December 20, 1983

Governor Cuomo said yesterday that if the Federal Government provided enough manpower and other resources New York State might participate in a plan to evacuate residents near the Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island, even if Suffolk County refuses to cooperate. Since the beginning of his administration, Mr. Cuomo has taken no position on whether Shoreham should operate, but has offered many proposals and suggestions on issues of the plant's safety and economics. He said yesterday that it would be wrong to interpret his remarks as a signal that the plant should open, and that if the Federal Government did nothing he would oppose the issuing of an operating license. His comments, in a series of interviews, represented a division between Mr. Cuomo and Suffolk County, which does not want the nearly completed $3.5 billion, 809-megawatt Shoreham plant to go into operation.

WHEN Judy hurts herself, she cowers in a corner of the classroom and cries. After a while, she sidles over to the teacher, gradually inching closer until she is almost on the teacher's lap. But she will destroy her work rather than ask the teacher for help, and she almost never plays or works with the other children. Adam is impulsive and angry much of the time. When he has difficulty with a project, he abandons or wrecks it, just as he might strike another child who he thinks is in his way. Adam's classmates, fearful of his unpredictable violence, try to keep their distance. Judy and Adam (not their real names) are only 5 years old. They are both victims of child abuse and are already well on their way to being severely handicapped both socially and psychologically. They are part of a pioneering study that is following some 200 children from birth to their teen-age years to determine the causes and consequences of child abuse.

PUBLIC health officials are predicting the virtual end of tooth decay among children and young adults by the turn of the century because of new developments in dental technology, the wider application of discoveries already made and the fluoridation of municipal water supplies. This year alone a half-dozen advances have been reported in dental research, ranging from the identification of the gene that produces tooth enamel (and thus the potential for cloning it by genetic engineering) to the use of lasers in an experimental method of recrystallizing the mineral structure of decaying teeth. Coupled with the wider use of topical fluorides and sealants, the officials say, the new technology should virtually halt tooth decay for people under the age of 50 within the foreseeable future. ''There has been a revolution in dental research, dental technology and dental treatment, which has yielded results over the last decade that are nothing less than remarkable,'' said Dr. Harald L"oe, director of the National Institute of Dental Research in Bethesda, Md. ''For the first time in the history of man,'' Dr. L"oe said, ''we are seeing a decrease in tooth decay.'' He added that by the end of the century he believed that the loss of teeth ''would be rare.''

Israeli gunboats pounded the Tripoli harbor area today, and the planned evacuation of Yasir Arafat and 4,000 of his supporters who have been besieged here by Palestinian rebels for six weeks was put off for another day. Five Greek transport ships and a French escort left the Greek Cypriot port of Larnaca in the evening in an attempt to evacuate the Arafat forces, now expected to be made Tuesday. (The Greek ships and their and escort sailed into Tripoli early Tuesday, Reuters reported. Unidentified aircraft flew over the city after the arrival, and antiaircraft guns opened fire on them. Security personnel later said the planes were French jets from the carrier escorting the flotilla.)

Holiday partying sharply increases the need for maids and bartenders, while a surge in shoplifting vastly improves the security guard business. Some 16 million turkeys wind up as holiday meals, 10 percent of the year's consumption, but sales of chickens collapse to 70 percent of their pre-Christmas level. Liquor stores do one-third of their year's business and television advertisers shell out one-fifth of their annual budgets during the holidays. Gambling casinos and motels, on the other hand, cannot wait for the season's end. The generosity and gift giving that accompany the season fuel the single biggest business event of the year. But beyond that, no part of the national economy escapes the impact of Christmas.