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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 14, 2000)
Page 3 Wednesday,Juk idnesday, June 14,2000 _ scicnc TECHN THE BATTALION Getting Burned dangers posed by ultraviolet radiation damage sun worshippers' skin Cyra Gatling and Stuart Hutson The Battalion With summer days approaching, college stu nts are daydreaming about lazy days of bask- |g in the sun at the closest pool, but if they are careful, those dreams may turn into night- [ares. The villain of the nightmare: ultraviolet V) light. Ultraviolet light is a form of electromagnet- The Oakland Athletics also :M outfielder Daylan Hoi yers were part of the 1998rect is, and Scarcella said it is ago •tunity for both be able tojc ne team. Scarcella and his parentsmr kland Athletics representat? te 9 to begin the negot >cess. During the meeting,!! vas told by a scout for the ion he had been following!! ince his junior year of high ? Athletics also told him the: make Scarcella a starter fo ikie-league team based inVd ■ and will pay for two more a 3 of school so he can gethisi speech communications. Scarcella said getting his do aortant to him and his parent "A degree from TexasA&Mt 1 " Iv. giiid'i ijradiation — a term physicists use to defineen- not, 1 still plan to get my Aji ^ at travels in such forms as light, radio Waves and microwaves — that lies just beyond 1 he season starts June 20 forJ e v j s ibl^ color spectrum, scarcella said he hopes to miH This means that UV light cannot be seen by the human eye, but it carries more energy than any color of light that can be seen. ■ Because of its intense energy, UV light is ca- able of damaging genetic material within cells and disinfecting foods. A result more commonly known to the av- aest for the team. That's it eroge college student is the damage UV light inflicts when encountering a person's skin: a re 1 akers seemed to need v. sunburn. veen Rice and Jackson,a feJ Unlike the large-scale effects of a thermal e airing of grievances, orpr burn (such as what is received from touching a natherapy (Don't laugh. ]; hot skillet or catching an arm on fire), a sunburn ;affects individual skin cells, causing damage to d the relationship betoeenh the cell walls and interior. ,n was not a "bad" one, while# This can release toxins into the body from e two have had a good relatir the individually damaged cells, possibly re sulting in a fever. I and 5 will be Wednesdayrel uv ra y s ma y also lead to cancer by damag- in Indianapolis before the e ing the genetic material of the cells that produce . to I os Angeles, it nea«n;B dd hional skin cells. i Monday night and Gie/I The skin is made U P of three layers, the y night. on bv the week's end. nGame epidermis, the dermis and the subcutis. The epidermis is the top, thinnest layer of skin that protects the deeper layers of the skin and organs from the environment. It also re ceives the most damage from sunburns. The epidermis is composed of the stratum corneum, which is the outermost layer of skin and is composed of dead skin cells. The lowest part of the epidermis is a layer of cells called basal cells which produce new skin cells — these are the cells that commonly become can cerous when damaged by UV rays. Sandwiched between these two layers is an intermediary level where living skin cells formed from the basal cells replace the upper level of dead cells. The dermis is the middle layer of the skin. It is thicker than the epidermis and is made up of hair follicles, sweat glands, blood vessels and nerves. The subcutis is the deepest layer of skin. It conserves heat and protects the body's organs from injury. Each of these layers provide protection from UV rays by absorbing them before they can dam age the body's internal cells. But, when it comes to protecting skin and other organs, they cannot handle the power of die UV rays of the sun alone. The American Cancer Society recommends wearing a hat, sunglasses, sunscreen and a shirt when out in the sun. Fabrics that have a tight weave provide the best protection against the sun. Margaret Griffith, the health education co ordinator at Texas A&M offered additional valuable tips for tackling UV rays. "When choosing a sunscreen, you should get an SPF (sun-protec tion factor) of at least 15 and re-ap- ply it often," Griffith said. "Even if it is waterproof, that doesn't mean that it stays on all day long. Sun screen can rub off by sweating or swimming." One should also wear sunscreen on hazy days because UV light can penetrate cloud cover, even though visible light cannot, Griffith said. The effect of the sun on skin de pends on the way its light contacts it, said Dennis Driscoll, associate professor of meteorology at A&M. "The sun is harshest when it is in right-angle contact with the skin," Driscoll said. "The degree of harshness depends whether or not the sun is vertical or horizontal and whether or not your body is verti cal or horizontal to the sun." The UV rays from the sun must go through more layers of the at mosphere when the sun is closer to the horizon (or "more horizon tal"), so less of the UV light pene trates the atmosphere and reaches the skin. The sun is most dangerous when it is di rectly above head, because the UV rays have less atmosphere to penetrate. There are three different types of UV rays. dead cells basal cells hair epidermis -dermis aneous layer nerve fiber UV-A rays are almost harmless. They cause aging and wrinkling. These rays can increase the damage of UV-B rays. UV-B rays are more harmful. They play a larger role in the development of skin cancer hair follicle sweat gland than UV-A rays. UV-C rays are deadly to any living thing. They are commonly absorbed by the ozone. However, these rays penetrate the earth's atmosphere when ozone layers are damaged. !Off f Deposi Hurricanes predicted for Texas cold - 6 Sun 1 * 5 mmate?? fiskam Stuart Hutson The Battalion Farmers in central and west Texas may find relief from 5 year's drought in an ironic source — a hurricane. William Gray, head of Colorado State's hurricane fore- ast team, is predicting an above-average number of hur- Icanes for the 2000 hurricane season —12 named storms, ight hurricanes and four hajor hurricanes. Texas State Climatolo- pst John Nielsen-Gam- mon said that one out of Iree hurricanes will gen- pally strike the Texas |oastline, causing rain. "Certain parts of Texas ire experiencing a worse Ifought than they are iSed to seeing," Nielsen- femmon said. "So, there a strong possibility that, th increased chances of lirricanes and tropical irms, there will be rain at will help alleviate iat situation." He said central Texas, luding the Brazos unty through Waco d Tyler will experience a fair amount of rainfall. However, Nielsen-Gammon said coastal areas and the untain area stretching northward from Temple are likely to experience severe flooding problems. "The coastal areas are always in danger of flooding because of storm surges where the ocean rises up and floods the shore," he said. The areas farther west receive higher levels of rain be cause moisture in the air from the storm encounters the mountains and is pushetj up into the colder air in high- Cold A i r cold Coriolis Force Area of Moisture Area of Moisture er elevations. There, it cools and condenses into rainfall. Nielsen-Gammon said there is also an increased chance of tornadoes associated with hurricanes. "No one really knows all the reasons why tornadoes result from some hurricanes and not others," he said. "Some hurricanes don't produce any, while others can produce dozens. Generally, a hurricane that hits the shore will cause at least a few tornadoes." A hurricane forms when a pocket of warm, moist air becomes trapped between an area of ocean with above level surface temperatures (around 80 degrees Fahren heit) and an area of cold air. The ocean acts as a heat engine, driving the moist air upward, where it condenses into rain in the cold air above. This rain then adds moisture to the middle area. The additional moisture causes more moisture to be driven upward, resulting in more rain. This cycle, called cyclogenesis, continues until a trop ical storm results. If the storm is more than 300 miles away from the equator, the Coriolis force (the same force, caused by the spin of the earth, that makes water going down a drain spin counterclockwise) causes the storm to spin, and a hurricane forms. Gray said that this year, the Atlantic Ocean's surface temperature is higher than normal, resulting in the high er probability of a hurricane. Nielsen-Gammon said hurricanes are usually pre vented from starting by strong, high-level winds that tear the storm apart before it can evolve into a hurricane. These winds usually come from air currents over the Pacific Ocean. Gray said the presence of La Nina, a large area of cold water in the Pacific Ocean, is preventing these winds from developing, thus leading to an even greater probability of hurricanes. A snowball’s chance... Stuart Hutson its matching sen! Black box technology‘within reach’ for autos | SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A par rolls on the highway in the daf (jnad through 6//0 1 middle of the night and a signal ||sent to the nearest 911 center. ||thin seconds, emergency workers know how fast the car /\ (il s g° in g, w h ere h crashed, U(\ur l\0(VW' 0 was i ns i de ahd Whether tj they were wearing seat belts. I The technology is within reach, according to experts who fcsented a prototype of the f £ f £ § # XV/ij^ u t oma ti c Crash Notification f \ § $ £Jl t| S y stem at the National Emer- 1 gency Number Association con ference Monday. It's not here today, but it's tight around the corner," said Stephen Meer of SCC Commu- hitations Corp., a 911 routing :oinpany that was part of the demonstration. r 0/Y/ad J; 7M The system is based on a so- called "blackbox" — nicknamed after the devices that record alti tude and other flight data on planes — built by Veridian. The box uses sensors to record the speed a car is travel ing and the point of impact, and then radios that information into a central communication system when a crash occurs. A global positioning system embedded in the box tells the network how to relay the call to a local 911 number, transmitting the crash information to the dis patcher on the ground. That data can then be relayed to a hospital or trauma center to feed information about the crash to doctors or paramedics on their way to the accident. The idea of crash notification is not new; General Motors and other car companies already in stall systems such as OnStar in some models. Proponents of the new technology call those sys tems basic. "That says there was a frontal crash, yes or no," said Doug Funke, transportation sector pro gram manager for Veridian. "But we know was it side impact, was it the left side, did the car roll over, what was the car's final resting position — on the side or the roof — as well as the car's ac tual location." The new system also meshes with traditional 911 operations, said Meer, who helped design a routing network for calls. That means emergency systems will not have to be overhauled each time another company invents a new black box. The system was tested earli er this month, when Veridian wired two cars and crashed them near Niagara Falls, N.Y. The emergency services depart ment in Harris County, Texas, which covers Houston and its suburbs, signed on in advance to take the call. When the cars slammed to gether, the black box data was instantly transmitted to SCC's home base in Boulder, Colo, and relayed to Houston's 911 number. In less than a minute, dis patchers at the Houston Fire De partment read the crash data and decided how many engines and paramedics to send (be cause the crash was in New York, no crews were actually dispatched). Within five min utes, the crash data was trans lated into a computer model that could be read by doctors. That final step — which will eventually include information about the ages of passengers and crumple zones of specific makes of car — is not yet ready for the mass market. But it will be soon. Response Services Center, a subsidiary of AAA, has paired up with SCC and plans to offer an emergency notification system to con sumers in 2001. Experts predict the technology will become as standard as seat belts and air bags in just a few years. The Battalion Scientists believe that life on earth began 3.8 billion years ago. But until now, they had trouble believing that it has survived. An ice age that blanketed the earth 600 million years ago (called the "snowball period") was previously believed to have covered the entire earth— from poles to equator — in a layer of ice that should have prevented the single-cell organisms of the day from surviving. "Life at this time existed in the oceans, but if those oceans were covered in a thick layer of ice, light from the sun could n't have made it through," said William Hyde, professor of oceanography at Texas A&M. "These organisms depended on a process called photosynthesis for energy. So, no light meant no life." Photosynthesis is the process by which organisms absorb light from the sun and then use the energy from that light to make sugar for the organ isms to feed on. Hyde, along with A&M oceanographers Thomas Crowley and Steven Baum, and Uni versity of Toronto physi cist W. Richard Peltier, has constructed a com puter model of the earth at that time, which indi cates that life may have survived in ice-free pools of ocean surrounding the earth's equator. "We were constructing different models of what the earth may have looked like at this time under cer tain conditions and came along this set up which seems a very probable possibility," Hyde said. "This is isn't the definite way that things went, but it would answer some questions." Hyde said the snowball period, which predates the latest ice age — known for its cave men and woolly mammoths — by hundreds of millions of years, was caused by low levels of car bon dioxide in the atmosphere and a sun that was 6 percent dimmer than today's. The sun is believed to have been dimpier because a star grows brighter as it grows older due to a nuclear chain reaction which gradually consumes more fuel in the star's core. Carbon dioxide is one of the main contributors to a process known as the "greenhouse effect." The clear carbon dioxide gas allows the sun's energy, in the form of light, to penetrate the at mosphere. The light warms the earth which in turn radiates the energy in as heat into the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide then acts as an insulating blanket, keeping that heat in. Life may have sur vived in ice- free pools of ocean surrounding the Earth's equator