The Morning Call from Allentown, Pennsylvania • 55

in EALTH exercise time from 90 to 180 minutes daily for 14 days experienced a 17 percent drop in testosterone levels. Further, all six subjects reported lowered sex drive during the 14-day period. This was attributed to fatigue. While the point at which testosterone begins to dip is not yet understood, study co-author Dr. Rudolph Dressendorfer noted that he's confident 15 to 60 minutes of exercise three to five days a week at 50 to 85 percent of aerobic capacity should not alter testosterone levels or sex drive.

Find new uses for healthy oat bran Oat bran, the new darling of the healthy set, is the food we want most to eat for its supposed cholesterol-lowering properties. Yet what should we do with the stuff? The University of California Wellness Letter has this advice: Make your own oat flour by putting oatmeal through the blender. Use it for breading, baking and thickening sauces, as you would any other flour. Toast oatmeal on a baking sheet in the oven at a moder- Well-fitted elastic support stockings may help provide effective counter-pressure support. Elevating the legs above heart level periodically, during the day as well as at night, can help reduce pressure in the veins.

Regular exercise such as swimming, cycling, walking, dancing or golf will help maintain muscle tone. But avoid exercise that increases intra-abdominal pressure, such as weight-lifting. It can aggravate symptoms. Also avoid standing for prolonged periods of time without contracting the leg muscles. Varicose veins can occur when blood flows backward into them from above when the valves fail to keep the circulation going toward the heart.

This causes increased pressure and swelling in the legs. Overtraining can lower sex drive Overtraining may not only lower testosterone levels in men. It could also lower sex drive, according to Runners World magazine. A study by researchers at Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo, found that male athletes who doubled their Tips to ease varicose vein symptoms By KIM UPTON While varicose veins probably cannot be prevented, some complications of them can be, according to the California Medical Association. Since varicose veins are caused by increased pressure in the veins, anything that reduces the pressure will help prevent them, while anything that increases vein pressure will aggravate them.

Please See BRAN Page D2 i THE MORNING CALL XjjV SECTION TUESDAY NOVEMBER 15, 1988 Specialists give boot to 'accidental' label for falls by elderly By SANDY ROVNER Of The Washington Post i ASHINGTON For years, it has been one of those givens that when you get old, you become prone to the "accident" of falling. The corollary was that injuries from falls were simply a hazard of aging. Not much could be done about either. But as with so many aspects of aging, the specialists are beginning to find that falling is a lot more complicated than comedian Chevy Chase makes it look, and, in fact, there may be a lot of different ways to prevent falls in the first place and to prevent injuries when falls do occur. The klutz factor may be genuine for comedians and the careless at any age, but for the aging, for whom falls are a major problem, specialists are finding that what looks like a pratfall may be caused by a sudden drop in blood pressure, leading to a momentary dizzy spell.

Almost anything can trip up a mind clouded by medication for another age-related disability. A tangled electric cord becomes a snare to a foot that doesn't lift the way it used to. Gait and balance change in the normal elderly. Vision may be impaired. Older people who fall may be suffering from one of many illnesses that affect awareness of themselves in space.

They don't call falls "accidents" anymore. DON RSHER The Morning Call public-health impact, for its causes and possible prevention. At a recent symposium here sponsored by the National Institute on Aging, the National Center for Nursing Research and the CDC, Dr. Richard Sattin, head of the CDC Unintentional Injuries Section, noted that "older persons are not only more at risk of falling, but also more likely to sustain more severe injuries than a younger person. A fall, even without injury in an older person, may produce fear, decreased mobility and activity, or change in the quality of life." What's more, older people may suffer multiple falls and deliberately withhold the information from families who, they fear, might pressure them to leave their homes or otherwise alter their way of life.

Sattin and his team have established a surveillance program in South Miami Beach, where about 60 percent of the population is over age 65, compared with about 11 percent nationally. In the program, called Study to Assess Falls among the Elderly (SAFE), the researchers are beginning to amass information about why people fall and what happens when they do. Researchers found that about 40 percent of the people who fell and somehow became involved with emergency health services or hospitals had fractures, and of these, some 12 percent had hip fractures. "This," said Sattin, "is a tremendous public-health impact Many of these people who do injure themselves end up going to long-term care facilities. They don't go home, especially if the hip is fractured." SAFE will also be evaluating the role of the home, the environment in falls, as well as the possible role Please See FALL Page D2 French scientist Dr.

Jean-Marie Lehn uses light chart to explain supermolecules. Nobel Prize-winning chemist proves in talk to Lehigh Valley scientists why he's a r. Jean-Marie Lehn startea out I bv savin? he was "hnildine It has only been a few years not even five since falling has become a major concern of specialists on aging. In 1984, the Centers for Disease Control initiated a program designed to examine the phenomenon closely in terms of its Dll bridges," and the metaphor I could not have been more apt. A For more than 20 years, By ROSA SALTER Of The Morning Call "It is a chemistry that lies beyond the molecule," Lehn said.

Most of Lehn's studies involve creating synthetic molecules that will encase, or bouse, other molecules. The class of substances he works with are called cryptands, since they have hollow centers, or "crypts," in which the other molecules, sometimes called cryptates or guest mol- BiHfl chemical that would be relatively nonreactive. Lehn's compounds are like crown ethers but are three-dimensional more like a stack of donuts than a ring that enclose the guest molecule completely. They are more selective, more stable and able to house a larger number of guest molecules than Pedersen's com- pounds. And they have some in the French chemist has specialized in molecular bridges teresting qualities, Lehn said.

Some molecules when encased will provide photonic effects color changes that make them useful as molecular tags, Lehn said. Some are able to go across membranes. And some may aid in chemical reactions as catalysts. According to Rushton, two of Air Products' main concerns are the use of cata- lysts to enhance chemical reactions and the separation of gasses. Lehn calls his field supramolecular chemistry because it deals with how molecules recognize and interact with each other to form what he calls 'new molecular species.

ecules, can be placed. When modeled, the new chemicals resemble an elaborate, many-sided Rubik's puzzle that houses another smaller puzzle. Some scientists compare cryptands to "molecular cages," since they totally surround the encased molecules. "There is a parallel sort of development From atoms using covalent bonds you can build up molecules, and from molecules using noncovalent, intermolecular bonds, you can have other species, which -as. l' studying the chemical bonds that link molecules.

And since last year, he has been working on bridging the international scholarly community, traveling around the world to explain the research that won him the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1987. For Lehn, last Tuesday's 90-minute talk at Muhlenberg College's Center for the Arts in Allentown was another bridge a quick flight on the Concorde from Paris. But for the Lehigh Valley, it was a nearly unprecedented event, a chance for more than 300 invited area scientists to hear first-hand news about pioneering work in a developing field. "Often our scientists have to travel to conferences. Instead of them traveling to some place else, we brought someone here," said Brian Rushton, vice president of research and development for Air Products and Chemicals Trexlertown, which brought Lehn to the area to inaugurate the company's Distinguished Speakers' Forum.

The lecture series plans to sponsor talks by internationally known outstanding scientists Rushton calls them "technical visionaries" twice a year. The next speaker, Rushton said, will be a superconductivity pioneer, Dr. Paul Chu of the University of Texas, who is scheduled to speak in May. Much of Lehn's talk was highly technical. But to the scientists in the audience, many of whom work with processes at Air Products which one day may be impacted by the organic chemist's work, the information was also basic "The types of structures he's been working on relate to a lot of fundamental advances in science and chemistry today," explained Lloyd Robeson, a chemical engineer and a principal research associate at Air Products.

iBut we're talking decades before some of this has practical utility." Lehn calls his field supramolecular chemistry because it deals with how molecules recognize and interact with each other to form what he calls "new molecular species." "In all of Air Products' work we use catalysts to make chemicals and enrich gasses. In fact, we license catalysts," he said. Air Products also uses membrane technology to separate gasses. "Some of the techniques he was explaining to us have the possibility, with a lot of re-. search associated with it, to make better membrane gas separation, doing it more efficiently or cost effectively," Rushton added.

"Certainly the concepts that Dr. Lehn spelled out we would take into account in some of our work. "The reason he got the Nobel Prize is that he was looking.at chemistry in a different light than his predecessors. He was being very manipulative of the properties of the molecule and using the molecule in a unique and different fashion than had been done throughout the history of chemistry. "We're trying to tap into that novelty and creativity to stimulate the minds of our chemists around the corporation to perhaps use that to the benefit of ourselves." But as much as the talk was technical, it we call supermolecules," Lehn stated.

In his talk, Lehn said his work is built on the observations of two 19th-century chemists, Paul Ehrlich and Emil Fischer, who developed the idea of biological receptors. For reactions to take place, the scientists noted, substances have to fit together and recognize each other, much like a lock and key. This concept of lock and key, which is basic in biology, has become basic in chemistry as well," Lehn said. Lehn's expansion of this idea improved on more recent work by Charles J. Pedersen, a retired du Pont chemist who was one of two men with whom Lehn shared the Nobel Prize for similar work.

The other 1987 winner in chemistry was Dr. Donald Cram of the University of California. In 1967, Pedersen developed a class of molecules called crown ethers, two-dimensional loops of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen that resemble crowns. In their hollow centers, crown ethers were found to be able to couple with charged metal particles called ions to form a new 3. J' Please See LEHN Page D2 DON RSHER The Morning Cal Oisease and medications can increase chances of falling..