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News Tonight," the authors found that "Vremia" devoted a much larger percentage of its stories to international coverage than did its American counterpart. In particular, "Vremia" focused "on the adversary": 17.6 percent of "Vremia" stories involved the U.S. and its NATO allies, whereas only 5.1 percent of ABC "World News Tonight" stories covered the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries.
The "mission" of...
Richard Fox, in The Center Magazine, (Sept.-Oct. 1987), PO. Box 4068, Santa Bar-bara, Calif. 93140.
American liberahsm, argues Fox, a historian at Reed College, has tradition- ally found allies among such "celebrated religious spokesmen" as Martin Luther King, Jr. But in the 1980s, while leaders in other professions (ac- tors, psychologists, and even astronomers) support the liberal agenda, there is no theologian "to link liberal politics to spiritual meaning or tran- scendent purpose."
Why...
science.
Engen, a psychologist at Brown University, identifies two distinct types of olfactory memory: the ability to call up the sensation of a particular odor and the ability to identdy a smell when presented. New research has illuni-nated these Merences.
Until recently, researchers classified odors the "smell prism," de- veloped by German psychologist Hans Henning over 70 years ago. The prism separates all odors into six categories, such as "flowery," "spicy,"...
name.
Engen believes that people organize odors according to personal ex- periences. In one set of tests, Engen presented test subjects with 10 different odors, ranging from chemical "odorants" such as amyl acetate (banana oil) to "brand name " stimuh such as Vicks Vaporub. Responses such as "bawipes" for the smell of Johnson's baby powder show that people remember odors by association with similar smells and by "the context or kind of object in which odors may...
Lee Edson, in Mosaic (Surn-mer 1987), National Science Foundation, Wash- ington, D.C. 20550.
Silicon is the material that defines our times. Because it is the primary element of computer microchips, silicon is as important to our age as steel was to the 19th century and bronze was to the Greeks of 3,000 B.C.
Although silicon's importance will continue indefinitely, says Edson, a free-lance science writer, many of its functions may be taken over gallium arsenide, a synthetic semiconductor. While...
Wallace S. Broecker, in Natural History (Oct. 1987). American Mu- seum of ~atural History, central Park West at 79th St., New York, N.Y. 10024.
The "greenhouse effecto-the rise in the Earth's surface temperature caused increasing amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, and freon gases in the environment-is well known. But what will the consequences be in the long term?
Broecker, a geologist at Columbia University, believes that increasing amounts of "greenhouse" gases may cause shifts...
Wallace S. Broecker, in Natural History (Oct. 1987). American Mu- seum of ~atural History, central Park West at 79th St., New York, N.Y. 10024.
The "greenhouse effecto-the rise in the Earth's surface temperature caused increasing amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, and freon gases in the environment-is well known. But what will the consequences be in the long term?
Broecker, a geologist at Columbia University, believes that increasing amounts of "greenhouse" gases may cause shifts...
man.
Bruce Ames, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, studied the effects of naturally occurring carcinogens. He concluded that an eight-ounce glass of wine is thousands of times more likely to cause cancer than either DDT or ethylene dibromide (EDB), because alcohol is known to cause about three percent of human cancers resulting from cirrhosis of the liver. According to Ames, peanut butter, basil leaves, and comfrey herb tea all contain compounds at least 100 times more carcino-...
creating art deliberately designed to change over time. Rauschenberg argued that his assemblages, made from beds, stuffed birds, garbage, and dirty laundry, were designed to capture "the smell, and the feel of our total environment."
Rauschenberg, argues Barnett, "opened up the path for art with built- in obsolescence." His successors include Christo, the Bulgarian artist who wraps bridges, cliffs, and islands in cloth, and the German artist Joseph Beuys, who creates sculptures...
selecting "fifth-rate throwaway tracts" such novelists as John Irving and E. L. Doctorow.
Teachout thinks the BOMC has done its best to survive a period of American literary decline. "In its well-meaning, idealistic way," he main- tains, the club brings "pretty good books to the prairies year after year."
Emerson the "The Making of an American Prophet: Emer- son, His Audiences, and the Rise of the Culture
Showman Industry in Nineteenth-Century America"...