover recent assertions that Iraq used poison gas against Kurdish rebels and against Iran during the Persian Gulf war. Diplomats here and a senior Reagan Administration official in Washington expressed a mixture of pleasure and surprise at the French President's call for sanctions in view of his Government's role as one of Iraq's principal military suppliers during the gulf war and France's close political ties with Baghdad. They also welcomed a change in France's position at the Geneva talks on | Mitterrand Urges Sanctions Against Users of Poison Gas |
177169_0 | LEAD: WOMEN taking estrogen after menopause were half as likely to die from a stroke as women who had not taken the female hormone, according to a new study in the British Medical Journal. WOMEN taking estrogen after menopause were half as likely to die from a stroke as women who had not taken the female hormone, according to a new study in the British Medical Journal. The study is the first to suggest that estrogen protects against stroke. The hormone is commonly prescribed to treat menopausal symptoms. Earlier studies have indicated that it helps prevent a bone-softening disorder called osteoporosis and reduces the risk of heart attacks. But estrogen has been linked to an increase in uterine and breast cancer. The new study, conducted in 1981-87, involved 4,962 women who received estrogen, and 3,845 women who did not. Twenty women taking estrogen died from a stroke, compared with 43 women who did not receive it. The participants lived at Leisure World, a retirement community in Laguna Hills, Calif. The research was led by Dr. Annlia Paganini-Hill of the University of Southern California. | Estrogen Reduces Risk of Stroke After Menopause |
177161_0 | LEAD: Q. If osteoporosis occurs more often in postmenopausal women because of estrogen deficiency, why don't men get it even more often, and at younger ages? A. It is true that men don't have as much of the hormone estrogen as women, but ''the male hormone androgen, which normal men have in considerably supply, appears to exert similar protective effects on the skeleton,'' said Dr. Q. If osteoporosis occurs more often in postmenopausal women because of estrogen deficiency, why don't men get it even more often, and at younger ages? A. It is true that men don't have as much of the hormone estrogen as women, but ''the male hormone androgen, which normal men have in considerably supply, appears to exert similar protective effects on the skeleton,'' said Dr. William Peck, president of the National Osteoporosis Foundation and physician in chief of the Jewish Hospital of St. Louis. He added that men who have an insufficient supply of androgen do get osteoporosis, the loss of bone mass that often occurs in old age. There are other factors at work that make osteoporosis less of a threat for men, he said, among them the fact that ''genetically, they have larger skeletons and heavier bones.'' Q. Why are tears salty? A. Tears contains a variety of different salts, most of which probably come from the blood and, ultimately, from the diet, explained William Frey, a biochemist, who is director of the Ramsey Dry Eye and Tear Research Center of St. Paul. Salt in food is absorbed by the intestines and enters the bloodstream. The salt probably enters tears as blood flows through the lachrymal glands, where tears are formed. He said that the first known chemical analysis of tears, published in 1791 in a scientific journal edited by the French chemist Lavoisier, noted that they contained sodium chloride, which is regular table salt, and other salts. The second major salt in tears is potassium chloride, he said, ''and there are also other things, like calcium, bicarbonate and manganese, that can be involved in salt formation.'' Experiments in the 1950's showed that ''the concentration of sodium in the tears was the same as that in the plasma,'' he said. Salts are also excreted in urine and sweat, he said. Readers are invited to submit questions about science to Questions, Science Times, The New York Times, 229 West 43d Street, New York, N.Y. 10036. | Q&A |
183069_1 | and the cancers. ''They were pretty outrageous stories,'' he said. ''So we took the best three people we could find and asked them to do whatever is necessary to study the situation and make the results public.'' The three-member panel was headed by Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, director of the environmental and occupational medicine division at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. The other two members were Dr. Frederick B. Cohen, director of the oncology department of the Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, and Dr. Bernard D. Goldstein, chairman of the environmental and community medicine department at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Dr. Goldstein was assisted by Dr. Lioy, director of the exposure measurement and assessment division of the environmental department, who conducted the organic compound study. A Review of Four Cases The first study involved a review of the four cancer cases. Dr. Cohen said no indication could be found linking the four, either by cause or common exposure to any suspected carcinogens. ''These cases do not meet the usual criteria of a cluster and must be considered as a coincidence,'' Dr. Cohen said in a letter to Dr. Landrigan. A cluster is a group of cases that occur close to each other in time and have a common cause. Dr. Landrigan said two of the four players developed cancer within a year or two of coming to the Giants. ''That is too short a time,'' he said. ''It usually takes between 5 and 15 years for environmental exposure to cause cancer.'' In the second study, researchers sampled the air for 16 chemicals at the stadium, race track and practice field and measured electromagnetic waves emanating from 15 AM radio towers within eight miles of the complex. Dr. Lioy said the levels of organic compounds that may cause cancer were ''low and were typical of those found in urban areas throughout New Jersey and other areas of the country.'' Dr. Landrigan said the field strengths of the radio waves were found to be within safety standards. Combing Through Records He added that the third study involved analyzing patterns of death in the entire work force since the complex opened in 1970. Researchers are combing through health, payroll and other records and tracking death certificates to determine whether there were any similar patterns of death among employees who have died. ''If there | Meadowlands: Studies Dispute Link to Cancer |
182971_2 | maulings in national parks that once had garbage dumps that bears become most dangerous when they associate people with food. ''We think we have a bomb there and it's ticking,'' said Ken Mitchell, the United States Forest Service's director for the Admiralty Island National Monument. Mr. Mitchell supports a plan that Forest Service and state game officials put into effect this year designating the spit as human turf and leave the rest of Pack Creek to the bears. The authorities hope the boundary will keep people from being mauled and bears from being killed. But some bear watchers are furious. ''The bears are all used to people and they're busy fishing. They don't mind you,'' said John Tillinghast, a lawyer from Juneau who visited the creek one recent weekend. Less Drastic Measure Mr. Tillinghast said it used to be easy to come away from Pack Creek with a standard prize: ''Mom and cubs with a 50-millimeter lens, and you didn't have any baby sitter from Fish and Game watching you either.'' The bear that lunged at Mr. Land -called ''Pest'' with reason - prompted the establishment of the boundary between people and bears. In 1987, a Forest Service letter file grew fat with reports of bold advances by bears along the creek, mostly Pest. Forest Service staffers at Pack Creek pleaded with Mr. Mitchell to do something. ''None of us wants to see Pest killed, but we feel some action must be taken soon to prevent more incidents,'' they wrote, suggesting the creek be closed to people. In July 1987, the Forest Service and the Alaska Fish and Game Department announced Pest would be killed. When the anticipated protests came, they began work on the less drastic plan. Stan Price, an 88-year-old who lives on the creek, is a leader of the fight against the boundary rule. Since Mr. Price built his cabin and floated it onto the remote banks of Pack Creek more than 30 years ago he has shared the creek with dozens of bears and raised orphan cubs. 'Here Before We Were' ''It burns me up,'' Mr. Price said of the new rules. ''I can't say what a bear's worth. I can't say what a bear's good for. But I know they were here before we were.'' He said that he had had little conflict with the bears that wander into his cabins and woodsheds and that | Curb on Bear Watching Leaves Uneasy Truce |
182944_1 | complexities of fatigue and then perhaps even design treatments or diets to combat it,'' said Dr. Robert Miller, chief of clinical neurology at Children's Hospital of San Francisco. Few Spectrometers in U.S. Dr. Michael Weiner, director of magnetic resonance studies at the San Francisco Veterans Administration Medical Center and associate professor of medicine and radiology at the University California, said that while there are hundreds of magnetic resonance imaging devices in the United States, there are only three or four spectrometers large enough to accommodate a full body. He said experiments using the devices are just beginning to see how tumors are affected by drugs, to measure alcohol levels in the brain, to follow chemical changes in spinal cord injuries and to study mechanisms of fatigue. Previous information about muscle fatigue came from experiments in which muscle tissue was stimulated or exercised, removed from the body, quick frozen and later studied under a microscope. Few people signed up for such experiments more than once, Dr. Miller said, because the procedure was extremely painful. Samples of muscle were obtained with a biopsy needle three inches long and a quarter-inch in diameter. Such experiments demonstrated that chemical changes occur in fatigued muscles, Dr. Miller said, but they did not reveal exactly how the changes came about. The spectrometer, on the other hand, reveals a broad spectrum of chemical changes in muscles instantly and without requiring the cutting or suctioning of tissue. The technique is based on the novel response of living tissue when placed in the path of a magnetic field and radio waves, Dr. Weiner said. A person is put inside a doughnut-shaped magnet and radio waves are beamed in. The magnet aligns the nuclei in the atoms of the body, and the waves excite the nuclei. Because each chemical compound has its own frequency, just like each radio station has its own broadcast frequency, researchers can ''tune'' the spectrometer for one compound at a time. At this point, Dr. Weiner said, the person becomes a radio transmitter, broadcasting chemical information to a computer. The procedure, moreover, is harmless. The Mystery of Fatigue Mechanisms of muscle action had previously been worked out in detail, Dr. Weiner said, but exactly how muscles become fatigued has remained a mystery. Fatigue is defined as a decrease in force that a muscle can exert as it tires. There are two main theories. One holds that | Researchers Detect Chemical Differences In Muscle Fatigue |
182980_1 | Earth, far above the path of the shuttle, which orbits at about 184 miles up. The two giant satellites together will be able to relay messages from spacecraft, including future shuttles, traveling over the far corners of Earth, for the first time allowing nearly continuous communications with a single ground station in the United States. The system will thus allow the space agency to close down much of its worldwide network of aging, costly ground stations that can cause political friction with the countries where they are situated. The solar-powered satellite, with an array of seven antennas designed to handle multiple-frequency communications, is a huge receiver-transmitter capable of funneling extraordinary amounts of data within seconds. At its highest data rate, the craft could transmit in a single second the contents of a 20-volume encyclopedia, with each volume containing 1,200 pages and 2,000 words on a page. Establishing the full communications network, the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System, is of such a high priority that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is devoting scarce cargo space to these spacecraft on the first and fourth flights of the new shuttle launching schedule. (The satellites are called ''TEE-driss,'' for their initials, T.D.R.S.) Discovery is to use a spring device to launch the satellite from its cargo bay six hours into the mission, on the fifth orbit. An hour after leaving the shuttle, a two-stage booster engine is to kick the satellite into a high, circular orbit above the Equator where, more than 13 hours after leaving the Earth, it should unfold from its fetal launching position into a sprawling, X-shaped structure. Two arms of the craft are large solar power panels combining to span 57 feet, and on the other axis are a pair of umbrella-like antenna, each measuring 16 feet in diameter when unfurled, which span 42 feet from tip to tip. At the center is a modular, six-sided box containing the craft's electronics and bristling with additional antennas. $3.1 Billion Program The program, which NASA estimates will cost $3.1 billion through 1993, is behind schedule and over budget because of delays caused by technical problems and the revamping the troubled shuttle program. But the agency maintains that the satellite system will offer more capability and be more cost effective than upgrading and operating its existing network of 14 ground stations. Charles T. Force, NASA's deputy associate administrator for space operations, | Shuttle's Giant Payload Aims to Broaden Links to Space |
183017_2 | of a health risk and, therefore, be willing to pay less.'' The authority argues that there is no an adequate scientific basis for fearing cancer or other harmful effects. ''You can find some studies in modern science today to support any proposition you can dream up,'' said a lawyer in Washington who represents the authority, Tom Watson. ''That is not enough to show that there is an adequate scientific basis for fear. ''And if you have a claim that you are entitled to compensation for fear, there must be an adequate scientific basis for that fear. Otherwise, people would feel that we might as well throw any claims against the wall to see what sticks.'' Concern about electromagnetic fields has grown steadily since 1979, when two scientists in Colorado, Nancy Wertheimer and Ed Leeper, reported that a group of children in Denver who developed leukemia lived closer to electrical transformers and secondary lines than a control group without leukemia. Studies by Utilities In July 1987, the New York Health Department released results of a series of studies that found that children with leukemia or brain cancer were more likely than healthy children to be living in homes where the exposure to the magnetic fields of power lines was high. The New York researchers, however, said their studies neither explained the increased cancer nor established a direct cause-and-effect link. Since then, the study of magnetic fields and their effects on living beings has expanded. ''The utility industry is taking this question seriously,'' said Dr. Leonard A. Sagan, manager of the radiation studies program of the Electric Power Research Institute, an industry organization. ''If it should be established that power lines cause childhood cancer, the industry has a problem on its hands.'' One major court case has been decided on the issue, in November 1985. It involved the Houston Lighting and Power Company, which had built a power line next to a school in the Klein Independent School District. A six-member jury found that the utility had improperly condemned the property and, determining that there was a potential for the line to cause health problems, awarded the district punitive damages of $25 million. 'Law Is Being Made' An appeals court overturned the verdict last year, finding that the utility had followed all the necessary legal steps in acquiring the property. The Supreme Court of Texas upheld the apellate decision. But the utility | In Goshen, Challenge on Power Line's Effect |
179659_5 | data - one including freight and insurance and the other without - on the same day. This change, mandated by the comprehensive new trade legislation and long urged by economists, is intended to put exports and imports on the same footing. The trade law undid a measure sponsored in the mid-1970's by Senator Russell B. Long, Democrat of Louisiana, that barred the Commerce Department from reporting the figures without freight and insurance until 48 hours after it had published the inclusive figures. The aim was to make the trade deficit appear larger, and it largely succeeded because the second set of figures was generally ignored. The Reagan Administration supported the move to eliminate this requirement, but it blunted charges of political maneuvering by pointing out that the change was included in the 1988 bill throughout its long journey through Congress. Calculated on the new basis, which will become standard beginning with the trade report for next January, the July trade deficit was $8.1 billion, compared with $11.7 billion in June. Further Adjustment Planned The Commerce Department said today that, beginning early next year, it would also provide import and export data in constant dollars as well as in the current dollars now reported. By eliminating the effect of inflation, this will produce a more accurate measure of trade volumes and their effect on economic activity, it said. This summer the department resumed the practice of adjusting the trade totals for seasonal variation, which had been suspended for about two years because data-collection backlogs had made this approach meaningless. By countries and geographical regions, which remain only in adjusted form, the July figures show relatively little shift. The United States deficit in trade with Japan remained at about $4.4 billion, and imports of Japanese cars climbed about $100 million, to $1.7 billion. The deficit with Canada, America's largest trading partner, remained at about $1.1 billion, and the deficit with newly industrialized countries, including South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, remained at about $2.7 billion. The trade deficit with Western Europe, however, climbed to $2.3 billion, from $1.9 billion, while the deficit with Mexico shrank to $75 million, from $400 million, and the deficit with Brazil slipped to $410 million, from $490 million. This nation's surplus in agricultural trade shrank to $885 million, from $928 million, as the manufacturing deficit narrowed to $12.8 billion, from $13.6 billion, the Commerce Department said. | U.S. TRADE DEFICIT IMPROVES SHARPLY AS IMPORTS PLUNGE |
179550_1 | from symptoms of breast cancer and in reducing the death rate from the disease. But these studies failed to resolve questions about which drugs to use, the best time to begin treatment, how long to continue it and the theories for such choices. The new study was undertaken in part to address the questions of timing and duration of the use of a specific combination of drugs. It involved 1,229 women in Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, West Germany, Yugoslavia, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. The Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Berne, Switzerland, reported on the study in today's issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. Toxic Effects Countered The drugs used in the study were cyclophosphamide, methotrexate and fluorouracil, commonly used in the regimen of adjuvant chemotherapy. To counter the toxic effects of the drugs, the doctors added leucovorin, a derivative of the vitamin folic acid. The researchers also added added low doses of prednisone, a steroid drug, for menstruating women, and included tamoxifen, a hormone, for those who had passed menopause. The women were randomly divided into three groups. One group received the drugs over nine days beginning 36 hours after having a breast removed or a form of the operation. The drugs were taken on the first, second, eighth and ninth days. A second group started receiving the drugs from 25 to 32 days after the operation in a regimen that took 28 days. Then the women repeated the regimen for five more cycles. The third group started with one course just after surgery and continued with six additional cycles. Seven Cycles of Drugs According to the report, 62 percent of the women in the second group had no evidence of disease after four years, as against 60 percent of the women in the third group and 40 percent in the first group. Two patients died from the drug therapy during the first year after the surgery. Other reported toxic effects included systemic infections, tearing of the surgical scar, painful inflammation of the mouth, an abnormally low white cell count that could lead to infections and a low platelet count that could lead to bleeding. The study did not determine the most effective period of treatment, but suggested that five or six cycles may be the fewest required. The authors said they had clearly determined that prolonged therapy was more effective than a single course. | Health; Breast Cancer Drug Therapies Compared |
179504_1 | story, Aug. 13). I have twice been to China and have studied China's birth policy in cities and rural areas. Only about 20 percent of Chinese families choose to be one-child families. As such, they have certain privileges. No one prevents the others from having two or more children. Indeed, those who choose one child are counseled not to have a sterilization until the child is 10 or 12 years old in case something happens to the only child (or in case they change their minds). Peer pressure is great to limit family size because this is recognized as the only way to protect the future for a country that has more than 1 billion people, and only 11 percent of its land mass is arable; a country with 23 percent of the world's population and only 7 percent of its farmland. China has incentives for small families and increasing economic disincentives, known by all, for larger families. The Chinese system is both compassionate and fair. For example, if an oldest child is handicapped, the family can have a second child with all the privileges of an only child. If both parents are only children, the same thing. If the parents belong to minority groups (5 percent of the population), they can have more than one child, with all the benefits of an only child. When a country has lost millions of citizens within memory to starvation, the citizens understand the limited carrying capacity of their own country. I think the Chinese have developed one of the most humane and rational population policies in the world. No one is forced to have an abortion, and all are encouraged to limit families. We can learn for our own future. Allowing any pregnant Chinese couple to gain asylum here on assertion of fear of forced abortion at home (as illegal in China as it is in the United States) makes a mockery of our asylum law. There are people who truly need asylum, and irresponsible use of refuge in our country will make it only harder in the long run for true political refugees. Let us work out a rational population policy for our own country and respect policies of other countries that are dealing humanely with the critical need to slow population growth. SARAH G. EPSTEIN Washington, Aug. 23, 1988 The writer is on the advisory board of The Population Institute. | China Has Humane and Fair Birth Policy |
178862_0 | LEAD: The Air Force has quietly approved the final construction phase for a nuclear ''doomsday'' radio network, concluding that the project can be expanded without harming the environment. The Air Force has quietly approved the final construction phase for a nuclear ''doomsday'' radio network, concluding that the project can be expanded without harming the environment. The decision to expand the network of radio relay towers across the nation was made last month by James F. Boatright, Deputy Assistant Air Force Secretary, said Kevin Gilmartin, a spokesman for the Air Force Electronic Systems Division at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass. The Air Force calls the network GWEN, for Ground Wave Emergency Network. It is a system of low-powered radio antennas and transmitters designed to insure adequate communication links for American military forces following a nuclear attack. The Air Force says the network is needed to insure that a President can give a launching order to Strategic Air Command bombers. The approval to expand followed a review of public comments received since Sept. 25, 1987, when the Air Force published a final environmental impact statement on the work, Mr. Gilmartin said Wednesday. The approval means the network ultimately will grow from 56 radio towers linking 38 terminals at military bases to 96 towers linking 49 terminals, the spokesman said. That represents a reduction from the 126 towers proposed last fall but will still provide a ''final operational capability,'' he added. Cost Estimated at $600 Million The service has said it would like to complete the system by January 1992. Mr. Gilmartin said the Air Force estimates the system will have cost roughly $600 million when completed. A typical station consists of a thin, 300-foot tower and three small shelters surrounded by a fence. The shelters house electronic equipment and an emergency generator and fuel. The stations normally require a 700-square-foot parcel of land. Each GWEN antenna is connected to a small grid of copper wire buried underground at its base and operates with less than 2,000 watts of power. The Air Force is currently completing construction of a group of 56 GWEN towers. Fifty of those towers are operating, receiving and relaying brief test messages every 20 minutes. Some of the towers in the initial system prompted citizen groups in Massachusetts, Oregon, Pennsylvania and California to band together to fight GWEN on grounds that the towers increased the likelihood of their towns | U.S. to Complete Emergency Radio Network |
180555_1 | in the Bethanys and the Woodbridges.'' Mr. Selden said working with apartment dwellers, retailers, big corporations, hospitals and others was not as easy as enlisting the aid of homeowners. A small city, he added, might work with one or two haulers on recycling and a large city might work with a dozen or more. And where there is municipal collection, recycling can become an issue in labor negotiations. The five cities working with the consultants together account for more than 600,000 people, nearly one-fifth the state's population. The study of the five will cost $50,000 and take six months, said a senior analyst in the Department of Environmental Protection, Lynn R. Stoddard. ''It's not costing that much, because the consultants are not developing a complete plan for each town,'' Ms. Stoddard said. They're just doing a lot of the background work that will help the towns develop their own plans.'' The consultants will also develop a manual of recommendations to be used by other urban areas. ''This urban-recycling assistance is further evidence of the state's commitment to recycling,'' Environmental Protection Commissioner Leslie Carothers said. ''We are backing our mandatory recycling act with the information and methods necessary to implement effective urban-recycling programs.'' Legislation passed last year requires all towns to start recycling programs by 1991, with the aim of reducing by at least 25 percent the trash that they burn or bury. High Proportion of Paper The law has two lists of materials, one of items that cannot, after Jan. 1, 1991, be accepted at landfills or incinerators. The items include cardboard, paper, glass bottles, and aluminum and tin cans. The second list, items that should be recycled, includes tires, used motor oil and batteries. Of the 2.5 million tons of garbage a year generated by cities and towns in the state, 40 percent is paper, nearly 90 percent of which is potentially recyclable, according to figures compiled by the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. Maurice Sampson of Sampson Associates in Philadelphia was in charge of recycling in Newark, N.J., and Philadelphia. The consultant from the Energy Systems Research Group of Boston, John Schall, was the recycling director of Massachusetts and helped draw up programs for Boston and Springfield. Hoping for More Money The consultants will examine the waste, collection, recycling opportunities and steps to be taken. In Hartford, where the consultants began working last week, Mr. Sevigny said he hoped | 5 Cities to Get Help With Recycling |
180404_1 | the casualties included fishermen drowned at sea and washed ashore, and two women and two young girls crushed when a wall fell on the house in which they had taken refuge from the storm. Three days later, the hurricane's handiwork is visible everywhere. But perhaps the most stunning reminder of the storm's tremendous force is on display at the Hotel Club Las Perlas in this Caribbean resort. At the peak of the storm Wednesday, a 150-ton Cuban fishing boat was heaved out of the water and deposited lengthwise on the beach. It smashed into the hotel, crushing walls and rooms and challenging cleanup crews with a logistics problem that will require days, if not weeks, to resolve. Government officials said the casualty counts could rise once communications were re-established with remote areas in the states of Quintana Roo and Yucatan. Many small towns remain unreachable by road and are without telephones or electricity, and ferry service to the island of Cozumel and to Isla Mujeres cannot be resumed because docks were destroyed. Surpassed All Expectations Those who survived their brush with Gilbert said they had been chastened by the experience. Billed in advance as the most powerful storm to hit the Western Hemisphere this century, the hurricane surpassed all expectations. ''I could never ever have imagined anything as disastrous as this,'' said Lazaro Olavar, operator of a diving and fishing supplies shop. ''Now I know how it must feel to drive in a Formula 1 automobile race at 180 miles an hour.'' ''It was like an earthquake, but with one difference,'' said Ramon Villegas Cob, a laborer, as he swept up debris at the heavily damaged Playa Azul Hotel in Cozumel. ''An earthquake doesn't last but for a minute, but this hurricane went on for hours and hours.'' In both Cancun and Cozumel, streets were flooded, windows shattered and palm trees uprooted or bent at angles recalling the Leaning Tower of Pisa. To such traditional debris, there was a new high-tech addition: satellite dishes that Gilbert had blown off roofs and tossed around as if they were Frisbees. Tourist Season in 2 Months Outside luxury seaside condominiums, armed Mexican soldiers stood guard and discouraged the looters who pillaged some shops and boutiques in the first hours after the storm. Army jeeps are also in the streets, distributing food and water to those residents whose supplies have run out. But with | Hit the Worst, Yucatan Begins a Long Cleanup |
180181_2 | treasure and are almost guaranteed a high-paying job in any business that has two or more computers.) Through a series of interactive exercises, Career Navigator can help job seekers identify their skills, values, interests and personal style. The program is especially easy to use, and the documentation actually adds to an understanding of the product rather than obscuring it. Would you prefer to work for a big corporation or a smaller company? Which values are most important: Job security? Personal growth? Money? Power? Status? Change and variety? Leisure or family time? Service to society? Independence? Integrity? Such questions might not occur to a young job seeker without experience. And the answers to these questions might be revelations to experienced workers who cannot figure out why they are unhappy. ''The exercises are intended to be a springboard for thought and discussion, rather than a test with right or wrong answers,'' said Dr. Joan M. Baker, a vice president at Drake Beam Morin who helped develop the program. The idea is that the user should focus on jobs that are likely to result in the best fit of personality and skills and that are likely to yield the most satisfaction. ''Job seekers who have neither a clear understanding of their own assets and needs nor a well-defined job objective often desperately grab at an inappropriate hot job, demonstrate insincerity or aimlessness in interviews or get easily frustrated,'' the manual observes. For many people the very idea of looking for a job can be paralyzing. Career Navigator breaks the process down into manageable choices that the user can make at his or her own pace. For example, by answering simple questions in the self-introduction segment, the user drafts, almost without knowing it, a professional-looking resume. The draft can be revised and edited using the Navigator word processor (or the user's own word processing program.) ''The goal is to get a job objective that fits who you are, and the skills you have to offer, with the kind of organization you ought to be in,'' Dr. Baker said. ''Take a computer programmer or systems analyst, for example. You probably like to work alone, with independence, rather than on a team. Knowing that beforehand may prevent you from taking a position in which you wouldn't do well. Someone might put you in computer sales because you understand computers, and that would not be right.'' Step | Navigating Through a Job Hunt |
180508_0 | LEAD: A COALITION of the clergy and conservative legislators will hire a lobbyist and encourage the General Assembly next year to pass legislation promoting ''a societal return to godliness,'' leaders of the group have announced. A COALITION of the clergy and conservative legislators will hire a lobbyist and encourage the General Assembly next year to pass legislation promoting ''a societal return to godliness,'' leaders of the group have announced. The group said it would promote what one member called the ''Leave It to Beaver family,'' where the father works outside the home and the mother stays home with the children. The coalition, the Concerned Ministers of Connecticut, said that it would oppose the spending of state money for abortions for poor women, gay rights legislation and pornography and that it would promote prayer in school and the teaching of the Bible as literature in public schools, along with greater care for the environment. ''I'm extremely disgruntled and upset over the condition of our nation, particularly in those areas revolving around the family, abortion, the gay rights issue, human rights issues, crime in our nation,'' the Rev. Herb Rylander said Tuesday at a news conference in the Capitol. ''I feel that at some point, the clergy, considering our mandate from God, we must come together, change things in America, to alter history before we fall and self-destruct.'' Seeing the Family as Endangered The Rev. Earl Imswiler said 4 percent of American families could be classified in the ''Leave It to Beaver'' mold, an indication of the breakdown of family values. Pornography, he added, is ''taking a devastating toll'' on families and helps perpetuate child abuse. Mr. Imswiler said that there had been a steady ''secularizing of our education,'' that children are being taught ''the religion of secular humanism.'' ''We are appealing that prayer be back in the school, that even the teaching of the Bible as literature ought to be back in school,'' he said. He said much of the Constitution was based on the 18th-century preachings of Christian clergymen. 'Sold a Bill of Goods' The Rev. June Elliot said American woman might ''be the most hurting of all,'' in that they have been ''sold a bill of goods about not being home, not being wives and mothers.'' ''God created us in his image,'' she said. ''It says in the Bible there's neither male nor female in God. We're created equal | Family is Aim of Clergy Group |
180276_0 | LEAD: Rice Grows On the Anacostia Rice Grows On the Anacostia ALONG the Anacostia River, which ecologists have called virtually dead, some hardy plantings of wild rice are raising hopes for the river's future. The Anacostia, a tributary of the Potomac that was once a marshland with lush aquatic plants, has suffered the effects of sewage treatment plants, runoff and dredging. ''We've just lost the whole wetlands system, basically,'' said Dick Hammerschlag, chief of the National Parks Service's Center For Urban Ecology. ''It's pretty bad,'' he said. ''There are terrible dissolved oxygen levels, terrible sediment levels.'' The fact that there is any life at all in the water - turtles, carp and catfish survive and an occasional egret drops by - recently inspired officials at the Parks Service and the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin to try the rice experiment as part of the a program to revive the the Chesapeake Bay. The program extends to all related waterways in the bay system. The Anacostia flows nine miles through Prince Georges County in Maryland and the District before joining the Potomac. Wild rice is a fairly sensitive plant and the scientists are viewing it in this experiment as a barometer of the Anacostia's ability to support life. The rice plant will also attract water fowl and muskrat and other life forms needed to restore the river's balance, Mr. Hammerschlag said. Rice was planted in the main part of the Anacostia and in the adjacent Kenilworth marsh. ''The success story is in the main stem Anacostia, all three plantings essentially were successful,'' said Mr. Hammerschlag. ''We didn't see anything particularly toxic or problems affecting those plants.'' In the marsh, the plants also grew, though some were eaten by animals. ''The plants grew, so there is the hope that if other plants were planted and protected, they, too, might succeed,'' Mr. Hammerschlag said. Ecologists are hoping the plantings have put down seeds and will revive next year. The long-term hope is that a revival of the Anacostia will be as successful as the revival of the Potomac. ''The analogy is in the Potomac,'' said Tom Schueler, principal environmental engineer with the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. He said that in only five years, the ''dead'' Potomac became the source of local bass-fishing tournaments. ''We're trying to accomplish over time the same sort of effect in the Anacostia,'' he said. Pollution, | NORTHEAST JOURNAL |
180237_1 | I can understand that some consumers still feel threatened by 20th-century technology - there must be plenty of people who still prefer going into their banks to get cash from a teller over dealing with a 24-hour cash machine - the Redeemers are being used by tens of thousands of Connecticut and New York shoppers each day. The number of returned containers processed through our equipment speaks for the consumer approval we experience: * In July, more than 61 million containers were accepted in our can, glass and plastic bottle redeemers in Connecticut and New York stores. * The number of cans and plastic and glass bottles returned through the equipment was higher by nearly 9 million containers in July over the same period in 1987. * In California, where we began operations less than a year ago, volumes through the equipment are up nearly 50 percent in the last two months. * In the California program, a recent poll of shoppers revealed that of those consumers who had used our equipment for the first time, 80 percent said they would continue to recycle through the machines. In 1982, the Environmental Products Corporation developed its current line of Redeemer equipment, separate reverse vending machines for cans, glass bottles and plastic containers, for use in mandatory-deposit states. The company operates about 1,800 machines in the major supermarkets of Connecticut, New York City and its surrounding counties. The machines are equipped with laser scanners to read Uniform Pricing Codes and microprocessors to account for the brand and number of containers that are returned. The equipment also compacts the containers for ease in handling large volumes of cans and bottles, and pays the consumer an appropriate amount for the redeemed containers. In addition to collection, we also administer a program for the pickup and backhaul of all empty containers and provides an accounting for the millions of dollars in deposit refunds and handling fees due to bottlers and retailers. Most retailers, bottlers and consumers find the equipment to be convenient, fast, reliable and accurate. In an age when we are all faced with a growing waste problem, and recycling is more and more the accepted solution to this problem, the Environmental Products Corporation provides a specialized recycling service that is effectively reducing the number of used beverage containers that might otherwise litter the landscape. BRUCE H. DEWOOLFSON President Environmental Products Corporation Fairfax, Va. | Recycling Equipment Is User-Friendly |
180541_1 | told them - not parents, friends, or teachers throughout their 16 years of schooling - that without marketable office skills, they are virtually unemployable. Fundamentally, what these newly minted liberal arts graduates are suffering from is reality shock [ ''Brand-New Degree and No Place to Go,'' Aug. 28 ] . For the first time in their lives, they have to get real jobs and support themselves, but no one has told them - not parents, friends, or teachers throughout their 16 years of schooling - that without marketable office skills, they are virtually unemployable. As a 1974 graduate of Adelphi University majoring in theater (a fun, but useless subject for the everyday business world), I walked straight out of school and into my first job. It was no easier then for a B.A. to find a job than it is now, but my very wise parents had urged me to go to secretarial school at night during my senior year. With typing and shorthand skills under my belt, I could and did always find work, and was able to explore various career fields in a very short period of time. Eventually, I landed a secretarial job with a shopping center developer and began a 10-year career in real estate. A year ago, I formed a public relations and marketing concern for real estate companies and utilize my office skills to this day. At the age of 21 or 22, most young people have little to offer potential employers except their enthusiasm, energy and willingness to learn. But no company will hire them, especially for entry-level positions, without the training to do such ''boring'' tasks as typing or word processing, computer programming or bookkeeping. If the college graduates of 1988 want to go to work, they must first realize that they will not get hired because of who they are or what they know, but rather, for the contributions they can make to their companies. And they will find that principle to be true throughout their careers. JANET WHITE Queens The Times welcomes letters from readers. Letters for publication should include the writer's name, address and telephone number. Letters should be addressed to The Editor, Long Island Weekly, The New York Times, 229 West 43d Street, New York, N.Y. 10036. We regret that because of the large volume of mail received we are unable to acknowledge or to return unpublished letters. | Graduates Need Marketable Skills |
181022_2 | the actual techniques,'' but he did not discount the possibility that future satellites would have military applications. Israeli crowds at a Mediterranean beach broke into cheers as they saw the rocket rise into a clear blue sky from an undisclosed launching site at 11:32 this morning. ''That's it!'' exclaimed a reporter for Israel state radio, one of a small group of Israeli journalists brought to see the launching, over the rumble of the liftoff. ''The satellite has been launched. It's an amazing sight!'' Press Full of Reports The launching came a day after the Israeli press was full of reports - citing foreign technical magazines - that the country was about to launch a communications or spy satellite. Israeli journalists frequently cite foreign reports to avoid military censorship. Government officials declined to comment on the reports and denied that the subject had been discussed at Sunday's weekly Cabinet meeting. ''Who said anything about spying?'' Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said after the Cabinet meeting, in reply to a radio reporter's question about an article in the British magazine ''Flight International'' claiming that Israel had developed a reconnaissance satellite and a rocket to put it in low-level orbit. Mr. Shamir was considerably more expansive today, saying the launch ''makes Israel a partner in the upper echelon of the modern technological world.'' ''Certainly we should congratulate our scientific community, our industry and everyone who is involved in Israel's great technological and scientific achievement,'' said the Prime Minister, who is the midst of a tough election campaign. Comments by Peres Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Mr. Shamir's electoral rival, was somewhat more circumspect, trying to play down any military aspects of the new satellite: ''This is not a weapon. This is not an arms race. This is technology.'' In the Jonathan Jay Pollard espionage case, court documents indicated that many of the military secrets the United States Navy analyst gave away came from satellite intelligence the United States was not passing on to Israel. Experts say a satellite in a low orbit is of limited military use since it is only in place for a short time. The United States and the Soviet Union have high-altitude satellites that, in effect, hover permanently over their targets. The cost of such effective military observation is put in the billions of dollars. NASA Denies Any Role An official with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said yesterday that | Israel Launches Space Program And a Satellite |
180900_0 | LEAD: APPLYING new computer programs and long-known laws of physics, scientists have become increasingly adept at recreating and analyzing car crashes, providing a powerful tool for improving automotive safety and resolving legal disputes. APPLYING new computer programs and long-known laws of physics, scientists have become increasingly adept at recreating and analyzing car crashes, providing a powerful tool for improving automotive safety and resolving legal disputes. The reconstruction technique produces detailed, slow-motion replays of the terrifyingly complex and rapid events that occur when automobiles slam into one another or into pedestrians. The automotive industry is using the approach to help design cars that are less likely to injure passengers and pedestrians, while Federal officials use it to improve auto safety standards. And by helping establish the often-disputed facts of accidents, the technique has also come into wide use in lawsuits and insurance cases. After a major accident today, any of a variety of crash investigators, including state police officers, university experts, automobile company officials and insurance consultants, may enter data gathered at the scene, like the length of skid marks and the size and location of dents, into their computers. Using powerful new programs, the computers recreate the accident, showing who hit whom at what speed, and just how the cars and passengers were affected in the moment of the crash. Older methods of crash analysis often focus on staged experiments with dummies in which actions and circumstances tend to be highly artifical. For instance, a test car holding a dummy will often be directed to plow into a stationary object like a concrete wall. By definition, the science of accident reconstruction deals with real-world events that usually are far more complex, like when two speeding cars slam into each other after they have careered off other objects and rolled over several times. The advantage is a huge increase in the accuracy of accident data and a corresponding rise in the potential for better cars. ''The reconstruction of what happened after the fact has a lot to do with improving auto safety,'' said Charles A. Moffatt, an engineer at Indiana University who studies car crashes. ''After all, we can't do experiments on living people, so what happens out in the field is very important.'' Bob Rosenfeldt, head of occupant protection and impact dynamics at the Ford Motor Company, said of the evolving science of crash reconstruction, ''It allows you to hone | Auto Wrecks Yield to Computer Analysis |
180929_1 | region has already lost a whole decade of development and its recovery remains blocked by a massive burden of unpayable debt. The partial measures taken so far have kept most of these countries on a treadmill of painful austerity, economic stagnation and rising debt. Fragile democracies throughout the region are losing support and credibility because they cannot meet the basic demands of their citizens. Here, a new approach is urgently needed. The capacity of each Latin American country to manage its debt should be evaluated on a case by case basis. Every nation prepared to pursue sound economic policies should have its payments fixed at a level that allows sustained growth, political stability and social advance. We have the technical competence to work all this out. What has been lacking is the political resolve. The longer we delay taking decisive action, the greater the ultimate cost -for the United States as well as for Latin America. In Central America, a new Administration must make a firm commitment to support and abide by the peace plan advanced by President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica, which provides a viable framework for resolving Central American wars and building a lasting peace. As called for by the Arias plan, Washington should confine further support to the contras to humanitarian aid. We should also be ready negotiate directly with Managua on regional security arrangements to assure that Nicaragua will sharply reduce the size of its army, withdraw Soviet bloc military personnel, curtail its weapons acquisitions and cease assistance to insurgents elsewhere. The United States should together with other Western democracies devise and implement a strategy of sustained diplomatic, political and economic pressures to promote democratic openings and protect human rights in Nicaragua and throughout Central America. In confronting the drug problem, the next Administration will have to recognize that drugs are now a shared tragedy for both the United States and Latin America, and that the war against drugs can be won only if the United States curbs its demand for narcotics. Placing the blame on other countries aggravates rather than solves the problem. What is needed is sustained cooperation between the United States and Latin America to assure that the necessary effort and resources are put to work where they can be most effective. The United States also has a central role to play in helping to rebuild inter-American institutions. Today the Organization | Daggers of Debt, Drugs Aiming At the Americas |
180971_1 | students took the American College Tests this year - an increase of 8 percent. The Scholastic Aptitude Test consists of two sections, verbal and mathematics, with a maximum score of 800 for each section. The overall national average in the verbal section was 428 this year, while the overall average math score was 476. Last year the national average verbal score was 430 and the national average math score was 476. Blacks gained 7 points last year in the S.A.T.'s, for an average verbal score of 353 and an average mathematics score of 384. Those are the highest recorded since 1976, when data on ethnic groups were first tabulated. The math S.A.T. scores of all ethnic groups rose this year while verbal scores either rose or stayed the same. The gains occurred as 23,000 more students who are members of minority groups took the test this year. A greater number of people taking the tests usually means lower averages. Slight Gain in A.C.T. Scores The American College Test consists of four tests that measure academic abilities in English, mathematics, social studies and natural sciences. The composite score is the average of the four test scores. Scores are reported on a scale ranging from 1 to 36. The national average score was 18.8 this year, up from 18.7 last year. For black students the national average was 13.6 this year, up from 13.4 last year. The A.C.T. tests, more common in the Midwest, South and West than in the Northeast, are used by nearly 3,100 of the 3,406 public and private universities in the United States. Scholastic Aptitude Tests are used by 1,600 of the more selective colleges. Many schools will accept one or the other as an admissions test. Other findings included these: * Although S.A.T. scores have been relatively stable for the last few years, verbal scores are 38 points lower this year than their high in 1968, while math scores are 16 points down from their high that same year. * Women scored an average 13 points lower than men on the verbal section this year and 43 points lower on the math section. Women scored 422 on the verbal section while men scored 435, and women scored 455 on the math, while men scored 498. * Average math S.A.T. scores for women rose by 2 points, but their verbal scores fell by 3 points. * Men scored | Blacks Gain Again in College Admission Tests |
175954_0 | LEAD: The Irish Republican Army said today that three men killed by British soldiers in Northern Ireland on Tuesday were I.R.A. members ''on active service.'' The group uses the phrase to refer to a guerrilla mission. The Irish Republican Army said today that three men killed by British soldiers in Northern Ireland on Tuesday were I.R.A. members ''on active service.'' The group uses the phrase to refer to a guerrilla mission. In the past, political furors have followed incidents in which the British military or security forces have killed unarmed I.R.A. members; when the guerrillas have been armed, there have been few protests. The growing violence in Northern Ireland claimed two additional victims today. An elderly couple in Londonderry died when they triggered an I.R.A. booby-trap bomb. The blast occurred when the couple, worried that they had not seen a young neighbor for days, went to investigate, the police said. A bystander was hurt. The local I.R.A. unit issued a statement saying the bomb had been intended for a British Army search squad in the area. In an apology for the deaths, the I.R.A. statement said, ''Although the operation was carefully planned, it went tragically wrong.'' Vehicles Are Taken At the same time, the police said more than two dozen commercial vehicles, mostly buses and trucks, were hijacked this evening in West Belfast, an impoverished Roman Catholic district where nationalist sentiment is strong. Several vehicles were set on fire. The disruption, interpreted as a show of force by sympathizers of the I.R.A., is similar to the violence and vandalism over the weekend to protest the extradition to Belfast from Dublin of Robert Russell, an I.R.A. member convicted of terrorist activities. Over the weekend, the police reported 23 shootings and 17 bombings across Northern Ireland that injured 12 members of the security forces and at least 4 civilians. The general civil disruption and almost random violence in the last week has been been the most intense and widespread in Northern Ireland in recent years. The killing of three I.R.A. guerrillas on Tuesday near Drumnakilly, in County Tyrone, appeared to have been part of a mission by the British antiterrorist unit known as the Special Air Services. A local man said he saw four men in civilian clothes being flown from the scene in a helicopter minutes after the shooting, a characteristic method of operation for the unit. Killings in Gibraltar Using | I.R.A. Syas 3 Slain Were on Mission |
175866_0 | LEAD: Out on the Caribbean coast east of here, a new resort is gearing up for its first winter season. In the capital, the old Havana Hilton, now called the Havana Libre, is being remodeled. At the glorious white-sand Varadero Beach a new airport for jumbo jets is nearing completion and several more hotels are going up. Out on the Caribbean coast east of here, a new resort is gearing up for its first winter season. In the capital, the old Havana Hilton, now called the Havana Libre, is being remodeled. At the glorious white-sand Varadero Beach a new airport for jumbo jets is nearing completion and several more hotels are going up. Nearly 30 years after Fidel Castro and his revolutionaries shut down Cuba as a frolicking, anything-goes playground for foreigners and began preaching austere Communism, the island is plunging back into tourism. ''We need the money,'' said Rafael Sed, a 40-year-old bureaucrat pulled out of Mr. Castro's personal advisory staff to oversee the new drive. In recent years, the gap between Cuba's income from sugar, lobsters, tobacco and other exports and the cost of buying spare parts and raw materials from Western countries has widened. The Need for Hard Currency The equivalent of $10 million a day in supplies and equipment from the Soviet Union has kept Cuba afloat. But Cuba needs to raise $1.2 billion a year in hard currency to buy goods from the Western countries and it has been scrimping along on half that much. ''Unfortunately,'' Mr. Castro said in a speech in late June, ''we can't get everything we need in the U.S.S.R. We can't get everything in the socialist bloc. There are many things we have to get in the capitalist bloc and they have to be paid for with sugar bought at low prices and other exports.'' Cuba earned $117 million in hard currency from 193,000 Western tourists last year, according to Mr. Sed. It is shooting for 350,000 Western tourists three years from now and eventually hoping for annual earnings of $500 million, which would make tourism the country's leading source of foreign currency. Such goals would not be terribly ambitious if Cuba could hope to attract the American tourists who accounted for most of its clientele before Mr. Castro took over in 1959. But the United States bars all but a few categories of Americans, such as journalists and Government | Santiago Journal; Can Cuba Be Fun Again? Yes, but No Sex Please |
178015_1 | Officials there think it will be three to six months before something resembling a normal existence returns. 'A Terrible Human Tragedy' Brig. Gen. Subed Ali Bhuya and his infantry brigade there are feeding and housing nearly 30,000 people, 12,000 head of cattle and innumerable chickens and goats. ''Their houses were washed away,'' the general said today of the people who have converged on his garrison since Aug. 30, leading cattle and carrying what they could salvage of their homes. ''It was a terrible human tragedy.'' The flooding this year is unlike the expected annual inundation that comes with the monsoon season. It has been a sudden flood ''out of season,'' destroying the barriers and embankments that this impoverished country has managed to construct. Bangladesh is on the receiving end of mighty river systems - among them the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Jamuna and Meghna - that descend from the Himalayas. From ancient times, it has been destined to suffer major floods with great regularity. Adding to the problem in modern times, the great mountains of South Asia have become increasingly denuded and eroded in many places, and the cascade of earth and water each year grows more devastating to Bangladesh, which sprawls over delta after delta at the rivers' mouths. If an international effort were to be mounted to control the rivers, the task would be mammoth, not only because of the technical challenges involved but also because of regional politics. India Called Key to Effort No effective plan can be drawn up without the active support of the regional power, India. Although Bangladesh has sought to involve other neighbors, especially Nepal, where deforestation has also contributed to problems downriver, India continues to insist that the rivers are a matter for direct negotiation between New Delhi and Dhaka. But joint commissions have produced no comprehensive improvement. In addition, relations between China and India have been cool since they fought a border war in the 1960's, and diplomats think India would be unlikely to welcome Chinese involvement in such talks. The Government of Bangladesh today was decribing the floods as ''an unprecedented human tragedy.'' [ The Indian Government announced that it was sending two transport aircraft to drop food supplies to flood victims in Bangladesh. An Indian spokesman said the craft are to carry about 30 tons of foodgrains on Friday and that four Indian helicopters already are assisting in relief work. ] | Flood-Ravaged Bangladesh Seeks Plan to Control Rivers |
176540_0 | LEAD: The start of the school year is a good time to establish a system for the records - academic, medical and legal - that will be needed as your child advances. The start of the school year is a good time to establish a system for the records - academic, medical and legal - that will be needed as your child advances. While schools maintain such information, and will forward it to a new school when a child moves, parents should have a set to verify information. Graded papers are helpful if a report card or an evaluation has to be challenged. Some schools will issue two sets of report cards and major test scores for parents who are separated. Any documents pertaining to custody should be kept by both parents. Two brochures, ''Annual Education Checkup'' and ''School Records Fact Sheet,'' are available free with a stamped, self-addressed, business-size envelope from the National Committee for Citizens in Education, 10840 Little Patuxent Parkway, Suite 301, Columbia, Md. 21044, or by calling 800-NETWORK (800-638-9675). TYPE ITEMS LENGTH OF STORAGE Medical Records of Through high school, vaccinations and at least medical and dental treatments Academic Tests and papers; Consolidate as report disciplinary reports; cards are issued; keep notes on teacher report cards through conferences; report high school cards Legal Birth certificate; Indefinitely adoption papers; judgments affecting custody; immigration documents | CONSUMER'S WORLD: Guidepost; Keeping Children's Records |
181601_2 | the archdiocese's sheer size. With 1.8 million Catholics, New York City is not only the third-largest archdiocese in the nation, after Los Angeles and Chicago, but it is also spread out geographically. Its 4,700 square miles take in Westchester, Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan and Ulster Counties as well as Manhattan, Staten Island and the Bronx. The Brooklyn diocese, by comparison, has a Catholic population of 1.4 million but covers only 180 square miles in Brooklyn and Queens. #61,000 Responses to Survey Work on the synod began in 1986, when a diocesan team interviewed 2,000 Catholics. A questionnaire was then distributed throughout the diocese's 410 parishes and hundreds of schools. It was also translated into nine languages and appeared in a number of newspapers. The questionnaire listed several dozen areas of concern, from service to the poor to better sermons, and asked respondents to evaluate the importance of each and how well the archdiocese had dealt with it. The survey drew 61,000 responses, and they were supplemented by statements from groups meeting in about half the archdiocese's parishes. The questionnaire responses were distilled into a list of 564 proposals for action. Last April, Cardinal O'Connor named additional members to the synod, and the expanded group selected the 65 items on this weekend's agenda. The delegates were chosen by archdiocesan officials from among Catholics active in parish and regional councils and from names supplied by church agencies working with minorities and special groups. Half of Delegates Are Women Half the synod members are laity and slightly more than half are women. The other half is divided equally between nuns and male clergy, including eight bishops. Of the 120 lay members, 32 are Hispanic, 13 black and 5 Asian. Each geographic area of the archdiocese is represented. Six people with physical disabilities will also participate, as will similar numbers of teenagers and Catholics over the age of 70. Some of the synod proposals reflect these groupings. Two proposals on Friday's agenda, for example, call for expanding lay leadership in parish councils and for giving women greater roles both in the liturgy and the administration of the archdiocese. Other proposals outline measures to recognize Hispanic and black culture in church functions and Catholic schooling. Previous synods in New York - the last one was in 1950 - involved only the clergy and focused on church regulations. Relatively few dioceses have held the kind | Archdiocese to Hold Synod And Give Laity a Voice in It |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.