WEST

SCIENTISTS BAFFLED BY CHANGES IN SATURN’S RINGS

LOS ANGELES – New observations by the international Cassini spacecraft reveal that Saturn’s trademark shimmering rings, which have dazzled astronomers since Galileo’s time, have dramatically changed over just the past 25 years.

Among the most surprising findings is that parts of Saturn’s innermost ring – the D ring – have grown dimmer since the Voyager spacecraft flew by the planet in 1981, and a piece of the D ring has moved 125 miles inward toward Saturn.

Scientists are interested in Saturn’s rings because they are a model of the disk of gas and dust that initially surrounded the sun. Studying them could yield important clues about how the planets formed from that disk 4.5 billion years ago.

The ring observations were made this summer. The $3.3 billion Cassini mission, funded by NASA and the European and Italian space agencies, was launched in 1997. Cassini is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

– Associated Press

TELETHON RAISES $54.9 MILLION

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -The Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon raised $54.9 million for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and more than $1 million for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Mr. Lewis, 79, decided to devote the two-day telethon to both children with muscular dystrophy and Katrina victims after seeing reports from the Gulf Coast. The Katrina donations will go to the Salvation Army in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Tens of thousands of people are out of their homes, and many of those homes have been destroyed.

“I’m overjoyed we were able to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina and at the same time continue our 40-year tradition of helping my kids,” Mr. Lewis said.

The telethon’s total to fight muscular dystrophy was $4.5 million less than last year, but lower figures were expected due to the outpouring of donations for the hurricane victims. It was only the third time in 40 years that the telethon failed to surpass the previous year’s total.

– Associated Press

WASHINGTON

SODIUM NITRITE COULD CURE DISEASES

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health think the salt that preserves hot dogs could also preserve your health. They’ve begun infusing sodium nitrite into volunteers in hopes that it could prove a cheap but potent treatment for sickle cell anemia, heart attacks, brain aneurysms, even an illness that suffocates babies.

Those ailments have something in common: They hinge on problems with low oxygen, problems the government’s research suggests nitrite can ease. Beyond repairing the reputation of this ofte -maligned meat preservative, the work promises to rewrite scientific dogma about how blood flows, and how the body tries to protect itself when that flow is blocked.

NIH researchers have filed for new patents on this old, overlooked chemical and are hunting a major pharmaceutical company to help develop it as a therapy. The scientists are so convinced of nitrite’s promise that lead researcher Dr. Mark T. Gladwin says the government will pursue drug development on its own if necessary.

– Associated Press

RED-HOT HOUSING MARKET COOLS

The nation’s red-hot housing market may finally be nearing its peak, meaning the end of double-digit annual percentage price gains for homeowners and potential trouble for more recent purchasers who stretched to buy.

Sales have certainly been sizzling this year, putting the country on track for a fifth straight year of record purchases of new and existing homes. But scattered among the statistics are some signs of a slowdown. In July, sales of existing homes fell by 2.6% even though the nationwide median price rose to a record $218,000. Homes in some areas are staying on the market longer before they sell, and the Mortgage Bankers Association reports that its index of demand for home mortgages now stands 11% below a June peak.

The devastation from Hurricane Katrina could turn out to help the housing industry, mainly through falling interest rates. Investors pushed rates lower this week in anticipation that Katrina and the resulting surge in energy prices will act as a drag on economic growth and could persuade the Federal Reserve to pause in its 14-month campaign to push rates higher. As a result, rates on 30-year mortgages dipped to 5.71%, down from a high this year of 6.04% set in late March.

– Associated Press

ARCHAEOLOGY

EXPLORER CLAIMS FATHER’S DISCOVERY AT RISK FOR LOOTING

An American explorer says an ancient, pre-Incan metropolis discovered by his father in Peru’s remote cloud forest on an earlier expedition has been plundered by tomb robbers.

Sean Savoy, 32, urged Peru’s government to take steps to protect the city, which he estimated housed 20,000 people and had hundreds of circular stone buildings in the seventh century. Mr. Savoy, just back from leading a 23-day expedition to the site, described it as a massive metropolitan complex spread along a river valley high in Peru’s rain forest on the eastern slopes of the Peruvian Andes. The expedition to the Gran Saposoa ruins, located 335 miles north of Lima, included more than 50 people, counting government archaeologists, architects, a stonemason, an expert on Andean art, armed police, and 30 mule drivers.

Mr. Savoy, son of famed 78-year-old explorer Gene Savoy, who has discovered more than 40 lost cities in Peru since the 1960s, said in an interview with the Associated Press that the city is much bigger than his father had calculated. He estimated the metropolitan area covers more than 80 square miles. The elder Mr. Savoy discovered it in 1999, naming it Gran Saposoa, and concluded it was one of the cities of the Chachapoyas kingdom.

– Associated Press