SCIENCE OF BASEBALL: A University of Arizona professor of systems and industrial engineering has come up with some conclusions that may baffle baseball fans. Among Terry Bahill’s conclusions: The rising fastball is an illusion; wood, not aluminum, bats produce the fastest batted balls; and many players, even in the major leagues, use a bat that is too heavy. Bahill spoke on The Rising Fastball and Ideal Bat Weights at the American Association for the Advancement of Science symposium held recently in Washington, D.C. For more on this story, visit http://uanews.opi.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/LQPOnLine.woa/wa/LQPOnLine?ArticleID=1291.

JUST DUCKY: Officials at the University of California, Davis are studying reasons for the growing number of mallards on campus. An estimated 400 of the waterfowl are living in the campus arboretum. Officials want to consider potential risks to the environment, to other wildlife and to humans. The population apparently thrives on bread crumbs left by people. For more on this story, visit http://www.dateline.ucdavis.edu/012800/DL_ducks.html.

ECHO ECHO SPOTS SPOTS: Echo spots - places where the sound of one’s own voice is reflected back at the speaking individual - are everywhere on the University of Maryland campus. A recent article in the University of Maryland Outlook highlighted a few of the places on campus where the brave can go and talk to themselves in a lower-tech version of surround sound. The echoes are caused by the sound being reflected off various curved walls. For more on this story, visit http://www.inform.umd.edu/Outlook/2000-03-28/echo.html

OVER 2 MILLION SERVED: Electronic communication has become a way of life around the world and no place more than Penn State University, according to an official at the school. Russell Vaught, senior director of Penn State’s center for academic computing, said the school’s computers often handle more than 2 million e-mail files daily - and the number is steadily increasing. “This is an unprecedented level of electronic communication for virtually any college or university in the nation,” Vaught said. For more on this story, visit http://www.psu.edu/ur/2000/email2.html

For links to the original articles summarized here, visit Peer Portfolio online via the University Week homepage at http://depts.washington.edu/uweek/. ¶