Experiments

This Saturday, while the Sunset Strip Music Festival rolls out various forms of pop music, a completely different idea of radical sound will be heard all over Los Angeles, stretching and blurring the boundaries of music and noise and art. The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound (SASSAS) is celebrating 10 years of experimental sounds and artist collaborations by staging an all-day (and completely free) concert series, leading its participants through various L.A. neighborhoods and concert venues.

The world's leading center for research into the origins of matter has taken a giant step toward a 15-year experiment that could unlock secrets of the universe. A 1,920-ton magnet, the equivalent of five jumbo jets, was lowered Wednesday into an underground cavern at the multinational center, CERN, on the Swiss-French border near Geneva.

Rapidly rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are driving noxious poison ivy and those annoying patches of dandelion to grow taller, lusher and more resilient, according to two new studies. Poison ivy growing in lab chambers set to present carbon dioxide conditions swelled to twice the size of samples grown under conditions from the 1950s, according to a study published in the current issue of the journal Weed Science.

A U.S. scientist collaborating on now-discredited South Korean cloning and stem cell research accepted questionable payments for his work on the project and engaged in "scientific misbehavior," according to a University of Pittsburgh review panel's report. Gerald P.

Medical researchers have countless tools and techniques for studying disease -- epidemiology, clinical trials, lab tests, CAT scans. But throughout the history of medicine, many have resorted to a little-publicized method: self-experimentation. -- Elena Conis These do-it-yourselfers inject themselves with untested vaccines, perform surgery on their own bodies, remove nutrients from their diets and swallow live bacteria and viruses.

Artists can spend years on their work and never make a dime. In protest, Stuart Breidenstein has rallied a band of cash-strapped artists behind a project he hopes will bring them not dimes, but quarters -- lots of quarters. "The Coin-Op Gallery: An Exhibition of Self-Funding Art" opens with a reception at 6 tonight at the 7 Muses Community Art Organization in Fullerton.

Using the active ingredient in illegal hallucinogenic mushrooms, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have induced a lingering sense of spirituality that they believe has the potential to help patients struggling with addiction or terminal cancer. Researchers said that the 36 subjects in the tightly controlled experiment -- none of whom had ever taken the drug before -- already had deep religious convictions, which primed them for a mystical experience.

An experiment combining bird flu with a common human strain failed to create a pandemic virus, suggesting that it may be more difficult for bird flu to mutate into a form that is easily transmissible among humans, federal scientists said Monday. Researchers in a high-security lab infected ferrets with genetically engineered versions of H5N1 avian influenza and found that the animals did not infect other ferrets caged nearby.

Scientists at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla have developed an experimental anti-obesity vaccine that allowed rats to feast on dry pet chow without getting fat. The vaccine reduced levels of ghrelin, a hormone found in mammals that regulates the consumption and storage of fat, according to their study, which was published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The rats received up to four shots over nine weeks.

Surrounded by cornfields and cows, this gas-and-go exit off Interstate 5 south of Sacramento seems an unlikely place to solve global warming. But for months, researchers have been quietly negotiating with a local farming family to bury carbon dioxide -- the world's leading greenhouse gas -- below their tomato fields northeast of town.