Ultraviolet

Anyone with creaky knees or other painful joints may someday get repairs made with an injectable plastic that gradually grows replacement cartilage, scientists report.A research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a plastic material containing living cartilage cells, designed for injection into troubled joints. The plastic hardens when subjected to ultraviolet light, providing a pliable "glue" that holds the cells in place while they grow.The basic idea is to replace or repair old, damaged joint tissue with slick new cartilage, smoothing the movement of limbs and erasing chronic pain.

If the shuttle Endeavour blasts off on schedule early tomorrow, Silver Spring astronomer Ronald A. Parise will be the first company-paid astronaut to fly in space since . . . well, since the last time he flew in space, in 1990.Dr. Parise is a payload specialist for Endeavour's Astro 2 ultraviolet astronomy mission and a senior principal scientist at Computer Sciences Corp., a big NASA contractor based in El Segundo, Calif.He is one of an exclusive subset of astronauts who are not employed by NASA, the military or a university research program.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness. But a relatively simple outpatient procedure can restore the sight of even the most severely afflicted cataract patients, safely and virtually without complications.For information on cataracts, and what can be done for them, I consulted Dr. Sheila West, an associate professor of ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.Q: What are cataracts?A: Located behind the cornea and the pupil, the lens of the eye focuses incoming light. In order for it to do this effectively, the lens must be perfectly transparent.

Fusion Systems Corp. said yesterday it reached a settlement in its case against the Internal Revenue Service, resulting in a $7.2 million benefit.The settlement provides for the allowance of a significant portion of tax benefits claimed by the Rockville-based company that had been previously disallowed by the IRS.As a result, the company will recognize a gain for financial reporting purposes of about $7.2 million in the third quarter, which ended Friday....

They have been accessories of the famous and rich, Secret Service agents, cool dudes and even saxophone-playing presidential candidates.protection. Many low-cost sunglasses work just fine, medical experts and industry representatives say.In fact, for those wearing prescription eyeglasses, there's a good chance their clear lenses -- especially if they are plastic -- are screening out most of UV.Contact lenses also filter out a substantial amount of UV...

Edwin Hubble, whose 1936 masterwork, "The Realm of the Nebulae," explained that certain fuzzy objects in the night sky were actually galaxies far beyond our own Milky Way, would have been impressed with the research of his present-day followers.This new generation of astronomers is actually looking into the cores of certain rare galaxies to identify and map their many parts -- clouds of gas arranged in circular patterns around a brilliantly luminous center.Indeed, studying a galaxy's innards is a "hot" branch of astrophysics today, as one scientist put it.Results of the latest research in this field have been published in the April 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

THE OZONE layer filters out some of the sun's ultraviolet rays, which cause cancer and cataracts as well as other damage to animals and plants.Recently a U.N. panel of scientists disclosed that ozone depletion over the United States and other countries in the world's temperate zones now extends into the summer months. That, of course, is when ultraviolet rays are strongest and most likely to strike bare skin, to say nothing of crops that could be damaged.The Bush administration basically does not want to hear about ozone depletion, but it simply cannot ignore the latest U.N. findings.

NASA engineers are trying to outwit a new glitch in the star-crossed Hubble Space Telescope, an intermittent power failure that afflicts one of the most productive of the telescope's five scientific instruments.Because of the problem, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has stopped using one of two ultraviolet detectors housed in the telescope's Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph. This postpones indefinitely about 30 percent of the research planned for the spectrograph.It's behaving exactly the way my dryer at home has been working recently," said Doug Duncan, an astronomer at Baltimore's Space Telescope Science Institute, the center for Hubble research.

Back to the future: A fabric that permits suntanning is making the rounds of Seventh Avenue. Developed by a military contractor, Inner Tech Inc. of Richmond, Va., the material is being used on hat brims by the designer Patricia Underwood."

Astronomers on board the space shuttle Columbia were busy today gathering valuable scientific data from their $148 million Astro Observatory, breaking into full stride after two days of hobbling technical failures.The observatory's troublesome Instrument Pointing System (IPS) was functioning well enough early today to enable night-shift astronomers to do 35 percent of their planned observations, up from 17 percent yesterday. Today's day shift was said to be doing still better.Mission scientist Ted Gull said the pointing system's performance should continue to improve as engineers require fewer IPS tests.

Awnings are common in Europe, where nearly one of every three homes has one. But in the United States, where only 3 percent of houses have awnings, they're more of a novelty. That number is growing, however, because people want to spend more time outdoors on their patios, porches and decks. "They add another room to your home," says Greg O'Brien, who had a fabric awning installed on the back of his Leawood, Kan., house a year ago. Before, O'Brien's west-facing patio would become uncomfortable when the temperature hit the 80s. In summer, it felt like an oven.

GAITHERSBURG -- Using light waves, polymers and a nuclear reactor, researchers here are investigating a superstrong, experimental gel that might some day turn into a novel treatment for millions of people who suffer from arthritis. Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have spent two years shooting neutron beams at the mysterious hydrogel, trying to determine why it is almost as strong, flexible and resistant to friction as the cartilage in the human knee. The polymers in the gel - formed when synthetic molecules are struck by ultraviolet light - were developed by researchers at Hokkaido University in Japan in 2003.

"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.

Dozens of tropical cultures have no word for the color we know as blue, and two researchers say they've discovered why: The people who live in those areas can't see it. Scientists have known for years that ultraviolet light can cloud our vision and increase the risk of eye diseases. An estimated 20 million people in the United States have cataracts. But a psychologist at Ohio State College of Optometry says that among indigenous tribes in equatorial areas, ultraviolet light has another effect.

The U.S. government continues its changes to U.S. currency M-{ intended to thwart counterfeiting M-{ with a new look for the $50 bill. The new bills went into circulation yesterday. Security thread: a plastic strip embedded in the paper with M-tUSA 50M-v written on it; glows yellow under ultraviolet light Color-shifting ink: the M-t50M-v changes from green to copper when the note is tilted Color: Subtle background colors, reds and blues, added Watermark: a faint second image of Ulysses S. Grant is seen when the bill is held up to light Microprinting: yellow M-t50sM-v scattered around the back of the note Source: Bureau of Engraving and Printing

High-energy blue and ultraviolet light penetrate deeper into the skin and damage it. The resulting inflammation is sunburn. -- Sheldon Margulies, The Fascinating Body: How It Works

By slathering sunscreen on yourself and your children this summer, you are fending off sunburn and cutting the odds of at least one kind of skin cancer. But does sunscreen help prevent melanoma, the deadliest of skin cancers? Remarkably, scientists still aren't sure. About 54,000 cases of Americans with melanoma are diagnosed each year - triple the incidence of 30 years ago - and 7,600 die of it, according to the National Cancer Institute. And the numbers keep climbing despite decades of widespread sunscreen use. Some researchers, concerned about this apparent paradox, wonder whether sun lotions may have contributed to the problem.

Dr. Richard L. Riley, whose work with guinea pigs as a Johns Hopkins Hospital researcher in the 1950s proved that particles the size of a mote of dust could transmit tuberculosis, died of a stroke Monday at a hospital in Athol, Mass. He was 90 and had been living in Petersham in central Massachusetts. Dr. Riley - who wrote most of his roughly 120 scientific papers on the 1928 Remington typewriter he got as a high school graduation present - was equally well known for his work explaining the mechanisms that allow the body to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Trailblazing studies of the heavens by a Johns Hopkins-based orbiting observatory have been shut down by the failure of its pointing system. The $108 million Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer spacecraft was parked in a "safe" mode Dec. 10 after the second of four "reaction wheels" used to aim and hold the telescope on its targets stopped spinning, NASA said yesterday. Engineers in the FUSE control room in the physics department at Hopkins in Baltimore, aided by consultants brought in from across the country and recalled from retirement, have been working ever since to repair the problem or find an alternate solution.

A $100 hand-held ultraviolet spore zapper. A $38 antibacterial filter for the home air conditioner. A $30 kit for testing dust or powder in the home. Sealed boxes for safely opening mail. By Internet, e-mail and phone, merchants are pushing a slew of products designed to assuage the fear of bioterrorism fanned by the recent anthrax outbreaks. Some items deliver what they promise, but others are outright phonies that employ technical jargon to sound impressive while doing nothing, anthrax scientists said.