The Springfield News-Leader from Springfield, Missouri • Page 26

4D Tuesday, August 21, 1990 SCIENCEMEDICINE The News-Leader Search skies for thin crescent moon tonight OZARKS SKIES rr' mi cycle to Hunter's Moon on Nov. 2. This is also a good time to begin watching the rapid shift of the sunrise and 6unset points. The change in these positions is most rapid in the weeks before and after an equinox. It is now less than six weeks until the beginning of fall.

Pick a' point with a good eastern view for morning observations and one with a western view for evening studies. The lower in the sky you can see the the more pro-, nounced will be the changes. The sun is still 12 degrees north of the equator and so rises well north of east and sets well north of west. In the next six weeks it will move south to cross the equator and these events will take place straight east and west. During the six weeks following Sept.

23, sunrise and sunset will move to be 12 degrees south of the cardinal directions. point. Try to observe it first without optical aid, the way that ancient observers would have had to do. If you haven't seen the moon by 8:30, use binoculars to give better contrast, and then look with the unaided eye. By Wednesday evening the moon will be an easy object, 60 hours after new moon.

Look somewhat south of west before sunset and you should be able to pick it up. As the 6ky darkens, look for the glow of the dark side of the moon, which is being lit by the reflected light of a nearly full earth. For the next two weeks the moon will increase in brightness each evening, reaching full phase on Sept, 4. This is the last cycle of summer since the next new moon is only a few days before autumn begins. The next cycle will lead to Harvest Moon on Oct.

4, and the following JOHN NORTH RIP trast. By 9 p.m. the moon will have set although the western sky will be rather dark. This means that the best time to spot the moon will be as the twilight dims but when it is still well above the horizon. Look for a very thin crescent with the bright side toward the sunset of civilization in 6,000 years? Pacemaker advances allow more activity Improvements beneficial to children thought a complete record of civilization might be needed.

Jacobs advanced the idea in a Scientific American magazine article. He added 6,177 years the amount of time that had passed since the establishment of the Egyptian calendar to 1936 and came up with 8113 A.D. "It took hold in an enormous way. People were flooding in with suggestions of things to put into the Crypt of Civilization," Hudson said One respondent was T.K. Peters, an archaeologist and photographer.

Peters became the archivist, deciding what should go into the tomb. He also set up three shifts of students microfilming more than 800 written works including complete encyclopedia sets, the Bible, the Koran, even the novel "Gone With the Wind." The microfilmed documents were sealed in stainless steel containers, lined with asbestos and filled with inert nitrogen. A swimming pool in the basement BRIEFLY Dead snakes can kill, so watch your step From Our Wire Services "Was you ever bit by a dead snake?" Of course, actor Walter Brennan, in the line from "To Have and Have Not" was talking about dead bees, but a University of Pittsburgh emergency medicine specialist notes that while a dead bee can sting, a dead snake can kill. Snakes, warns Sandra Schneider of the Montefiore University Hospital of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center emergency room, have a reflex that stays functional for about an hour after the snake has been killed or even decapitated. The reflex can trigger a bite and the release of venom from a dead snake.

Heart valve company to notify all wearers The manufacturer of a heart valve that was withdrawn from the market in 1986 after being linked to 248 deaths has agreed to notify the 55,000 people still wearing the device about possible complications. Shiley a subsidiary of Pfizer announced an unprecedented program to identify recipients of the Bjork-Shiley Convexo-Concave or BSCC valve and to establish a patient registry "to promote patients' awareness of the signs and symptoms of serious or life-threatening complications associated with all mechanical valves," according to a company statement. Baby's size affects labor more than first-time mom Contrary to folk wisdom, the size of a first-time mother's baby rather than the fact that she was a first-time mother was a better gauge of the length and difficulty of her labor, according to a study in the August issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The study of 1,000 first-time mothers found the average duration of labor increased with baby weight. Mothers of babies weighing more than 9.9 pounds were in labor an average of 7.7 hours; mothers of babies weighing less than 5.5 pounds were in labor an average of 3.8 hours, said Dr.

Michael J. Turner, assistant master at the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin, Ireland. Researchers also found that Caesarean deliveries and forceps deliveries increased with birth weight. Sea squirts produce anti-cancer substance Small marine organisms called sea squirts have been found to contain potent chemical substances that can fight cancer. The substances, called ecteinasci-dins, showed in preliminary lab tests at the University of Illinois.

Kenneth Rinehart, who is directing the work, developed another sea squirt substance, didemnin which is being tested in humans for its potential to suppress the immune system in transplant patients. Estrogen therapy drops risk of hip fractures A new study found that potent estrogen therapy significantly reduces the risk of hip fractures the first 10 years after menopause, according to a report in a recent issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. In the first study of its kind, women given a combination of estrogen and progesterone suffered far fewer hip fractures during falls than women who took less potent estrogens, Swedish researchers found. After 10 years of observation, scientists determined that potent estrogens cut the risk for fracture in half. The Associated Press Recent advances in technology have now made it possible for people with heart-rhythm irregularities to use pacemakers that respond to changes in physical activity and are simple to monitor and maintain.

The latest improvement is rate-adaptive pacing, which helps the pacemaker meet the demand for an increased or decreased heart rate when an individual changes his or her level of physical activity, said Dr. Sydney Mehl, a cardiologist at New York University Medical Center. This is particularly valuable for very, active people and for those with "sick sinus syndrome," a condition in which the sinus node, the heart's natural pacemaker, does not initiate the impulse properly. "It is also a boon for children who need pacemakers, since it means less interference with their normal levels of play," Mehl said. Pacemakers can now be monitored quickly and efficiently over the telephone by a machine The best observing positions are those that have a varied skyline a few hundred feet away.

Watching the change of solar position with! reference to trees, hills and cuts is fairly easy under these conditions. But from almost any position, the i change over a period of several days will be obvious. Another good way to observe the southward motion of the sun is to watch shadows at the beginning and end of the day. These shadows have a decided, southward slant, but will Become straight east and west as fall begins. By the end of October they will have a northward angle equal to the current southward angle.

John Northrip is a professor at Southwest Missouri State University. His astronomy column appears each Tuesday in The News-Leader. in the physician's office. Any necessary adjustments can be made in the office without removing the pacemaker. A pacemaker is a device that provides a regular electrical impulse that replaces an absent or too infrequent natural one.

Pacemakers consist of a lithium battery-operated pulse generator and one or two insulated wires with electrodes at the tip. Pacemakers are placed in a "pocket" under the skin of the chest. The wire is fed to the heart through a vein near the collarbone. Typically, a pacemaker has a useful life of about years. The battery can then be replaced under local anesthesia.

The standard pacemaker is set at a fixed rate, usually in the range of 60 to 72 beats per minute, to prevent the heart rate from fall- ing below that level. Its sensing circuit allows it to be used on demand; it does not compete with the patient's heart if the heart is beating faster than the pacemaker rate. However, it cannot adapt to changes in activity. flammation, dermatologists say. A poor grip and an oversized or too small instrument also can cause problems, according to Richard L.

Spiel vogel, a dermatologist at Hah-' nemann University in Philadelphia. Sweating is an unavoidable effect of the anxiety associated with per-, formance, but excessive perspira tion can corrode metal instruments and irritate inflamed skin, 9:00 llMffiffl yNofth Town Moll 664-6060 lip mLMm 8-6-4 good in theory miserably in practice This evening look for the thin crescent moon in the sky soon after sunset. While not an opportunity for a record setting sighting, this is a chance to test your skill against a late summer sky. New moon occurred Monday at 7:39 a.m. This means the moon will be about 37 hours old during twilight this evening.

We have had several opportunities to look for a day-old moon, but none have met with much success in the Ozarks, particularly during the hazy evenings of late summer. The best time to look for the moon will be about 20 minutes after sunset. The moon will be about 15 degrees east of the sun. This is about the same as the width of your hand held at arms length. Before sunset the sky will be quite bright in that area and the thin crescent will show little con- Will slice be found By Keith Phillips The Associated Press ATLANTA In a basement on the campus of Oglethorpe University rests the Crypt of Civilization a sl ice of life from the late 1930s that will be an archaeological gold mine if anyone remembers it in 8113.

Entombed behind a stainless steel door in a former swimming pool are thousands of items designed to provide a picture of life in 1936. From bottle caps to appliances, the Crypt of Civilization is "the first successful attempt to bury a record of this culture for future inhabitants or visitors to the planet," according to the 1990 Guinness Book of World Records. Thornwell Jacobs, then-president of Oglethorpe, conceived the idea for the time capsule in 1936, said Paul Hudson, Oglethorpe registrar, history lecturer and unofficial keeper of the cyrpt. Inspired by the archaeological finds of the Egyptian pyramids and frightened by the rise of fascism and a looming world war, Jacobs Cadillac's but failed DEAR TOM AND RAY: A few years ago, one of the Big Three offered, on a limited basis, a car with a V-8 engine which had a switch on the dashboard that allowed the operator to "turn off' two or four of the cylinders while cruising. I'm interested in knowing how they worked it, since it seems like the "turned off' cylinders would be a drag on the working ones.

GERALD RAY: The car was first offered by Cadillac during the 1981 model year, and the engine was known as the 8-6-4. In theory, it was a great idea. You would start off with eight cylinders for good acceleration. Once you reached cruising speed, two, then four, cylinders would shut down. If you came to a hill or needed extra power to pass, two or four cylinders would kick back in.

It was not controlled by a switch on the dash; it was controlled automatically by a computer. TOM: The inactive cylinders were not a drag on the active ones. The valves simply closed, and the inactive cylinders just kept compressing and decompressing the same stuff. No new gas came in, and the small amount of wasted energy was more than offset by the gain in mileage. RAY: If you want more technical details on how this engine worked, history, people have destruction of to a compensatory reaction among the young, an exaltation of those values which American society seemed intent on destroying." Protesting Mechanical Age Enter the Woodstock Generation: flower children, peace protests, and a Summer of Love.

In contemporary culture, archetypes still follow ancient scripts. Heroes be they Odysseus, Superman or Rambo continue to step out of their mundane worlds and travel to other realms, facing all manner of trials in pursuit of glory, wisdom or wealth. "In their confrontations with evil monsters, heroes dare us to leave the security of the commonplace," Biallas writes in "Myths: Gods, Heroes and Saviors." When Dorothy skipped down the yellow brick road and Odysseus sailed for home after the sack of Troy, they were embarking on classic heroes' quests. Instruments can cause skin problems The Washington Post Aspiring musicians beware, the pleasure of making beautiful music may be muted by painful skin problems such as flutist's chin and fiddler's neck caused by instruments. Such skin problems, named after the body parts irritated by prolonged contact with instruments, can include scaling, pimples and in of Hearst Hall was drained and waterproofed.

It was lined with pitch and marble, then encased in enamel to create a crypt 20 feet long and 10 feet wide. Thousands of items from paper clips to messages from world leaders were donated. There are newsreels, recordings, newspapers, Donald Duck toys, models, pictures even a specially sealed ampule of Bud-weiser beer. Pictographs showing human development are painted on the walls. And in case the tomb's openers no longer speak English, a hand-operated device is at the entrance to teach English.

Directions to the capsule were written in seven Asiatic and seven European languages and mailed to libraries, monasteries and other repositories worldwide. But a common problem with time capsules is that they are forgotten. That's why Hudson and others want to form an organization to track capsules. man who said it was dangerous. He said I had to order a new tire, which would take three days.

Who do I believe? I'm an old lady (I'm not little). I won't order a new' tire until I hear from you. RUTH TOM: Order the tire, Ruth. The inner tube is probably safe under normal conditions, but we can't see any reason for you to take a chance. RAY: First of all, the car is 6 weeks old, and the tires ought to be warranteed against defects (of course, you're not covered if you got the hole by running over an acupuncturist).

Second, we can tell that you're worrying about this, and you shouldn't have to. One of the luxuries of owning a new car is that you can trade all those worries about breaking down for a set of new worries, like whether it's going to get, scratched or stolen. TOM: The inner tube is fine as a temporary solution. But get rid of it once the new tire comes in. Tom and Ray Magliozzi, whose weekly radio program "Car Talk" airs at noon Saturdays on KSMU-FM, write for King Features Syndicate.

Their column appears each Monday and Tuesday in The News-Leader. Address correspondence to Car Talk, The News-Leader, P.O. Box 798, Springfield, Mo. 65801. into god-like icons Dean.

An annual church service marking his Sept. 30, 1955, death still draws thousands to his Fair-mount, hometown. The power of myth may account for his enduring popularity; Dean was among those rare humans who embody archetypes so convincingly that the culture finds it difficult to let go of their images. "We tend not to realize that Elvis lives for us not because he's not dead, but because he represented something," Biallas says. Never mind that he died a bloated, middle-aged man.

Like Dean, Elvis projects "a perpetual unchanging little boyness," Schechter says. "And for a lot of people, their relationship to these figures takes them back to that moment when they were young." Early death seals the bargain, by enabling pop culture heroes to stay forever young in our minds. "They symbolize something deep and mysterious and make manifest certain kinds of spiritual values, a belief in some eternal timelessness." 1V1 13JLUJE HEAVEN A suburban comedy. PG-13 srrRfp rr 13) 5:00 1856 Glomtont 8B2-7469 KUitMJtl-lun) "A WILD AOSTSFi!" ft '-'V iB CAR TALK TOM AND RAY MAGLIOZZI Gerald, I'm sure you can go to any Cadillac dealer and find one of the 8-6-4 service manuals in the dumpster. As I said, it was a great idea in theory.

In practice, it was a disaster for Cadillac. The execution of the idea was poor. The engines had lots of problems, and customers were unforgiving since they had spent a lot of money to buy a Cadillac. After just one year, General Motors did what any intelligent car company would have done; they discontinued it. DEAR TOM AND RAY: My 6- week-old 1990 Honda Civic EX got a small hole on the inside sidewall of my left front tire.

I brought it to my tire salesman, who sealed the hole and put in a radial inner tube. The salesman said this would be safe. I then spoke to my car dealer's tire turned various heroes Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows. The darker side of man's soul assumes a host of identities, from Sherlock Holmes' Dr. Moriarty to Dr.

Jekyll's Mr. Hyde. Schechter sees the shadow in "horror movies featuring a scientific mastermind with a monstrous al-ter-ego; melodramas about the conflict between rival brothers, one good, one evil; fantasies in which the hero confronts a fiendish facsimile of himself, created through science and sorcery; Westerns in which a white-clad cowboy does battle with a gunslinger who dresses all in black" as in "Frankenstein," "East of Eden," "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," and "Duel in the Sun." The eternal child archetype that dominated the America of the '60s is an androgynous male who dies young and is reborn, or who inhabits a world where he's allowed to stay forever young. "Live fast, die young, have a beautiful corpse," was a favorite saying of Eternal Teen-ager James HIM ry usmoom DAVID "(Drmrin ad iynch's MythThroughout FROM PAGE 1D Like the other new gods, hero Luke Skywalker can trace his roots back to ancient symbols or archetypes that have remained consistent through the ages. They recur so often within storylines that scholars suggest heroes, shadows, helpful animals and other archetypes embody elements of the human personality.

Their consistency over time and similarity across cultures led Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung to conclude that myths originate not in any specific time or place but rather within the psyche. "It seems to me that if we look at American society between World War II and the Vietnam War we see a society which is militaristic, increasingly mechanized and tech-nologized, which prizes competitiveness and masculine aggression, defines sex roles very rigidly and so forth," Schechter writes in "The New Gods." "The denial of child-values by American society and the actual uii iiu 14 HIS CARE Of IUSINESS 2.25-'5.257;25-?:25 HAILINlni YOUNG SUNS 2 mis a IT BLUE IEAVEN rata CHOST pais 21 THE TWO JAKES i rcOO-'SftMB DUCK TALES PRESUMQ INNOCENT PROBLEM CHILD f07flHX AKDFIOY!" OnUhMtMmWtnamiM occlusive 17t. 8otlM.W 181 mi r'f. iffff. days or inn m.

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