Frequency

Because of inaccurate information provided The Sun, an article Wednesday about the abrupt departure of radio talk-show host Art Bell from the airwaves listed an incorrect frequency for Washington radio station WWRC. The station can be heard at AM 570.The Sun regrets the error.Pub Date: 10/17/98

A headline and article in Thursday's Howard County edition of The Sun mischaracterized a proposal for a local bus service. The proposal entails placing limits on the frequency of reserved-service trips but does not involve a reduction in service.The Sun regrets the error.Pub Date: 2/01/98

WHEN PEOPLE think of airport noise, they typically think of the piercing high-frequency screech of jet engines.Residents of the Allwood neighborhood, just east of Baltimore-Washington International Airport in northern Anne Arundel County, find they are disturbed more by the low-frequency variety, which rattle and shake their houses several times an hour.Unfortunately for about 80 Allwood families, until recently most airport noise suppression programs were oriented only toward the high-frequency sound waves.

Hard against Baltimore-Washington International Airport, a neighborhood of tightly packed brick homes and basketball hoops is the subject of a debate inside the Federal Aviation Administration with national implications.At issue is a new variety of jet noise first documented by airport engineers in September 1995. They found that, unlike most neighborhoods rimming major airports hit by high-frequency noise from jets passing overhead, homes along Allwood Drive were buffeted by low-frequency blasts from planes taking off.The finding has significant implications: A $25 million soundproofing program run by the Maryland Aviation Authority with federal assistance is not effective in eliminating jet noise for the 82 homes in the area.

The status of Orioles catcher Chris Hoiles has changed with each major shift in baseball's tortuous labor negotiations this off-season. Restricted free agent one week, eligible for arbitration the next.Hoiles may have found a way to clear up the confusion. The Washington Times reported yesterday that he and the Orioles have agreed in principle to a five-year contract worth between $17 million and $18 million.The deal may not be finalized for weeks, or even months, however; any contract first must be approved by the owners' Player Relations Committee and the Players Association, and the owners say they won't OK any contracts until the labor stalemate is resolved.

In a step that may one day free diabetics from painful needles, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have shown that pulses of ultrasound can inject drugs like insulin through the skin.The skin, one of the body's first lines of defense against infection, is highly impermeable, so only a few small-molecule drugs like nicotine can now be administered with skin patches.Dr. Robert Langer, Dr. Daniel Blankschtein and Samir Mitragotri, a doctoral student, all of the school's chemical engineering department, found that pulses of low-frequency ultrasound significantly increased the skin's permeability, allowing insulin and other large-molecule drugs to be delivered from a skin patch.

If there's anything we can agree on in America, it is that we have problems. We can even agree on what some of the problems are. Two examples come to mind: teen-age pregnancy and drug abuse.No arguments, right? But watch how quickly you can start one. All you have to do is begin discussing possible solutions for these social ills.That's when it can get ugly. We seem to break down into two camps that, as the football announcers say, plain don't like each other. That's another problem.One group preaches abstinence.

The big band sound of radio station WITH-AM (1230), which listeners had feared would fade away with a change in ownership, will keep on swinging in Baltimore, but at a different station.Beginning at 6 a.m. Monday with "The Alan Field Show," the "Station of the Stars" format will move to WHLP-AM (1360), Jim Ward, general manager of WITH, announced yesterday.All current personalities on WITH -- Mr. Field, Ken Jackson, Wayne Gruen, sports-talk announcer Nestor Aparicio and Fred Robinson -- will be heard at approximately their usual times on the new station.

Productos Electronicos Industriales in Hunt Valley won a $15,018,335 contract from the Navy to provide an air-cooled frequency converter.Vitro Corp. in Silver Spring won a$2,863,874 contract from the Navy to provide engineering for anti-submarine warfare acoustics.The Westinghouse Electric Corp. in Sykesville was awarded a $2,573,155 contract from the Navy to provide preliminary studies and engineering services.I-Net Inc. in Bethesda won a $1,477,477 contract from the U.S. Navy to provide intercom systems.

WESTMINSTER - The County Commissioners on Thursday took a step toward clearer emergency communications.At the request of the members of the Communications Advisory Board, the commissioners agreed to write a letter of intent to the Federal Communications Commissions, stating that they will be interested in any high-frequency channels that open up in the future.The move is the first step in a plan that would change the county's current low-band emergency communication system into a $5.5 million, 800 megahertz system that is designed to ensure clear communications and eliminate the current system's problems of interference.

Just as waterfowl migrate and fish swim upstream to spawn, the Chesapeake Bay regularly witnesses another predictable rite of passage - governors and mayors making bold promises to reverse decades of water pollution and restore the nation's largest estuary at some future date. One can only contemplate what native instinct drives these intrepid visitors. But they always perform with great vigor and seemingly little awareness of the generations of forebears who have done exactly the same thing.

Howard Reith repeatedly clicks on his garage door opener. Up close. Farther away. Moves it back and forth, but the door refuses to budge. And he's not alone. In his Harford County neighborhood, electric garage doors suddenly don't work the way they used to. Blame the new radio system at Aberdeen Proving Ground. If this is a showdown of military technology versus consumer gadgetry, it is, not surprisingly, no contest. APG's new radio signals are overpowering the meager, fraction-of-a-watt ones emitted by garage door openers.

A ripple of indignation spread across the campus of the University of Maryland, College Park yesterday over news that its student-run radio station, which has been broadcasting since 1937, might be unceremoniously forced off the air by a more powerful station in Baltimore. The college station, WMUC, issued an appeal to alumni to help it retain its signal, currently powered by just 10 watts and available within a radius of only a few miles of the 1,200-acre campus. University officials said they had met with lawyers to determine the station's legal options.

Home insurance companies are searching through their customers for the ones they want to keep: those who file few claims or, better yet, none at all. Rising construction costs, weather losses, and a poor investment climate have made insurance companies wary of anyone who files claims with any frequency. At most companies, that's anyone who files more than one claim every eight years, the industry average. By that definition, James and June McCloy of Rockport, Mass., were positively claim-crazy.

Maryland will end a half-century ban on black bear hunting next year, opening a limited season that would help trim the state's bear population by about 20 percent. The plan would likely allow hunters to kill about 30 black bears in Western Maryland in October -- the first legal hunt since 1953. "This is not a bear eradication program," said Paul A. Peditto, director of the Wildlife and Heritage Service of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. "Our goal is simply to reduce the bear population so that everyone can enjoy having them as an important part of the landscape."

For theater, classical music and dance reviews and event listings, go to www.SunSpot.net/stageTo close its eighth sensual, sexual season, the over-the-top and sometimes raunchy drama company known as Cherry Red Productions takes it down a notch with its newest play, titled Kenneth, What Is the Frequency? "This play is very clean by Cherry Red standards. ... It's a little new for us," said artistic director Ian Allen, who has been writing and directing such in-your-face CRP shows as Cannibal Cheerleaders on Crack, Baked Baby and Thumbsucker since 1995.

Maryland's poor and minority communities are likely to bear the heaviest burden if state lawmakers adopt Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s plan to allow slot machines at four racetracks, a new study suggests. The study by researchers at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, found that the rate of problem and pathological gambling among poor people is more than three times that of the most affluent segments of society. "The study provides support for the notion that lower socio-economic-status Americans are being disproportionately affected by gambling," researchers wrote.

The Department of Defense has appealed for ideas to help in the fight against terrorism. Officials said they want innovative ideas from sources that might otherwise not have access to the Pentagon - small companies and individuals with imaginative solutions. This idea of the national equivalent to the office suggestion box drew jibes from some quarters. A Washington columnist for the New York Times laughed at the idea of "every Tom, Dick and Goofball" becoming national security consultants.

Last night, I listened to "The Star-Spangled Banner." I heard static crashes in the background, and then the sound of a French announcer speaking words I couldn't translate but that my heart understood. I was listening to a French commercial shortwave station. With a slight twist of the tuning knob, I could hear the news from stations in almost any spot on the globe. The news was all about America's crisis. Because I have a shortwave receiver, I can easily hear - directly from the source, unfiltered by American editors and producers - what the rest of the world is saying.

PETERBOROUGH, N.H. - At 68, Philip Roth is at the phase of a successful writer's life in which the awards stack up with alarming frequency - the surest sign, he says, that one's career is finished - and he garners the kind of reverent praise that usually doesn't come without hearses and incense. But if he thought he would sit back yesterday at the MacDowell arts colony here, pick up another lifetime-achievement medal and bask in the kind of high-minded, man-of-letters accolades befitting someone of his stature, well, no wonder he was startled by how his friend and fellow author William Styron characterized Roth's role in the pantheon of literature.