Scientists

WASHINGTON -- The nuclear arms race is history. The world's industrial nations are at peace. But the Union of Concerned Scientists is still, well, concerned.The 23-year-old anti-nuclear group yesterday issued a "World Scientists Warning to Humanity," signed by about 1,580 top scientists from 69 countries, declaring that governments everywhere must act quickly to save the planet from doom."Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course," the "Warning" admonishes. "Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources."

LIVERMORE, Calif. -- The "Woodpecker Project" was a great success.The CIA says so and invited a team of scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and their families to a brass-band ceremony at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., where the Woodpeckers received the Intelligence Community Seal Medallion.So what was Project Woodpecker?Don't ask. It's a state secret."Here we have this great recognition, but we can't say anything about it," said Ellen Raber, who started up the project in 1985 and gave it its name.

A Columbia biotechnology education firm run by a pair of Ph.D.s in biology went international last month, teaching Israeli scientists and doctors methods for studying diseases and genetic engineering.Robert E. Farrell Jr., 32, and Gregory S. Leppert, 33, specialists in molecular biology, founded Exon-Intron Inc. in 1987 while graduate students at Catholic University in Washington. Last month, they ran two seven-day laboratory workshops at the Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine in Haifa, Israel.

For years scientists have believed that one of the first signals of global warming would be the shrinking of the polar ice cover.In today's edition of the British publication Nature, two scientist report a 2 percent decrease in the Arctic Ocean's ice cover between 1978 and 1987, discovered through a statistical analysis of satellite data.While this record may be an indication of global warming, th scientists say their work is not conclusive evidence because it is a relatively short record.

Stem cell researchers who eagerly anticipated President Bush's speech last night said they were pleased that he opened the door for some federal funding but were perplexed by his assertion that 60 cell lines exist. Several said the president's decision to allow federal funding for research into existing cell lines would make it possible for more scientists to get involved, thus speeding the pace of discovery. But one of the foremost authorities in the field, Dr. John Gearhart, a developmental biologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said, "I am absolutely puzzled by this report of 60 cell lines."

ST. MARY'S CITY -- Crowded around color TV monitors, scientists watched in wonder yesterday as a tiny fiberoptic camera led them on a jerky tour of the inside of a child-sized lead coffin buried here 300 years ago.The circular color image showed fine, root-like tendrils hanging from the coffin's lead roof; a jumble of rotted material, perhaps from a wooden inner coffin; piles of brown mud washed in by groundwater, and what appeared to some to be part of...

They are ghostly pinpricks of matter so elusive they can pass easily through miles of rock and metal.But Demosthenes Kazanas, a NASA astrophysicist, thinks these faint specks could become the foundation of a whole new branch of astronomy.They're high-energy neutrinos. And Dr. Kazanas, a 41-year-old Severna Park resident, wrote in a recent issue of the scientific journal Nature that telescopes designed to detect the decay products from these particles could give scientists CAT scan-style images of the Earth's core and provide a clearer picture of the star-swallowing black holes at the center of some galaxies.

Dr. Gerald M. Rosen may be a leader in the study of microscopic particles called free radicals, but he committed scientific fraud by using identical graphs of the molecules' action to illustrate reports of different experiments, an expert in the field testified yesterday.Dr. Gary R. Buettner of the University of Iowa testified in Baltimore County Circuit Court that "scientists do make mistakes," and that for that reason he made no comment when he noticed in 1985 that the same graph had appeared in Dr. Rosen's articles of 1980 and 1984.

In one of Asia's most isolated jungles, the Foja Mountains of western New Guinea, naturalists have discovered a vast unexplored preserve of exotic species new to science. Among the previously unknown species researchers found during a 15-day expedition in December were more than 20 species of frogs, five palms and four butterflies. They also found hundreds of rare birds and giant rhododendrons with white blossoms the size of bread plates, believed to be the largest on record. All told, the 3,700 square miles of mist-shrouded tropical forest might be the most pristine natural area in Asia and the Pacific, Conservation International announced in Indonesia today.

In laboratories across America, scientists work feverishly to create the perfect frozen pizza.Slathering pizza pies with a new wonder topping would ensure )) the crisp crusts they crave, a topping that would keep the tomato sauce from seeping into the bread dough prior to their arranged marriage at 425 degrees.That wonder topping: plastic.Not your basic petroleum-based Saran Wrap, but edible films made from corn, wheat, soybeans and other crops. Food wrap that melts in your mouth, adds protein and makes you feel good about the environment every time you bite into your jumbo supreme pizza.