University Daily Kansan / Friday, October 13, 1989
Nation/World
7
5 Nobel winners selected in chemistry and physics
The Associated Press
STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Five scientists won the Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry yesterday for discoveries that have given the world exact measurement of time and could help explain the origins of life.
Canadian-born Sidney Altman, 50 of Yale University and Thomas Cech, 41, of the University of Colorado in Boulder, won the chemistry prize for their discovery of catalytic properties of RNA.
Bertil Andersson of the Nobel committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said their work had forced "the rewrite of whole chapters" in chemistry textbooks and could help reveal how life began.
It changed dogmas from the turn of century to the living cells function;愈加说服了。
The discovery probably will provide a new tool for gene technology, with potential to create a new
defense against viral infections and virus-resistant plants, the academy said.
Norman F. Ramsey, 74, of Harvard University, was given half the physics prize for inventing a method for measuring electromagnetic current standard of time is based.
Because of Ramsey's discovery, time has been measured since 1967 by the movement within the smallest particle of matter rather than the rotation of Earth. Ingvar Lindgen, chairman of the awards committee, said the atomic clock deviated by tust 1.000th of a second in 300 years.
Ramsey developed a way to study the structure of atoms by exciting
them to different energy levels using two oscillating electromagnetic fields.
German-born Hans G. Dehmelt, 67, of the University of Washington in Seattle, and Wolfgang Paul, 76, of the University of Bonn, West Germany, shared the other half of the $499,000 prize for developing ways of trapping particles to study them with extreme precision.
Another application is the cesium atomic clock, in which cesium atoms are excited to higher levels.
That led to the development of the hydrogen maser, a laser-like device that excites hydrogen atoms and provides the most detailed determination of their internal structure.
Dehmelt and Paul were recognized for developing the technique for trapping single ions, or electrically charged atoms, according to weight. Lindgren said ion traps could provide even more exact time measurement in the future.
Their discoveries might provide a method to destroy harmful RNA molecules that cause infections, such as the common cold, and eventually also might provide cures for hereditary diseases, the academy said.
Sweden releases convicted assassin
The Associated Press
STOCKHOLM, Sweden — An appeals court yesterday freed a 42-year-old career criminal convicted of killing Prime Minister Olof Palme, ruling that there wasn't enough evidence to convict the crime that traumatized Sweden.
Christer Pettersson, who maintained his innocence throughout his sensational trial, walked away from Kronoberg prison hours after the Svea Appeals Court threw out his July conviction.
Prosecutors had charged that Peterson, who has a long criminal record and a history of drug and alcohol abuse, gunned down the popular and dynamic Swedish leader on a Stockholm street in 1986.
Pettersson had been sentenced to life in prison and had been in solitary confinement since his arrest in December.
"I'm surprised. I never really believed. I would be acquitted,
although I am innocent," Pettersson said after his release, the national news agency TT said.
The ruling could dash any hope authorities have of bringing Palme's killer to justice. It is the biggest setback so far in a three-year investigation that critics have said was bungled from the beginning.
The appellate court decision was somewhat foreshadowed by the July conviction. Although six lay jurors found him guilty, the two professional judges on the eight-member panel voted for acquittal.
Prosecutors could appeal the court's ruling to the Supreme Court. But the Court would hear the appeal only if it was the basis of a legal precedent or if it were considered a special case.
Prosecutor Joergen Almbad said the prosecution would not decide whether to go to the Supreme Court in a matter of months. It gives its formal written verdict Nov. 2.
Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson
vowed to continue with the hunt for Palme's killer. "The work in this investigation must continue with full force," Carlson said.
Though it delayed releasing details of its decision, the appeals court apparently found the prosecution's circumstantial case too thin. Petterson was convicted even though no motive was established, no weapon was found and no witnesses testified to seeing the Swede fire five shots at Palme.
Palme, a four-term prime minister and prominent international figure active in socialist causes and nuclear disarmament, was shot from behind at close range on Feb. 28, 1966, as he walked home from a late movie in downtown Stockholm with his wife, Lisbeth.
The appeals court decision added to a hopelessness that many Swedes feel about the chances of resolving the first murder of a national leader in 200 years.
LATINS FIGHT DRUGS: Seven Latin American presidents yesterday prepared a joint declaration expressing support for the war against cocaine trafficking and for keeping Panama out of the Group of Flight.
Panama has been suspended from the consulting organization of Latin countries since Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, chief of the Defense Forces and head of the country, removed a civilian president from office last year.
"Panama will remain suspended from this group and this type of meeting until a democratic regime is restored there," President Carlos Menem of Argentina said at a news conference hours before the close of the two-day summit last night in Peru.
He said the group's declaration also would include full support for the coca-producing Andean countries of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia in their "all-out battle" against the region's cocaine cartels. The three countries produce nearly all of the world's cocaine.
Presidents Alan Garcia of Peru, Carlos Salinas de Gortari of Mexico, Carlos Andres Perez of Venezuela, Virgilio Barco of Colombia, Jose Sarney of Brazil and Julio Sanguinetti of Uruguay also attended the two-day summit.
SIOVIETS AID NICARAGUA: The Soviet Union apparently "approved and may be orchestrating" delivery of Soviet bloc weapons and equipment to Nicaragua despite pledges to halt its own shipments of weapons, Pentagon officials said yesterday.
"If present trends continue, 1989 could exceed 1988 in total tonnage and dollar value of Sovet bloc military shipments to Nicaragua," the Pentagon said in a report.
World Briefs
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev told President Bush in May that the Soviet Union had sus- pended its nuclear weapons to Nicaragua at the end of 1988.
However, the Soviet Union has sent the government in Managua some $500 million in various other forms of military aid this year, U.S. officials said.
"Evidence is circumstantial, but we believe the Soviets have approved and may be orchestrating the delivery of Soviet bloc lethal aid to the Sandinistas through Cuba," the Pentagon said.
VIRUS RUNUMS ABOUND: Fears that a computer virus will trash information on some portable computers are overblown, experts said yesterday, but some alarmed users have taken steps to make sure that they don't wake up on Friday the 13th with the infection.
"Our advice to people is stop worrying," said Dennis Stelnaier of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. "People should make a backup copy of their files and not call me in the case where they are hurt. It can spread around and cause any significant damage at all."
But others believe the threat from the virus is real. The virus is programmed to activate after computers' internal clocks hit 12:01 a.m. today and to begin doing its dirty work when an operator begins using an infected program.
The virus, also known as Datarime, is programmed to scramble indexing information in IBM or IBM-compatible personal computers. It would be the equivalent of zapping index cards in a library and making the books impossible to locate.
PRE-FLIET CRACK FOUND:
Federal safety investigators said yesterday that they had found a pre-flight crack in the DC-10 engine disk, which was recovered from an Iowa corn field nearly three months after the crash of United Flight 232.
James Kolstad, acting chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the precise size, nature and reason for the crack were not yet determined.
But he said investigators hoped that further examination of the engine part would help determine the cause of the July 119 crash that killed 112 of 296 people aboard as the plane was landing at the Sioux City, Iowa, airport.
"There has been no determination on whether this crack was detectable before the accident, nor has there been a determination whether this crack was the point of origin of engine failure," said board spokesman Ted Lopattiew.
icz.
However, he and Kolstad said preliminary evidence indicated that the crack existed prior to the flight.
CHURCH URGES CHASTITY: The U.S. Roman Catholic Church should drop its qualified support for teaching about condoms in public schools as a way of preventing AIDS, a committee of bishops said yesterday.
The Church should urge that youngsters be taught chastity instead, the committee said.
"There is no such thing as safe, or safer, sex. That's an illusion," said Archibishop Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, chairman of the Ad Commission on the HIV SIV支 ment. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS.
The committee's draft statement, which was criticized by an AIDS activist who said "keeping information from children would be "abandoning them to death," revises an answer issued by the church's 50-member Administrative Board in December 1987.
The 1987 document said the church could tolerate public schools providing information about condoms as long as sexual abstinence outside of marriage was presented as the "only morally correct and medically sure way" to prevent AIDS.
OFFICIALS REJECT REFOMS:
A high-level East German official yesterday rejected the democratic reforms embraced by some of the country's Communist allies and said socialism would continue to dominate society.
Another top official said the government would listen to 'all parts of the population' clamoring for change as long as they were not committed to scrapping the current social order.
Reports persisted that 77-year-old Erich Honecker, the hard-line leader of the East German Communist Party, was in trouble.
West Germany's mass-circulation Bild newspaper, quoting unidentified Communist Party sources, reported yesterday that Honecker would be replaced Wednesday.
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