Daily News from New York, New York • 15

i sHH' Mir Monday, February 15, 1988 i i i i i 1 DAILY NEWS 15 MmMMnKJ jJrooLa) Pirn i li EfWn fi 1 mmmi Plate tech tonic from Oiibno duo CD XI Ik; HE STORY behind U.S. patent No. 4,722,053, "Food Service Ordering Terminal with Video Game Capability," started one night six years ago in a forgotten eatery somewhere in Greenwich Village. Dan Dubno, 28, and his brother, Mike, 25, were shaking their heads at the service "bad, really bad" and ambience "the pits." Suddenly, they were talking over an idea that sounds like Star Trek cuisine packaged by Rube Goldberg, the inventor with the crazy complicated devices, like sun-powered screwdrivers. The idea? A computerized restaurant "The waitress was bringing us stuff that we didn't order," recalls Dan, who is a producer at Channel 13, "and it started us thinking." The idea, which received Uncle Sam's official recognition Jan.

26, would not eliminate waitresses, cooks, bartenders and so on. In fact, there even is a specific role spelled out in the legal language of the patent for that most visible symbol of le snob dining the maitre "The maitre d'f" according to the patent, "turns on the video monitor, which automatically, in response to the turn-on signal, triggers the computer to transmit a game menu to the terminal." Unanswered, of course, is the size of the tip the maitre d' earns for this service, and what tools he carries in case the computer system fails. The Dubno device would do more than amuse diners. "The system, built right into the table," says Dan, "could display the menu and the prices, show the day's specials, send the order directly to the chef, print the bill, process credit cards, tn iiiTSi- By EDWARD EDELSON Daily News Science Editor BOSTON Elementary schools should start vigorous exercise programs for girls to reduce their risk of breast cancer later in life, a Harvard researcher said here yesterday. Regular exercise can delay the onset of menstruation, and early menstruation is associated with an increased risk of cancer of the breast and reproductive organs, said the researcher, Rose Frisch of the Harvard School of Public Health.

She recommended that girls in elementary school and high school have at least two one-hour workouts a week. Research done by Frisch and Dr. Tenley Albright found that women who exercise early in life have half the rate of breast cancer and 40 the rate of reproductive organ cancer of inactive women. Those benefits come from what first seemed to be a harmful side effect of strenuous exercise it disturbs or even eliminates menstruation. That effect is caused by a reduction in body fat that changes metabolism of estrogen, the female sex hormone, Frisch said in a symposium at the an-nual meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of AJNT HE HEAVY? He's my brother, boasts Dan Dubno (I.) of Mike Together, they've designed a computerized restaurant but, at the moment, it's still cooking.

torn monaster daily news play dinner music and let people play computer games while they waited to eat" "We could even program it to count the number of mice in the kitchen," says Mike, a computer consultant at Goldman Sachs Co. brokerage house. He isn't kidding. Mike can make a computer talk. He designed his first computer game when he was 13.

At 15, while using a computer made by a company that went into business under the name Kentucky Fried Computers, he created a portfolio management system for a securities firm. He has 14 computers at home in River-dale, Bronx. Their father, Herbert, is a patent attorney who goes to medical school at night "for fun," Dan says. And it was their father who started them tinkering in the first place. "When we were growing up," says Dan, "there was a spirit of innovation at home.

Dad would bring us models of something he was doing patent work on. Mechanical toys, electronic cars, things like that We took them apart to see how they worked." Dan was a TV freak, too. "He used to even watch the color bars," says Mike. Both of them went to the Bronx High School of Science, with Dan going on to Queens College, where he majored in English lit and creative writing and graduated at 19. "Poetry," he says now, "is the only thing you need to know to succeed." Mike went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, but dropped out after one year.

"They wanted me to take a lot of stuff I already knew from high school," he says. "I just wanted to get into the computer stuff." It took six years to get a patent but not because the Dubnos were agonizing as they fine-tuned their grand idea. "What happened," says Mike, "is that computer games went out of fashion for a while and we put it on the back burner." They have detailed specifications and drawings now, but no models. "It probably would cost a couple million to get started," says Mike. "When we get ready, we'll look into the venture capital opportunities." Meanwhile, almost the only money that they have spent on their idea is in restaurants.

They eat out together more often "purely in the interest of research," says Mike. ND THEY are still adding to their original idea. One new wrinkle is informa tion. "Like a stock market ticker," says Mike. "There's no reason you couldn't hook the computer up for that.

Or sports scores or you name it" Dan looks at his brother with affection and says, "Is this guy a genius or what?" is vt comet turned ancient swamps ju. i -to -J! big guys, a researcher believes. uuir umMm MM Acid bath tagged as the killer By EDWARD EDELSON i several years ago by physicist Luis Alvarez, that dinosaurs died when a giant meteorite slammed into Earth and made it unlivable for them. Manhattan-size comet Prinn's theory requires a bigger hit by a comet the size of Manhattan Island, which he described as a once-in-a-billion-year event Deep ocean drillers have found a significant change in the amount of strontium that could have been caused only about that time, he said. He explained his theory at a session of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science devoted largely to the Alvarez theory of dinosaur extinction.

Most people accept mucji the theory, said David a geologist at University of Chicago, but it still has not been proved. Daily News Science Editor BOSTON Acid rains caused by the shock wave of a comet that crashed into the earth 65 million years ago killed the dinosaurs, a geo-chemist said here yesterday. The great beasts and many other species died when the shock wave of a comet's impact transformed atmospheric nitrogen into nitric acid, said the geochemist, Ralph Prinn of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For a year after the impact, the sky rained the equivalent of battery acid, he said. The only survivors were animals that burrowed in soil containing chemicals that neutralized acid, Prinn's scenario built on the theory, proposed Pifrfegawcg iam SPUSH.

SPLASH: When a to battery acid it was goodbye,.