February 4, 1997

Recent suggestion by New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, that public school students could benefit from private school education, is on verge of becoming reality as at least 1,000 students stand poised to enter private schools in fall '97 on scholarships raised from private sources; actual program will differ from that envisioned by Mayor because of possible church-state conflict; participating students will not necessarily be drawn from among lowest-performing 5 percent in city, since compiling list would involve Board of Education, presenting constitutional challenge; School Choice Scholarships, private foundation created to administer program, will give special priority to applicants from city's 200 lowest-performing elementary schools, based on public information about reading and math scores (M)

Defense lawyers for Jesse Timmendequas, who is accused of murder-rape of Megan Kanka, files appeal of decision to allow man with close ties to US Representative Richard A Zimmer to remain in jury pool (New Jersey Daily Briefing) (S)

New Jersey Assembly's Law and Public Safety Committee approves plan to require people who commit most serious offenses to serve 85 percent of their sentences before becoming eligible for parole (New Jersey Daily Briefing) (S)

Transistor has shrunk drastically in size in the 50 years since its invention, and scientists are now striving to create transistor that works by virtue of the movement of a single electron, the subatomic particle that is a building block of matter and fundamental unit of electricity; feat of creating a transistor operated by single electron has recently been achieved in the laboratory; but translating this into commercial products is daunting, and could take decades to achieve, if ever; experts are confident that transistors will continue to shrink in the near future; diagrams; photo (L)

Article profiles career of Charles B Wang, chairman and chief executive of Computer Associates; he discusses current problems that are facing company and his plan to deal with them; photo (L)