HOLDER OF PRIESTLY OFFICE CARVED ABOUT 2400 B.C.Good sculptors, those Sumarians who lived in the land around about Ur of the Chaldees 4,000 years ago!This week’s cover picture shows the upper portion of a broken life-sized statue found at the city of Lagash, north of Ur. The features, finely cut, portray a man of dignity and reserve. The proportions of the body are skillfully handled. The arm muscles almost ripple beneath the stone, and the drapery over the left arm is softly folded.The statue, which is now being exhibited in London by Sydney Burney, is pronounced to date from the time of Gude...

Biodegradable plastic that releases germ killers provides an example of what's known as active packaging, and scientists report progress toward taking this concept to market.Paul Dawson and his colleagues at Clemson (S.C.) University are fashioning plastics from proteins found in corn, soy, and wheat. While these biodegradable polymers are being heated or compressed to make a thin film, the food scientists add a sprinkling of a natural antimicrobial agent—usually nisin. This is a bacteriocin, an antibioticlike substance secreted by bacteria such as those harnessed to make yogurt and cheese. Ni...

Created at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, this Web site features middle-school classroom activities with an atmospheric cycles theme. Topics include climate, greenhouse effect, global climate change, and ozone.Go to: http://www.ucar.edu/learn/

FUNGUS BEAUTIFIES SELF WITH FUR-TRIMMED EDGEThe picture on the front cover of this week’s SCIENCE NEWS LETTER looks like a fur-trimmed opera cloak for Queen Titania of the fairies, but it is nothing more romantic than a rather common small fungus, Schizophyllum commune, that feeds on dead sticks in the woods.The furry effect is due to the splitting and shredding of the edges of the cap. The photograph, which shows the plant at several times its natural size, is the work of Cornelia Clarke.SOYBEANS RECOMMENDED AS THE IDEAL HUMAN FOODSoybeans, 3 million acres of which are raised for cattle food ...

STABILIZER REDUCES ROLLING ON ROUGHEST SEASEven during the stormiest weather there should be no sea-sick passengers on the vessel that will carry in her hold the 120-ton gyro-stabilizer pictured on the front cover of this week’s SCIENCE NEWS LETTER. The photograph shows the stabilizer on test in the South Philadelphia Works of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co., where it was built to the order of the Sperry Gyroscope Co. for a foreign shipbuilder.The huge stabilizer is 11 feet in diameter. The rotor alone weighs 55 tons and is spun at 930 revolutions per minute by a built-in 200-h...

For more than a decade, the Hubble Space Telescope has provided astronomers with astonishing views of the universe. This week, the Exploratorium in San Francisco hosts a series of Webcasts from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore to present a behind-the-scenes peek at how the space telescope is managed. Also check out several collections of spectacular Hubble images.Go to: http://www.exploratorium.edu/hubble/, http://hstexhibit.stsci.edu/, and http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/

By laying sheets of plastic across their fields, farmers can bring crops to market faster while reducing their vulnerability to many blights (SN: 12/13/97, p. 376). On the negative side, however, this polymer mulch creates impermeable surfaces over more than half of a planted field. That significantly increases the amount of rain and pesticides that runs off into nearby lakes and streams (SN: 9/25/99, p. 207). A new study on tomato fields shows that this runoff can kill fish, clams, and other aquatic life.Although farmers apply many different agricultural chemicals to tomatoes, copper-based pe...

People with diabetes face a high risk of heart attack and stroke. One apparent culprit is the chronic, low-grade inflammation that they develop. Megadoses of vitamin E can dramatically reduce that inflammation, a new study finds.Ishwarlal Jialal and Sridevi Devaraj of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas studied 47 men and women with adult-onset, or type II, diabetes and 25 healthy volunteers. The scientists sampled people’s blood before and after each received 1,200 international units of vitamin E daily for 3 months.Before treatment, the 23 people with major diabetes...

Explore the wonders of solution caves, lava tubes, sea caves, and other underground realms at this beautifully illustrated Web site, developed by caver and photographer Dave Bunnell. The site features photographs of caves throughout the world and maps of idealized "virtual" caves, which explain and illustrate examples of nature's handiwork.Go to: http://www.goodearthgraphics.com/virtcave.html

THE PRECIOUS JEWELS IN HIS HEAD ARE TWAINDid you ever stop to take a really good look at a toad’s eyes?Just as many a plain-faced person is redeemed from ugliness by having fine eyes, so also does the toad find salvation from his ungraceful form, his abysmal mouth, his warty skin. His eyes are of beryl and chrysoprase.In his almost-too-often-quoted line about the toad bearing a precious jewel in his head, Shakespeare was only repeating the current belief of his time, which was older than Aristotle. Though then it was believed that this jewel was concealed inside the toad’s broad cranium, it se...

Quantum physicist Eric J. Heller of Harvard University writes computer algorithms to convert scientific data into brilliantly colorful images. A selection of the resulting graphic images is now featured in an art exhibition titled Approaching Chaos. These Web links to Harvard Magazine and to Heller's own Web page highlight several of these intriguing artworks.Go to: http://www.harvard-magazine.com/archive/01jf/jf01_feat_quantumart.html and http://monsoon.harvard.edu/images-ejheller/