Sequence

There's something subtly different about the Maryland license plates being issued for passenger cars these days. Gone is the familiar sequence of three letters and three numbers (ABC 123). Since late last year, the Motor Vehicle Administration has been handing out plates that start with a number, followed by three letters and two numbers (1AB C23). What happened? The MVA ran out of numbers in the old sequence, which began in 1986 with license plate NAA 001 and ended last fall with MZZ 999. Betty Rabbitt, the MVA's assistant manager of vehicle services, said a few cars are still on the road with tags starting with N, so the sequence can't repeat itself.

DUNEDIN, Fla. -- As the competition for the Orioles' fifth rotation spot begins to heat up, right-hander Jake Arrieta made his case Saturday afternoon, throwing 4 2/3 shutout innings in a 3-1 win over the Toronto Blue Jays at Florida Auto Exchange Stadium. Arrieta, last year's Opening Day starter, said his ability to mix his pitches Saturday was the best "since I can remember.” “Today was the best sequence day I've had from start to finish in a long time, not just the spring, but since I can remember,” Arrieta said.

Rivals in the sometimes acrimonious race to sequence the human genome are working together to unravel the genomic software powering the rat, an animal often used as a model to help understand disease in people, the National Institutes of Health announced yesterday. Celera Genomics Group, which recently published its human genome sequence in the journal Science, and the Baylor College of Medicine, a key sequencing center for the rival publicly funded project that published in Nature, have been awarded two new grants totaling $58.5 million to help sequence the rat. The awards, $21 million of which will go to Celera over the next two fiscal years, are meant to speed up a publicly funded rat DNA-sequencing project begun at the end of the 1999 fiscal year.

This musical cantata will be presented at 6 p.m. Dec. 13 at Glen Burnie Baptist Church, 7524 Old Stage Road. The cantata takes a look not only the birth of Jesus, but also the sequence of events leading up to it. Free. For more information, call 410-766-2588.

As the ninth-graders peered into two mirrors they had taped together to study reflections, their assignment seemed simple enough: Using one pencil as their object, count the number of pencils that appear in the mirrors from various angles. Marco Alvarez and Ashley Ponton gradually decreased the angle of the mirrors from 67 degrees to 32 degrees, as physics teacher Joel Weiss had instructed, to better visualize the concepts of angle of reflection and angle of incidence. At 67 degrees, they counted five pencils.

WASHINGTON -- For the first time, the entire DNA sequence of a free-living organism has been deciphered, displaying an entire set of the genes needed for life, two scientists announced Wednesday night.The sequence is a chain of 1,830,121 DNA bases, the chemical units of the genetic code, which constitute the full genetic data base of a bacterium, Hemophilus influenzae.The result, announced at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology here, is a personal triumph for Dr. J. Craig Venter, the scientist who led the sequencing work.

I'm just amazed there are people who want to be known for looking like the Simpsons." - AL JEAN, executive producer of "The Simpsons," on a live-action opening sequence filmed for the animated show [SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL]

This musical cantata will be presented at 6 p.m. Dec. 13 at Glen Burnie Baptist Church, 7524 Old Stage Road. The cantata takes a look not only the birth of Jesus, but also the sequence of events leading up to it. Free. For more information, call 410-766-2588.

This morning marks the year's earliest sunrise. Sleepers wish it were later, but Old Sol popped above the eastern horizon at 5:39 a.m. EDT as seen from Baltimore (5:36 at Ocean City, 5:40 in Oakland). The summer solstice is early this year, at 7:59 p.m. on the 19th, and the latest sunset falls on the 27th, at 8:39 p.m. The sequence reverses in December, beginning with the earliest sunset on Dec. 7, the winter solstice on Dec. 21, and the latest sunrise Jan. 5.

The Senator is bringing back that old proto-music video "Fantasia" in a restored version for two weeks, starting today.The original 1940 production featured a full-frame 1:37 ratio, a multichannel stereo soundtrack and an intermission. These features have been re-created for the showing on the 900-seat theater's big screen, but this restored version will also be screened in 70 millimeter for enhanced depth and detail.Additionally, the screenings at the Senator will feature a 1940 newsreel for an added sense of milieu.

Ballet Theatre of Maryland launched its 30th anniversary season - and its most successful opener ever - with a sizable audience Saturday for the opening performance of Cinderella and a sold-out show Sunday at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts. The draw was a sparkling choreographic recreation of the fairy tale favorite by BTM artistic director Dianna Cuatto. Clearly relishing the project, Cuatto explained that she had "combined the best parts of favorite versions including Ever After, Disney, Rodgers and Hammerstein and others to create this version of the beloved tale."

This morning marks the year's earliest sunrise. Sleepers wish it were later, but Old Sol popped above the eastern horizon at 5:39 a.m. EDT as seen from Baltimore (5:36 at Ocean City, 5:40 in Oakland). The summer solstice is early this year, at 7:59 p.m. on the 19th, and the latest sunset falls on the 27th, at 8:39 p.m. The sequence reverses in December, beginning with the earliest sunset on Dec. 7, the winter solstice on Dec. 21, and the latest sunrise Jan. 5.

Two-way traffic on the westbound span of the Bay Bridge does not appear to have been a factor in causing the seven-vehicle crash that killed three Eastern Shore residents Thursday, a top police official said yesterday. Marcus L. Brown, chief of the Maryland Transportation Authority Police, said at a news conference yesterday that it might take two months to complete the investigation of the devastating chain-reaction accident -- set off when a trailer came unhitched from the sport utility vehicle that was pulling it. Yesterday, police identified the those killed in the crash as Randall R. Orff, 47, and his son, Jonathan R. Orff, 19, both of Millington in Kent County, and James H. Ingle, 44, of Preston in Caroline County.

As the ninth-graders peered into two mirrors they had taped together to study reflections, their assignment seemed simple enough: Using one pencil as their object, count the number of pencils that appear in the mirrors from various angles. Marco Alvarez and Ashley Ponton gradually decreased the angle of the mirrors from 67 degrees to 32 degrees, as physics teacher Joel Weiss had instructed, to better visualize the concepts of angle of reflection and angle of incidence. At 67 degrees, they counted five pencils.

CHICAGO -- Scientists are running out of things they think truly separate humans from other animals. For a long time the reigning difference was thought to be tool-making, but then they discovered that chimpanzees and gorillas use tools. One of the last bastions of human uniqueness, they surely thought, is language. Although animals can communicate, it was thought to be in only a fixed way - using sequences of sounds with specific meanings that never vary. Humans supposedly were different because they can follow rules of grammar.

I'm just amazed there are people who want to be known for looking like the Simpsons." - AL JEAN, executive producer of "The Simpsons," on a live-action opening sequence filmed for the animated show [SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL]

HOLLYWOOD -- Controversial director Spike Lee is calling on African-Americans to send Hollywood a message by taking a day off from work and keeping children home from school Nov. 20, when his movie "Malcolm X" opens."

BETHESDA -- Leaders of the federal Human Genome Project pledged yesterday to produce a complete blueprint of human DNA by 2003, two years earlier than scheduled. And, after criticizing a rival plan to produce a less-than-perfect blueprint a few months ago, they said they would create a "rough draft" by the year 2001."What we are talking about is a big and ambitious and even audacious plan," said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project. "It will, I believe, ignite the imagination of the scientific community."

"Fighting movies are [one of] two things: They're either real, or they're cool," says Ultraviolet stunt coordinator and fight choreographer Mike Smith. Falling firmly into the latter category, Ultraviolet (not screened in advance for critics) is a futuristic vampire tale starring Milla Jovovich as Violet, a victim of a disease called hemophagia. The sufferers gain superhuman speed, agility and senses but are left with an abbreviated life span. Director Kurt Wimmer, whose film Equilibrium wowed audiences with its "gun kata" style of gunfighting and martial arts, added much more to the mix this time around.

Researchers say they have sequenced the chemical structure of about 1 percent of the genetic material of the woolly mammoth, an Ice Age cousin of today's elephants. In the largest project to analyze the genetics of an extinct creature, scientists extracted DNA from remains found in permafrost. They identified the precise sequence of about 13 million chemical units within the mammoth's DNA, according to the study released today in the journal Science. The researchers report that almost 99 percent of the DNA sequenced was identical to that of modern elephants.