n114  2033  30 Jul 79
 
BC-SCIENCE WATCH Undated 2takes
(Science Times)
c. 1979 N.Y. Times News Service
                   A City's Effect on Weather
    Those who live downwind of a big city may be blessed, or cursed,
with more summer rainfall than those who live upwind, a
meteorological study of the St. Louis area has determined.
    Rainfall was measured over a five-year period by 220 recording
gauges evenly distributed within a 50-mile circle centered on the
city. Stanley Changnon Jr. of the Illinois Water Survey, which made
the study, found 302 individual rainfall incidents in the five
summers from 1971 through 1975.
    Prevailing winds and general weather conditions before and during
each rainfall were monitored at 28 stations and used to determine the
size and direction of the rain-producing weather plume.
    Combining these statistical data, Changnon reported in the current
issue of the journal Science, three out of every four rains resulted
in an average of 22 percent more rain downwind of the city than
upwind. The statistic, he noted, could be a boon to agriculture or a
nuisance to nonfarmers.
                 Bitter Hops, Better Beer
    Federal Agriculture Department scientists have discovered a quick
way to determine a hop plant's degree and quality of bitterness,
factors that beer producers depend on for brewing a tasty lager. Beer
gets its bitterness from the brewing of hop plants, and the more
bitter the hops the better the beer.
    The bitterness in hops comes from a substance called alpha acid
which is produced in the lupulin glands in male and female hop
flowers. By analyzing the glands for alpha acid content, the plant's
bitterness can be determined. Male hop flowers, however, which alone
determine the bitterness of their progeny, possess only a few
well-hidden glands that have been hard to isolate.
    But the Agriculture Department researchers developed a simple method
by which the male glands can be quickly isolated and analyzed for
alpha acid content. They put water and male hop plant flowers in an
electric blender and activate it for a few moments. The plant's
glands float to the surface as tiny, yellow grains. They are strained
out of the liquid and analyzed.
    By this method, 20 male hop plants can be evaluated in a single day.
Before, it would have taken two years for hop breeders to make
bitterness estimations on as many plants by observing the qualities
of the progeny.
                   Acid Tears From Onions
    At last, the precise nature of the chemical that causes you to weep
over sliced onions is known. The tear-jerking substance is, as was
suggested in the 1960s by a Cornell University graduate student, a
chemical called propanethial S-oxide. But it is not, as the student
also suggested, present in onions in a structural configuration known
as ''anti.'' Rather, a University of Missouri researcher has shown
with the aid of an elaborate analytic system called microwave
spectroscopy that the lacrymating agent in onions is in the ''syn''
structure.
    As such, Dr. Eric Block reported to a recent chemical meeting, it
readily forms a gas that, when dissolved in water (such as is in your
eyes), reacts to form sulfuric acid. And it does not take much
sulfuric acid to reduce even the toughest to tears, Block said.
    (MORE)
    
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a014  2311  30 Jul 79
PM-Portable Wilderness, Bjt,600
Laserphoto CR1
By ANDREW SCHNEIDER
Associated Press Writer
    YORK HARBOR, Maine (AP) - Using flashlights in the misty darkness,
Gerald and Helen Harper pitched their tent along the rocky Maine
coast. They spent the night anticipating the uncluttered beauty of a
coastal sunrise.
    When the sun finally rose, they found a forest of metal blocking
their view. Their small piece of wilderness was crammed with 96
trailers and three trees.
    ''The guidebooks said, 'Come to Maine to get away from it all,' but
we woke up and found it's all still here,'' moaned Harper, a
stockbroker from New York City. ''I can see more of the great outdoors
in Central Park.''
    ''We thought we could save money and get away from the crowds by
going camping,'' his wife said. ''But after paying more than $1,000
for what the clerk called the 'bare essentials,' we get here to find
we're camping in a parking lot with more New Yorkers than we left in
Manhattan.''
    Though the Harpers may not have considered their night in Libby's
Campground ''roughing it in the wilderness,'' many of the others in
the four-acre field said they had found just what they wanted.
    The Harpers' $228 canvas tent was dwarfed, both in size and price,
by the transportable homes that surrounded it.
    ''Explorer,'' ''Woodsman,'' ''Adventurer,'' ''Deep Woods,''
''Savage,'' and other brand names on their metal sides offered the
only hint that they had something to do with the outdoors.
    Costing as much as $30,000, the motor homes and trailers carry all
the luxuries of home, and sometimes more. Sometimes parked just inches
apart, they serve as home base for the visitors attracted to the
area's beaches, theaters and vistas.
    ''I've got a microwave oven, shag carpeting and even a waterbed
which I fill up when I get to the campground,'' said George Domain of
Bridgeport, Conn., as he proudly patted his $26,000 motor home. ''I
don't mind spending money for this because, contrary to popular
belief, you can take it with you - if it's on wheels.''
    On the rear bumper of Domain's camper was a sticker reading,
''Camping - Roughing it is the first step to adventure.''
    ''I guess you can say they're roughing it. We don't allow them to
use their air conditioners,'' joked Cora Davidson, who with her
husband, Archie, operates the crowded camp.
    Cora, 66, who says she's been ''babying would-be campers'' since her
father opened the camp in 1923, agrees it is not for people looking
for north woods adventure.
    ''Today, people want to camp in luxury, but that's a trend that
started years ago,'' she says. ''They thought my father was a kook
when he put in electricity in 1927. No one could understand why tents
needed electricity, but that was just the start.''
    The camp is also hooked to the town's water and sewer system.
There's no need for a community television antenna, for most of the
trailers sprout their own antennas, most connected to color TV sets.
    An insurance salesman from Manchester, N.H., stood on the roof of
his modest $11,000 Winnebago and tried to fix his bent antenna. Two of
the hefty seagulls that patrol the camp had used it for a roost.
    The salesman didn't want his name published because he didn't want
his friends, who think he's ''camping beside some isolated river in
northern Maine,'' to know where he really was.
    ''I actually went to the north woods one year,'' he said. ''But I
was eaten alive by bugs, got the camper stuck in the mud and was
chased by a moose. When I was through I really needed a vacation. This
is much better.
    ''The outdoors is great except for the damn seagulls who sit on my
antenna.''
    
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n012  0808  04 Aug 79
 
BC-FOLLOW UPS (UNDATED)
Follow Ups on the News
c. 1979 N.Y. Times News Service
    At his death, Nelson A. Rockefeller was reportedly working on the
second of five books dealing with his art collection. And he had just
opened the Nelson Rockefeller Collection, a lavish mail-order store
in Manhattan that sold reproductions of his art. Rockefeller's will,
however, gave most of his art collection to museums. Two questions
remained unanswered:
    Would the four remaining art books still be published? Would the
art-reproduction store at 11 East 57th Street continue in business?
    At Alfred A. Knopf Inc., which is under contract to publish the
books, the plans are in disarray. Anthony Schulte, executive vice
president, reports:
    One of the books, Rockefeller's memoirs, will ''obviously not'' be
published, and a second, on architecture, is ''unlikely'' to be. The
book Rockefeller was working on at his death, on modern art, is
''under review'' and ''probably will be published, but I can't tell
you how or when.'' A book on Mexican folk art ''we hope to publish in
1980.''
    In Rockefeller Center, Dr. William J. Ronan, president of Nelson
Rockefeller Collection Inc., reports the art store has a new
five-year lease, has expanded its line and is in business to stay.
''It's doing very well,'' he says.
    
    When the Radio City Music Hall reopened its doors last May 31, hopes
were high that a steady offering of stage productions, with no
movies, would restore a healthy glow to a box office that appeared
terminally ill. ''A New York Summer'' opened to encouraging backslaps
from Broadway critics.
    Attendance today is described by Patricia Robert, public-relations
chief for Radio City Music Hall Productions, in such terms as
''extremely good,'' ''terrific'' and ''marvelous.''
    ''We're now up to over 40,000 people a week,'' she says, or an
average of ''over 3,000 people a performance'' for 12 shows a week.
Saturday night performances have pulled in as many as 4,700, she says.
    Still that means the 6,200-seat Music Hall is half empty for the
average performance.
    ''Half full,'' Mrs. Robert corrects. She points out that ''you have
to put that into context with the other live shows in New York.''
    ''If you get 4,700 people here at night,'' she says, ''you've got
four and a half Broadway houses.''
    
    Since the 1950s the Russians had been beaming microwaves at the
United States Embassy in Moscow, but starting in 1975 the signal
intensified, and this gave rise to fears that the radiation might
harm embassy employees. Last January one source of the microwaves, a
transmitter atop an apartment house across the street from the
embassy, was knocked out by fire.
    The radiation continues from a second source, an official of the
State Department's Soviet desk reports, but ''it's been very erratic
and low-level.'' This puzzles the State Department. Formerly, the
desk official notes, the radiation was of high level and predictable:
''It came on at a certain time in the morning and stayed on until a
certain time in the p.m.''
    The State Department doesn't know what the change means, anymore
than it knows why the Russians are beaming the microwaves. There is
just continued speculation that all of the signals, high or low, have
to do with eavesdropping on or interfering with embassy
communications.
    
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n301  1716  04 Aug 79
 
BC-ADVISORY 1stadd AFTERNOON EDITORS NOTE
NYT UNDATED: the news. a012.
 
CULTURE
     New York-MOVIE REVIEW-John Rockwell reviews a film called ''Rock
'n' Roll High School. a007.
    New York-MOVIE REVIEW-BROOK-Janet Maslin reviewq Peter Brooks's
''Meetings with Remarkable Men.'' a019.
    Aspen, Colo.-OPERA-An opera based on the life of magician Harry
Houdini receives its premiere in Aspen. By Harold C. Schonberg. a011.
 
FINANCIAL
    New York-PERSONAL FINANCE-New problems with car insurance. By Thomas
C. Hayes. a008
    Hartford, Conn.-FISH-In a strange sidelight to the gasoline
shortage, there's a boom in the fish hobby industry. By Matthew L.
Wald. a016.
ny
     Abu Dhabi-EMIRATES-In spite of their oil wealth and one of the
highest per capita incomes in the world, the United Arab Emirates are
experiencing an economic slowdown. By Marvine Howe. a017.
     New York-ECOSCENE-How the trade bill zipped through Congress. By
Clyde H. Farnsworth. a004, a005.
nypt
 
SPORTS
     New York - JETS - Is this the year of the Jets? Are they finally
ready. An in-depth look at the Jets' rebuilding effort, by Gerald
Eskenazi. a025, a026.
nypt
    New York-ABOUT MOTOR SPORTS-A bit of motor sports history will be
made at Watkins Glen Sunday when Indy cars compete there for the
first time. By Phil Pash. a021.
     New York-DURSO-Sports of the Times: 'Nobody to talk to now.' By
Joseph Durso. a0x4, a015.
     New York - ANDERSON COLUMN - Over the last half-century, the
Yankees have had only two captains but both had their lives and their
illustrious careers shortened by tragedy. Dave Anderson on Thurman
Munson and Lou Gehrig. a059, a060.
    Cape Vincent, N.Y. - OUTDOORS COLUMN - Nelson Bryant writes that the
St. Lawrence region offers good fishing and unspoiled country. a036,
a037, a035.
 
COLUMNS
    San Juan, Puerto Rico-WICKER-In the Nation: An American dilemma. By
Tom Wicker. a013.
    Washington - FOREIGN AFFAIRS - Joseph Sisco, former under secretary
of state for political affairs, looks at how well the U.N. is
performing its peace-keeping functions. a003.
     
The New York Times News Service, Aug. 4
    
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n113  2008  06 Aug 79
 
BC-MARKETPLACE
(FINANCIAL COMMENTARY)
 By ROBERT METZ
 c. 1979 N.Y. Times News Service
    NEW YORK - When should one take a flyer on office-equipment stocks
selling at high price-earnings ratios?
    ''One shouldn't,'' is the usual reply from anyone who recalls how
often investors were burned on such stocks back in the ''go-go''
years of the late 1960's.
    ''Not so,'' says Harry Edelson, an analyst who follows
office-equipment and telecommunications companies for Drexel Burnham
Lambert. Admittedly, Edelson broke into Wall Street after the bubble
had burst on the go-go years, and his memory was not seared, as was
that of his older colleagues.
    Edelson insists that, whatever the apparent risks, a prudent
investor can buy shares selling at price-earnings ratios of 15 to 20
times the current year estimates provided the company's earnings are
growing at a much faster rate than the price-earnings ratio.
    In these terms, Edelson contends, the shares of Wang Laboratories,
as a notable example, are a buy. Wang, which manufactures small
business computers and word-processing equipment, is said to be
returning to favor after a long hiatus that reflected an earnings
trough in the mid-1970's. Edelson said that institutions that he was
in touch with were showing more interest in Wang.
    Despite some problems, Wang has been selling at a generous
price-earnings ratio of 18 times its latest 12-month results. While
18 times earnings would strike most investors as unusually high,
Edelson points out that the company's earnings have grown at an
average of 63 percent annually in the last three years, or three
times faster than its price-earnings ratio.
    And, in Edelson's judgment, Wang's earnings will continue to show
exceptional growth. ''We are estimating earnings of $1.60 per split
share for the year ended June 1980, up from $1.15 in June 1979, or an
increase of 39 percent,'' he said.
    Edelson not only likes Wang Laboratories. He also has a list (or
more precisely, computer screens) of data on office equipment
companies and on telecommunications companies highlighting what he
considers undervalued companies. The list was published last month.
    According to Edelson, his computer list, which has 115 companies,
indicates price-earnings ratios that do not always adequately reflect
earnings growth.
    ''It appears that investors will not pay for superior growth,'' he
said. ''In fact, they rarely pay more than 10 to 15 times earnings
regardless of rates of growth.''
    Edelson points out that a company with a price-earnings ratio of,
say, 20 that increases its earnings by 50 percent a year will cut its
p-e by more than half within two years, if the stock price does not
continue to reflect the earnings growth. Thus, by Edelson's
reckoning, Wang, California Microwave and Data General, all of which
have price-earnings ratios of 13 and up, are nevertheless undervalued.
    His computer list, which is published periodically, also shows
latest revenues divided by market value, a measurement used to detect
turnarounds or takeovers. That is, if a company has big revenues and
relatively little market value, it is ripe for new management to come
in and rejuvenate by selling off assets and trimming personnel. What
will be left will be a smaller but much more profitable company.
    Those companies ranking high in this category are Planning Research,
Nashua, Memorex, Control Data, Sperry Rand, Savin and Pitney-Bowes.
These and many other companies on the list are selling at relatively
low prices compared with book value, and, again, Mr. Edelson regards
them as potential turnarounds.
    The latest list is the second of its kind he has published and
Edelson notes that several companies on the first lsit, published
last December, have done well. He mentions Four Phase, a data
terminal manufacturer, which was growing 6.7 times faster than its
earnings multiple. The shares are up a modest 10 percent, and he
thinks the company is still attractive.
    Comten, a manufacturer of computer parts for telecommunications
applications, was growing five times faster than its multiple. The
company was acquired at double the price shown in the first report.
    General Instruments was growing four times faster than its p-e in
December 1978. The stock has since gone up by half from 28 12
to about 40 today. Anderson Jacobsen, a manufacturer of data
terminals, growing at 3.3 times faster than its p-e, also increased
50 percent from 5  5/8.
    Of course, many of the shares that looked well on the list have done
nothing and some have dropped lower. Edelson suggests that anyone who
looks at some of these companies should do some fundamental analysis
before making a commitment. After all, raw figures often mask
adversity.
    
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n109  2020  13 Aug 79
 
BC-SALT 1stadd
NYT WASHINGTON: new rockets.
     Although this information is judged to be vital to verifying
provisions in the new arms treaty restricting the modernization of
new and existig missiles, the CIA was forced to abandon the Iranian
stations in the wake of the revolution there.
    - Ships and aircraft. The loss of the Iranian sites has led the
administration to seek other means of gathering the missile
telemetry. Although American stations in Turkey are too far away to
pick up line-of-sight radio broadcasts, a new generation of
''over-the''horizon'' radars, which bounce signals off the onisphere,
are still able to pick up the trajectory of experimental Soviet
missiles.
    Meanwhile, American ships equipped with sensitive listening gear
similar to the Iranian sites patrol the North Atlantic, where they
collect telemetry broadcast by new Soviet submarine-launched missiles
tested in the White Sea, northeast of Finland.
    But to fully compensate for the Iranian stations, the administration
is reconfiguring the 25-year-old U-2 reconnaissance plane to pick up
missile telemetry. Flying at an altitude of 100,000 feet over Turkey
and dangling an ultra-high frequency antenna, CIA intelligence
specialists believe that the aircraft will be able to collect much of
the data on missile performance previously intercepted in the
northern mountains of Iran.
    The administration's U-2 plan, however, has run into political and
technical obstacles. Under pressure from the Soviet Union, the
Turkish government of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit is having second
thoughts over whether it should grant the United States overflight
rights for the new versions of the U-2. And even if the Turkish
government does finally give its permission for the flights, some
specialists acknowledge that the aircraft's antenna will not be able
to pick up the entire wave spectrum of telemetry signals.
    The job of collecting the missile signals has been further
exacerbated by a Soviet practice known in intelligence circles as
''encryption,'' the transmission of telemetry in code. During a
single test firing, a missile may broadcast telemetry on as many as
30 or more frequencies. Each of these frequencies, or ''channels'',
contains specific information on the performance of a different
component aboard the missile, such as a fuel pump or guidance system.
    Until 1974, both Washington and Moscow had fairly easy access to the
telemetry broadcast in various channels during each other's test
flights. However, Moscow at that time began to transmit telemetry in
many channels in undescipherable code. To make things worse, Soviet
engineers also began to switch channels for the transmission of
different performance characteristcs, making it almost impossible for
American eavesdroppers to determine which channels corresponded to
specific missile subsystems.
    The Soviet practice of encryption emerged as a key, last-minute
issue in treaty negotiations last winter and American negotiators
were finally able to get Moscow to agree to a provision in the accord
that forbids the encoding of telemetry that would interfere with the
verification. But the treaty does not spell out precisely what
channels of telemetry must be broadcast ''in the clear.''
    Senate experts on verification, such as Sen. John Glenn, Democrat of
Ohio, have cited the ambiguity of the encryption provision as well as
the possible deficiencies of the U-2 to argue that under the new
accord, Moscow might be able to upgrade the payload of its existing
missile force without American knowledge.
    Intelligence specialists also report that the United States would
also be able to use a new class of ''Siglint,'' or signal
intelligence, satellites to collect some of the missile telemetry.
Although these satellites are the most secret of American
surveillance systems, it is known that the CIA and the National
Security Agency are already able to intercept Soviet radio and
microwave communications from outer space.
    By positioning some of the Siglint satellites over Soviet missile
test complexes, officials asserted that the administration would be
able to collect much of the telemetry missed by the U-2s. And they
also dislosed that as early as 1983, the United States would be able
to hoist a new satellite into orbit which, equipped with a huge
antenna, would be able to collect the entire spectrum of telemetry
communications.
    While the new satellite will cost over $250 million to develop and
deploy, officials believe that if it lessens the anxiety of Glenn and
others over verification, it will be worth the money.
    
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