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- THE WEEK, Page 25HEALTH & SCIENCEEt Cetera
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- AND IT'S GREAT WITH PROSCIUTTO
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- Trichloroethane is widely used as a cleanser in microchip
- manufacturing. Unfortunately, it also attacks the planet's
- ozone layer, so chipmakers are looking for a substitute. Now
- AT&T may have one in N-butyl butyrate, a chemical found in, of
- all things, cantaloupes, peaches and plums. In fruit, it
- contributes to overall flavor; in the atmosphere, it should help
- reduce mankind's siege of the ozone layer, in turn relieving
- the onslaught of cancer- and cataract-causing ultraviolet light.
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- SEX AND THE SINGLE WORM
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- Every biologist knows that females spend a lot of energy
- making a small number of eggs, while males churn out huge
- quantities of sperm almost effortlessly. Not so, says a scientist
- who has studied the sex life of a worm no bigger than an
- apostrophe. Male soil nematodes that copulate a lot -- and thus
- produce a lot of sperm -- live only two-thirds as long as fellow
- worms that copulate but don't make sperm, according to a report
- in Nature. University of Arizona researcher Wayne Van Voorhies
- warns that it may be a mistake to make the leap from worms to
- humans, but women live, on average, six years longer than men.
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