The Des Moines Register from Des Moines, Iowa • Page 2

2A Thk Des Moines Register Friday, March 3, 1995 Iowa News Dateline Iowa ISU physicists help discover elusive quark last to be found, and with good reason. "Probably these quarks were created in the big bang" that created the universe, Hauptman said. "They died away very quickly and JV I til A IIAKRY HAl'MKKTTlIK RE(ilSTEK Walter Day's collection includes a newspaper Civil War, Custer's last stand and Pearl Har-from V-J Day 1945, which he's holding, and, bor as told by a Nazi newspaper. He from left, accounts of the War of 1812, the hopes to sell some of the papers to museums. Old news is good news, or so this collector hopes The lop quark is one of six such particles that are the building blocks of matter.

By THOMAS R. 0'DONNELL Ok Tiik Rkgistkr's Amks Bchkac Ames, la. Iowa State University researchers are part of an international team that has found the final piece of a puzzle explaining the basic composition of all things. "All the forces of nature are now described," said John Hauptman, a physics professor and one of five ISU researchers who helped find the "top quark." "This is really, truly an amazing accomplishment." E. Walter Anderson, another ISU physics professor who worked on the project, agreed.

"For physicists, this is clearly the discovery of the decade. This is nature at its most fundamental level," he said. "Important" Role ISU's role in the discovery was "very central and very important," Hauptman said. The project tied together two teams of about 450 scientists each from around the world. Much of the work was done at Fermilab, a U.S.

Department of Energy facility near Chicago. By discovering the top quark one of six kinds of such sub-atomic particles known to exist scientists have found "the absolute basic building blocks of everything," he added. The discovery confirms the quark theory of matter structure commonly called the Standard Model. Quarks are tiny particles 10 million times smaller than an atom that make up most matter. For instance, protons, a particle found in an atom's nucleus, are really "bags" containing three quarks, Hauptman said.

Over the years, physicists have found quarks appearing in patterns of pairs; the first were called the "up quark" and "down quark." The second pair of quarks is made up of the "strange quark," so-called because "they were weird; they were inconceivable," and the "charm quark," so named because it "solved a whole host of problems in theoretical physics," Hauptman said. Physicists believed another set of quarks also existed, which they called the top and bottom quark. The bottom quark was discovered in 1977. Top quarks were the Jury Won't Be Told Sioux City store clerk shot during robbery Tin Kkgisti u's Ii a Nkws Sioux City, la. A convenience store clerk was shot in the leg during a robbery in Sioux City early Thursday.

Jeffrey Parker, 29, was shot by one of two robbers at the Coastal Mart he worked at just south of Saint Luke's Regional Medical Center, Sioux City Police Sgt. Ron Cardwell said. Parker, a Sioux City resident, was taken to Saint Luke's, where he has requested that his condition not be released. Cardwell said the two made off with an undetermined amount of cash. UNI faculty union ratifies contract settlement Cedar Falls, la.

The University of Northern Iowa's faculty union has ratified a contract settlement with the state that calls for wage increases of 4 percent next year and another 4 percent the following year. No changes were made in insurance benefits. Members of the UNI-United Faculty ratified the settlement last week. The Iowa Board of Regents is expected to give formal approval to the settlement at its meeting later this month. Regents executive director R.

Wayne Richey said the raises were in line with the salary policy adopted for other state workers. The settlement covers only UNI faculty. Professors at Iowa State University and the University of Iowa do not belong to a union. In 1993, United Faculty and the state agreed to salary increases of 1 Vt percent and 4 percent, plus a $444 bonus in the first year. Cornell College student struck by train, killed Tiik Rmjistkk's Ii w.

NkwsSkrvick Mount Vernon, la. An 18-year-old college student was killed about 8:20 p.m. Wednesday when he was struck by a train in Mount Vernon. Police believed Shawn Capehart, of Fort Collins, committed suicide because of several letters received by his friends. Capehart was a first-year student at Cornell College in Mount Vernon.

A campus service for Capehart is being planned at Cornell, and additional staff has been made available for counseling. Four teen-agers arrested for armed robberies Council Bluffs, la. (AP) Four teen-agers were arrested Thursday in connection with armed robberies in Council Bluffs. Brian Keller, 17, and a 15-year-old were arrested in Omaha shortly after a 3: 1 2 a.m. armed robbery of a Texaco Food Mart on Thursday.

Omaha police recovered an undisclosed amount of cash, a revolver and a automatic pistol believed to have been used in the robbery. The two teens were booked for possession of a stolen vehicle, possession of stolen property and flight to avoid arrest. The car they were driving and the guns had been stolen in Council Bluffs shortly before midnight Tuesday, police said. Police say they were able to identify the teens from store videotapes. Council Bluffs police arrested two 13-year-olds about 1 a.m.

Thursday on charges of robbery and theft in connection with robberies that occurred Wednesday. No shots were fired in the Texaco robbery, but several shots were fired in the robberies early Wednesday. By L0REN KELLER RK CoKKESI'ONnEVT HcnopHemtaa nanopaMa cTdHunm iQmiimuMH ON mil hum tiw c.rn mmw MtiyMWHt noiy am)o tt turn, y.t wmm poaixpra winmm tm rami Meeuu mi MUm 0BMOKJMt hrat wMm IOnh rm i num. haven been in our universe ever since." But by using the world's most powerful particle accelerator, at Fermilab, scientists have been able to create top quarks. The Tevatron accelerator, what lay people may call an atom smasher, is a facility four miles in circumference used to generate thin beams of particles.

The particles collide with each other, breaking them into their smaller parts. Scientists at Fermilab smashed beams of protons and anti-protons together, then used sophisticated detectors to measure the results. That's where ISU's team of Hauptman and Anderson, graduate students Myungyun Pang and Michael Wendling, and post-doctoral researcher Jay Wightman came in. They sifted through the data and determined just which of the particles detected from the collisions could have been the remains of top quarks. "What we have done at Iowa State is to determine the primary measurement of top quark mass," Hauptman said.

The ISU scientists looked at each particle collision and the energy and mass generated by them and asked "what's the nrohahilitv that this fit for the mass of the top" quark? he said. "All the momentum and energy measurement" of the particles "has to be consistent with a single top quark." Many Failures Nearly all the particle collisions the scientists examined failed the test. Out of 20 million, the researchers found only 1 1 that met, the criteria to be called top quarks. The next horizon in particle physics is explaining just what gives quarks their mass. The top quark, for instance, is the heaviest of the six, more than 40 times the mass of the bottom quark.

"All these quarks have mass. No-, body knows why the masses are what they are," Hauptman said. If mass can be explained, "Man, you have unified everything" in the physical world. Some scientists suggested Thursday to the Associated Press that the frontier for that research may shift from the United States to Europe, where a lareer accelerator is to be built. prison without parole, but may be given less time in exchange for his testimony.

A fourth man allegedly involved in the robbery, Michael Einfeldt, ca -e ou, oi ues moines. nas not been captured. Describes Robbery Proctor told the judge that he and the throo nthnre AnnnaA clri uuiiiitu on, masks to rob the Waterloo Hy-Vee. He said Einfeldt held a shotgun on the manager and was asking for the combination to the safe when Proctor heard a scanner report indicating the police were on the way. He said Farmer suggested shooting the manager and said Farmer didn't want to leave without the money.

Proctor said he hit a male customer twice to prevent the man from leaving. AH but Einfeldt were arrested at Farmer's uncle's house in Waterloo a short time later. Whether the robbery hindered interstate commerce will be a main issue at the trial, which has been rescheduled to begin either Marph 90 rxi 9 1 1 Says Law Applies U.S. Attorney Stephen Rapp gued that the law applies because Hy-Vee, though based in Iowa, has 162 stores in seven states and that 90 percent to 95 percent of its goods come from other states. He SaiH tVlO attamntil .1 have affected Hy-Vee's ability to purchase those products.

If Farmer is convicted, Melloy, WnillH llntnpminn .1 .1 mvia.hiili:ij iitijiifiv wiiinii HIV V. ('V applies under the three-strikes law. Farmer has served prison time for a 197 1 second-degree murder and a 1978 robbery in Waterloo.JIe also, was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder of a fellow inmate at the IOWa Statp Pnnitnntiom In 1983. Fairfield, la. As far back as the early 1800s, someone realized the value of old newspapers.

Walter Day learned that from reading a tiny article titled "Old Newspapers," which ran in an old newspaper from 1863. He later discovered the story had in fact been reprinted from what else? an old newspaper from 1844. The story, Day recalls, suggested that old newspapers could be used as fascinating time machines to discover a hidden side of history. Today, a newspaper documenting a watershed event of the past may carry not only historical value, but a significant cash value as well. Day believes his collection which includes rare issues of the New York Herald chronicling Custer's last stand and a German Nazi newspaper reporting the bombing of Pearl Harbor may be worth thousands to the museums he plans to sell to.

Among the potential purchasers, he said, are the Pearl Harbor Memorial Museum and the Custer Battlefield Museum. A descendant of the man who brought the first printing press to his home state of Massachusetts around 1640, Day's fascination with old newspapers began at age 14, when he found a stack of Civil War-era papers selling for a dime apiece in a Boston bookstore. In college, he started Masthead, a newspaper subtitled "A Journal for Teaching History with Old Newspapers," which lasted for 1 1 issues. The newspapers read by millions, Day learned, are saved by few. "It's a hobby that never really took off," he said.

"I wouldn't be surprised if there are only 200 or 300 collectors in the nation." Day, 42, is selling part of his collection to support himself as a free-lance writer and to buy new computer and phone equipment for his work with a California publishing company. A large part of Day's collection was saved from public libraries, which trashed millions of newspapers after transferring them onto space-saving microfilm starting in the early 1940s. Some of the oldest newspapers in his collection are also the best preserved. Newsprint produced before the 1870s, unlike the newspaper you are December 1941 Pravda shows soldier punching Hitler, whose the Soviet Union that June. Judge green-lights '3 strikes' test case was made with a cloth-based substance chemicals naturally deterring process that turns more recent papers as the facts presented in some of Day said, is some of the fiction alongside.

Sea serpents, two-headed attacks were common subject mainstream newspapers of the 1800s reserved today for supermarket less of an attempt to verify the accuracy in those days," he said. "You rely on newspaper accounts, newspapers, on the other hand, very important stuff that historians So you actually have to read the in case." Troubled Consortium Bettendorf schools chief quits, citing 'harassment' tMf wtt ww mended stricter spending controls for the Mississippi Bend Consortium after discovering that its director of personnel relations, Jim Humble, charged taxpayers for hundreds of dollars worth of liquor, flowers and tickets. Humble was placed on administrative leave in January. The consortium's board of directors which consists of school superintendents from the Bettendorf, Camanche, Maquoketa, Central City (DeWitt), North Scott (El-dridge) and Pleasant Valley school districts will meet in Eldrige this morning to determine Humble's employment status. Though he didn't make his decision public until Wednesday, Coury told school board members in November that he would be looking for employment elsewhere.

"After reviewing the kind of rationale directors were using to either discredit me or to build a case for terminating my contract, it was quite apparent that I was not the person this board wanted as its superintendent," Coury wrote. A cartoon in a a Russian forces invaded reading now, and without an aging yellow and brittle. As compelling his older newspapers, printed babies and werewolf matter for the sort of tales tabloids. "There was of reporting couldn't necessarily even though the will have some will overlook. newspapers, just Fanner sentenced for making false statements Tiik Rkcistkk's Iowa Nkws Skkvick Cedar Rapids, la.

A north Iowa farmer was sentenced to 14 months behind bars Wednesday on his guilty plea to charges of making false statements to the government to obtain benefits higher than the law allows. LeRoy Behr, 50, who has had Algo-na and Rockwell addresses, will have to serve eight of the months in a prison or jail and six months in a community corrections facility. He must pay $24,000 in restitution. Behr pleaded guilty last November to two counts of making false claims that some of his farm operations were being conducted by his three daughters. The false claims allowed him to exceed the $50,000 annual government payment limit for each farmer.

By DEBORA WILEY Ok Tiik Rkgistkk sCkiiar Raimds Blkkac Cedar Rapids, la. A federal judge ruled Thursday that a jury will hear a case later this month involving a test of the new "three-strikes-and-you're-out" law. However, the jury will not know that the controversial law, which is intended to send habitual violent offenders to prison for life after three convictions, is involved. U.S. Judge Michael Melloy denied a motion to dismiss the case against Thomas Lee Farmer, 42, who stands to go to prison for life if he is convicted of an attempted armed robbery of a Waterloo Hy-Vee store last October.

Farmer's lawyer, Alfredo Par-rish of Des Moines, argued that the only reason the case is in federal court is so it can be a test case of the three-strikes law, part of the 1994 crime bill. Judge Asks "Why Not?" Melloy agreed. "I can't think of any other reason they would have brought it," the judge said, "but why not? if in fact it's a valid Hobbs Act prosecution." The jury will decide whether Farmer and co-defendant Reggie Williams, 18, of Des Moines violated the 1951 Hobbs Act, which involves interference with interstate commerce. Such a violation is necessary to give the federal courts jurisdiction in the case. A third co-defendant, Orlando Proctor, 32, of Norwalk, pleaded guilty Thursday to interference with commerce by attempted robbery and carrying a firearm in a crime of violence.

Proctor agreed to testify against Farmer and Williams at the trial. His sentencing was set for June 5. He could receive up to 25 years in He pioneered blood tests LAWYER Continued from Page I A at 4 p.m. Four hours later, Coonley brought a doctor to the county jail to take a blood sample from Town-send. The alcohol content indicated Townsend was "definitely drunk," a physician was to testify later.

The prosecutor tried to introduce the sample into evidence in Town-send's manslaughter trial, but the judge wouldn't allow it. Two days of deliberation ended with a hung jury and a mistrial, but Coonley had Townsend arrested on a different charge drunken driving. Another trial on a new charge with a different judge who allowed the blood sample as evidence resulted in a conviction. "Townsend got 22 months in prison and served every minute of it," Coonley said. In the landmark 1937 case, the young prosecutor argued: "In this day and age, with the situation of our highways being what it is, scientific methods must be allowed to determine whether a person can go out on the highways to take lives." It was a statement heard around the country.

Superintendent Coury sees an effort to 'discredit me or to build a case for terminating my ByLOREN KELLER Amid turmoil involving an eastern Iowa school consortium, Bettendorf schools Superintendent Michael Coury has resigned. In a letter critical of the Bettendorf school board, which Coury said has been trying to discredit him since late last year, he told school district employees he will step down June 30 after serving as superintendent since July 1993. "This constant harassment by the board has taken its toll on me," Coury wrote. "I am tired of being asked to defend board positions that I oppose. This includes making decisions in support of the consortium and the consortium director." Last week, state auditors recom- Two of I juniors elected to student government Tin Rk Iowa News Service Iowa City, la.

University of Iowa juniors Tim Williams and Jeremy Johnson were elected of I Student Government president and vice president, respectively, Tuesday. Williams, from Naperville, 111., and Johnson, from Bettendorf, won with a total of 901 votes, or 61.8 percent. A total of 1,529 votes were cast. Voter turnout was about 3 percent..