X Rays

Responding to concerns over the safety of some airport scanners, the Food and Drug Administration issued a letter Friday calling the potential health risks "minuscule. " The letter came in response to concerns raised in April by a group of doctors and professors from UC San Francisco. They feared the scanners used at airport security checkpoints may expose the skin of passengers to excessive doses of radiation that could increase the risk of cancer and other health problems. The Transportation Security Administration has deployed 385 full-body image scanners at 68 airports across the country.

Trudy R. Papson spent 11 years inspecting X-ray equipment for the county, earning honors in 1993 as an Orange County Woman of the Year. An imaging industry newsletter dubbed her "The Terminator" for her work closing substandard mammography centers. Monday morning, Papson interviewed for a new job with the county--as a dispatcher for animal control--only to learn by day's end she had not gotten the job. At least three of her colleagues also remain jobless.

A motorcycle courier, carrying a diagnostic X-ray that was taken the night of Hall of Fame jockey Bill Shoemaker's accident, lost it en route from one lawyer's office to another, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge was told Monday. "The X-ray blew out of the package," said Neil Papiano, one of the attorneys for Shoemaker, a quadriplegic who is suing a hospital and seven doctors for more than $50 million. "This X-ray is vital to the case. There are copies, but they are not sufficient.

With the hobbled space shuttle Columbia standing silent 10 miles away, NASA launched an unmanned rocket Friday with an observatory that will search the heavens for sources of X-rays. The Delta rocket blasted into a partly cloudy sky at 5:47 p.m. from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The $273-million West German observatory, called Rosat, was to be boosted later into an orbit 360 miles high. "It's the finest X-ray telescope that's ever been flown," NASA program scientist Alan N. Bunner said.

The complicated and volatile business of making the machines that make computer chips has become a critical battleground in the United States' ongoing technological competition with Japan--and the Japanese are winning. Over the past decade, scores of U.S. equipment and materials firms have been bought by Japanese companies or lost their edge in the market.

UCLA had one quarterback sit out practice while the other's play was erratic Tuesday. Richard Brehaut hobbled in a walking boot after suffering a sprained left foot. X-ray results showed no damage and he is said to be "day to day. " Kevin Prince , meanwhile, labored through the day, following up crisp passes with bad ones. Coach Rick Neuheisel , though, kept his finger off the panic button. Whether Brehaut can participate in Saturday's scrimmage remains to be seen.

Bombarding tumors with high-energy neutrons instead of X-rays doubles the percentage of men who survive certain inoperable prostate cancers and could save the lives of one-fourth of those now killed by the disease, scientists said last week. Prostate cancer is the third leading cause of cancer deaths in U.S. men after lung and colorectal cancer. About 103,000 U.S. men will develop the disease this year, and 28,500 who have it will die, according to the American Cancer Society. Dr. George Laramore of the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle said the study he led indicates that one-quarter of those who die each year could be saved by nationwide adoption of neutron radiation as the treatment for such men. Neutrons are electrically neutral particles in the nucleus, or center, of an atom.

Dr. Celedonio Fernando, a neurosurgeon from Glendora Community Hospital, testified Wednesday that one of Bill Shoemaker's fingers moved slightly about five hours after his accident. Fernando, one of seven doctors who are defendants in Shoemaker's $50-million malpractice lawsuit, also said in Los Angeles County Superior Court that he thought the first diagnostic X-rays of Shoemaker were inadequate. After looking at the X-rays, Fernando said that he requested more X-rays at 1 a.m.