Experiments

Bob Kahl slips in through a side door of the vast, abandoned hangar and looks at what's left of the assembly plant where he worked for nearly 40 years. He remembers the hum of power tools, the biting aroma of cutting oil, swarms of workers plugging away on a labyrinth of yellow scaffolding. All that's left is a few piles of broken concrete and a sea of colorless dust that coats a Palmdale factory floor the size of two football fields. "Welcome to the birthplace of America's space shuttle fleet," said Kahl, 60, smiling.

CAIRO - Seizing a moment in history they never imagined, the two old men walked arm in arm into a polling station on a day that was thoroughly and wonderfully Egyptian: Opinion polls were unreliable, intrigue was high, and there was a sense of destiny to rekindle the grandeur of the nation's ancient past. But it was also unlike any other day in this troubled land that has veered from euphoria to disgust to resilience: The name Hosni Mubarak wasn't on the ballot, and the two men didn't already know the outcome when they walked into the polling booth in an election that was as thrilling as it was unpredictable.

The makers of Botox have been celebrating — and no, it's not because they found a better way to smooth wrinkles. The company, Allergan Inc. of Irvine, announced in June that the Food and Drug Administration approved its new method to test Botox's potency. Instead of having to test every batch on live animals, it can now run a test on cells in a lab dish. It took 10 years for Allergan scientists to perfect the new test. If it's approved in all the countries where Botox is sold, Allergan expects to eliminate the need for at least 95% of its animal testing within three years.

By the stats, Jordan High School in Watts is an abysmal failure: Only 3% of its students are proficient in math and only 11% in English. More than half the students drop out between ninth and 12th grades. And almost 20% of those who make it through fail the state exam they need to graduate. Even its physical plant is wretched. On last year's "Safe School Inspection," Jordan rated poor in every category, from fire safety to vermin infestation. But this year, the struggling school is the scene of a high-stakes experiment.

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.

"Protecting Human Guinea Pigs" (Jan. 16) clearly demonstrates the need for strong regulation, oversight, and enforcement to prevent scientists from performing medical experiments on human beings without their consent. However, when it comes to immoral and unethical business practices, a separate standard seems to apply. The Environmental Protection Agency reported a few years ago that in one year alone, 1987, industry was permitted to spew at least 22.5 billion pounds of toxic and cancer-causing chemicals into the nation's air, land and water.

Space shuttle Discovery's astronauts took more pictures of the Hale-Bopp comet and struggled with balky experiments. Mission Control said a device to isolate unwanted vibrations from delicate science samples apparently has problems with its electronics. And a heat-transfer experiment has yet to collect any data because of bubbles in the line.The shuttle is expected to return Monday morning.

It seemed almost a miracle--three young men, strangers who had grown up in separate families, discovering by accident that they were identical triplets. The public devoured their inspiring story as it made headlines around the country in 1980. The three, who had grown up in the New York area, appeared on "Good Morning America," "Today," "Donahue" and "Geraldo Rivera." A movie was in the works.

The gig : Chemical engineer and biochemist at Caltech in Pasadena. Frances Arnold, 54, specializes in the creation of new proteins, with a focus on renewable energy. She is co-founder of Gevo Inc., a company that develops liquid fuel from plants that can be used as a substitute for gasoline and jet fuel. Early challenge : She arrived at Caltech in 1986 at age 29, focusing her research on developing proteins with potential for use in areas such as medicine and energy. But she struggled early on. "I was completely ignorant of how difficult it was," she said.

Ocean View High School students became unwitting subjects of an unusual psychology experiment Friday. About 25 psychology students wearing all-black clothing and holding clipboards stood in the central area of the school and collected data on how passers-by reacted to their silent presence. The students stood shoulder to shoulder on a platform overlooking the school's indoor commons and recorded students' and teachers' physical and emotional reactions.

The battle for the soul of Dodger Stadium is about to be joined. It is a battle for your eyes, for your ears, for your wallets. It is a battle over what it means to attend a baseball game in the new millennium. It is a battle sanitized by jargon: This is about the "fan experience. " The Dodgers' new owners all but canonizedPeter O'Malley during their introductory news conference, so this would be a good time to recall that O'Malley did not employ mission statements or talking points or the term "fan experience.

SACRAMENTO - Twenty-two years after California became one of the first states to limit legislators' terms in office, voters are about to decide whether the rules should be changed. In 1990, voters limited lawmakers to three two-year terms in the Assembly and two four-year stints in the Senate, for a total of 14 years in the Legislature. Proposition 28, on the June 5 ballot, would limit lawmakers to 12 years in the Legislature but allow all of those to be served in one house. Proponents contend that existing law doesn't give people enough time in one office to fully master complex issues and the lawmaking process.

Re "Preparing for a Martian climbing trip," May 12 John Grotzinger, head scientist for the NASA mission that will try to land a rover on Mars in August, acknowledges that the mission will not search directly for life there. Left unsaid is that several experiments that could search directly for life have fallen victim to shortsighted budget decisions. These include an experiment designed by Gilbert Levin that could validate the Viking landers' "labeled release" findings in 1976 that were consistent with the presence of microbial life in the Martian soil, and another designed by Christopher Carr that would look for and attempt to sequence Martian DNA. Even more disappointing, plans to retrieve Martian rocks for study on Earth have been postponed indefinitely.

"Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948" Madeleine Albright Harper: 480 pp., $29.99 Madeleine Albright is a formidable figure. She was a member of the National Security Council and the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. When she became secretary of State in 1997, she was the first woman to hold the position. Her manner is direct, with a frankness uncommon for her level of statecraft. Nowadays she teaches at Georgetown, has a school of international studies named for her at her alma mater, Wellesley College, and writes the occasional book.

Los Angeles County voters will soon select a new district attorney, and it likely will be their most consequential vote in years. It is hard to overstate the role that the top prosecutor of the nation's most populous county will have as California completely reinvents its justice system. Residents must demand a D.A. who will do his or her utmost to keep them safe, while at the same time embracing reform and ensuring smarter, and less costly, punishment and supervision of nonviolent criminals.

If you want a relationship, the advice goes, do what you like and you'll eventually bump into the love of your life. None of that was on my mind when I opened up the newspaper and read about a film series at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Goldwyn Theater on Wilshire Boulevard. The academy would be screening, every Monday night for 75 weeks, all of the best picture winners from "Wings" (1927) to "Chicago" (2002) for just $75. I sprinted to buy my series pass.

 My Monday night ritual: Get to the theater early.

South Korea acknowledged that it conducted a plutonium-based nuclear experiment more than 20 years ago at a reactor since dismantled. The Yonhap news agency said the experiment did not violate a safeguard agreement with the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. Last week, South Korea disclosed that it had conducted secret uranium-enrichment experiments four years ago. Plutonium and enriched uranium can be used in weapons.

The former white-led government tried to develop bacteria that would kill, or make infertile, only black people, the scientist who set up the apartheid regime's secret poison factory said. Dr. Daan Goosen told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, engaged in unraveling the grim secrets of the apartheid era, that a major focus at the secret laboratory had been the infertility project. "It was not thought to get rid of all the black people, just to curb the birth rate," he said.

WASHINGTON - After more than 12 years and at least $100 billion in construction costs, NASA leaders say the International Space Station finally is ready to bloom into the robust orbiting laboratory that the agency envisioned more than two decades ago. "The ISS has now entered its intensive research phase," said Bill Gerstenmaier, head of NASA operations and human exploration, in recent testimony to Congress in defense of the roughly $1.5 billion...

In a bid to pull more users away from rival Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. said Thursday it is rolling out the most significant revamp of Bing since its search engine's 2009 launch. "Over the coming weeks, we will be introducing a brand new way to search designed to help you take action and interact with friends and experts without compromising the core search experience," Microsoft's Bing Team said in a blog post. Leveraging its relationship with Facebook, Microsoft said the new features will personalize the search experience to make it more relevant to users.