up109601|Arnoldo Aleman elected president of Nicaragua|<STRONG>Arnoldo Aleman elected president of Nicaragua</STRONG><P>Jose Arnoldo Aleman Lacayo was elected president of Nicaragua on Oct. 20, 1996. The 49-year-old Aleman was a former mayor of Managua, the Nicaraguan capital, and a member of the conservative Liberal Alliance Party.</P><P>Aleman defeated Daniel Ortega Saavedra of the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front. Ortega ruled Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990 before he lost the 1990 presidential election to Violeta Chamorro. Chamorro was prohibited by law from seeking consecutive terms as president.</P>
up109602|New York Yankees win World Series|<STRONG>New York Yankees win World Series</STRONG><P>The New York Yankees defeated the Atlanta Braves to win baseball's World Series on Oct. 26, 1996, in New York. The Yankees won the series 4 games to 2. The win gave the Yankees their 23rd World Series championship and their first title since 1978.</P><P>The Yankees' path to the World Series included play-off wins over the Texas Rangers, the American League Western Division winner, and the Baltimore Orioles, the wild-card play-off entry, for the league championship. The Orioles defeated the Cleveland Indians, the American League Central Division champions and the owners of baseball's best record, to reach the pennant championship series.</P><P>The Braves were the National League Eastern Division winners and defending World Series champions. They defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers, the National League wild-card play-off team, to reach the league championship series against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals, winners of the National League Central Division, beat the San Diego Padres, the Western Division champions, to reach the pennant championship series.</P><P>After losing the first two games of the World Series, the Yankees rallied to win four straight games. In the final game of the series, the New York defeated Braves' pitcher Greg Maddux, whom many considered to be the best pitcher in baseball.</P>
up109603|Nobel Prizes announced|<STRONG>Nobel Prizes announced</STRONG><P>The 1996 Nobel Prizes for work in physiology or medicine, physics, chemistry, economics, peace, and literature were announced in October.</P><P>Immunologists Peter C. Doherty and Rolf M. Zinkernagel won the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for their work in the early 1970's concerning how cells of the human immune system recognize viruses. Doherty was born in Australia and was a researcher at St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Zinkernagel was born in Switzerland and was a researcher at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.</P><P>Physicists David M. Lee, Douglas D. Osheroff, and Robert C. Richardson won the Nobel Prize for physics for their work in the early 1970's on how a form of helium behaves at temperatures near absolute zero (-273.15 degrees C, or -459.67 degrees F.)--the temperature that scientists believe is the lowest attainable. Lee and Richardson were in the Physics Department at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and Osheroff was in the Physics Department at Stanford University in Stanford, California. <P>Chemists Robert F. Curl, Jr., Harold W. Kroto, and Richard E. Smalley won the Nobel Prize for chemistry for their discovery in 1985 of new forms of carbon called fullerenes that take the shape of a ball. Curl and Smalley were from the United States and were both members of the Chemistry Department at Rice University in Houston. Kroto was from the United Kingdom and was a researcher at the University of Sussex in Brighton, United Kingdom.</P>Economists James A. Mirrlees and William Vickrey won the Nobel Prize for economics for their work about how policymakers often use incomplete economic information to make decisions. Vickrey was born in Victoria, Canada, and was affiliated with Columbia University in New York City. Mirrlees was born in Scotland and was in the Economics Department at Cambridge University in Cambridge, United Kingdom.</P><P>Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta won the Nobel Peace prize for their efforts to resolve the ongoing conflict on the eastern half of Timor island. Indonesia took over East Timor in 1975, and many residents of that half of the island have resisted Indonesian control. Belo and Ramos-Horta were peace activists who had sought a solution to East Timor's conflict with the Indonesian government since the mid-1970's. Belo was a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church. </P>
up109604|Researchers find direct link between smoking and lung cancer|<STRONG>Researchers find direct link between smoking and lung cancer</STRONG><P>Researchers said on Oct. 18, 1996, that they had found the first biological evidence that cigarette smoke causes cancer in human lungs. Scientists had not discovered a direct physical connection between smoking cigarettes and the development of lung cancer. In making claims about the risk of cancer from smoking, researchers have instead relied on animal studies and statistical evidence showing that far more smokers develop lung cancer than nonsmokers.</P><P>Researchers pinponted a chemical in cigarette smoke and identified a gene called p53 that the chemical damages. The researchers said the damage to p53 in laboratory lung cells is identical to the damage observed in many malignant tumors of the lungs in smokers. The gene is vital becuase it suppresses the runaway growth of cells that lead to cancer. Researchers at the University of Texas in Houston and the Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope in Duarte, Califiornia, performed the study reported the finding.</P>
up109605|Scientists find new planet|<STRONG>Scientists find new planet</STRONG><P>Two teams of astronomers announced on Oct. 23, 1996, that they had discovered a planet outside the solar system. According to the scientists, the new planet orbits the smaller of twin stars about 70 light years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The announcement brought to 11 the claimed number of planets discovered outside the solar system since 1992. Some of the findings have been disputed, however.</P><P>The scientists that independently discovered the new planet were Paul Butler and Geoff Marcy at San Francisco State University and Bill Cochran and Artie Hatzes at the University of Texas in Austin.</P>
up109606|Signs of life on Mars?|<STRONG>Signs of life on Mars?</STRONG><P>On Oct. 31, 1996, a team of British scientists reported finding possible evidence of life in a meteorite that originated on Mars. The British scientists found the meteorite in Antarctica. The scientists said that organic (carbon-containing) compounds in the meteorite may be evidence of gases left over from the activity of microbes. The British research bolstered findings by scientists in the United States in August 1996 that also pointed to possible life on Mars.</P><P>According to scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in Houston and three universities, organic compounds and chemicals found inside another meteorite that fell from Mars to Earth about 13,000 years ago could be the remnants of primitive life. The U.S. scientists made their announcement on Aug. 6, 1996. Their meteorite was also discovered in Antarctica. <P>NASA scientists said that several substances found in the meteorite hinted at possible life on Mars. Scientists found polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH's), which form as a result of the decomposition of microorganisms. The scientists also found magnetite and iron sulfide inside the meteorite, both chemicals that can be related to bacterial action. The scientists also said that they had found fossils made of carbon material that resembled fossilized bacteria inside the meteorite.</P><P>The scientists ruled out the possibility that the PAH's could have entered the meteorite after it hit the Earth. If organic molecules had entered the meteorite after it hit Earth, they would have been concentrated on the meteorite's surface, according to the researchers. But there were no PAH's on the meteorite's surface, and the bacterialike fossils within the meteorite predated its arrival on Earth by billions of years.</P><P>The meteorite formed from molten rock about 4.5 billion years ago when Mars was warmer and wetter than it is today. Scientists speculated that an asteroid or comet hit Mars and knocked the rock loose from the planet's surface about 15 million years ago and that it drifted through space until its collision with the Earth.</P><P>Many other scientists were skeptical of the claim that life once existed on Mars, however. NASA's top official, Daniel Goldin, said the research was "exciting, even compelling, but not conclusive." And a planetary scientist who studied the same meteorite in which the NASA scientists claimed to have found evidence of Martian life said on Aug. 21, 1996, that it showed no evidence of life. The scientist--Ralph Harvey of Case Western University in Cleveland--said the carbon-containing fossils that resemble bacteria could have resulted from carbon in the Martian atmosphere. An impact could have driven tiny amounts of liquid saturated with carbon into the rock to form carbon-containing mounds and structures that resemble bacteria, Harvey said.</P>
up109607|Scientists report evidence of black hole at center of Milky Way|<STRONG>Scientists report evidence of black hole at center of Milky Way</STRONG><P>A team of German scientists added to speculation that a black hole exists at the center of the Milky Way on Oct. 3, 1996, with a report on evidence that a massive unseen object accounts for the motions of stars near the galaxy's center. The scientists studied the motions of 39 stars near the center of the galaxy for five years.</P><P>The study showed that the velocities of the stars declined the further they were from the center of the galaxy--behavior that would be expected if they were in orbit around a huge central object. Since the scientists detected no normal stars at the center of the galaxy, they determined that a black hole about 2.5 million times more massive than the sun existed at the Milky Way's center. </P>
