News In-briefs
By Sarah Beirute

Recently released tapes from the Nixon-era government record that then President Richard Nixon matter-of-factly considered using a nuclear bomb in Vietnam.

The suggestion, buried in 500 hours of taped conversations, was contradicted by National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. Nixon's statement came after he and his advisees had considered ways to escalate the war effort, such as bombing power plants and docks.

The conversation was recorded in the Executive Office Building, Apr. 25, 1972.
   "I'd rather use the nuclear bomb," Nixon stated.
   "That, I think, would just be too much," Kissinger replied.
   "The nuclear bomb. Does that bother you?" Nixon asked. "I just want you    to think big."

Nixon later said in a 1985 Time interview that he rejected the idea because the targets would have been primarily civilian. (www.webcenter.newssearch. netsc-ape.com)



New research shows that persons residing in the U.S. since 1951 have been exposed to more radiation than originally thought. The above-ground nuclear weapons tests conducted in the 1950s produced a significantly larger fallout than scientists had previously calculated, and the radiation is being blamed for an increase in cancer cases as well.

"Any person living in the contiguous United States since 1951 has been exposed to radioactive fallout, and all organs and tissues of the body have received some radiation exposure," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute said in a progress report prepared for Congress.

Over 2000 nuclear tests have been conducted since the 1950s but previous studies considered only fallout from the above-ground tests between 1951 and 1962. In 1963 both the U.S. and Russia agreed to limit testing to below-ground installations.



New models show that the Tyrannosaurus Rex in the movie "Jurassic Park" could be unrealistic. Stanford University researchers using computer software have demonstrated that a T-Rex could not run as fast as "Jurassic Park" depicted and might not have been able to run at all.

"There is no way you could fit enough muscle into its body for that kind of locomotion," said John Hutchinson, co-author of the article in Nature, as reported on CNN.com.

Scientists have long debated the mechanics of the Rex's skeletal-muscular system. The researchers started off with the assumption that T-Rex was simply too big to be able to generate that much speed.

Using biomechanics, they created a computer program that would simulate the necessary muscle mass to produce a speed of 45 mph, the speed the T-Rex in "Jurassic Park" ran. According to the model, the T-Rex's leg-muscle mass would comprise an unlikely 86 percent of the Rex's total weight.



The United States plans to have prototype rockets capable of intercepting and destroying enemy missiles available in about two years. The statement was recently made by Pentagon officials in front of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee.

Plans have been underway to develop the missile defense system President Bush has pushed for. Last year Bush withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that bans the proposed defense shield.

The military will build silos for the interceptor missiles at Fort Greely, Alaska. The interceptors should be capable of shooting down an enemy missile by September 2004.

The Pentagon has already tested prototypes of missile interceptors from land and Navy ships. Though the missiles have destroyed dummy warheads, officials say the tests were solely to evaluate system components and were practically guaranteed success.



A new camera recently attached to the Hubble Space Telescope, called the Advanced Camera System, will greatly enhance the telescope's investigative powers. The camera will not only be able to see with much greater clarity, but its field of vision is nearly twice that of the current camera, the Wide Field Camera.

"If you had two fireflies six feet apart in Tokyo, Hubble's vision with ACS will be so fine that it will be able to tell from Washington that they were two different flies instead of one," says Dr. Holland Ford from Johns Hopkins University, as reported on BBC.com.

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