Experiments

Victims of secret government radiation experiments during the Cold War should be granted financial compensation and a personal apology, a draft report of a presidential panel recommends. Members of the presidential Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments are to consider the draft report at meetings this week. Although minor changes may be made, the section on compensation is unlikely to be changed substantially, one committee source said.

What do you think of when you stand in front of your favorite work of art? Does it remind you of somewhere you've been or someone you've known? Is it just, somehow, "beautiful"? Are you impressed by how much someone paid for it? Do you enjoy the formal qualities (line, mass, color, brush stroke) of the work? Are you captivated by the ideas the piece seems to convey?

A few families in Southern California will soon be able to see on their home television screens just how much electricity their toasters, water heaters and other appliances are using, under an experiment expected to be announced today by Southern California Edison Co. In February, 25 Palm Springs-area Edison customers will be hooked up through computers at the utility and at their homes, with sensors attached to five common appliances.

Middle school students discovered Tuesday that preventing an egg from cracking after a 20-foot drop onto a concrete surface is no easy feat. With each team using 15 6-inch balsa wood sticks, 15 drinking straws, a piece of paper, string and tape, 28 students attempted to design and build a structure that would protect a raw egg, which was dropped from the second-story balcony of Cal State Northridge's Business Administration and Economics Building.

Hollywood Park, hoping to expand its fan base, begins a four-week trial of Friday night racing tonight with a nine-race program, starting at 7. Other Friday night cards are scheduled for June 29, July 6 and July 13. The night programs will replace the normal Friday afternoon racing. Some trainers are opposed to night racing, saying that it lengthens a day that already starts very early in the morning.

People nationwide may be able to file their income tax returns by telephone--without doing any of their own calculations--and get their refunds mailed within three weeks if an experiment in Ohio proves successful. Since Jan. 10, about 5,000 taxpayers in Ohio have filed their taxes by calling a 24-hour 800 number and punching information from their W-2 forms into their touchtone phones. The IRS computer connected to phone lines automatically calculates their payment or refund.

A cannon made from apple juice cans exploded in a fireball during a high school science experiment in Newhall on Wednesday, burning three students, one of them critically. The experiment, in which flaming alcohol was intended to launch a tennis ball as a projectile, was conducted on the football field of Hart High School under the supervision of a science teacher, school officials and sheriff's deputies said.

Lawndale is a poor place west of Chicago's downtown Loop business district, a preserve of familiar urban American ills. The housing is substandard. The infant mortality rate is greater than in some developing countries. Unemployment is high. Gangs and drug pushers operate unchecked. And the children in this place do not learn. Half of those who start classes in Chicago's public schools--called the worst in the country by former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett--never finish.

Five AIDS patients have sued a North Hollywood hospital for allegedly taking part in an "unethical experiment" by a former Orange County radiologist seeking human test data to help him market a phony AIDS cure. The men alleged in lawsuits filed this month that the Medical Center of North Hollywood slashed its fees as a lure for them to undergo surgery so they could take the potion, called Viroxan, which was never approved by government regulators and has no proven value against AIDS.

Hundreds of worms being used in a science experiment aboard the space shuttle Columbia have been found alive in the wreckage, NASA said. The worms, known as C. elegans, were found in debris found in Texas several weeks ago. Technicians sorting through the debris at Kennedy Space Center in Florida didn't open their containers until this week. All seven astronauts were killed when the shuttle disintegrated over Texas on Feb. 1. Columbia contained almost 60 scientific investigations.