Scientists

About 130 feet in the air is where forest ecologist Geoffrey Parker and his team hang out. Literally.The researchers are in a basket dangling from a crane in what Mr. Parker calls the "biological frontier."They are studying the treetops, known to these Smithsonian Environmental Research Center scientists as the forest canopy.And while taking the pulse of leaves located where the atmosphere meets the biosphere may seem like obscure science, it is a hot subject in forest studies for researchers who believe their work will lead to an understanding of healthy forests.

MOSCOW -- A foreign-backed program to provide funds for civilian projects for Russian nuclear-weapons scientists finally started up this week, but Russian officials insisted there be no fanfare for fear it might provoke an outcry from ultranationalists in the Federal Assembly, or parliament.The program calls for the United States, Japan and the European Union to give $12 million to 600 of these scientists in the coming months and $57 million to more than 3,000 over the next few years.The program is driven by the fear that as Russia's military budget declines, its suddenly impoverished nuclear scientists might feel tempted to accept lucrative offers from Iraq, Libya or some other country to help build a nuclear weapon.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- The chance that the Earth will be struck by a milewide asteroid in the next year is greater than the chance that any given person will be struck by lightning -- about 1 in a million. But since an asteroid that size could destroy half the planet's population, some NASA scientists say it's a statistic worth worrying about."We know that the Earth exists in a swarm of comets and asteroids," David Morrison, chief of the Space Science Division at NASA's Ames Research Center here, said last week.

After more than a decade of urgent warnings about the effects of toxic chemicals on everything from the foods people eat to the towns they live in, scientists are taking a contentious second look at the way they decide the health risk of hundreds of chemicals.There is by no means agreement among experts that it is time for an across-the-board lowering of official concern about the safety of chemicals. Depending on who you talk to, dioxin, which caused a whole Missouri town to be evacuated a decade ago, could either be as deadly as the plague or in low doses as non-threatening as the common cold.

How and why nature created an enormous number of butterfly species has both enthralled scientists and stumped them. Now, University of Wisconsin researchers report that they have found the key: a set of genes that also may solve a baffling puzzle in human evolution."

LIMA, Peru -- In one room, scientists grow potato plants wit sticky hairs to see how they repel bugs. In another, the plants are pumped with hormones to see how they adapt to sunlight.A scientist crushes moth larvae to remove a fungus that, when combined with talcum and water, creates a natural insecticide. Nearby, scientists mix and match genes to produce potatoes that are bigger, stronger and tastier -- not to mention better-looking.Here in the country where the potato originated, scientists at the International Potato Center take potatoes seriously.

FAIRBANKS, Alaska -- From satellite images received here, from remote cameras on the seashore and from the periodic reports of bush pilots, scientists are following what for them is the event of a lifetime -- a rampaging glacier as big as the state of Delaware.Just a year ago, there was a flurry of news accounts about the retreat of the Bering Glacier, the largest in Alaska and probably the largest temperate glacier in the world. It was melting faster than ice was advancing, and scientists said the process might have gone on so long that it was irreversible.

ST. MARY'S CITY -- Scientists excavating what may be the burial place of Maryland's founding Calvert family said yesterday that the contents of at least two of the crypt's three lead coffins appear to be extremely well-preserved after more than 300 years.The first gamma ray images of the two coffins' contents show apparently well-preserved skulls, with shadows that some scientists suggest may reveal soft tissue, cloth burial shrouds or even hair.The images also clearly reveal the fine wood grain of the interior coffins, an indicator that the lead sheathing has kept the coffins relatively dry and sound.

Scientists say a six-year warming trend in the Chesapeake Bay's water could be due to local weather patterns rather than global warming and should not determine the bay cleanup plans."

Scientists at the University of Maryland Medical Center, who have been searching for the cause of high blood pressure for a decade, say they have found new evidence that the recently discovered hormone ouabain is linked to hypertension in humans.A team of researchers, headed by Dr. John M. Hamlyn, reported yesterday that in their first clinical study of ouabain (pronounced WA-bain) they were able to demonstrate that levels of the hormone increase when blood pressure rises and decrease when blood pressure falls.