NEWS BRIEFS
Talking trash
Nasty talk is on the skids in the House of Representatives after the peak of pique during the 104th Congress, the year of the Republican revolution, according to researchers from the Annenberg School of Communications, as reported in the March 11 Wall Street Journal. The researchers checked congressional records and interviewed reporters. The most dramatic drop was in the casting of aspersions, from about 5,000 to about 2,000 instances. Other frowned-upon speech -- non-cooperation, pejorative words, the use of "lie" and its synonyms, hyperbole and name calling -- also dropped.
Maya tomb looted
An important ancient Maya tomb, discovered by Univeristy Museum archaeologists in Copán, Honduras, in 1993, was looted Feb. 27. Archeologists, including Museum Conservator Lynn Grant and Ellen Bell, a grad student in anthropology, are working to preserve the information and artifacts that remain.
Fortunately, most of the tomb artifacts had already been documented and removed, but the looters did steal some remaining artifacts, including about five carved jades, said Robert Sharer, project director of the Early Copán Acropolis Program (ECAP). Archaeologists believe the skeletal remains in the tomb, which dates to circa A.D. 400-500, may belong to the wife of the Copán dynastic founder.
Koppel covers fish
Fish fingers were the featured item on the March 12 menu of "ABC News Nightline." Host Ted Koppel devoted the entire program to the recent discovery by Associate Professor of Biology Neil Shubin and doctoral candidate Ted Daeschler of a fossil fish fin with a finger-like bone structure. In addition to accompanying Daeschler and Shubin as they retraced the path to their discovery, Koppel spoke with Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould, who explained how the scientists' find changes our understanding of amphibian evolution.