Science

Nicolaus Copernicus. Galileo Galilei. Sir Isaac Newton. Jennifer Rene Obakhume. Jennifer who? In truth, Jennifer Rene Obakhume does not yet qualify to be listed among history's leading scientists. But if the 8-year-old student at the Saturday Science Academy near Watts lives up to her dream, she'll make the list. "I'm going to go to Neptune and come back with a cure for cancer," said Jennifer, a student at Highland Elementary School in Inglewood who is in her first year of the program.

The dinner was impressive for its guest list alone: a dozen college presidents who gathered recently in Low Library, a handsome Italian Renaissance building at Columbia University. But after the dishes were cleared, what ensued was a frank discussion of the dilemmas facing higher education, including one that could jeopardize the competitive position of the United States in science and other areas.

An old friend wrote me recently from his new post at MIT, describing one of his colleagues as a typical "dot edu," and another as an uptight "dot com." For those of you not yet plugged into e-mail, the dot followed by the three letters designates the origin of your Internet address: edu for educational institutions, com for commercial enterprises, org for nonprofits and gov for you-know-who. Inevitably, the jargon of the science invades the popular lexicon.

The 100 researchers working at UC Irvine for the past two weeks looked like typical scientists in most regards, even donning white lab coats. What was unusual was their age: All were fourth- through ninth-grade students. As part of Kids Investigating and Discovering Science, a joint effort between the Santa Ana Unified School District and UCI, the youngsters have been studying, experimenting and also touring the campus medical buildings and nuclear reactors used for research.

North Hollywood High School senior Kevin Shapiro left the Westinghouse Science Talent Search in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday2 with a $1,000 scholarship toward his upcoming Harvard education. The 17-year-old Encino resident was one of 40 scientific wunderkinds to compete in the nation's oldest science competition, whose previous finalists include five Nobel Prize winners. During his weeklong, all-expenses-paid trip to the capital, Kevin met congressional representatives and toured the White House.

The launch pad was in the middle of a softball field, and the mission control leader had a megaphone instead of a headset. But the jubilation of the engineers rivaled that of any space shuttle launch. With their schoolmates cheering them on, third- and fourth-graders at John Marshall Elementary used a 5-foot rubber band Friday to launch rockets that they built themselves. The object was to see whose missile would fly the farthest. "It's fun for everybody in my class," said Armando Hurtado, 9.

The Galileo spacecraft cruised the solar system for six years before it got to Jupiter--a distance of 2.3 billion miles. Yet its aim on arrival was picture perfect. This is the kind of spectacular success that leads people to believe science is good at predicting just about anything: the next hurricane, the next cancer victim, the next stock market crash, the global climate 20 or 200 years from now.

On the rooftop of the sprawling Moscone Conference Center in San Francisco, a courtyard-sized cloud floats quietly, waiting for a whisper of wind to whip it into an interesting shape. This is no ordinary cloud--no visitor dropping in from a passing weather front. Instead, it is a sculpture--a work of art. The cloud condenses into existence from billions of tiny water droplets exhaled from a circle of nozzles that spit a fine spray of city water into the courtyard.

They came in costume--a Godzilla here, a George Washington there--and pushed wobbly contraptions crafted from plywood and milk crates. Dry ice and blinking lights provided the special effects, but for the hundreds of youngsters competing Saturday in a unique academic event, imagination was the key.

UC Irvine's two 1995 Nobel laureates, F. Sherwood Rowland and Frederick Reines, will be honored by the state Legislature on Monday for their contributions to science. Both the Senate and Assembly will read resolutions praising UCI's first Nobel Prize-winning scientists. The pair personally accepted their Nobel awards in Stockholm in December.