Science & Technology

By ANITA SRIKAMESWARAN
Among women who stopped smoking during pregnancy, those who weren't worried about controlling their weight were most motivated to stay quit after delivery.

According to a new study led by psychologist Michele Levine, of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, pregnant ex-smokers who weren't as confident about their ability to manage their weight without cigarettes were less motivated to stay smoke-free.

But that "makes me feel hopeful because weight concerns are something we know how to address," Levine said.

By LISA RIDDLE
Three teenagers sat among the adults here at Lawnwood Stadium's press box last week during the Martin County vs. Fort Pierce Central football game.

Reporters, officials, clock keepers and a game announcer all journeyed through their paid assignments while a trio of Central seniors feverishly tallied offensive and defensive statistics to earn class credits.

By LEE BOWMAN
The black cottonwood seldom inspires poetry, but it was worthy of being the first tree to have its genetic code mapped, scientists say, largely because it grows so rapidly.

"Poplars are already valued for research because you can see results in them relatively fast, but this gives us a new edge in understanding tree biology," said Stefan Jansson, a researcher at Umea University in Sweden and a member of the team of more than 100 scientists who plotted the approximately 45,000 genes of the black cottonwood.

The team published the results of the project Friday in the journal Science.

Although the tree has about 480 million DNA building blocks, that's about 50 times fewer than the units found in a pine tree.

By LEE BOWMAN
Carvings on a stone block plucked from a Mexican rubble pile by road builders represent a previously unknown writing system dating back nearly 3,000 years, and possibly the earliest written language in the Western Hemisphere, according to researchers.

Based on other artifacts found with the inscribed block, Mexican and American archaeologists date it to around 900 B.C., about 400 years earlier than any example of writing from the Olmec culture seen before.

The Olmec civilization, which flourished along the Gulf of Mexico coast northwest of the Yucatan Peninsula from about 1200 B.C.

By LEE BOWMAN
The year-round ice cover of the Arctic Ocean has declined by nearly one-third during the summer months over the past 30 years, and a new study shows that even the maximum cover of winter ice has shrunk an area larger than Texas in just the past two years.

A second study, also using satellite data from NASA, shows that since the 1970s, ice cover in prime hunting areas for some Canadian polar bears has been breaking up earlier and earlier each summer, forcing the animals onto land and closer to native villages an average of three weeks sooner.

NASA scientists discussed both studies in a press briefing Wednesday.

"While a cold snap in August seems to have kept us from seeing quite the record level of melting we did last year, the amount of ice cover we're seeing in the Arctic just before the onset of winter is well below normal," said Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.

Thanks to recently declassified data from the Soviet and U.S.

Status: The seals are rare and considered a species vulnerable to extinction by the World Conservation Union. Numbers of the seals are rising at the Farallon Islands but dropping at the Pribilof Islands, an established breeding ground.

Description: The seals have large, bare flippers.

By GLEN MARTIN
A marine mammal that disappeared from California's North Coast more than 170 years ago has returned in force to the Farallon Islands.

The Farallones once supported hundreds of thousands of breeding northern fur seals _ big marine predators with luxuriant pelts.

By DAN FOST
The hard drive has come a long way.

Once useful only in universities and large corporations, hard drives today are ubiquitous, and play an ever-increasing role in people's lives.

Now people have so much digital data, they rely on the increasing development of hard drives to get smaller, cost less, and hold more bytes of information to store their songs, photos and videos, as well as written documents and PowerPoint presentations.

By DAN FOST
The silicon chip gets all the attention. A valley is even named after it. But none of the computer revolution would have been possible without the humble hard drive, which IBM introduced to the world 50 years ago this week.

Facts and figures:

The first hard drive (RAMAC) _ delivered on Sept. 13, 1956 _ weighed 2,140 lbs and stored 5 megabytes of data.

Today, a video iPod weighs 5.5 ounces and holds up to 60 gigabytes.