REMOTE SCIENCE: Think astronomers look through telescopes at the stars? Not anymore. Today's telescopes are so sensitive that heat waves from a person in the same room can impair their functioning. "Once you realize that you have to observe from at least a dozen yards away, you might as well be 12,000 miles away," Astronomy Professor Bruce Margon told the San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle, which was doing a story about modern astronomy. "It is more efficient, but I think it's not as much fun. It is more fun to be on an isolated, beautiful mountaintop, and think about your science."

ADOLESCENT CARE: Adolescent medicine is blossoming as a specialty, and just in time—says a New York Times article, for the world is a scarier place for adolescents these days. Quoted in the piece was Clinical Professor of Pediatrics Jeffrey Lindenbaum, who said "Twenty-five years ago, if you were sexually active, the bad news was that you'd get pregnant. Maybe you'd get herpes; it was unlikely but possible you'd get a sexually transmitted disease. None of those were the end of your life. Now, statistically, teens are one of the groups with the highest incidence of H.I.V., so in that sense they're much more at risk."

DOWNTOWN GRANDPARENTS: When it comes to living downtown, senior citizen status seems to be the ticket. That was the message in a story widely circulated by AP and quoting Geography Professor Richard Morrill. Said Morill, "You're not going to find any people in their 40s, with kids, living downtown. You will find lots of people in their 50s and 60s whose kids are grown."

TRACKING EARTHQUAKES: The UW's seismology lab was the subject of a feature in the Portland Oregonian. Quoted was lab coordinator William Steele, who said "The advantage of this system is that it graphically displays the information. It shows you a map with the quake pinpointed, and it has the tools that you can use to estimate ground motions. It will save a critical few minutes that emergency managers need to assess a situation and make quick decisions. We're trying to narrow the time it takes to get information out and at the same time have a lot of information available."

INFLUENTIAL MONEY: The computer industry will change the Northwest through the influence of its wealthy company owners, a story in the Chicago Tribune says. "The trajectory of Microsoft's influence is going to be like the Rockefellers and the Fords and the Carnegies and the Vanderbilts," Sociology and International Studies Professor Daniel Chirot says in the article. "You've seen it with cities in the Middle West and the East. Here it's just beginning. There will be a lot more of it. It's just inevitable."

BIODIVERSITY ESSENTIAL? Just how important is biodiversity? The New York Times took on that question recently, and Zoology Professor Peter Kareiva came down on the side of diversity. Said Kareiva, "The studies show that species richness does matter. It's like an insurance policy. The more species you have, the more likely you are to have the right ones. The more you eliminate, the more likely you are to have eliminated some particular function." ¶