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 A team of UCLA chemists and researchers at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories have taken a significant step toward producing computers that will be molecular- rather than silicon-based. The scientists, including UCLA chemists James R. Heath and J. Fraser Stoddart, demonstrated molecular-based logic gates for the first time and showed that, for certain tasks, molecules can effectively achieve the same or better results than silicon. They also showed that molecular circuitry can be defect-tolerant. Molecular computers hold the promise of being far less expensive, smaller and faster than today's silicon-based computers, and able to learn and improve the more they are used.
 
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 Workers most likely exposed to the rocket fuel component hydrazine at the Rocketdyne field laboratory in Simi Valley, CA, are more likely to have died of lung cancer and several other types of cancer than coworkers not exposed to the chemical, according to a study by researchers at the UCLA School of Public Health. The study, headed by epidemiologists Hal Morgenstern and Beate Ritz, examined 6,107 men first employed at the Rocketdyne plant before 1980. The researchers found that workers presumed to have a high exposure to hydrazine died from lung cancers and possibly cancers of the bladder, kidney and blood and lymphatic system about twice as often as other Rocketdyne workers who were not exposed to the chemical.
 
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 Although day labor is difficult, dirty and often risky, the average day laborer in Southern California earns well in excess of the federal minimum wage and sends home more than $2,600 in remittances each year, according to the initial findings of a study by Abel Valenzuela, assistant professor of Chicano studies and urban planning. Valenzuela's continuing study, believed to be the first scholarly analysis of this highly visible but little known phenomenon, is based on a random and detailed survey of 481 day laborers at 87 different hiring sites in Los Angeles and Orange counties.
 
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 Children who spend their preschool years in community-based child-care centers perform slightly above average in the early elementary school grades, according to the findings of a multi-university research team that included UCLA education professor Carollee Howes. The researchers followed more than 800 children beginning in 1993, when they were 4 years old and attending day care, through completion of second grade. The study found that children receiving poor-quality child care were less prepared and tended to have less success in the early phases of school than students who received high-quality care in their preschool years. A key factor, Howes reported, was the relationship a child had with his or her child-care teacher.
 
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 UCLA researchers have found a link between a person's self-awareness of memory failure and the major known genetic-risk factor for developing Alzheimer's disease, apiloprotein E-4 allele, or ApoE4. Under the leadership of Dr. Gary Small, director of the UCLA Center on Aging, researchers performed standardized assessments of memory performance (objective memory) and self-perceived memory performance (subjective memory). They found that objective verbal memory and two subjective measures, frequency of forgetting and changes in memory, were worse in the subjects who had the ApoE4 gene.
 
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 Through the combined efforts of linguistics professor Pamela Munro and graduate student Felipe Lopez, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center has published the first dictionary with English definitions of a Zapotec language. The language is spoken by 2,000 villagers in San Lucas Quiavini, where Lopez grew up in the Valley of Oaxaca in southeastern Mexico. Fearing that the language was endangered, Lopez collaborated with Munro, a leading scholar of indigenous languages of the Americas, on a two-volume dictionary that contains more than 9,000 entries and cross-references.
 
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 The 18 million Americans with obstructive sleep apnea - a disorder characterized by loud bursts of snoring and irregular breathing - are at 10 times the normal risk for stroke, according to research by Arthur Friedlander of the UCLA School of Dentistry. In Friedlander's study, he compared X-rays of patients with obstructive sleep apnea with those of patients without the disorder. A total of 21 percent of sleep-apnea patients showed calcified plaques blocking their carotid arteries - nearly 10 times the rate found in healthy, age-matched patients.
 
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 The advent of the potent antiretroviral therapy known as the "AIDS cocktail" has resulted in a significant delay in the onset of AIDS symptoms and death, a study by the UCLA School of Public Health's Roger Detels found. Detels looked at the impact the availability of the cocktail has had on HIV-infected people, regardless of whether they were taking the drugs and regardless of whether the drug-takers were following the recommended protocol. Detels found that the length of time between HIV infection and development of AIDS was 63 percent longer than before the therapy was available, the length of time from HIV infection to death increased by 21 percent and the risk of death dropped by 40 percent.
 
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 A team of UCLA geophysicists, working with scientists from Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has found new evidence of salty liquid-water oceans just beneath the surfaces of two of Jupiter's moons. The study, headed by Krishan Khurana, was based on data gathered from the Galileo spacecraft. Khurana's group concluded that the moons Europa and Callisto perturb Jupiter's magnetic fields due to these subsurface oceans. Moreover, the existence of these oceans raises the tantalizing possibility of extraterrestrial life.
 
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 While ethnicity plays no role in determining quality of life for long-term breast-cancer survivors, sociological factors such as life stress, relationship status, education and income do affect how well women cope after having the disease, according to a first-of-its kind study led by Dr. Patricia Ganz, director of UCLA's Division of Cancer Prevention and Control Research. Ganz evaluated 278 California breast-cancer patients - 117 African-American women and 161 white women - and found no differences in quality of life based on race. She concluded that socioeconomic level and life stress are more important in assessing quality of life.
 
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 Los Angeles County's imposition in 1998 of time limits on General Relief welfare payments has done little to encourage former recipients to look for jobs or join job-training programs, a UCLA survey found. Instead, the loss of benefits has increased hunger, homelessness and dependence on nonprofit community groups, families and friends, according to interviews with 174 former welfare recipients. The study was headed by Ailee Moon, associate professor of social welfare, and doctoral student Rebecca Hawes.
 
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 Yang Yang and a team of researchers in UCLA's Materials Science and Engineering Department have developed what they call a polymer Solution Light Emitting Device (SLED) that is transparent one moment and glows the next at the flick of a switch. The device is a "sandwich" of clear liquid polymer between two pieces of glass. When an electrical current is applied, the polymer molecules are excited. They release energy in the form of light, making the transparent device glow - a process called electrogenerated chemiluminescence (ECL). Although ECL has previously been demonstrated in polymers in solid forms, this is the first time it has been observed in liquid polymers.
 
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 California must change the way it finances highway construction and repair if it is to avoid a dramatic increase in traffic congestion and crumbling concrete over the coming decade, warns a study headed by researchers at UCLA and UC Berkeley. Over the past decade, California has gradually shifted from a reliance on user fees like the gasoline tax toward more politically popular measures such as bond issues and county sales tax increases, the study finds. The authors, including UCLA urban planning assistant professor Brian Taylor, conclude that California should renew its reliance on fuel taxes and other user fees, the pay-as-you-go method the state has employed since 1923.
 
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 A fossil meteorite believed to be from the huge asteroid that crashed to Earth 65 million years ago - the probable cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other species worldwide - has been found by UCLA geochemist Frank Kyte. Based on his analysis of the sample, Kyte concludes that the cosmic impactor, some six miles in diameter, that broadsided Mexico's Yucatan peninsula was probably an asteroid, not a comet.

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