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Welcome to Science in the News in VOA Special English. I'm BobDoughty.

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And I'm Faith Lapidus. This week:a computer program that discovers an earthquake before it happens... a mystery noise from deep in the Earth ... and we answer aquestion from a listener in Pakistan.

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But first, a new report on ways to improve human health indeveloping countries.

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Scientists are calling for an international effort to share theproducts of genomics research. The scientists say such an effortcould help to save the lives of millions of people in developingcountries each year.

The University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics proposed theeffort in a report to the United Nations. The report is calledGenomics and Global Health. It was presented earlier this month atthe Fourth World Conference of Science Journalists in Montreal,Canada.

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The science of genomics investigates genes and the way theyoperate. Genomics has led to new medicines and tools for fightingdisease.

The University of Toronto group says such tools are able toidentify disease at the molecular level in blood or tissues. It saysthis will help increase a patient's chance of survival and preventdiseases from spreading. The group says poor countries often wastelimited resources on wrong treatments.

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Peter Singer is Director of the Joint Centre for Bioethics. Hesays millions of people in developing countries die from diseasesthat could be prevented or treated easily through products ofbiotechnology.

Doctor Singer says the report urges industrial nations to sharetheir wealth of information with developing countries. He says thereport also shows a way for developing countries to reach targetsset at a United Nations conference four years ago. The targets areknown as the U-N's Millennium Development Goals. Delegates at theconference agreed to reach these goals by two-thousand-fifteen.

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The report explains how genomics could improve human health indeveloping countries. For example, scientists could make a geneticmap of the organisms responsible for the disease malaria in humans.This information can be used to develop new drugs and vaccines tostrengthen the human body's defenses against disease.

The report says the products of genomics once were so costly thatonly wealthy nations could pay for them. It says developingcountries are now able to pay for some of these products. And, itsays, a few are now so low-cost and simple they can start replacingolder, more costly health care technologies in poorer countries.

The report calls for creation of a program to support genomicsfor the public good of all people. The program would askgovernments, businesses and other organizations to support genomicsand learning worldwide.

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A team of scientists has developed a computer program that cantell where and when earthquakes will happen. The programsuccessfully warned of fifteen of the sixteen largest earthquakes inthe American state of California in the past ten years.

John Rundle of the University of California at Davis led thescientific team. Mister Rundle says the scientists are extremelyhappy with results of the project. He says the results are evidenceof the project's ability to tell when and where earthquakes willhappen in the future.

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The method involves the use of a special computer program calledQuakeSim. The program examined information about large earthquakesin the past. The information tells where and when the earthquakestook place. It also includes their strength as measured by theRichter scale. The computer program used information aboutearthquakes in California as long ago as nineteen thirty-two.

The program also examined information about small, recentearthquakes and information gathered from satellites in Earth orbit.The satellites measured small changes in the surface of the planet.

The computer program then consideed all of the information tohelp the scientists tell where and when earthquakes were most likelyto happen.

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The scientific team published its findings in Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences in February, two thousand-two. Theirreport warned that fifteen earthquakes would take place. There wereeleven earthquakes after the report was published. Four othershappened before it was released to the public.

The effort to estimate when earthquakes will happen was a projectdeveloped by scientists at the University of Colorado and the JetPropulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The American spaceagency and the United States Department of Energy paid for thestudy.

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Scientists in the United States believe they have identified thecause of a mysterious noise made by the Earth. They say the noiseseems to be coming from some ocean areas. They say it starts duringperiods of severe winter storm activity.

For years, scientists have known the Earth can ring like a bellafter an earthquake. They believed that the shaking would end whenthere are no earthquakes. Yet studies have shown it continues longafter the effects of an earthquake.

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Scientists in Japan first described the noise six years ago. Theysaid it is a deep, low sound that is present in the ground. Thesound is too low for human ears to hear. Scientists say the sound isnot very powerful. They say it only has as much power as a few onehundred watt electric light bulbs.

Recently, research scientists from the University of Californiaat Berkeley attempted to find the cause of the noise. BarbaraRomanowicz and graduate student Junkee Rhie reported their findingsin the publication Nature.

The researchers studied information collected by seismographicequipment in California and Japan. Seismographs measure themovements of the ground and within the Earth. The researchersconsidered information gathered on sixty days during the year whenthere was little or no earthquake activity.

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The researchers say the noise appeared to come from the northernPacific Ocean during winter months in Japan and California. Duringsummer months in these areas, the noise seemed to move to oceans ofthe Southern Hemisphere, just north of Antarctica. The researchersnoted that these are times and places where winter weather causesstrong winds and large waves.

Professor Romanowicz says this suggests that the force of thewater hitting the ocean floor may be causing the noise.

Toshiro Tanimoto is a geophysicist with the University ofCalifornia at Santa Barbara. Professor Tanimoto praised the newstudy for finding a believable explanation. He says he proposed asimilar explanation in the past. He also said the noise shows thatthe Earth, its oceans and atmosphere all are part of a commonsystem.

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Several weeks ago, we began asking listeners to send us anyscience questions they might have. Electronic mail messages camequickly. One came from Pakistan. Nadeem wants to know about the BigBang theory. Our first stop for information was the American apaceagency, NASA.

NASA calls the Big Bang Theory the leading theory for describingthe beginning of the universe. The theory says the universe wascreated almost fourteen-thousand-million years ago from a hugeexplosion.

Big Bang scientists think all the parts of the universe startedfrom a single object. It would have been small, but of great mass.Scientists believe this object exploded. They think the universe isstill expanding today from that event.

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There are two major pieces of evidence that scientists saysupport the Big Bang theory. First, stars and other objects in spaceappear to be moving away from each other. The other major evidenceis the existence of background microwave radiation. Scientists thinkthe Big Bang explosion created this energy.

The Big Bang theory is widely accepted by scientists. However,most of them would agree that it is unlikely anyone will ever beable to prove the theory.

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This program was written by Brian Kim, Paul Thompson, George Growand Caty Weaver. Cynthia Kirk was our producer. I'm Bob Doughty.

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And I'm Faith Lapidus. Join us again next week for Science in theNews in VOA Special English.