The Paper

"Quark Disasters." Delivered at the British Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Festival, Glasgow, Scotland, September 2001


The Author

Benjamin Allenach, European Center for
Nuclear Research (CERN)


The Gist

Think quarks, leptons, and bosons are too small to harm you? Think again. Someday, they and their sister particles could unmake your whole cosmos.

Perspiration, however odiferous and uncomfortable, is good. Scientists at Germany's Tuebingen University have discovered an antimicrobial peptide -- a protein that protects the body against attacks from germs -- in human sweat. The new one, Dermcidin, is, according to co-discoverer Birgit Schittek,"the first one known to be produced continuously in the skin." Other types are produced only after injury or infection.

Many drug users flirt with death, but now some are inhaling it. The new craze: marijuana cigarettes soaked in embalming fluid, then dried and sold on the street for $20 apiece.


Shuddering at the thought? So are morticians and drug abuse counselors. Embalming fluid is a compound of formaldehyde, methanol, ethanol, and other solvents. It can burn the eyes and nose fiercely. Can it also deliver a high?


Not according to psychiatry professor Julie Holland of New York University. "Embalming fluid is so flammable, it wouldn't survive in a joint."

How controversial is the new car seat from Xportation Safety Concepts Inc. (XSCi)? When a representative
of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) heard that we had no editorial position on the thing, he was livid. "Shame on you!" thundered Tim Hurd. "Why wouldn't you take a position against injuring or possibly killing a child?"

Winter brings the noise of cooped-up kids, clanking heaters, and other racket and yawp. But Robert Fricke of the consulting firm Arthur D. Little is trying to lower the decibel level with Lodengraf (Low Density Granular Fill), a class of experimental materials that use granular mixes, such as volcanic glass and nylon flock, to dampen noise.

When J.D. Power rates cars, consumers and manufacturers listen, and favorable results can boost sales. But what is really behind the influential rating? Here are some frequently asked questions.

In Samantha Diaz's mind, it's one day after an Arctic storm. Scientists are stranded on an ice sheet and hungry polar bears are closing in. All that can save them: a robot, designed by 11-year-old Samantha and classmates at CS 61 in the Bronx, New York.

Jessica Payne had seen and read much about false memories. In particular, she had read about witnesses to violent crimes who misidentified the perpetrators. But as a graduate student of neuroscience at the University of Arizona, she was shocked to discover that there was almost no research on the effect of stress in creating such memories. Payne decided to study the phenomenon herself, and her research strongly suggests that stress can alter memories by messing with the way they are consolidated.

It all started five years ago, when a yacht off the coast of Israel broke loose from its moorings. "People were running all around the beach, shouting," says oceanographer Claudio Richter of Germany's University of Bremen. "We dove in and found that a chunk of reef coral had broken apart -- and there were all these colorful sponges inside." Richter and colleagues knew they were on the verge of solving a crucial mystery: What eats the very tiniest planktons in a coral reef?

All you need to know about the universe in just 216 pages -- talk about efficiency.

Leave it to Stephen Hawking, the University of Cambridge physicist who came into national prominence with his 1988 book A Brief History of Time. In his lavishly illustrated sequel, The Universe in a Nutshell ($35, Bantam Books), Hawking tackles the pesky "theory of everything." He explains how information might be pulled out of black holes, and weighs in on whether the future of humanity will be anything like how it's depicted on "Star Trek" (on which he once guest-starred).