Research United States

Japanese and American science officials have agreed on a new earthquake research partnership between the two countries, significantly expanding two 20-year-old science pacts. One of the earliest projects of the Earthquake Disaster Mitigation Partnership will be a Japanese-financed but jointly designed shake table in Japan that will be the world's largest to date.

Japanese and American science officials have agreed on a new earthquake research partnership between the two countries, significantly expanding two 20-year-old science pacts. One of the earliest projects of the Earthquake Disaster Mitigation Partnership will be a Japanese-financed but jointly designed shake table in Japan that will be the world's largest to date.

Driving around Los Angeles, particularly around the UCLA campus, it's hard not to notice the hospitals and research centers that bear their name. The father-and-son team of Leslie and Louis Gonda made a fortune from the sale of their aircraft leasing business, and they weren't shy about spreading their wealth around, giving to charities and medical research throughout the city. "For years, they've given away a great deal of money," said Bob Safai of Madison Partners, a Los Angeles commercial real estate firm.

Development of costly synthetic fuels, halted in recent years because of cheap, abundant petroleum supplies, will become commercially viable again when world oil prices top $30 a barrel, a top Exxon Co. executive said Monday. Joe McMillan, a senior vice president of the world's largest oil company, said that Exxon was continuing to fund research and development of alternative fuels and will spend about $15 million in 1987 on synfuels, he said.

I just want to express my delight in reading "The Amazing Story of the Tonellis in America" (by Bill Tonelli, April 17). It was one of the most engaging articles I've read in a long time, starting with a great concept and culminating in a magnificent follow-through by Bill Tonelli. Tonellis arise! Today the nation, tomorrow the world! PAUL ROMERO Thousand Oaks I recently celebrated the results of 10 years of study involving the origins of my family name of Lozzi.

In an unprecedented use of U.S. money to sustain cutting-edge Russian research, the United States has decided to fund a major Russian nuclear laboratory, paying the salaries of 116 former Soviet scientists to work on harnessing nuclear fusion for civilian use, officials said Thursday.

Concluding that the threat of global warming is serious enough to warrant prompt national action, a panel of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences said Wednesday that the United States could reduce its production of "greenhouse" pollution as much as 40% with little or no economic cost.

President Reagan told the Soviet people Saturday that Americans "do not threaten your nation and never will" and called for increased contacts between the superpowers, including annual summit meetings. In an address broadcast abroad by the Voice of America and heard without jamming in parts of the Soviet Union, Reagan struck an exceptionally conciliatory tone just a week before he departs for his meeting in Geneva with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

It's springtime, when thoughts of love fill the air, and so it was that Dillon and Mulinda--a pair of black rhinos at the San Diego Zoo--chose to manifest what comes oh so naturally. The Sunday-afternoon crowd of zoo visitors watched shamelessly as Dillon, standing atop his monumental tippie-toes, and Mulinda enjoyed several minutes of breathless intimacy.

In a setback for Washington, the U.N. narrowly blocked moves by the U.S. and other countries Thursday to approve a global ban on human cloning because the proposal also would have constrained stem cell research. The General Assembly's legal committee, which includes representatives of most U.N. members, voted 80 to 79 to delay for two years consideration of a treaty to ban human cloning. Fifteen members abstained, and some missed the vote.

Consumers could have a hard time sifting through the mushy confusion of the oat bran controversy that erupted last week when the New England Journal of Medicine reported that a Harvard University study had all but debunked former scientific conclusions of oat bran's cholesterol-lowering effect. For the American Heart Assn., it is not so much a question of oats and oat bran as it is a concern about fat in the diet. Other health authorities see the problem as one of overall dietary management.