The Morning News from Wilmington, Delaware • Page 7

Friday, July 22, 1983 The Newt-Journal papcri A7 Storm J) 8 Panda cub dies hours after birth Staff photo by Bob Herbert Steve Crooks of Newark look over large tree that blew down near corner of Main St. and S. College Ave. in Newark. AP Ling-Ling nuzzles her new-born Continued from Al Dover areas, and repair crews were expected to work through the night to restore service, according to, Wallace C.

Judd a spokesman for Delmarva Power Light Co. A severe thunderstorm watch was in effect until 1 a.m. in Kent and Sussex counties and until midnight in New Castle County, the National Weather Service said. The storms arrived in Delaware just after 8 p.m. and moved east-southeast across the state.

They were part of a system that swept from northeast Pennsylvania to eastern West Virginia. The winds gusted erratically, toppling trees and utility poles. The storm hit nearby Maryland at about 40 to 45 mph, the National Weather Service there said. One gust was measured at 51 mph in Wilmington, the weather service said. In Wilmington and parts of southern Pennsylvania, there were many reports of dangling wires and scattered tree limbs, but apparently no serious damage.

The downed utility lines were responsible for setting off automatic alarms throughout the state. Electrical service was out in parts of Cecil County, and in New Castle County from east of Newark to the Chesapeake Delaware Canal. In Newark, parts of the city were without water. City Manager Peter S. Marshall said the storm had knocked out a circuit line feeding the South Well Field, shutting off the water source.

Newark police also reported two major streets leading into the city South College Avenue and Delaware Avenue were blocked by tree debris and downed utility lines. City crews were out after the storm, cutting branches and trying to repair damaged lines, von Koch said. The winds picked up a huge tree and carried it and an aluminum shed over a chain-link fence between two yards in the 900 block of Rock Moss Avenue in Cherry Hill near Newark. It was typical of the kind of damage the storm inflicted all over the state. "I heard this thump and I went to the back door," said Mary Danisa-vich.

She discovered her neighbor's tree and shed in her yard. Her clothesline, another tree and some flowers also were ripped away, she said, and a window was broken in her greenhouse. "When the rain started hitting against the back door, I thought it was going to break the window," she said. Dick Wicks, owner of Duffy Creek Marina in Fredericktown, said half the metal roof of a 30-foot by 60-foot shed at the marina was torn off in what one witness said was a tornado. storm hit, according to a spokesman at the Air Force Base.

The Leipsic Fire Company checked up on the campers, but no one was injured. None of the more than 2,000 people who were at the state fairgrounds in Harrington for a preview of the Delaware State Fair was injured, according to Gary Simpson, general manager of the fair, which opens tonight. The evening's harness racing had just finished when the news arrived about 9 p.m. that the storm then passing Hartly was due in Harrington in a few minutes. People rushed to their cars ahead of the wind-driven rain.

One man went running through the midway yelling, "There's a hurricane coming," to startled patrons trying out the amusement rides, said one fairgoer. The midway closed down immediately. About 2,000 people were in the grandstand area and several hundred more on the midway, Simpson said. A few tents put up by exhibitors blew over and some wires were down, but damage appeared minimal. Part of a neighbor's chicken house ended up in the Mildred Vod-varka's garage in Hartly.

A chrome car bumper, believed to be from an auto repair shop 500 feet away, ended up in her front yard where three trees were felled. On Delaware 44 a short distance away William Melvin's pickup truck was blown off the road and into a ditch. There were tree limbs, shingles and house siding and utility wires in the streets of Hartly, said former mayor Gary Finch, in the "worst' storm I have seen in 12 years." Staff reporters Jane Brooks, Dan Horgan and Al Hunter contributed to this story. It was written by Sandy Dennison. Material from the Associated Press is included.

Four or five boats were blown off their trailers, Wick said, including a 37-foot boat, which split in half. The tops of the pilings on slips along the Sassafras River were ripped off. "It just seemed to contact the north end of our marina," he said. There were reports of house roofs blown off in the Fredericktown- The worst damage appeared to occur in southern Delaware. But gusty winds also worked mischief in New Castle County.

Georgetown area, he said, and numerous trees down, but no reported injuries. An hour after the storm passed, trees could still be heard Wicks said. "I actually saw it myself," Jim McMahon, general manager of WAMD in Aberdeen, said of the twister "It did come down in Georgetown across the river from Fredericktown, and moved up the Sassafras River around 8:30. It was a black funnel cloud." Hail was reported in Maryland, but the Weather Service in Wilmington had no such reports. Six-hundredths of an inch of rain fell in Wilmington.

Three of the giant C-5A aircraft at the Air Force Base received minor damage. The high winds moved one C-5 located inside a hangar and in another area a maintenance stand was blown into an aircraft, said Lt. James Sahli of the public affairs office. A group of 78 ROTC summer students were on a survival training exercise at the Little Creek Wildlife Refuge, east of Dover, when the i cub at the National Zoo. come into heat.

But each time, Hsing-Hsing, six months younger, couldn't figure out what was expected of him. Consulting with panda experts from around the world, zookeepers analyzed Ling-Ling's health, charted her moods, put her on a diet, imported lovers and televised her trysts. At one point, zoo public relations officials issued a news release explaining that the pandas "have been unable to align themselves in an effective breeding posture." At another, they solemnly assured reporters the pandas were not homosexuals. When it was determined three years ago that Hsing-Hsing had a low sperm count, zoo officials had frozen semen from the British panda flown in from London, and Ling-Ling was inseminated artificially. When that didn't work, zoo officials brought in Chia-Chia himself.

But the two animals didn't get along. Ling-Ling became so bruised and battered that even artificial insemination was impossible. Finally last March, Hsing-Hsing figured it out. To the delight of long-frustrated panda watchers, he and Ling-Ling mated. While zoo officials were clearly disappointed that the cub died, they said the experience should aid both scientists and Ling-Ling in future attempts to breed the pandas.

And they were delighted that after seven years of trying, Ling-Ling had actually become pregnant. "Great expectations lead to great disappointments," said Dr. Christen Wemmer, acting director of the zoo. fr Continued from Al Kleiman, the zoo's acting assis-i tant director for animal programs, said the baby was vigorous and active for three hours, squealing and running around. Videotape of the birth, taken by National Geographic magazine, showed the baby pop out of Ling-Ling, who was lying on her side.

The cub fell about 12 to 18 inches onto a concrete floor and lay motionless for several minutes until Ling-Ling knocked against it. The tape shows that when the baby started wriggling and squealing, Ling-Ling picked it up in her mouth, then cradled it in her arms. Kleiman said that although Ling-Ling was an inexperienced mother, she doubts that the panda injured the baby: "She was extremely gentle with it." Zoo doctors also doubt that the baby was injured when it fell at birth because infant mammals usually survive such trauma. "Look at giraffe babies," she said. "They drop quite a distance." Because of a mother panda's large size and the tininess of the baby, it is difficult to tell whether a panda is pregnant.

Several days ago, one zookeeper noticed Ling-Ling's mammary glands, usually invisible under her thick were enlarged. And by Wednesday afternoon, Ling-Ling was reported building a nest with bamboo. She refused her afternoon meal and rubbed car- Embryo Continued from Al to infertile women," the doctors reported. The team of obstetricians and gynecologists, headed by Dr. John Buster, said embryo transfer "is especially applicable to cases where patients have declined further surgery, have surgically inaccessible ovaries or have genetic reasons" for not wanting to use their own eggs.

In March, an Australian clinic reported a pregnancy in a woman who received eggs that were donated by another woman and fertilized in a laboratory dish. The woman had a miscarriage after eight weeks. There have been no previous reported successful attempts to fertilize an egg inside a woman by artificial insemination and then implant the embryo in another woman. In the Lancet article, the identities of the two pregnant women were not given. In each case, the woman's husband supplied the sperm.

Although embryo transfer has been used for years in cattle breeding, fertility clinics had been hesti-. tant to attempt it. Buster, chief of reproductive endocrinology at Harbor-UCLA, said in an interview last year that the "principal advantage of this procedure is that it is non-surgical." Professor Ian Craft, director of obstetrics at London's Cromwell Hospital and a leading test-tube baby researcher, said it was "far too soon" to assess the importance of the California work. He said Buster's team "may yet show that there is a greater chance of fertilization" in the body than in a laboratory dish but more evidence was needed. In the Lancet article, the doctors said preliminary evidence indicates the success rate of embryo transfer "may be higher" than the 20 to 25 percent now reported with the conventional in vitro fertilization technique which has produced at least 128 babies worldwide since 1978.

The doctors said: "Our preliminary experience demonstrates that fertilized ova of advanced maturity can readily be recovered and transferred and that pregnancy can be obtained." Craft said donated eggs could be an important development for women who are carriers of genetic diseases such as hemophilia and DOVER AREA rots against her body. The cub was born 123 days after Ling-Ling mated with Hsing-Hsing last March. For the next two consecutive days of her heat period, she was artificially inseminated with semen from a British panda, Chia-Chia. Zoo officials say they might never be able to absolutely determine who was the cub's father. For seven years, zookeepers had been hoping Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing would have a baby.

Every spring Ling-Ling, now 13, would muscular dystrophy. But he said the use of donor embryos raised "emotional and ethical questions" about who is the biological and legal mother of the child. "This is uncharted territory," he said, adding he was not opposed to the work in principle. The British Medical Association has given the go-ahead for doctors here to work with donated eggs. But a spokesman said it would have to study the ethical implications of embryo transfer.

For in vitro fertilization, eggs are surgically removed from the woman's body, fertilized with sperm in a glass dish and implanted in the womb. In its work, the California team fertilized the ovum inside the donor woman's body by artificial insemination. The doctors did the insemination midway in the 28-day menstrual cycle, when ovulation is most likely to occur and the chance of pregnancy is highest. The embryo is removed non-sur-gically after about five days by washing out the womb with a solution, the doctors said, and the embryo is then implanted in the infertile woman for what should be a normal nine-months pregnancy. In April, the group reported in a letter to Lancet that a pregnancy had been achieved a month before using the technique, but said the 23-year-old patient had "apparently aborted the transfer." Since then, the doctors said they had done five embryo transfers at their Torrance, clinic.

Three patients did not become pregnant. Of the two pregnant patients, one is "now well into mid-trimester and has fetal heart activity documented by ultrasound," the doctors said. The other "has passed her fifth week" of pregnancy and is progressing normally, they said. Fourteen women have been artificially inseminated at the clinic, but nine have not yet produced embryos, the doctors said. They said all five women who received embryo transfers had undergone unsuccessful surgery for blocked Fallopian tubes and had not conceived in 3Vz years or more.

The "test-tube" baby technique pioneered by Britain's Dr. Robert Edwards and gynecologist Patrick Steptoe was designed for women with blocked or missing Fallopian tubes, pathway to the womb and site of normal fertilization. "We see ovum egg transfer as an alternative to in vitro fertilization when an infertile couple is willing to accept a donated ovum," Buster and his colleagues said. Bouthr Illlnola Uaivtrslty fttMwaroavlll WEEKEND FORMAT OSSL i i i i i i HI DRY PAPER TOWELS CIGARETTES ALL BRANDS SIZES Li ctn. (Limit 5 cartons with this coupon) Valid Saturday, July 23 only rolls for Limit 6 with this coupon Valid Saturday, July 23 only 3 Super Coupon ZU Super CHARMIN 4 pk.

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