Research Centers

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory will become the first customer for a new software system that allows people in several locations to collaborate in real-time over a virtual reality network. The Continuum software, developed by Muse Technologies of Albuquerque, will be used to help engineers at the NASA lab in Pasadena design a next-generation Mars lander that will operate far more precisely than the Pathfinder craft that touched down on the red planet last month.

Early last month, the University of Texas at Austin held the grand opening ceremony for a private research center to explore ways the U.S. Army can use high-speed guns to blast through tanks and launch satellites into space. It sounds like a great idea. It is. But the Army already has research teams studying these weapons. So do the Air Force and the Navy. Each of the armed services has its own multimillion-dollar program to design these powerful cannons and test them on high-tech firing ranges.

ATLANTA--In a wooded corner of Emory University's suburban campus, the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center has long exuded an air of mystery. Those who find the way down a winding two-lane road behind the Emory dorms and offices, through the woods and past a secluded lake, find fences and "Private Property" signs around the site where scientists in lab coats have labored quietly for years. Through studies and experiments with monkeys and apes, they seek clues to human health problems.

A former UC Irvine scientist under scrutiny in a campus ethics inquiry on Thursday conceded misstatements in a research article that was used to promote nutritional supplements in which he had a financial interest. Dr. Darryl See, a Huntington Beach physician once considered a promising researcher in infectious diseases at UCI's medical school, quit last year following admitted research improprieties.

Each day thousands of motorists are bemused and perplexed by the Zzyzx turnoff signs on Interstate 15, the busy Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas highway. What does it mean? How do you say it? It's pronounced Zeye-Zix. The turnoff is a 4 1/2-mile dirt road leading to the former headquarters of the late super-squatter Curtis Howe Springer, one of the Mojave Desert's most colorful characters.

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation has selected 100 acres of donated land in a rural area of eastern Ventura County as the site for the proposed $30-million Reagan presidential library and public policy research center, it was announced Friday.

Ending a year-and-a-half nationwide search to replace well-known surgeon and patient advocate Dr. Susan Love, the Revlon/UCLA Breast Center announced Wednesday that its new director is Dr. Helena Chang, a researcher and cancer surgeon from Brown University in Providence, R.I. Chang, 48, who has a doctorate in immunology in addition to her medical degree, was one of more than 50 applicants who sought to run the breast center, which treats 3,900 women a year.

This is a story of people who made a world in their image and of how it came apart. Their world is a self-contained planet in a bottle outside Tucson called Biosphere 2--an ambitious ecology experiment that draws 250,000 tourists every year to browse past its souvenir stands, admire its architecture and gawk at its sculptures constructed of scrap metal recycled from nuclear weapons laboratories.

The cancer research and treatment program at UC Irvine is on the verge of winning a long-coveted National Cancer Institute designation that would make it one of the top five centers in Southern California, officials say. Being named an NCI "clinical cancer center" could bring the university up to $2.4 million over the next three years, while also attracting additional grants, top-flight researchers and patients wanting access to cutting-edge medicine.

One hundred years ago today, five men and two women were secretly transported by barge up the Mississippi River to an abandoned Louisiana plantation. The seven were suffering from leprosy, one of the most feared and loathed conditions of the time. And the plantation was to become the one hospital in the United States devoted solely to treating the disease and to offering a long-term sanctuary to its patients.