Palo Alto

EAST PALO ALTO, Calif. -- It's a weekday night in the Silicon Valley. Within a tiny Protestant church, the language of prayer is Spanish with a Mexican accent; the sounds of joy, bird-like warblings, belong to evangelical Protestantism. The church is the northern edge of a new Protestant reformation.Outside the doors of the Apostolic Assembly is the Bayshore Freeway, connecting San Francisco to San Jose. Across the freeway is wealthy Palo Alto, home of Stanford University. All along this stretch of freeway are exits to cyberspace, the greatest concentration of high-tech industry in the world.

After starting for the U.S. national team and playing a solid game in Sunday's 1-0 victory over Uruguay before 35,000 in Denver, Baltimore Blast defender Bruce Savage will be on the field again May 19 when the U.S. national team meets 1990 World Cup runner-up Argentina in Palo Alto, Calif.Savage, 30, has been invited back to the national team for a second look by coach Bora Milutinovic, who is preparing the U.S. squad for the 1994 World Cup, which be played in the United States.If Savage continues to impress Milutinovic, he could be offered a full-time contract with the U.S. national team and play in the 1994 World Cup."

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Stanford University vowed yesterday never to be embarrassed again by revelations of overcharging the government for research and unveiled a 35-point program to reform its accounting practices.The university promised tighter controls over what it charges the government for costs of doing research, stepped-up training of researchers and university employees to spot "unallowable" bills and guarantees to protect campus whistle-blowers who suspect wrongdoing in government contracts.

Francis Gherini,84, who won a battle with the federal government after it seized his Santa Cruz Island ranchland for a park, died Tuesday in Ventura, Calif., of injuries he suffered the previous week when he collapsed and struck his head on a driveway.He was patriarch of a family that had owned thousands of acres since 1880 on Santa Cruz Island, 20 miles off the Ventura County coast. In 1980, the island was designated to become part of a five-island national park chain.In the early 1990s, the National Park Service bought out his three siblings.

In the further consolidation of the struggling biotechnology industry, Crop Genetics International Corp. of Columbia has agreed to merge with biosys Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., in a stock swap valued at $11.4 million.The acquisition of Crop Genetics recalls the 1992 purchase of Nova Pharmaceutical Corp. of Baltimore by Scios Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. Since then, most of Nova's local operations have been shut down, although the merged Scios Nova Inc. spun off Baltimore-based Guilford Pharmaceuticals Inc.But both Crop Genetics and state officials yesterday were emphatic that Crop Genetics' operations won't leave the state.

CHICAGO -- At most offices, the sight of a co-worker waving at a television set might stir up some concerns and a little gossip.But it's perfectly natural in the break rooms of Xerox Corp.'s research operation in Palo Alto, Calif. Now that the company has linked lounges in departments and buildings through video conference hardware, researchers frequently chat with colleagues they have never met or haven't seen in person for months."You can walk by and wave to people," said Mark Weiser, head of the computer science laboratory in Palo Alto.

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Hewlett-Packard Co. yesterday named Carleton Fiorina, a Lucent Technologies executive, as president and chief executive, choosing a woman with ties to telecommunications companies to lead the No. 2 computer maker.Fiorina succeeds Lew Platt, 58, who will remain chairman until he retires Dec. 31. Fiorina, 44, becomes one of three women heading Fortune 500 companies. She'll run a Palo Alto corporation that helped create California's Silicon Valley and now has $47 billion in annual sales.

CHICAGO -- At most offices, the sight of a co-worker waving at a television set might stir up some concerns and a little gossip.But it's perfectly natural in the break rooms of Xerox Corp.'s research operation in Palo Alto, Calif. Now that the company has linked lounges in departments and buildings through video conference hardware, researchers frequently chat with colleagues they have never met or haven't seen in person in months."You can walk by and wave to people," said Mark Weiser, head of the computer science laboratory in Palo Alto.

* Wallace Hoggson, 95, a retired business executive and a decorated World War I pilot, died of pneumonia Monday at a nursing home in Sarasota, Fla. For many years, Mr. Hoggson worked as an investment banker for Bankers Trust in Manhattan and later as a broker for the Travelers Insurance Co. He retired in the early 1960s.* Dr. Jeffrey S. Tanaka, 34, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana, died in an automobile accident on Nov. 3 near Bondville, Ill. The author of five books, he was known for his work on statistical models gleaned from psychological studies.

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- In the sunny precincts where personal computers and myriad other information technologies were pioneered, some people are focusing on making these appliances more useful.Others seek to make them invisible.It may seem a heresy in Silicon Valley, spiritual home to the computer nerd, but some researchers predict that hackers will fade from view, just as crystal-radio buffs did once commercial receivers became widely available.At Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California, the lab where personal computers were pioneered -- but not commercially exploited -- the goal is to move beyond desktops, laptops, notebooks and all such models to the day when computing is so widespread and easy that no one notices the technology at all.They call the concept "ubiquitous computing."