Tools

Hammers with smaller handles. Lightweight electric saws. Gloves with reinforced fingertips. These products and others are coming soon to a hardware store near you--and they're made specifically for women. Bowing to the growing number of women tackling home repair and improvement projects themselves, hardware companies and home centers are changing what they sell and how they sell it.

Researchers in Washington have found a cutting tool believed to be 2,800 years old that is the only such piece ever found intact in the Western Hemisphere. The quartz crystal artifact was found at a dig at a 3,000-year-old Indian village at the mouth of the Hoko River, said Dale Croes of Washington State University. "These blades are of real interest because they're very sharp, and very specialized tools.

Crows living in New Caledonia's rain forests are as advanced as Stone Age humans when it comes to using tools, according to a New Zealand naturalist. Reporting in Nature, Gavin Hunt of Massey University wrote that the birds stripped a twig of leaves, and sometimes bark, and cut it off just below a shortened offshoot to create a hook. They also used a barbed type of leaf that they cut to a pointed shape. Crows throughout the forest used the tools to dig insects out of crannies.

In the 10 years Dale Turner has been building houses, he has bought thousands of dollars worth of convenient, go-anywhere battery-powered saws, screwdrivers and drills. But if he needed a new cordless tool tomorrow, he would not buy a Black & Decker. "In my opinion they are just handyman's specials," said the construction supervisor for Landmark Homes. "They don't have the power and they don't seem to hold up" for professional purposes. Black & Decker Corp.

Is a Japanese company with U.S. subsidiaries entitled to U.S. government protection from cheap, look-alike imports from Taiwan that it claims are hurting its sales in America? The question will be answered in a case under investigation by the U.S. International Trade Commission. Makita USA of La Mirada and Makita Corp. of America of Buford, Ga., claim that Taiwan rip-offs of their power tools are hurting Makita's U.S. sales. The two companies, both owned by Makita Electric Works Ltd.

Betty was hungry, but the food was out of reach and the tool she needed to get at it had been swiped by a bully. What to do? Grab some wire, bend it into a hook and get the food. Betty may be a crow, but she's no birdbrain. And she repeated the success over and over, using bent wires to pull the small bucket of food up by its handle. Her exploits are reported in today's issue of the journal Science.

EVERY city has its soundtrack. Venice has the slapping of water against stone, New York has car horns, Madrid has the vroom of mopeds. Here in our green, green city, one sound dominates life. No matter where you are, Bel-Air or Bellflower, you hear it intermittently from 7 a.m. to nightfall. It's there on Christmas, on the Fourth of July, on Halloween and Thanksgiving, and every day in between. It's the lawn mower. If you want to buy one, read on.

Unfasten your seat belt! A stop at this road trip-planning website will give you a trunk-load of reasons to return for another visit. Name: Myscenicdrives.com What it does: Arms day-trippers and road warriors with tips and tools they need to improve their next drive. Get enticing descriptions, worthy detours, park passes and a gas calculator all in one place. What's hot: Don't miss the interactive maps that can add such features as Vista Points, Side-Trips, Hikes and Museums.

Grinding tools found near San Luis Obispo are believed to be the oldest in western North America, bolstering an alternate migration theory about some of the continent's earliest settlers. The discovery of the milling stones, beads, shells, tools, seeds and a carved stone fish, all believed to be about 10,000 years old, suggests that humans who entered the continent from the sea did not rely on hunting.