NOTEBOOK

By KATHLEEN ADAMS, DANIEL EISENBERG, TAM GRAY, ANITA HAMILTON, JANICE HOROWITZ, NADYA LABI, JAMIE MALANOWSKI, ALAIN SANDERS AND JOEL STEIN

WINNERS & LOSERS

TOUGH TALKERS AND BIG MOUTHS

[WINNERS]

JANET RENO Just the facts, ma'am. A.G. toughs it out before a bunch of sound-bite-seeking pols. She stands for law

BRITISH TELECOM The early loser, stuck with 20% of MCI, looks golden now that GTE bids big for MCI stock

WOMEN Frozen eggs allow gals to be forever fertile

[& LOSERS]

ANDY GREEN Dept. of Dumb Records. So what if a jet plane on wheels breaks the sound barrier? The Wrong Stuff

AL GORE Gratuitous praise of Ellen the week after The Kiss; Dan Quayle, the flip side; p.r. help needed

DONALD TRUMP Says he'd like to have dated Di. Big hair, big head, fat chance

HEALTH REPORT

THE GOOD NEWS

TICK TALK Are ticks licked? Not quite. But Lyme disease cases this year are down 36%, compared with 1996. Why? People may be better at keeping the bugs at bay, and for now the tick population seems to have declined.

OPEN SESAME Early reports suggest radiation may prevent arteries from closing up again after balloon angioplasty. It may work even better than today's tiny arterial props.

TO TEST OR NOT TO TEST Wondering if you should be tested for the breast-cancer gene? Geneticists have come up with clear criteria. Consider it if any blood relative developed breast or ovarian cancer before age 50, including relatives on your father's side.

Sources: Centers for Disease Control; Meeting: American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology; JAMA

THE BAD NEWS

FAT OF THE LAND Trans fatty acids--a class of fat that's pervasive in the American diet--may be linked to an increased risk of breast cancer. They're found in margarine, fast foods, baked goods and some vegetable oils.

HERPES ERUPTION A whopping 1 in 5 Americans 12 and older has incurable genital herpes. That's up 30% since the late '70s. The steepest rise: among white teens.

PILL CHILL Overdoses of acetaminophen may be the most common cause of acute liver failure in the U.S. Particularly dangerous when mixed with alcohol, the drug is often taken unwittingly: it's in many cold remedies and prescription pain-killers, as well as Tylenol.

Sources: Cancer Epidemiology; Centers for Disease Control; New England Journal of Medicine

NOBELS

ECONOMICS: Robert Merton and Myron Scholes. The $1 million prize the two academics will share may seem like small change compared with the $148 billion stock-options market their work helped create. Merton, of Harvard, and Scholes, of Stanford, were honored last week for helping develop and refine in the 1970s the breakthrough formula commonly used today to price stock options and other so-called derivatives. Their financial acumen had earlier been rewarded (presumably quite amply) through their partnership in a successful Connecticut-based hedge fund.

PHYSICS: Steven Chu, William Phillips and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. Atoms in the air can move at thousands of miles an hour--far too fast for scientists to get a good look at them. Chu and Phillips, of the U.S., and Cohen-Tannoudji, of France, were cited for developing new ways to slow down and "freeze" atoms at temperatures near absolute zero with blasts of laser light, giving researchers the opportunity for more detailed studies.

CHEMISTRY: Paul Boyer, John Walker and Jens Skou. A split decision involving ATP, the molecule that stores energy in all living cells. Half the prize went to Boyer, of the U.S., and Walker, of England, for showing how ATP is made. The other half went to Skou of Denmark for discovering a key ATP-related enzyme.