Notebook

The public may have long ago forgotten the phenomenon of cold fusion. And most of the scientific community never accepted what two University of Utah researchers said they had found two years ago when they applied an electric current to palladium rods wrapped in platinum coils and immersed in heavy water. But there is a core of researchers still on the trail of a new and endlessly abundant source of energy. And they have decided to rename what they are studying. "It's time we stopped calling these reactions `cold fusion,' says David Worledge, a scientist at the Electric Power Research Institute, in the winter issue of the utility industry-funded institute's journal. Worledge says that "there is now good evidence that cold nuclear reactions of some sort are taking...