Thursday, October 14, 1999
The University Daily Kansan
Section A · Page 7
Nation/World
Obstacles hamper food delivery
Relief supplies slow to reach southeast Mexico
CUETZALAN, Mexico - Two days after the end of the festival, the Ferris wheel and the merry-go-round still stand beside the 17th-century stone church. There's no way to remove them.
The Associated Press
The bare shelves in the shops of this picturesque tourist town and the worried faces of its people reflect another side of the same problem: There's little way to get food in.
100 m. The storms that battered southeastern Mexico last week destroyed all roads into the cobblestone-paved
town of 46,000, knocking down a major bridge to the east and wiping out sections of the highway south.
Asheville, North Carolina,
"Money isn't very valuable if there isn't anything to buy," she said.
People in scores of other towns across the mountainous region have similar fears. The storms, which killed at least 359 people, cut road and bridge access. Continuing poor weather is restricting aid flights.
"When the food runs out, what are we going to do?" asked Miguel Baltazar Ramirez, a 24-year-old music teacher.
The two were among scores of stranded tourists who were able to leave Cuzetalan on Tuesday by taking a 40-minute truck ride to the Apulco River, where oarsmen in two small boats fought a churning current to cross the 130-foot-wide span, dodging chunks of concrete from the broken bridge above.
inguis.
Cuetzalan, a quaint colonial town 100 miles northeast of Mexico City, had been celebrating its biggest festival of the year in honor of Saint Francis, attracting hundreds of tourists and craft vendors.
"Sunday it started really raining," said Mahni Dare, 31, of Brighton, England, who was attending the festival with friends. "We couldn't leave."
from the rear. volunteers from the Yesterday, volunteers from the area strung steel cables across the gap to build a flimsy footbridge.
Though the water and power went out, vendors continued to sell jewelry, but little else was available, said Marjorie Phelps, 24 of Asheville, North Carolina.
gave the answer. "We won't be able to carry many things over it," said Javier Hernandez, a state rural development worker who was coordinating the work.
It was part of a remarkable mass volunteer effort in an area still bare ly touched by federal relief supplies
By midday the first relief hell-copters began to arrive, landing in a sloping field just north of the town.
In town, local teachers and city officials frantically made phone calls to locate gasoline needed to transport hundreds of men who volunteered to cut a path across a landslide blocking a nearby highway.
bringing a bear to Enrique Navarro, a state transportation department official who happened to become trapped in Cuetzalan, was overseeing the effort. He hoped some type of passage would be open late this week.
sage would be spiky.
But more rain yesterday slowed
the hundreds of men wielding picks
and shovels.
City council member Humberto Cruz Hernandez said he was counting on the two rowboats to bring in 10 tons of food.
Spacecraft searches for signs of life on Europa
The Associated Press
PADUA, Italy — Hundreds of cosmic scientists gathered in Galileo's homeland yesterday, hoping to learn from a spacecraft named Galileo whether a heavenly body the Renaissance astronomer discovered four centuries ago might support life
The NASA spacecraft Galileo, winding down a two-year, $30 million probe of Jupiter, made its closest ever flyby of the planet's moons earlier this week, passing within 380 miles of Io. Jupiter's innermost large moon.
But many of the scientists here are more interested in Jupiter's fourth largest moon, Europa, spotted by Galileo in 1610. Much of the NASA probe's data on Europa is still being analyzed.
still being held in prison.
"There should be dozens of high-resolution images, close-ups hundreds of times better than anything we've seen before," said Torrance Johnson, the Galileo project scientist.
bison, the Gobi desert. In the world of planetary science.
Europa is very hot these days. Not in terms of temperature — the surface is blindly bright ice and the thermometer hovers around minus 260 degrees — but in terms of the search for life beyond Earth.
search for the key factors Some scientists here think that Europe, the brightest object in our solar system other than the Sun, may have the elements needed for life: water, a heat source deep in the core and organic molecules.
With so much tantalizing evidence pointing to the conditions for life on Europa, scientists are eager to learn more. The Galileo spacecraft will make several more passes by Europa before funding runs out next year.
Puts out next year.
Ours are nowed on a new spacecraft aimed solely at Europa.
If all goes well, NASA's Europa Orbiter Mission will take off in November 2003 and reach Europa five years later. The space agency is soliciting ideas for the orbiter from the scientific community.
The Associated Press
Scientists have created cancer-resistant mice by deleting certain genes that govern the formation of blood vessels — a breakthrough that could lead to new drugs for wiping out tumors in people.
Scientists create breed of cancer-resistant mice
people.
The 57 specially bred mice were each injected with 100 million tumor cells. Many of them didn't develop cancer at all; others grew tumors, but they eventually shrank or didn't spread. Deleting most copies of the genes appeared to have no harmful side effects for the mice.
Last year, in one of the most celebrated developments in angiogenesis research, physician Judah Folkman of Harvard University reported that two proteins, angiotatin and endotatin, caused tumors in rats to shrink or disappear by cutting off their blood supply. Tests on people are about to get under way.
The finding is the latest advance in one of the most exciting and promising areas of cancer research: angiogenesis, or blood vessel formation. Scientists are trying to find ways to kill cancer by stopping the
growth of the blood vessels that nourish tumors.
The mice study, published in today's issue of the journal Nature, involves two genes called Id1 and Id3 that were found to play a vital role in the little-understood process of angiogenesis.
sis.
One of the researchers, Robert Benzema, a cell biologist at New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, said the findings could lead to drugs that target tumors by inactivating the genes.
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IT'S TIME TO TAKE A BREAK FROM STUDYING! "A Day Away Retreat" for Students The Franciscan Prayer Center, Independence, MO.
9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Saturday, October 16
Bring a blanket & a good book and spend a day in fellowship or on your own at this beautiful wooded retreat center.
Fernet center
This event is **free** but space is limited!
Call Rev. Heather Hensarling for reservations asap at 841-8661 Sponsored by United Methodist Campus Ministry at K.U.
HOMEMADE cherry-blueberry-chocolate-lemon-chocolate chip CHEESECAKE
LIMIT FOUR PIECES PER PERSON (PIG) expires 10/31/99
An advanced graduate education may be just the power you need to keep you running in the next century. Come to KU's:
Graduate and Professional School Fair Tuesday, Oct.19 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Kansas Union Ballroom
www.ukans.edu/~upc/gradschfair.html
Sponsored by: Coca-Cola, Sallie Mae, Kaplan Educational Centers, University Career & Employment Services, Business & Engineering Career Services Partnership, Graduate School, Student Development Center and Panhellenic Association.