February 22, 1994

News of 2000 B.C. A little known people, dismissed by their neighbors as barbarians, invented the chariot, researchers say, transforming the history of transport and warfare. Science Times, page C1. Japan Alters Nuclear Plans Bowing to international pressure, Japan is said to have decided to put off several nuclear projects that would add tremendously to the world oversupply of plutonium. Page A2. Cuts Seen in Cable TV Rates The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to order a further reduction in cable television rates of 6 to 10 percent, a senior agency official said. Page D1.

The Acura NSX is hardly your typical car. An aluminum-bodied rear-wheel-drive sports car with a 270-horsepower engine, it lists for $65,000, can hold the road at 140 miles an hour and was acclaimed at its introduction in 1990 as a marvel of Japanese automotive technology. But its tire wear has been far from typical, as well. In some cases, the rear tires have been found bald of tread after 3,000 miles.

Leon C. Hirsch likes to describe himself in Horatio Alger terms, as an up-by-the-bootstraps youth from the Bronx with a high school education, who single-handedly created an entirely new market in medical devices and then, still single-handedly, changed the way surgeons practice medicine. But after setbacks that analysts attribute at least partly to faulty business judgments by Mr. Hirsch, his company, the United States Surgical Corporation, announced last week that it was dangerously short of cash. After reporting three consecutive quarterly losses, it said it was negotiating with its creditors and seeking equity investors.

On Tilava Hill, in the Serb-held mountains ringing Sarajevo, eight 120-millimeter mortars today stood in open defiance of NATO threats, flanked by multiple-rocket launchers, anti-aircraft guns and other Serbian weapons used in the 22-month siege of the Bosnian capital. About half a mile away, Sgt. Robert Monneret, a French member of the United Nations peacekeeping force, stood in a snow-covered field and peered grimly at the weapons through binoculars.

ONE of the least explored ecosystems on earth is at last yielding its secrets as a small cadre of adventurous researchers refine their climbing techniques and broach the upper regions of North America's old growth forests. Although canopy research in tropical rain forests has been widely hailed as important science, similar work in the temperate zone has been sporadic. Yet the limited research that has been done suggests that the canopy, especially in old trees, is virtually an ecosystem in itself.