The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 29

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ALMOST EVERYTHING EDITED BY DAVID DALE AND MICHAEL SHARP T01IBY RIDDLE M5r Mice: the final solution THINGS THAT MATTER which they hope will foil randy rodents. The idea is not to kill the mice which in small numbers are quite charming but to reduce their fertility by "vaccinating" them against their own eggs and sperm. Recently team member Dr Michael Holland, a molecular biologist, identified a protein which sits on the surface of mice ova. He selected the protein because Dr Jurien Dean of the National Institutes of Health in Maryland has found that if the protein is injected into laboratory mice, it disrupts conception. The mechanism is unclear, but the boffins bet that when the protein gets into mouse tissue as opposed to being in its normal position on eggs it triggers an immune response which prevents sperm from fertilising the egg.

OK, but how to get the protein into mice? Professor Geoffrey Shellam, a virus expert at the University of Western Australia, using funds provided by the Grains Research and Development Corporation, has begun the task of tucking the protein into a sexually transmitted mouse herpes virus a cytomegalovirus to be precise. So just by doing what comes naturally, the mice will spread the virus and "catch" contraception. Now Singleton must figure out the best way to infect a group of wild rodents, determine how long mice remain infected and prove that the virus is as claimed: harmless to other plants and animals. This should take about three years. And then the only thing rustling in the grain fields will be the breeze.

GOSSIP FOOLISH people say lawyers are out of touch with the modern world. During Tuesday's ICAC Inquiry into the superannuation paid to former MP Phillip Smiles, George Souris, chairman of the Parliament pension scheme, was not impressed by the language used by commissioner. Barry O'Keefe and counsel assisting the commission, Tom Hughes, QC: O'Keefe: "It's a bit like the argument that St Bonaventure advanced, do you remember, potuit demit ergo fecit he could have done it, it was fitting that he did it, therefore he did it Hughes: "Yes To resort to Latin again, it's a tabula in mufragio" literally 'plank in a shipwreck' but also a rule relating to mortgages. O'Keefe: "Yes, it might be too." Souris: "Pity you didn't settle on Greek earlier on for all of this." Hughes: "I'm sorry about that" St Bonaventure was a bishop and theologian bora in Italy in 1221. He joined the Franciscan Order and is regarded as "the greatest friar minor after St Francis of Assisi himselT.

Barristers O'Keefe and Hughes may have read in The Penguin Dictionary of Saints how Bonaventure emphasised that "a fool's love and knowledge of God may be greater than that of a humanly wise ELLE Macpher-son (right) said yesterday she would not mind if men admired her body in a new 45-minute workout video filmed in Hawaii and titled Elle Macpherson The Body Workout. "If they think there's enough there to salivate over, then eood on them," said the model businesswoman. "But personally I would prefer it if they were Elle said she devised a work-out routine after gaining 10 kilograms to play the nude model Sheela in Sirens. Isn't Elle worried she will make mere mortals feel inadequate? "The whole pretext of this video is to help people feel better about themselves," she said. "It is not about having a body like mine This is not about a leotard and a G-string and bending over and touching your knees.

It's an active athletic work-out for an active athletic woman." Ef ISS, the 70s supergroup who I became famous despite wearing make-up and platform shoes and trying to touch their chins with their tongues, will meet the people when they tour Australia next month. Frontier Touring says KISS, including original members Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, will have barefaced chats to fans and sing acoustic versions of their hit songs during a series of "conventions" that will coincide with their concerts. The KISS conventions will also feature original artwork from the band's album covers, old KISS costumes and instruments. T'HE latest James Bond film, Goldeneye, began funning this week with British actress Dame Judi Dench (right) playing the spy-master, M. The original and definitive was Bernard Lee, but he died in 1981.

He was succeeded by Robert Brown. Bond's producers said that casting a woman as reflected the appointment of Stella Rimington as Britain's real-life intelligence chief. But the casting of Dench has not prevented the film featuring its usual galaxy of starlets. Goldeneye's girls include Swedish-born Izabella Scorupco and Famke Janssen, a Dutch actress. i i A USTRALIAN boffins have come up with a solution to the problem of mice, and the mouse won't mind a bit.

Well, apart from a little sore on its lip. The Herald's science writer, Leigh Dayton, revealed this breathlessly to us yesterday, and we insisted she file this report Up in the Darling Downs the mice are breeding like, well, rabbits. "How many? Millions or billions. I don't know, but it's a lot of mice," reported Kevin Strong, the mouse monitor for the Queensland Department of Lands. According to Strong, farmers have already reported damage of almost 20 per cent to sorghum crops.

And it's going to get much worse by June, when mice numbers peak. Hordes of mice are nothing new to Australia. Since 1900, the country has suffered a plague somewhere every four years. But a team headed by Grant Singleton, a population biologist with the CSIRO Division of Wildlife and Ecology near Canberra, may have the answer. They are building a mouse "contraceptive" LAST week we listed 10 questions which scientists will be unable to answer in 1995, if ever.

We asked readers to outdo science, and many took up the challenge. Congratulations to Jo Clarke, Cheltenham; Allan Kreuiter, Balmain; Narelle Stoll, Lane Cove; Matthew Easton, Warrimoo; K.B. Orr, Blakehurst; Jamie Oxen-bould, Bondi; Bob Smith, Bondi; Kris Hines, Bronte; and Lynne and Peter Watterson, Denistone; who each contributed to the answers below. But the winner of a subscription to New Scientist is Noel Bird of Lutwyche in Queensland. Bird imagined the questions were put to Paul Keating in Parliament, the PM responding in his usual moderate fashion.

Here's a selection ef the answers: 1. How old is the universe? a) It was created in 1984 when there was finance available to pull off that sort of thing. b) Paul Keating: "I shall require notice of that question around three to five billion years should do." 2. What is its ultimate fate? Will it expand forever or collapse back on itself in an almighty Big Crunch? a) Settle down. It's quietly engaging in a program of downsizing.

b) It will retire to an exclusive solar system and get fatter and fatter. c) The universe will gradually consume itself (like a snake swallowing its tail) and culminate in a cataclysm known as the Big Bummer. But take heart one swallow does not a Bummer make. 3. Is Time Travel possible? a) In 'Future Directions', John Howard promised a return to the good old days.

b) Ask me again yesterday. 4. What constitutes the missing 90 per cent of the universe which the astronomers cannot see? a) Odd socks. b) Kept political promises. 5.

When did early humans develop language and why? a) When they had to be at work at 6 am refclly NEXT Love Lucy arid maybe some old Then there's the so-called "new" movies channel which means recent films that have already been at the cinema and are already in your local video store. And, most controversial of all, the "Classics" channel, which they define as movies from the past 40 years, eliminating in one sweep the Golden Years of Hollywood. Ever heard of The Third Man, Casablanca and Gone With The Wind! So, to return to the question with whkh we began this diatribe what would it take to get you to subscribe? What sort of re-runs (or, for that matter, hitherto unheard of programs) would you like to see on pay TV? A 24-hour Simpsons channel? A 24-hour Young Talent Time channel? Our informal survey produced this list (and these are not necessarily the favourites of the editors of this column): Mission Impossible (the original series, not the later made-in-Queensland series); The Untouchables (with Robert Stack); the complete Number 96; Countdown; Lost In Space; Our Miss Brooks; Hie Odd Couple; Peter Cook and Dudley Moore; the complete Monty Python. Write to us with your shortlist of five programs that would cause you to subscribe to pay TV (Stay in Touch, Box 4969, GPO Sydney NSW 2001). We'll tally the results and send them to the pay TV people.

Then well await the next ads from Mr Yellow Shoes. the first at 1 pm, the second at 6 pm. WHAT was the name given to Taronga Zoo's Sumatran tiger cub yesterday? While Premier Fahey was busy at the ICAC, his wife Colleen christened the cub Kemiri, the name of a national park in Central Sumatra. Mrs Fahey selected the name herself. 0k.

oak sicrff tfl I HAT would it take to get you to tff pay a $299 connection fee and IB $50 a month to have pay TV pumped into your home? A lot more than they're offering now, seems to be the consensus in the small survey this column has been undertaking recently, plus a lot more leisure time than we currently have. It turns out that our informal impression is supported by a fat report just issued by the Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics, which suggests the main problem facing pay TV (starting officially next week) is that very few people will actually have the time to watch all the wondrous new channels. The report points to the paradox that those who are likely to have the time to watch such, delights as a 24-hour sports channel and a 24-hour music channel are to have the money to pay for the service (being students or unemployed people), while those who have the money are likely to be spending their time doing other things (like working overtime). The report creates a nice new terminology, dividing the potential audience into "the cash-rich, time-poor" and "the time-rich, Let's assume for a moment that you are part of that tiny segment of the community that might be called "time-rich, What are you currently being offered by that nerd in yellow shoes in the double-page ads for Galaxy pay TV? Mr Yellow Shoes promises a 24-hour sports channel, when there's too much sport aairiming our airwaves already. He promises a 24-hour news channel, when there's just about enough of that.

He offers a 24-hour music channel, which we know means pretentious rock videos introduced by brainless spokesmodels. There's an AdventureDocumentary channel, but haven't you seen enough of Dick Smith to last a lifetime? There's a "children's but when this column phoned Galaxy's information hotline yesterday to find out what would be on it, the phone answerer said "we don't have information on that (And how could they do better than Play School, Sesame Street, and Bananas in Pyjamas?) There's a so-called "Entertainment which has an alarming ring of Don Lane about it, but the info hotline wasn't too sure about that either, speculating that it may include "shows like Mary Tyler Moore and 'S FOR the rest of this week, this column is a Pope- and Gates- free zone. We are, however, pleased to tell you that Professor Noam Chomsky, famous for his studies of language, politics, psychology and the media, will give two free public lectures at the University of NSW's Sir John Clancy Auditorium today, VISIONARIES and someone else was in the shower, b) Dan Quayle told me that long ago the Latin Americans invented Latin. 6. Can scientists harness fusion, the nuclear reaction which fuels the sun? a) Scientists can't, but apparently the makers of Peanut Butter and Honey Spread can.

7. Can a machine think? a) Only ATMs being serviced just when you run out of money. 8. Arc we alone in the universe? a) Yes. We are all a loan.

And a low-interest one at that. b) Of course we are, otherwise they'd call it a multiverse. c) Are we alone on Earth? 9. Can humans be tamed, or will we always bash the planet as well as each other? a) The simple recipe to tame humans is to place them under the Sydney Airport flight path. That way they can still bash each other while trying to save the planet.

10. How many angels can dance on a hydrogen molecule? a) None hydrogen is an atom, not a molecule. b) Dividing the surface area of the molecule by the square feet of the angel, my Pentium gives the answer minus 15. c) Paul Keating: "As the questioner well knows, we have instituted a comprehensive econometric model of the celestial terpsichorean potential of the sub-nuclear hydrogen bond market the results should be known just as soon as we get the Treasury boys back on the planet.".