The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 69

Monday, December 19, 1994 THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER G5 Personal Computing Why the Pentium chip made the news pages Sports Medicine By GabeMirkin Iron deficiency can cause restless-legs syndrome By Evan Ramstad ASSOCIATED PRESS IBM's decision last week to stop selling personal computers that use Intel's Pentium chip elevated an obscure technical flaw to the front pages of the nation's newspapers. are some answers to ques-" tions that a nontechnical person may have about the situation. Question: What is a Pentium? Answer It is the latest, most advanced microprocessor produced by Intel Corp. to run a personal computer. A microprocessor is the coin-sized ceramic chip where the action is in a PC.

It performs calculations and processes data words, graphics, sound or video by turning millions of circuits on and off millions of times a second. Intel introduced the chip in the summer of 1993. Sales began to accelerate this year, much sooner than previous microprocessors partly because Intel reduced the price for competitive reasons. Next year, it is expected to become the standard chip used in PCs. What is the trouble with Pentium? In July, Intel found that the chip on rare occasions would produce a wrong answer in division.

The error occured in four digits after a decimal to 19 digits after a decimal. Because few people are concerned with such precision, the company continued to sell the chip while fixing the flaw. It did not discuss the flaw publicly until a mathematician discussed it on the Internet, the global computer network. New versions of the chip have only recently started to reach PC makers. Some PCs now on store shelves have the flawed chip.

Who is likely to face a problem? Scientific researchers and businesses that rely on lengthy or de Ql'm a very active 72-year-old. Often while I'm sleeping, my legs start to tingle and feel like they will walk off the bed. Should I change my exercise program? A You've described restless-legs syndrome, and 5 percent of people over 60 suffer from it. A recent study shows that restless-legs syndrome is often related to iron deficiency, and that the people with the most severe symptoms have the lowest blood levels of iron. You can be iron-deficient even though you may not be anemic.

Less than 50 percent of the iron in your body is in your blood. The rest is called your iron reserves and is stored in your tissues, primarily your liver, spleen and lymph tissue. Because red blood cells can survive for only up to around 120 days, your bone marrow has to make new red blood cells constantly, and it needs iron To children, using CD fir hCfP- Y'fS horse PARTICIPANTS WANTED FOR HORMONE STUDY No Periods? Researchers at Medical College of Pennsylvania and Hahnemann University are conducting a three-month study using natural progesterone for women under the age of 45 needing hormone replacement therapy. Participants will receive a free evaluation, advice, Pap test, ultrasounds and hormone tests and $250. Call (215) 762-6870.

to do this. You will not become anemic from iron deficiency until you have used up all your iron reserves. So many people are iron-deficient, even though they are not anemic. You can tell if you are iron-deficient by getting a blood test called serum ferritin. If it is low, you often can be cured by taking iron supplements or eating more meat, fish and chicken.

You can help control your nightly symptoms by taking one over-the-counter, 300-milligram quinine pill at bedtime. Quinine should not be taken by people with irregular heartbeats or eye or ear nerve damage. Have a question? Write to Dr. Gabe Mirkin, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Sportsmedicine Institute, 7608 Rossdhu Chevy Chase, Md. 20815.

This column appears each Monday in this section. wonderful? We're so very happy and are planning to spend the rest of our lives together. Thanks Connections. I hope all your clients have the same good fortune. God Bless You." Clorin Call Connections telepersonals 1-900420-5055 tailed calculations have the most cause for concern.

Intel has offered to replace the chips in their PCs. How will it affect my computer at home? The flaw does not affect word processing, games, communications or any other of the wide variety of uses of a personal computer. In division problems, however, an answer on rare occasions could have a wrong digit four to 19 spaces after a decimal. Intel has offered to replace chips for consumers who demonstrate a need. Is this the first time that there has been a problem in a chip? No.

There is no such thing as a perfect chip. Microprocessors are routinely updated to fix glitches and take advantage of better manufacturing processes. ROMs is the PC and the Macintosh. Early children's programs on CDs aren't Windows-based. They say DOS on the box.

Often these DOS programs are memory hogs, requiring the user to reconfigure the PC's memory to accommodate what has become outdated expanded memory. And DOS graphics can be unappealing. Some of the CDs with music also can be played on audio CDs. Some will print out pages of "coloring books" so children can continue their activities off the computer. With a PC microphone, some allow the kids to record their voices singing or reading along with the CD.

Carefully price-shop for these CDs, and visit stores that permit you to try out the CD with your child. CDs are pricier than typical programs on floppy disks. Here are just some of the CDs for children about 5 and under. They're just some of the many programs available on the shelves of computer stores: Arthur's Birthday, Harry and the Haunted House, The Tortoise and the Hare and Just Grandma and Me from Living Books (Random HouseBroder-bund). Great entertainment value.

Superior graphics. Each screen is a page in a book. The story is read, with the words highlighted as they are pronounced at the top of the screen. After the story is read, the child can click She Put Her Heart On The Line i J. lM4 When the horse is clicked in this Word Stuff program by Sanctuary Woods, the word "horse" comes up and the picture is circled.

Parents of disabled children report success with the programs. I "In January 1994 I finally decided to try Connections. I got quite a few responses and met most of them. From them I chose someone, and he was attracted to me. We began to date dinners, trips, shopping.

Our mutual love of music proved to be a strong advantage. I met his mother and college-aged daughter. We really liked each other, too. Now we are talking marriage; isn't that Kjj Should I buy a Pentium-based computer for the holidays? That depends on what you use it for. Buyers must decide how comfortable they are with the knowledge that the flaw could result in rare division miscalculations.

It will likely be February or March before all the PCs on store shelves have the corrected chip. What is the significance of IBM's decision not to sell Pentium PCs? IBM is one of the leading PC sellers and wields enormous influence throughout the industry. The company said it was trying to protect customers. But it also has reasons to try to slow the Pentium's momentum. IBM has been slow to develop Pentium-based PCs and has lost sales to rivals.

In addition, it has developed a chip called PowerPC to compete with Pentium. child's play Sitting on the Farm and The Cat Came Back from I Learn Programs (Sanctuary Woods Multimedia The boxes bill these as for children 7 to 11, but they also work for the preschool set. Educational, but also superior graphics and catchy songs. Older children also can write their own stories. Art Center and Sesame Street Numbers from EA'Kids (Electronic Arts).

With Art Center, children can compose pictures. They can select costumes and colors for the costumes for a variety of characters. Parents can turn that art into a screen saver for the home or office computer. The Playroom, Carmen Sandiego Junior Detective Edition and Math Workshop from Broderbund. This is the same distributor as the Living Books series.

Carmen is the junior version of the popular computer game, and Math Workshop is just that math problems with varying levels of difficulty (mostly for age 5 and older). The Playroom helps the young child pronounce words. Inquirer News to-read it every Jcu Calls cost 1 ,99 per minute. You must be 18 years of age to use this Connections is published Monday and Thursday in tlie Daily News and Friday aiui Sunday in Tlic Inquirer. CO-ROM from G1 and 85 percent of new computers sold will include them.

Overall CD-ROM software sales totaled $240 million last year and will near $1 billion next year. Those CD programs for children are teaching youngsters 5 and younger to read, to pronounce difficult letters, to learn words from foreign languages, and to discover different types of musical instruments. At the same time, some CD producers are discovering uses they had not anticipated for their programs. Parents of children with Down syndrome or autism are writing to the companies, telling them the programs have made a difference. In one case, an 8-year-old autistic girl who had never spoken a word was permitted to play with her CD programs well into the night.

One morning at breakfast she looked at her parents and said "I'm sorry," imitating the phrase spoken by one of the characters in the program, according to Living Books, a leading producer of CD-ROMs for children. Another family with a disabled child reported similar success. The family, in British Columbia, wrote to Living Books this year to praise what the programs had done for their second-grade daughter, who has neurological problems that make it difficult to process and retrieve information. "The format of the programs Just Grandma and Me and Arthur's Teacher Trouble allows her to repeat words and actions as often as she requires in order to retain them. She has made giant leaps in her speech, as she responds to the stories as they evolve," her mother wrote.

"Kids really feel empowered by this environment," said Mark Schlichting, who originated Living Books, a publisher of interactive CD-ROM books. "We really wanted to be as easy to use as CD-audio," he said. Living Books, whose Just Grandma and Me in 1991 was its first product, has slick animation and catchy music. Children sit and listen as the narrators (in English, Spanish, Japanese or other languages) read each story page-by-page. As the words are read, they are highlighted in yellow.

Once a page has been read, the child can go back and click on individual words to hear them pronounced again. However, the real attraction for Living Books are the hidden surprises in each page. After the page is read, the animation stops. By clicking on as many as a dozen or more parts of each scene, characters and objects do silly things (chimneys tip their hats, stone paths play tunes, fences dance). Many of the CD-ROM companies test their products ahead of time with children who visit from schools and day-care centers.

Before The Tortoise and the Hare was released by Living Books, it was kid-tested. In the first scene, the Hare runs out of his treehouse, picks up a newspaper on his front walk, reads it, balls it up, and stomps on it. He goes back into his house. But that's littering, the kids in the focus groups told the programmers. So now, if you click on the trashed newspaper again, the Tortoise asks: "Hey Hare, did you forget to recycle that newspaper?" and the Hare comes out of his house and does so.

Can these CD programs be too much entertainment and not enough education? Educators say moderation is the key, and the computer is no substitute for a parent's reading a book to a child. A computer can read a story to a child, but it can't model the parent-child interaction, said Diana L.M. Sharp, co-director of the Children's versity. "It's not so much the parental reading of the story to the children. It's the story talk and the story discussion" that are so important, Sharp said.

To Our Readers We welcome your commenls. Write us at Health Science, Box 8263, Philadelphia 19101; reach our voicemail at 215-854-2929; or send us E-mail at inqsciencedelphi. com. Parents should monitor how their children use the software to make sure they don't lose focus on the story, and get caught up in only clicking on animated objects, she said. Another educator, Julie Brush of the Dalton School in New York, worries about software that features only skills and drills.

Brush, a second-grade teacher and curriculum coordinator at the private school, said many educators were moving away from the dittos of the past that emphasized, for example, the alphabet and pronunciation. "Why learn the letter A unless there is a reason?" she said, adding that even young students should be made to think of the content of the story and not just the mechanics. Fun facilitates learning, said Rose-marie Shannon, producer of the I Learn library of CDs from Sanctuary Woods Multimedia Corp. "As far as the end-user goes, fun is No. 1, and we want to make sure that everything they do is an absolute blast," said Shannon, a former elementary-level teacher.

Shannon said that in developing her company's Sitting on the Farm CD, the designers asked themselves: "There has to be a really good reason for putting this on the computer. What are we trying to accomplish?" "They always call me a stick in the mud over here because I'm always serious," she said. In testing the Farm program, Shannon and her colleagues found one of the biggest obstacles was getting the youngsters to focus on the cursor (usually an arrow). Kids typically don't view the cursor as adults do, she explained. Animators came up with an oversized blue arrow that produces beady little eyes when it passes over an object that can be animated.

And the animators wanted to take it a step further they wanted to make the arrow burp if clicked in an area that isn't animated. A "huge internal debate" resulted with the animators winning, and the burping cursor is a popular feature today, Shannon said. Shannon said the main roadblock to growth in her industry was the underpowered computer. When a family upgrades its PC, who gets the old one? Typically the kids, she said. Often those PCs don't have enough horsepower to adequately run CD programs.

Children have "short attention spans, so performance is important," she said. Children won't wait for a slow computer "Go buy RAM first," Shannon advised. Although many CD programs say the minimum RAM (random-access memory) is 4 meg, the ideal is 8 meg or more. Second only to RAM is the speed of the CD player. Most mass-market multimedia systems today come with double-speed CD players.

That's the minimum. There still are single-speed players out there and they grind and grind, forcing the user to wait. Triple- and quad-speed CD players are becoming more widely available (and are more expensive). If you buy a child's CD program, check the box. Some work on both liiHX on words to hear them pronounced again, or can click on part of the picture.

Sound It Out Land from Conexus. Entertainment with a purpose. Children can select Sing-Along Sam (pronouncing letters: says 'b-uh' as in 'boat'," Sam sings) or Vowel Owl (pronouncing vowels: "When it's think of ostrich, it says 'a-h'," the owl sings). Other options include Reading Robot (sounding out whole words) and Toucan Read (sound out a word, select it, and Toucan paints it). Graphics are good.

Lessons are focused. Word Stuff from I Learn Programs (Sanctuary Woods Multimedia This is the one with the burping blue arrow. Graphics are superior and selections are I Spy, I Play and I Sing (the I Sing mode wants to use about two megabytes of hard-disk space). In the farm scene, for example, click on the pony and the word pony comes up, it is pronounced, and the picture is circled in blue. Four Footed Friends and Stradiwack- IHS- The Cmmtinv Concert from VroomBooks (TMaicer Animated multimedia book with excellent graphics and good music.

Rhymes, games and more. Stradiwackius emphasizes music and counting, showing the number, the number spelled out, and the pronunciation. (Best packaging; no easy-to-break plastic CD box; hard cardboard holder that also holds a booklet explaining how to work the program.) Read With Me 1 and 2 from Water-ford Institute (Word PerfectMain Street). Match the alphabet, colors and shapes. With the matching cards down, the child must remember where the different items are located.

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