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This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS, in VOA Special English. I'm BobDoughty.

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And I'm Sarah Long. Coming up: scientists demonstrate a possibleway to make faster computers in the future.

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What to do about some ancient Native American ruins.

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And the World Health Organization urges people to be careful withtraditional medicines.

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Scientists have made a big move in the transport of matter. Twoteams say they transported the properties of one atom to anotherwithout the use of any physical link. The process is calledteleportation.

Back in the nineteen-sixties, the"Star Trek" television series made the process look easy. There, youstepped into a transporter. Your body de-materialized. Then it cameback together someplace else. To return, you could simply radio theship's chief engineer and say: "Beam me up, Scotty!"

In real life, nothing about teleportation is simple, not even thescientific description. In the minds of physicists, to teleport isto move quantum states between atoms. The quantum state of an atomdescribes its physical properties. These are properties like energy,magnetic field and movement.

Scientists have demonstrated teleportation with particles oflight. But this was the first demonstration with atoms.

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The two teams that did the experiments are from the United Statesand Austria. The American team is from the National Institute ofStandards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado. The Austrians work atthe University of Innsbruck. The two teams worked independently. Butthey jointly published their findings in the magazine Nature.

The scientists used different kinds of atoms in theirexperiments. The American team used laser beams to teleport theproperties of an atom of beryllium, a kind of metal. The team inAustria used a calcium atom. All the atoms were ions. This meansthey had an electric charge.

In both cases the teams used three ions. We will call them A, Band C. The teams set up magnetic traps that held the ions in place.Then the scientists began a process called entanglement.Entanglement links the quantum states of atoms.

The scientists linked A with B. They also linked A with C. Theserelationships created a system. Any change to one ion produced achange in the others. The goal was to teleport the properties of Bto C. The scientists did this in three steps. These wereentanglement, measurement of A and B and correction to C to permitthe teleportation to happen.

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So ion C took on the properties of ion B. But not completely.

This is one reason you will not be traveling by teleportationanytime soon. Humans would probably want a guarantee of one-hundredpercent reproduction at the other end. And a human being would meana lot more information to gather and send than a single atom.

The scientists say they cannot imagine such use of teleportation.But their work does offer great possibilities for the future ofinformation technology. It could help in efforts to build a quantumcomputer. Such a computer would be faster and more powerful than anywe now use.

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Quantum properties of atoms are not like the world we normallyobserve. For example, scientists are able to create a specialcondition where ions can be in two places at once. Ions can alsohold information representing more than one number at once.

And scientists have known for many years that two ions can beentangled. Such atoms can be made to affect each other even whenthey are separated. Albert Einstein had a name for this kind ofeffect. The great physicist called it "spooky action at a distance."

We talked about teleportation with Laura Ost [OH-st] in the newsoffice at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Shenoted that teleportation does not physically move matter. It onlymoves the properties of one particle to another. This could befaster than physically moving particles inside a device like aquantum computer.

But the only way to teleport is to destroy the particle beingteleported. If the particle were not destroyed, then you would becopying. And scientists say there is no copying in the quantumworld.

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In the American West, the public has gotten its first look at theruins of an ancient people who lived in what is now the state ofUtah. Officials recently showed reporters the area where the FremontIndians lived about a thousand years ago.

A cattle ranch owner named WaldoWilcox had protected the ruins for the last fifty years. The landwas part of his property. He permitted some researchers to visit.But mostly he kept the ruins a secret. Mister Wilcox is now in hisseventies. He finally sold the property into the public trust. Thestate of Utah now owns the land. But Mister Wilcox says he stillworries that the ruins will be destroyed or stolen by people whowant a piece of history.

The state wants to prevent this and still permit people to learnabout the Fremont culture.

The ruins are spread over thousands of hectares of land in thehigh desert about two-hundred kilometers southeast of Salt LakeCity. Only one dirt road leads into the area.

Scientists have found where the Indians stored grain in the sidesof mountains. There was still maize inside. They have found arrowsused a thousand years ago. They have also found human remains,examples of rock art and pieces of pottery. Fifteen years ago,Mister Wilcox himself discovered the remains of a small villagebuilt on an edge of a mountain.

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Scientists say the ruins may offeranswers to questions about the Fremont Indians. Scientists do knowthat the people hunted animals and gathered plants for food. But noone knows what happened to them. The Indians left the place nowknown as Range Creek about eight hundred years ago.

The ruins show that the Fremont Indians built homes from stone.They painted and carved designs in rock walls. They built stonecontainers for corn and beans.

Waldo Wilcox, the former owner of the land, is not the only oneworried about the future of the ancient ruins. Some local Indianleaders want to make sure that tribal ways are honored as the areais studied. They are especially worried about the human remains thathave been found.

Utah officials say they do not know how many remains are still atRange Creek. But they say they are sure that Native Americans willbe involved in decisions about the future of the area.

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The World Health Organization says people need more informationabout how to safely use traditional medicines. The W.H.O. now hasguidelines to suggest ways for public health officials to developthat information. The health agency is part of the United Nations.

The W.H.O. says up to eighty percent of people in developingcountries depend on traditional medicines. More and more people inwealthy countries use them too. But the W.H.O. notes that justbecause products are natural does not always mean they are safe. Itsays reports of bad reactions have increased sharply in the last fewyears.

In China, for example, about ten-thousand harmful drug reactionswere reported in two-thousand-two. There were just four-thousandcases reported between nineteen-ninety and nineteen-ninety-nine.

Traditional medicines are made from plants, animal products andminerals. The health agency says they remain largely outsidegovernment control.

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In most countries, traditional medicines can be purchased withouta doctor's order. Sometimes they are prepared by friends or by thepatients themselves. The W.H.O. says this situation raises concernsabout the quality of treatments and the lack of professionalsupervision.

Under the new guidelines, traditional healers would have to beskilled. And the public would have to be informed about how andwhere to report problems.

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SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written by Caty Weaver, Nancy Steinbachand Jill Moss. Cynthia Kirk was our producer. This is Bob Doughty.

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And this is Sarah Long. Join us again next week for more newsabout science, in Special English, on the Voice of America.