Science & Technology

• 30 December 2005
  "When Monsanto introduced the world to genetically modified crops a decade ago, the biotech advancement was heralded as the dawn of a new era that could reduce world hunger, help the environment and bolster struggling farmers. Now, biotech beans, cotton, corn and canola are profit-drivers at Monsanto and are lifting the fortunes of rival companies like Swiss-based Syngenta and Dow AgroSciences, a unit of Dow Chemical. The gains are largely due to broad U.S. acceptance of crops that have been genetically altered to withstand weedkillers and insects, and backers say, generate higher yields. But as the industry celebrates its 10th anniversary, the early promises of biotech crops remain largely unrealized, and many countries have banned the technology amid concerns about potential danger for human health and the environment." Learn more at News.com.

• 29 December 2005
  "Traditionally, women have lagged behind men in adoption of Internet technologies, but a study released yesterday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that women under age 65 now outpace men in Internet usage, though only by a few percentage points. But the survey also noted that the disparity between women and men on the Web is even greater among the 18-to-29 age group and African Americans. The report, 'How Women and Men Use the Internet,' examined use by both sexes, looking at what men and women are doing online as well as their rate of adopting new Web-based technologies...The report found that 86 percent of women ages 18 to 29 were online, compared with 80 percent of men in the same age group. Among African Americans, 60 percent of women are online, compared with 50 percent of men." Learn more in the Washington Post.

• 28 December 2005
  "Books are being scanned to make them searchable on the Internet. Television broadcasts are being recorded and archived for online posterity. Radio shows, too, are getting their digital conversion -- to podcasts. With a few keystrokes, we'll soon be able to tap much of the world's knowledge. And we'll do it from nearly anywhere -- already, newer iPods can carry all your music, digital photos and such TV classics as 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' along with more contemporary prime-time fare. Will all this instantly accessible information make us much smarter, or simply more stressed? When can we break to think, absorb and ponder all this data?" Learn more at CNN.com.

• 27 December 2005
  "Warming temperatures could melt the top 11 feet of permafrost in Alaska by the end of the century -- damaging roads and buildings with sinkholes, transforming forest and tundra into swamps, and releasing vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the air. This meltdown forecast comes amid other signals that Arctic climate has been changing fast: shrinking sea ice cover, warmer temperatures and shifting vegetation. A new federal study released last week applied one of the most sophisticated supercomputer climate models ever developed to the future of permafrost. The results were startling." A new study bearing on the climate debate is summarized at Alaska's Anchorage Daily News.

• 26 December 2005
  "Her name is MARIE, and her impressive set of skills comes in handy in a nursing home. MARIE can walk around under her own power. She can distinguish among similar-looking objects, such as different bottles of medicine, and has a delicate enough touch to work with frail patients. MARIE can interpret a range of facial expressions and gestures, and respond in ways that suggest compassion. Although her language skills are not ideal, she can recognise speech and respond clearly. Above all, she is inexpensive . Unfortunately for MARIE, however, she has one glaring trait that makes it hard for Japanese patients to accept her: she is a flesh-and-blood human being from the Philippines. If only she were a robot instead." The interface between humans and robots in Japan is the subject of a report at Britain's Economist. The interface between humans and robots in Japan is the subject of a report at Britain's Economist.

• 23 December 2005
  "The jet approaching Reagan National Airport followed the complicated turns required for the prescribed route over the Potomac River, banking sharply left and right as it descended smoothly toward Runway 19. But the two pilots never touched the controls. The plane was being guided by the autopilot, which was taking its cues in three dimensions, from satellites in orbit. Until now, an autopilot could only fly a plane in a straight line or around a gentle curve. But the one shown off Tuesday by the Federal Aviation Administration was following a path as sinuous as the river beneath, a route that planes use to control noise when they approach the airport from the north. The problem is that pilots can follow a river only when they can see it, and when the clouds descend, National is sometimes closed to arrivals." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 22 December 2005
  "Scientists have mapped part of the genome of the woolly mammoth, a huge mammal that's been extinct for about 10,000 years. The breakthrough could lead to re-creating the creatures. A team led by Hendrik Poinar at McMaster University unlocked secrets of the creature's nuclear DNA by working with a well-preserved 27,000-year-old specimen from Siberia. Colleagues at Penn State sequenced 1 percent of the genome in a few hours and say they expect to finish the whole genome in about a year if funding is provided. 'We were stunned,' Poinar said Monday. 'Once you successfully sequence a genome, there are a million interesting questions one can begin to address.' The researcher can now begin to determine what separates mammoths from their closest living relatives, the Indian elephant." Learn more at MSNBC.com.

• 21 December 2005
  "Federal Judge John E. Jones III restored faith both in rational thinking and in the independent judiciary yesterday when he struck down a Pennsylvania school board's requirement that intelligent design be taught in public school science classes as ''breathtaking inanity." We hope the decision will stop the damaging movement to present creationism as an equal 'alternative' to Darwin's magisterial theory of evolution and help restore science to its proper place in the national canon. Jones, a lifetime Republican who was appointed to the federal bench by President Bush in 2002, neatly cut through the fog of ambiguity conjured by proponents to declare that intelligent design is not science and 'cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.' In a detailed 139-page ruling, he concluded that requiring intelligent design to be taught in public schools is an unconstitutional violation of the Establishment Clause forbidding the state from promoting religion." Learn more in the Boston Globe.

• 20 December 2005
  "Darwin’s fingerprints can be found all over the human genome. A detailed look at human DNA has shown that a significant percentage of our genes have been shaped by natural selection in the past 50,000 years, probably in response to aspects of modern human culture such as the emergence of agriculture and the shift towards living in densely populated settlements. One way to look for genes that have recently been changed by natural selection is to study mutations called single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) – single-letter differences in the genetic code. The trick is to look for pairs of SNPs that occur together more often than would be expected from the chance genetic reshuffling that inevitably happens down the generations. Such correlations are known as linkage disequilibrium, and can occur when natural selection favours a particular variant of a gene, causing the SNPs nearby to be selected as well." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 19 December 2005
  "The results of first large-scale trials of a low-dose vaccine against H5N1 bird flu have been announced – and they are unexpectedly disappointing. Scientists had hoped that very low doses of vaccine virus would make humans immune if injected along with an immune-stimulating chemical called an adjuvant. But on Thursday, French vaccine company Sanofi pasteur announced that in tests on 300 people in France, they did not. “The prospects for adequate global supplies of an effective pandemic vaccine of any kind are dimmer now than they were last week,” David Fedson, founder of the vaccine industry’s pandemic task force, told New Scientist. The first tests of H5N1 vaccine in the US in August 2005 found that the virus on its own does not stimulate much immunity in people." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 16 December 2005
  "Ten years ago researchers embarked on a study of zebrafish--a quick breeding aquarium pet. While searching for cancer causing genes, they ended up isolating the gene that makes European skin white, thanks to the golden variant of the fish. The genetic basis for human skin color has eluded scientists for years, with previous studies pointing to more than 100 different genes involved in the production of melanin--the pigment responsible for skin color and a natural sunblock. Cancer geneticist Keith Cheng at Pennsylvania State University and his team determined that the golden zebrafish--a lighter version of its "wild" cousin--has a genetic mutation that cuts short a protein critical to the production of melanin." Learn more in the Scientific American.

• 15 December 2005
  "Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that relies on volunteers to pen nearly 4 million articles, is about as accurate in covering scientific topics as Encyclopedia Britannica, the journal Nature wrote in an online article published Wednesday. The finding, based on a side-by-side comparison of articles covering a broad swath of the scientific spectrum, comes as Wikipedia faces criticism over the accuracy of some of its entries. Two weeks ago prominent journalist John Seigenthaler, the former publisher of the Tennessean newspaper and founding editorial director of USA Today, revealed that a Wikipedia entry that ran for four months had incorrectly named him as a longtime suspect in the assassinations of president John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 14 December 2005
  "The European Space Agency (Esa) says initial testing of a new plasma drive for spacecraft has been a success. The 'double layer thruster' is a new kind of ion drive which could give much more power than existing versions. It works by accelerating charged particles between two layers of argon plasma, gas where the atoms have been stripped of electrons. Esa says it has 'proven the principle', and will proceed with simulations and perhaps bigger prototypes. Esa already uses an ion drive on its Smart 1 Moon probe, and the US space agency Nasa deployed one on Deep Space 1, which flew out to Comet Borrelly in 2001. The concept is very different from a conventional rocket engine powered by chemical reactions. Gas is ionised and the ions accelerated in a magnetic field, producing a small thrust." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 13 December 2005
  "Tallinn, Estonia - Visiting the offices of Skype feels like stumbling on to a secret laboratory in a James Bond movie, where mad scientists are hatching plots for world domination. The two-year-old company, which offers free calls over the Internet, is hidden at the end of an unmarked corridor in a grim Soviet-era academic building on the outskirts of this Baltic port city. By 5 p.m. at this time of year, it is long past sunset, and a raw wind has emptied the streets. Inside Skype, however, things are crackling - as they are everywhere in Estonia's technology industry. The company has become a hot calling card for Estonia, a northern outpost that joined the European Union only last year but has turned itself into a sort of Silicon Valley on the Baltic Sea. Foreign investors are swooping into Tallinn's tiny airport in search of the next Skype (rhymes with pipe)." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 12 December 2005
  "Those stain-resistant khakis you just picked up at the mall, the tennis ball that holds its bounce longer and sunscreen that's clear instead of white have something in common — nanotechnology. Scientists manipulating matter at the molecular level have improved on hundreds of everyday products in recent years and are promising dramatic breakthroughs in medicine and other industries as billions of dollars a year are pumped into the nascent sector. But relatively little is known about the potential health and environmental effects of the tiny particles — just atoms wide and small enough to easily penetrate cells in lungs, brains and other organs. While governments and businesses have begun pumping millions of dollars into researching such effects, scientists and others say nowhere near enough is being spent to determine whether nanomaterials pose a danger to human health." Learn more at USA Today.

• 9 December 2005
  "Scientists are banking on the convergence of several technology projects, such as an international "light pipe" for high-speed data exchange and even Google Earth, to eventually help predict and mitigate natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. Here at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the scientific community talked about new opportunities for the way it studies Earth and its changes through bioinformatics, or the use of computers to study biology. One pivotal project is called the Global Earth Observing System of Systems, or GEOSS, a U.S.-led initiative involving 60 nations that are working to integrate data from weather sensors and satellites on a central network to better understand Earth on the whole. The goal is to open up possibilities for global planning, like forecasting winter weather months in advance or predicting the next outbreak of the West Nile virus, for example." Learn more at News.com.

• 8 December 2005
  "Nearly half the states are doing a poor job of setting high academic standards for science in public schools, according to a new report that examined science in anticipation of 2007, when states will be required to administer tests in the subject under President Bush's signature education law. The report, released Wednesday by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, suggests that the focus on reading and math as required subjects for testing under the federal law, No Child Left Behind, has turned attention away from science, contributing to a failure of American children to stay competitive in science with their counterparts abroad. The report also appears to support concerns raised by a growing number of university officials and corporate executives, who say that the failure to produce students well-prepared in science is undermining the country's production of scientists and engineers and putting the nation's economic future in jeopardy." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 7 December 2005
  "New maps show that the Earth is rapidly running out of fertile land and that food production will soon be unable to keep up with the world's burgeoning population. The maps reveal that more than one third of the world's land is being used to grow crops or graze cattle. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison combined satellite land cover images with agricultural census data from every country in the world to create detailed maps of global land use. Each grid square was 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) across and showed the most prevalent land use in that square, such as forest, grassland or ice. 'In the act of making these maps we are asking: where is the human footprint on the Earth?' said Amato Evan, a member of the University of Wisconsin-Madison research team presenting its results this week at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco." Learn more in the Guardian.

• 6 December 2005
  "Need a skin graft? A new trachea? A heart patch? Turn on your printer, and let it spit one out. A group of researchers hope printers' whirs and buzzes will soon be saving lives. Led by University of Missouri-Columbia biological physics professor Gabor Forgacs and aided by a $5 million National Science Foundation grant, researchers at three universities have developed bio-ink and bio-paper that could make so-called organ printing a reality. So far, they've made tubes similar to human blood vessels and sheets of heart muscle cells, printed in three dimensions on a special printer. 'I think this is going to be a biggie,' said Glenn D. Prestwich, the University of Utah professor who developed the bio-paper. 'A lot of things are going to be a pain in the butt to print, but I think we can do livers and kidneys as well.'" Learn more in Wired News.

• 5 December 2005
  "Disease outbreaks in humans are likely to increase as global climate change reshapes the world's ecosystems, a recent report suggests. The report, 'Climate Change Futures: Health, Ecological and Economic Dimensions,' was jointly issued last month by Harvard Medical School's Center for Health and the Global Environment, reinsurance company Swiss Re, and the United Nations Development Program. The editors project significant increases in human susceptibility to various diseases and present detailed scenarios for the rapid spread of malaria, West Nile virus, and Lyme disease. Previous studies of the future affects of warming have predicted dire consequences, such as species loss, coastal flooding, severe weather, and decreased fresh water." Learn more in the National Geographic.

• 2 December 2005
  "Seismic activity in Taipei has increased since the world's tallest building, Taipei 101, was built, raising questions over whether the Taiwan capital has become more vulnerable to earthquakes, a geologist said on Friday. Lin Cheng-horng, a geologist at the Institute of Earth Sciences at Taiwan's most prestigious think tank, the Academia Sinica, said seismic activity historically had been low in the Taipei basin, home to about 7 million people. But the city has experienced more micro-earthquakes (of magnitude 2.0-2.5 on the Richter scale) since construction began on the 508 meter (1,667 foot) skyscraper in 1997, he said. Two earthquakes of magnitude 3.8 and 3.2 occurred directly beneath Taipei 101 in October 2004 and March 2005, he said. 'There is a distinct possibility of earthquakes being triggered by the recent construction of the world's highest building, the imposing Taipei 101,' Lin wrote in an article published in the Geophysical Research Letters Vol. 32 on Nov. 30." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 1 December 2005
  "The Atlantic Ocean's flow between the tropics and cold, northern waters appears to be weakening, which could drastically alter the weather in Europe, a newly released study shows. The findings, published in the journal Nature, found that the Atlantic Conveyor flow slowed by about 30 percent between 1957 and 2004. The cycle of flow, technically known as the 'Atlantic meridional overturning current,' plays a key role in warming northern Europe...climate models suggest that if the Atlantic Conveyor shut down, temperatures in northwest Europe could drop by 4 to 6 degrees Celsius, or about 10 degrees Fahrenheit, in 20 years. The Atlantic Conveyor works because the cold water of the North Atlantic gets saltier and more dense, causing it to sink to the bottom of the ocean and flow south." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 30 November 2005
  "Surgeons in France have carried out the first face transplant, it has been reported. The woman had lost her nose, lips and chin after being savaged by a dog. In the controversial operation, tissues, muscles, arteries and veins were taken from a brain-dead donor and attached to the patient's lower face. Doctors stress the woman will not look like her donor, but nor will she look like she did before the attack - instead she will have a 'hybrid' face. It has been technically possible to carry out such a transplant for some years, with teams in the US, the UK and France researching the procedure. Skin from another person's face is better for transplants as it will be a better match than skin from another part of the patient's body, which could have a different texture or colour." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 29 November 2005
  "Battling a pandemic disease such as avian flu requires the ability to quickly track sick people and anyone they have contacted. In response, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials have proposed new federal regulations to electronically track more than 600 million U.S. airline passengers a year traveling on more than 7 million flights through 67 hub airports. The new regulations, which are available on the CDC's Web site and will be posted for a 60-day comment period in the Federal Register starting Nov. 30, would require airlines, travel agents and global reservations systems to collect personal information that exceeds the quantity of information currently collected by the Transportation Security Administration or the Homeland Security Department." Learn more in Government Health IT.

• 28 November 2005
  "At a North Carolina strangulation-murder trial this month, prosecutors announced an unusual piece of evidence: Google searches allegedly done by the defendant that included the words 'neck' and 'snap.' The data were taken from the defendant's computer, prosecutors say. But it might have come directly from Google, which - unbeknownst to many users - keeps records of every search on its site, in ways that can be traced back to individuals...Google has long presented itself as the anti-Microsoft, a company that the digerati regard as a force for good in the technology world. In many ways, it has lived up to that reputation. But if it wants to hold on to its corporate halo, Google should do a better job of including users in decisions about how their personal information is collected, stored, and shared." So argues Adam Cohen at the New York Times.

• 25 November 2005
  "The drive for 'green energy' in the developed world is having the perverse effect of encouraging the destruction of tropical rainforests. From the orang-utan reserves of Borneo to the Brazilian Amazon, virgin forest is being razed to grow palm oil and soybeans to fuel cars and power stations in Europe and North America. And surging prices are likely to accelerate the destruction The rush to make energy from vegetable oils is being driven in part by European Union laws requiring conventional fuels to be blended with biofuels, and by subsidies equivalent to 20 pence a litre. Last week, the British government announced a target for biofuels to make up 5 per cent of transport fuels by 2010. The aim is to help meet Kyoto protocol targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. " Learn more in The New Scientist.

• 24 November 2005
  "Biofuels produced from plant and animal feedstocks are growing by 10 percent per year. Nevertheless, if biofuels are ever to supply more than a small percentage of transportation fuels, the technology will need new, more efficient production methods. The most recent sign of such investment in new methods of production is Royal Dutch Shell's partnership with German biodiesel innovator Choren Industries. Choren's technology addresses a key limitation with today's biofuels: most start as feedstocks such as corn syrup or vegetable oil, which are already in demand as foods. So competition for these feedstocks props up the price of conventional biofuels and, ultimately, even limits their production volume." Learn more in the Technology Review.

• 23 November 2005
  "The Earth is warming up, and many people see this as a very serious threat to the planet and its inhabitants. Among the short list of side effects: melting glaciers, rising seas, scorching summer heat waves and a spike in severe storms. For investors -- particularly those fond of waterfront property and carbon-emitting fossil-fuel guzzlers -- climate change is also a factor worthy of weighty consideration in assembling a portfolio. It's not just about averting risk. A good grasp on global warming could also offer benefits to savvy stock pickers. Businesses well-poised to meet mandates for reducing carbon emissions, developers of alternate energy sources and even forward-looking insurers could conceivably profit from climate-change concern, say analysts and institutional investors who follow climate change." Learn more at Wired News.

• 22 November 2005
  "The number of people who use internet search engines to find information has jumped over the last year, claiming a solid No. 2 spot behind e-mail among online tasks, a new study finds. Of the 94 million American adults who went online on a given autumn day this year, 63 percent used a search engine, compared with 56 percent in June 2004, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said Sunday. Until recently, search and news have been running neck-and-neck for the No. 2 spot among internet tasks, said Lee Rainie, the project's director. But search had a dramatic jump over the past year to widen the gap over news, used by 46 percent of the internet's daily population. Use of search engines was higher among users who are richer and better educated, as well as those with high-speed broadband connections that are continuously on." Learn more in Wired News." Learn more at Wired News.

• 21 November 2005
  "American Biophysics, a small private company based in North Kingstown, R.I., runs a healthy business selling the "Mosquito Magnet," a system to rid American backyards of biting insects, according to its new CEO Devin Hosea. Simply described, the magnet emits a humanlike scent that includes carbon dioxide and moisture to attract bloodsucking insects. When the bugs flutter past, they're sucked into and suffocated by a vacuumlike device. Now AmBio, as the company is commonly called, is upping the ante with a 'smart' mosquito net, or computerized defense system, to serve the corporate and public health sectors. By the first quarter of 2006, AmBio executives hope to have finalized sophisticated software to control a network of magnets--forming a kind of wide-scale fence--which will be able to communicate with a central network through wireless 802.11b technology." Learn more at News.com.

• 18 November 2005
  "Every human being is unique. But some are more unique than others, especially when it comes to spreading contagious diseases like SARS or Ebola. They are what epidemiologists term 'superspreaders.' In a report published today in the journal Nature, researchers describe how they combined statistical studies with a mathematical model to determine how superspreaders affect the emergence of new diseases. It’s relatively easy to predict how sexually transmitted diseases, such as AIDS will spread, because it’s possible to estimate who is at risk, and to ask victims how many partners they’ve had. The same is true of vector-borne ailments such as Lyme disease, which is acquired through the bite of an infected tick. You know where to find ticks, and you usually know when you’ve been bitten by one. Much more difficult is the task of forecasting the course that diseases transmitted through casual contact, such as smallpox or influenza, will take through a population." Learn more in the Scientific American.

• 17 November 2005
  "It sounds like science fiction: simply swallowing a pill, or eating a specific food supplement, could permanently change your behaviour for the better, or reverse diseases such as schizophrenia, Huntington's or cancer. Yet such treatments are looking increasingly plausible. In the latest development, normal rats have been made to behave differently just by injecting them with a specific amino acid. The change to their behaviour was permanent. The amino acid altered the way the rat's genes were expressed, raising the idea that drugs or dietary supplements might permanently halt the genetic effects that predispose people to mental or physical illness. It is not yet clear whether such interventions could work in humans. But there is good reason to believe they could, as evidence mounts that a range of simple nutrients might have such effects." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 16 November 2005
  "Everyone is wondering whether the bird-flu virus will mutate and cause an outbreak of influenza comparable to the 1918 pandemic, which killed more than 25 million people. But there is an additional possibility - that the bird flu, if it comes, may bring more than influenza. The influenza pandemic of 1918 was followed by another epidemic. The disease was encephalitis lethargica, or the 'sleepy sickness,' and like influenza it spread through most of the world. Its symptoms were extraordinarily varied - most commonly there was lethargy, but sometimes there was insomnia, and even frenzy; sometimes there were paralyses, sometimes mental disorders. Of the million or so people who came down with encephalitis lethargica during this period, half a million died in the acute stages of the illness; most of the survivors, people who appeared to have recovered, went on to develop, sometimes decades later, a variety of neurological problems, including a crippling form of parkinsonism." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 15 November 2005
  "Inside a chamber about the size of a small fridge in Greenville, Indiana, scientists are taking the first steps toward creating human settlements on Mars. The chamber, called the Martian Environment Simulator, was put together by scientific engineering company SHOT and NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts. Scientists are using it to determine how to grow plants in greenhouses on other planets, and hope it will eventually aid people living and working on Mars, as well as provide insight to the evolution of planetary life. If Martian settlements come to fruition, 'you don't want to be existing based on resupply from Earth every so often -- you want to be able to grow your own food and live off the land,' said NIAC director Robert Cassanova. To do that, researchers must start small. They're currently experimenting with microorganisms, seeing how they react in conditions close to those on Mars, and slowly ramping them up to those of the red planet." Learn more in Wired News.

• 14 November 2005
  "The Chinese government says the spread of the deadly H5N1 bird flu in one of its provinces is not under control and has warned of a potential disaster there. There have been three fresh outbreaks of the avian virus in the north-eastern province of Liaoning in 24 hours, and a new suspected human infection. And the Middle East has now seen its first definite case of H5N1 bird flu. The authorities in Kuwait have confirmed that a migratory flamingo found on a beach died of the lethal strain. They say another bird suspected of having the virus had the milder H5N2 strain. There have been six outbreaks in the past month in China and the government has responded with mass culls of poultry. The most recent outbreaks, which killed about 1100 chickens, prompted the authorities to cull 670,000 poultry in the areas affected, and place 116 people in quarantine. The outbreaks are being blamed on migratory birds, but the head of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization in Beijing said it was possible that they were due to village-to-village spread of the virus." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 11 November 2005
  "A spacecraft could use a gravity 'towline' to alter the course of an Earth- bound asteroid, a new study by two NASA astronauts suggests. Previous schemes to deflect an incoming space rock range from landing a spacecraft on the asteroid and pushing it off course to blowing it up with nuclear weapons. The new plan takes a gentler approach. A spacecraft would hover above the asteroid and gradually pull it off course using nothing more than the gravitational attraction between the two bodies...With the gravity plan, a spacecraft would not have to dock on the asteroid, but instead hover above its surface. The craft's thruster jets would angle outward to avoid blasting the asteroid's surface and pushing it away. The astronauts calculate that, given a lead time of about 20 years, NASA could launch a spacecraft that could safely deflect an asteroid some 650 feet (200 meters) across in about a year of 'towing.'" Learn more in the National Geographic.

• 10 November 2005
  "Office workers waste up to a month a year trying to figure out how to use their computers properly because modern technology is so complicated, a new study warns. Trying to get their heads round difficult programmes on the PC is costing firms both time and money, often because no-one has taught employees what to do. The demands of the 21st century office leave almost one in five workers (17 per cent) struggling to get their heads round simple tasks asked of them, according to the report. Professor Christopher Johnson, of Glasgow University's human computer integration group, said the problem was that employers expected more from their workers. 'People in offices are now getting into the situation that they are under pressure to learn lots of new software. Software packages are becoming easier to use, but because there are so many packages to learn it is becoming harder to be able to use them all.'" Learn more at the Scotsman.com.

• 9 November 2005
  "Science moves in mysterious ways, and sometimes what seems like the end of the story is really just the beginning. Or, at least, that is what some researchers are thinking as they scratch their heads over the weird genetic sequence of the 1918 flu virus. Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, a molecular pathologist at the Armed Forces Institute of Technology who led the research team that reconstructed the long-extinct virus, said that a few things seemed clear. The 1918 virus appears to be a bird flu virus. But if it is from a bird, it is not a bird anyone has studied before. It is not like the A(H5N1) strain of bird flus in Asia, which has sickened at least 116 people, and killed 60. It is not like the influenza viruses that infect fowl in North America. That, Dr. Taubenberger said, gives rise to a question. Are scientists looking for the next pandemic flu virus in all the wrong places?" Learn more in the New York Times.

• 8 November 2005
  "From tsunamis and earthquakes to hurricanes and bird flu, the natural disasters of the past year have underlined the urgency of a global project to pool knowledge that could limit the damage. In Johannesburg in 2002, the World Summit on Sustainable Development highlighted the need for coordinating data on the state of the Earth. Three years on, the partnership known as the Group on Earth Observations has won the support of 58 countries and 47 global organizations for a Global Earth Observation System of Systems that aims to collate information gathered by thousands of instruments worldwide...Advocates of the System of Systems dismiss skepticism that national resistance to sharing information can be overcome and say the political will to achieve results is growing." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 7 November 2005
  "The Chinese health ministry says it cannot rule out bird flu as the cause of death of a 12-year-old girl in an infected province, and has invited the World Health Organization to investigate what could be the country's first known human case. The health ministry admitted in a statement that it did not know what killed the girl and afflicted her nine-year-old brother and a 36-year-old schoolteacher in the same province. While bird flu has killed more than 60 people in south-east Asia, China has insisted that it has had no human infections even though there have been numerous outbreaks in birds. 'The three cases have been diagnosed as pneumonia of unknown cause but we cannot rule out the possibility of human infection of the H5N1 avian influenza,' the ministry said." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 4 November 2005
  "Drug makers must begin submitting electronic versions of their drug labels to build a database that doctors and patients can search for recent warnings or other changes, the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday. The labels will be available on the Internet within one business day of any FDA-approved change, FDA officials said in a statement. 'With this information, physicians will be able to quickly search and access specific information they need before prescribing a treatment, allowing for fewer prescribing errors and better informed decision making,' the FDA said. Digital versions of drug labels must be provided to the FDA when either a label change is made or as part of a yearly report that pharmaceutical companies provide the agency." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 3 November 2005
  "Sony BMG is facing a cacophony of criticism this week following the revelation that some of its CDs are packed with special copy-protection software that conceals itself with an advanced hacker cloaking technique. The firestorm began when Mark Russinovich, a computer security expert with Sysinternals, discovered evidence of a 'rootkit' on his Windows PC. Through heroic forensic work, he traced the code to First 4 Internet, a British provider of copy-restriction technology that has a deal with Sony to put digital rights management on its CDs. It turns out Russinovich was infected with the software when he played the Sony BMG CD Get Right With the Man by the Van Zant brothers. A rootkit is a particularly insidious type of Trojan horse that hides its existence from users and programs by tampering with the operating system on the most fundamental level." Learn more in Wired News.

• 2 November 2005
  "Before there were Ghostbusters there was Thomas Alva Edison. The father of sound recording technology wanted to make a device that could record the voices of the dead, according to his diary. Since then, just about every recording and measuring technology invented has eventually fallen into the hands of ghost hunters, who stake out haunted houses, graveyards and other spooky locales to try to capture empirical evidence of restless spirits. To this end, they utilize the latest in sound, video and still-image recording, as well as sensors that detect changes in temperature, electromagnetic fields and radiation. 'We're looking for a ghost or spirit's influence on the environment," said Vince Wilson, author of "Ghost Tech, the Essential Guide to Paranormal Investigation Equipment.' No one really knows what kind of influence a ghost might have on the environment, so ghost hunters try anything and everything." Learn more in the San Francisco Chronicle.

• 1 November 2005
  "The one-two hurricane punch from Katrina and Wilma along with predictions of more severe weather in the future has scientists pondering ways to save lives, protect property and possibly even control the weather. While efforts to tame storms have so far been clouded by failure, some researchers aren’t willing to give up the fight. And even if changing the weather proves overly challenging, residents and disaster officials can do a better job planning and reacting. In fact, military officials and weather modification experts could be on the verge of joining forces to better gauge, react to, and possibly nullify future hostile forces churned out by Mother Nature. While some consider the idea farfetched, some military tacticians have already pondered ways to turn weather into a weapon." Learn more at Space.com.

• 31 October 2005
  "Hemmed in by mountains on three sides, the basin that houses Mexico City, Mexico, has some the dirtiest air in the world. Pollutants spewed by power plants and tailpipes have nowhere to go. They stay within the city and compromise the health of thousands of people. But it doesn't have to be this way, according to Mario Molina, a Nobel laureate in chemistry who is affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and the University of California, San Diego. 'Technologies exist now, clean technologies that produce a lot less pollution,' he said in a broadcast of the Pulse of the Planet radio program." Learn more in the National Geographic News.

• 28 October 2005
  "In a follow-up to the Human Genome Project, a consortium of scientists has compiled a partial catalog of human genetic variation that it hopes will speed the search for the genetic roots of many common diseases. The catalog is based on analyzing the genomes of people from four ethnic groups - Europeans, Japanese, Chinese and the Yoruba of Nigeria - and it has so far identified about three million sites on the three-billion-unit human genome where some people have different DNA units. These variations help make everyone unique, but they may also be the reason why people have propensities toward certain diseases. The $138 million project was undertaken by about 200 researchers in six countries. About a third of the DNA variations were analyzed in the United States, a quarter each in Japan and Britain, and 10 percent each in China and Canada." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 27 October 2005
  "Researchers have built one of the world's smallest controllable robots—a machine tinier than the period that ends this sentence. The miniscule device is as narrow as a human hair. Its inventors note that some 200 of them could line up across the top of an M&M candy. A lab headed by Bruce Donald, a computer science professor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, designed the robot. It was unveiled earlier this month at the 12th International Symposium of Robotics Research in San Francisco. The machine can be steered anywhere on a specially designed surface. It moves with a wormlike crawl and turns by dragging a silicon 'foot' around which it can pivot. A special floor provides a power signal to the robot anywhere on its surface, like a bumper car at an amusement park." Learn more in the National Geographic.

• 26 October 2005
  "We wield remote controls to turn things on and off, make them advance, make them halt. Ground-bound pilots use remotes to fly drone airplanes, soldiers to maneuver battlefield robots. But manipulating humans? Prepare to be remotely controlled. I was. Just imagine being rendered the rough equivalent of a radio-controlled toy car. Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp., Japans top telephone company, says it is developing the technology to perhaps make video games more realistic. But more sinister applications also come to mind. I can envision it being added to militaries' arsenals of so-called "non-lethal" weapons. A special headset was placed on my cranium by my hosts during a recent demonstration at an NTT research center. It sent a very low voltage electric current from the back of my ears through my head - either from left to right or right to left, depending on which way the joystick on a remote-control was moved." Learn more in Information Week.

• 25 October 2005
  "In 1972, when humans last visited the surface of the moon, the bulky, stiff legs of spacesuits made the 'moonwalk' more of a swaying hop. Since then, manned missions to space have stayed in Earth orbit, where astronauts mostly use their arms to get around. But when explorers get back to the moon, or if they ever get to Mars, these old spacesuits aren't going to cut it, scientists say. Both destinations, in fact, are in NASA's long-range plans. Last month, the agency announced an ambitious plan to return to the moon by 2018 as a launching pad for a mission to Mars. If they pull it off, astronauts will need added mobility and dexterity for the next stage of modern experiments, exploration, and construction. The proposed BioSuit will consist of a skintight body suit, a hard torso and backpack for life-support systems and equipment, and a domed helmet. The conceptual images for the project look like science fiction." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 24 October 2005
  "Amid mounting international concern over a potential human flu pandemic, a flurry of outbreaks of the deadly H5N1 bird flu were reported this week from Taiwan to Europe. There is some confusion over whether the virus has reached the European Union. But more worrying is evidence that it is still spreading in China, and the possibility that it could also reach Africa. Fears that an apparent outbreak of bird flu on the Greek island of Oinousa was H5N1 have not been borne out by initial tests at the UK’s Veterinary Laboratories Agency, the EU reference lab for flu, in Surrey. 'Initial tests are negative,' VLA spokesman Matt Conway told New Scientist, although he cautions this will take several days to confirm. Worries that the virus had reached Macedonia were eased when a die-off of poultry turned out to be due to another virus, called Newcastle disease. But in Romania the virus has spread to wild ducks and swans near the Ukrainian border, it has been confirmed." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 21 October 2005
  "The latest broadband delivery system has seen researchers looking to the skies to provide super-fast internet access via airships. Airships in the stratosphere beaming back broadband capable of speeds up to 120Mbps may seem like fantasy. But tests in Sweden have suggested it could become a reality within three to five years. A successful trial of the technology has been conducted by researchers, led by the University of York in the UK. Trials using a 12,000 cubic metre balloon, flying at an altitude of around 24 kilometres for nine hours, have proved it can successfully operate a data rate link of 11Mbps. 'Proving the ability to operate a high data rate link from a moving stratospheric balloon is a critical step in moving towards the longer term aim of providing data rates of 120Mbps,' said Dr David Grace, the project's principal scientific officer." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 20 October 2005
  "The Hubble Space Telescope has detected oxygen-rich minerals on the moon that might someday help astronauts become more self-sufficient in space. The first high-resolution ultraviolet (UV) images ever taken of the moon have identified several promising deposits of ilmenite. The mineral could provide a crucial oxygen source for future manned lunar missions. Ilmenite is composed of titanium and iron oxide, or rust, and contains oxygen that is relatively easy to extract. Titanium oxide is found on Earth in mountain ranges and sedimentary deposits. On the moon, the compound could be converted for use in breathing apparatus and for producing power sources such as rocket fuel...Because the moon has no atmosphere, astronauts or robots searching for oxygen must find it within the surrounding rock and soil of the dusty lunar surface." Learn more in the National Geographic.

• 19 October 2005
  "The idea that comets and meteorites seeded an early Earth with the tools to make life has gained momentum from recent observations of some of these building blocks floating throughout the cosmos. Scientists scanning a galaxy 12 million light-years away with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope detected copious amounts of nitrogen containing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PANHs), molecules critical to all known forms of life. PANHs carry information for DNA and RNA and are an important component of hemoglobin, the molecule that transports oxygen through the body. They also make chlorophyll, the main molecule responsible for photosynthesis in plants, and – perhaps most importantly – they're the main ingredient in caffeine and chocolate. While organic compounds have been discovered in meteorites that have landed on Earth, this is the first direct evidence for the presence of complex, important biogenic compounds in space." Learn more at Space.com.

• 18 October 2005
  "A study conducted by scientists in the U.S. and Italy warns that summers could be a lot hotter in a hundred years because of global warming caused by greenhouse gases. 'Summer is likely to be more severely hot everywhere in the U.S.,' said Noah Diffenbaugh, an atmospheric scientist at Purdue University who co-authored study. 'In the Southwest, if you imagine the hottest two and a half weeks of the year, you're looking at that becoming three months long. Phoenix [Arizona] will get three months of what is now the hottest two weeks of the year.' Winter weather could be affected as well, Diffenbaugh said. 'You're looking at the coldest couple of weeks of the year not existing anymore in lot of places,' he said." Learn more in National Geographic News.

• 17 October 2005
  "A new study shows that 20 percent of human genes have been patented in the United States, primarily by private firms and universities. The study, which is reported this week in the journal Science, is the first time that a detailed map has been created to match patents to specific physical locations on the human genome. Researchers can patent genes because they are potentially valuable research tools, useful in diagnostic tests or to discover and produce new drugs. 'It might come as a surprise to many people that in the U.S. patent system human DNA is treated like other natural chemical products,' said Fiona Murray, a business and science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and a co-author of the study." Learn more in National Geographic.

• 14 October 2005
  "It should come as no surprise that the Internet in Myanmar, the southeast Asian state once known as Burma and in the iron grip of a military cabal for decades, is heavily filtered and carefully monitored. But a new report from the OpenNet Initiative, a human rights project linking researchers from the University of Toronto, Harvard Law School and Cambridge University in Britain, once again raises tough questions about the use of filtering technologies - often developed by Western companies - by autocratic governments bent on controlling what their citizens see on the Web. Myanmar 'employs one of the most restrictive regimes of Internet filtering worldwide that we have studied,' said Ronald J. Deibert, a principal investigator for the OpenNet Initiative and the director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto. Myanmar now joins several nations, including China, Iran and Singapore, in relying on Western software and hardware to accomplish their goals, Mr. Deibert said." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 13 October 2005
  "The European Union on Thursday said the bird flu virus found in Turkish poultry was the H5N1 strain that scientists worry might mutate into a human virus and spark a pandemic. Turkey's health minister said the outbreak had been contained. 'We have received now confirmation that the virus found in Turkey is an avian flu H5N1 virus,' said EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou. 'There is a direct relationship with viruses found in Russia, Mongolia and China.' The birds were found dead in a village outside of Balikesir, western Turkey, which has been under a two-mile quarantine for the past week. Turkish Health Minister Recep Akdag said the outbreak had been contained and urged the public to remain calm, saying the country was well-prepared. 'Bird flu is totally under control,' Akdag said. 'The outbreak in winged animals occurred in one area and has been contained.'" Learn more in ABC News.

• 12 October 2005
  "The film '2001' gained cinematic notoriety with the introduction of a self-aware, independent-thinking, murderous computer named HAL that became a sci-fi icon. In the movie's namesake year, IBM engineers launched an effort to develop technology to help computers monitor, diagnose, and heal their own problems. IBM isn't trying to create a real-life HAL, but it does want to make computers smart enough to heal themselves. The promise of autonomic computing--systems that function automatically, much like reflexive bodily functions such as breathing, without external intervention--still remains formative. Developing these sorts of capabilities often requires multiple vendors to work together toward a long-term vision to build networkwide capabilities, sometimes piece by piece. 'We realize that autonomic computing isn't about building any one specific product,' says Alan Ganek, chief technical officer and VP of the autonomic computing software group in IBM's Tivoli software unit. 'It's about making all products exhibit these behaviors to the extent they can, and then integrating them to work more cohesively with others.'" Learn more at Information Week.

• 11 October 2005
  "On Saturday, the Stanford Racing Team's robotic car, 'Stanley,' drove autonomously across 131.6 miles in the Mojave Desert in six hours and 53 minutes, finishing about 11 minutes faster than Carnegie Mellon's 'Sandstorm.' Its average speed was 19.1 mph, versus Sandstorm's 18.6 mph. The Stanford University team, which takes home the $2 million prize, also beat two other unmanned robotic vehicles to finish the DARPA Grand Challenge's rugged course in fewer than 10 hours, the race's allotted time...They were the first autonomous vehicles to travel far within a specific time frame, as well as the first to finish the 2-year-old military race. 'These vehicles haven't just achieved world records, they've made history,' said DARPA Director Tony Tether." Learn more at News.com.

• 10 October 2005
  "In the back room of an unmarked brown building in a run-down strip mall, eight machines, each the size of a bass drum, are making diamonds. That's right — making diamonds. Real ones, all but indistinguishable from the stones formed by a billion or so years' worth of intense pressure, later to be sold at Tiffany's. The company doing this is Apollo Diamond, a tiny outfit started by a former Bell Labs scientist. Peer inside Apollo's stainless steel-and-glass machines, and you can see single-crystal diamonds literally growing amid hot pink gases. This year, Apollo expects to grow diamonds as big as 2 carats. By the end of 2005, it might expand to 10 carats. The diamonds will probably start moving into the jewelry market as early as next year — at perhaps one-third the price of a mined diamond. The whole concept turns the fundamental idea of a diamond on its head. The ability to manufacture diamonds could change business, products and daily life as much as the arrival of the steel age in the 1850s or the invention of the transistor in the 1940s." Learn more in USA Today.

• 7 October 2005
  "Physicists in Australia have slowed a speeding laser pulse and captured it in a crystal, a feat that could be instrumental in creating quantum computers. The scientists slowed the laser light pulse from 300,000 kilometers per second to just several hundred meters per second, allowing them to capture the pulse for about a second. The accomplishment marks a new world record, but the scientists are more thrilled that they were able to store and recall light, an important step toward quantum computing. 'What we've done here is create a quantum memory,' said Dr. Matthew Sellars of the Laser Physics Centre at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. Slowing down light allows scientists to map information onto it. The information is then transferred from the light to the crystal, Sellars said. Then when the scientists release the light, the information is transferred back onto the beam." Learn more in Wired News.

• 6 October 2005
  "Scientists have reconstructed the genetic code of the deadly 1918 'Spanish flu,' which swept the globe and killed an estimated 20 to 40 million people. Among their findings: The 1918 virus strain developed in birds and was similar to the "bird flu" that today has spurred fears of another worldwide epidemic. By studying the once deadly 1918 virus's genetic information, scientists may become better able to predict future pandemics, or widespread epidemics. It may also aid the development of new vaccines, antiviral medicines, and other treatments to cope with flus. 'The purpose was to get at questions relating to the 1918 pandemic,' said Jeffery Taubenberger, of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) in Rockville, Maryland. Taubenberger co-authored one of several related papers in this week's issues of the journals Nature and Science." Learn more in the National Geographic.

• 5 October 2005
  "In 'The Singularity Is Near,' the inventor and prognosticator Ray Kurzweil postulates that we are fast approaching a time when humankind melds with technology to produce mind-boggling advances in intelligence. We will be able to play quidditch as Harry Potter does. We will control the aging process. We will be smarter by a factor of trillions. We will be so smart that we understand what Ray Kurzweil is talking about. Qubits, foglets, gigaflops, haptic interfaces, probabilistic fractals: Mr. Kurzweil is not writing science for sissies. He is envisioning precise details about how and when the Singularity - a fusion of symbiotic advances in genetics, robotics and nanotechnology that creates 'a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability' - will be upon us. Mark the calendar for big doings in 2045 in case he's right." Read Janet Maslin's full book review at the New York Times.

• 4 October 2005
  "Hurricanes aren't behaving like many of us are used to them behaving. They're bigger and meaner, and more numerous than many people have seen. Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne tore up parts of Florida last year. After tweaking Florida, Katrina and Rita are wreaking havoc this year along the Gulf Coast from Alabama to Texas. But don't rush to blame it on global warming, experts warn. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, told a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday that we're in a period of heightened hurricane activity that could last another decade or two. 'The increased activity since 1995 is due to natural fluctuations (and) cycles of hurricane activity driven by the Atlantic Ocean itself along with the atmosphere above it and not enhanced substantially by global warming,' he testified." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 3 October 2005
  "The virus which causes Aids may be getting less powerful, researchers say. A team at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, in Antwerp, compared HIV-1 samples from 1986-89 and 2002-03. They found the newer samples appeared not to multiply as well, and were more sensitive to drugs - some other studies argue they are becoming more resistant. The researchers, writing in the journal Aids, stressed their work in no way meant efforts to prevent the spread of HIV should be scaled down. They were only able to compare 12 samples from each time period, and they were unable fully to tease out any effect that drug therapy may have had on the virus. Researcher Dr Eric Artz said: 'This was a very preliminary study, but we did find a pretty striking observation in that the viruses from the 2000s are much weaker than the viruses from the eighties.'" Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 30 September 2005
  "Genetically altered mice discovered accidentally at the Wistar Institute in Pennsylvania have the seemingly miraculous ability to regenerate like a salamander, and even regrow vital organs. Researchers systematically amputated digits and damaged various organs of the mice, including the heart, liver and brain, most of which grew back. The results stunned scientists because if such regeneration is possible in this mammal, it might also be possible in humans. The researchers also made a remarkable second discovery: When cells from the regenerative mice were injected into normal mice, the normal mice adopted the ability to regenerate. And when the special mice bred with normal mice, their offspring inherited souped-up regeneration capabilities. The mice, known as the MRL strain, were genetically engineered and inbred to develop lupus. But researchers don't know why exactly the animals' injuries heal so well." Learn more in Wired News.

• 29 September 2005
  "Faced with a growing number of medical students and few training hospitals, a Mexican university is turning to robotic patients to better train future doctors. Mexico City's UNAM University has opened the world's largest "robotic hospital" -- where medical students practice on everything from delivering a baby from a robotic dummy to injecting the arm of a plastic toddler. The robots are dummies complete with mechanical organs, synthetic blood and mechanical breathing systems. 'The country's rapid increase of medical students has not kept up with the number of medical facilities,' said Joaquin Lopez Barcena, an associate dean at the university's medical school. 'This a very a good learning opportunity for our students.'" Learn more at CNN.com.

• 28 September 2005
  "A proposal to scrap leap seconds - small adjustments made to clock time - could create chaos for astronomers and satellite operators, it is claimed. Every six months, the Paris Observatory tells the world whether to add or subtract a second from atomic clocks. This synchronises clock time with the solar time used by astronomers. The US plan to abolish leap seconds would force astronomers to look for new ways to make sure their telescopes are pointed in the right part of the sky. The row highlights the tug of war between two distinct forms of timekeeping: absolute timekeeping, based on atomic frequencies; and everyday timekeeping, based on the rotation of the Earth (solar time)." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 27 September 2005
  "The European Space Agency has selected two candidate asteroids for a future mission to study how to alter an asteroid's orbit by crashing a spacecraft into it. Such a deflection may one day be needed to prevent a catastrophic impact on Earth. The proposed Don Quijote mission will involve a pair of spacecraft - one will be used for the impact itself while the other observes the results. The observing craft, called Sancho, would go into orbit around the asteroid several months ahead of time, in order to determine the object's precise orbit before the companion craft, called Hidalgo, smashes into it. The two asteroids selected by ESA's Advanced Concepts Team are called 2002 AT3 and 1989 ML. Only one would actually be targeted by the mission, with the final selection being made in 2007, along with the spacecraft design." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 26 September 2005
  "When Adolf Hitler sparked World War II, the German war machine faced a daunting challenge: It had almost no petroleum. Despite the shortage - which some considered fatal - a powerful Nazi blitzkrieg quickly rolled back the armies of Poland, France, the Low Countries, and Britain, and it thrust far into the Soviet Union. Hundreds of German bombers pounded Britain, and swarms of German fighter planes fought off Allied attackers. How did Hitler do it? With coal. Operating 25 synthetic fuel plants, Germans converted their country's brown coal into high-quality diesel fuel and gasoline. Coal provided over 92 percent of Germany's aviation fuel and half of all its petroleum needs. What worked in wartime Germany could hold lessons for the United States. With only 2 percent of the world's proven oil reserves but teeming with coal, the US could turn its carbon bounty into synthetic fuels." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 23 September 2005
  "A landmark legal trial begins on Monday that could determine how the theory of evolution - one of the basic tenets of modern science - is taught in US schools. In the town of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 11 parents of children who already attend the nearby Dover High school or who will in future, together with the American Civil Liberties Union, are suing the Dover Area School District for voting in new rules that will encourage children to consider alternatives to evolution such as 'intelligent design' (ID). The court’s verdict will only bind schools within the Dover district, but could influence how schools teach evolution across the country, says Witold Walczak, a lawyer for the ACLU of Pennsylvania based in Pittsburgh, who will represent the parents. 'If we lose this case, I suspect it will send a green light to many school districts across the country that it is okay to teach ID,' he says. 'If we win, hopefully it will put a break on what we view as a religious concept.'" Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 22 September 2005
  "When David Sarokin finishes his day job as an environmental scientist in Washington, he heads home to a second batch of questions. He is one of several hundred humans who work for Google, answering questions from users who aren't satisfied with their results from the automated engine that made Google famous. The queries that users bring to Google Answers touch on all parts of life, but they usually cannot be reduced to a few keywords. One incoming freshman at Bates College in Lewiston, Me., for instance, asked for help finding a parking spot near campus. A stargazer asked the name of the two planets rising early in the northwest sky, and a homeowner wanted a 'romantic and literary' name for a new house. Google Answers is one of several services creating an online commons for impromptu research." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 21 September 2005
  "A new study shows that human stem cells injected into mice can repair damaged spinal cords and help partially paralyzed mice walk again. Although many questions remain unanswered, the research raises the hope of using stem cells to help people with spinal cord injuries. 'We're very excited about these stem cells,' said Aileen Anderson of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of California, Irvine. 'We're really on the cusp of making some big leaps forward.' Previous research has suggested that human stem cells can help rodents recover from spinal injuries. But the new study marks the first time that scientists have shown that human stem cells make connections with the nervous systems of the mice and are thus key to recovery from spinal cord injuries." Learn more in National Geographic.

• 20 September 2005
  "Tony Sanfilippo is of two minds when it comes to Google's ambitious program to scan millions of books and make their text fully searchable on the internet. On the one hand, Sanfilippo credits the program for boosting sales of obscure titles at Penn State University Press, where he works. On the other, he's worried that Google's plans to create digital copies of books obtained directly from libraries could hurt his industry's long-term revenues. With Google's book-scanning program set to resume in earnest this fall, copyright laws that long preceded the internet look to be headed for a digital-age test. The outcome could determine how easy it will be for people with internet access to benefit from knowledge that's now mostly locked up -- in books sitting on dusty library shelves, many of them out of print." Learn more in Wired News.

• 19 September 2005
  "With the shuttle fleet grounded and the international space station staffed by a skeleton crew, NASA is set to unveil plans on Monday to take people and cargo to the moon. Even before the official announcement, there is criticism from Capitol Hill over the reported $100 billion cost of the lunar program, given U.S. government commitments to the Iraq war and recovery from Hurricane Katrina. 'This plan is coming out at a time when the nation is facing significant budgetary challenges,' Rep. Bart Gordon, a Tennessee Democrat on the House Science Committee, said in a statement. 'Getting agreement to move forward on it is going to be heavy lifting in the current environment, and it's clear that strong presidential leadership will be needed.' To get astronauts back to the moon for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, one team of designers envisioned an Apollo-style capsule sitting atop rockets fashioned from shuttle components, including the shuttle's massive external tank and solid rocket boosters." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 16 September 2005
  "Concrete is probably used more widely than any other substance except water, yet it remains largely unappreciated. 'Some people view the 20th century as the atomic age, the space age, the computer age - but an argument can be made that it was the concrete age,' says Hendrik van Oss, a cement specialist with the United States Geological Survey. 'It's a miracle material.' Indeed, more than a ton of concrete is produced each year for every man, woman, and child on Earth. Yet concrete is generally ignored outside the engineering world, a victim of its own ubiquity and the industry's conservative pace of development. Now, thanks to environmental pressures and entrepreneurial innovation, a new generation of concretes is emerging. This high-tech, Willy Wonka-esque assortment of concrete confections promises to be stronger, lighter, and more environmentally friendly than ever before." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 15 September 2005
  "Tackling hurricanes before they make landfall by calming them down or steering them off course may be a good way to prevent a storm striking a city. Experts are working on numerous ways to do this but it may take some time – and it has never been done before. Hurricanes are fuelled by the warm waters they pass over. So hurricane mitigation strategies all focus on depriving hurricanes of this fuel. In April 2005, Moshe Alamaro at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, outlined a plan to use an array of floating jet engines to trigger miniature cyclones in the atmosphere ahead of a hurricane. The idea is to drain the ocean and atmosphere of energy before the hurricane arrives. But critics point out that even a large array of jet engines probably cannot inject enough energy into the atmosphere to trigger even a tiny storm. Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 14 September 2005
  "Hurricane Katrina tore families away from their homes and from each other. And with the Gulf Coast in chaos, electricity out and cell-phone towers down, people in far-flung places across the United States turned to the robust, decentralized internet to find their loved ones. While some evacuees posted their whereabouts on existing sites like craigslist, others turned to a variety of new message boards created specially for evacuees. The database, at Katrinalist.net, is tangible evidence of the beauty and power of internet technology in the hands of well-meaning citizens. It's also an endangered species. In a few years, legal doctrines being aggressively pushed by corporations and law enforcement officials might prevent something cool and useful like this from ever happening again. In a variety of cases, courts are holding that people can't access internet computers without first getting authorization from the computer's owner." Learn more in Wired News.

• 13 September 2005
  "Some scientists have long held the notion that comets delivered many of the chemical building blocks of organic life. NASA's Deep Impact mission to comet Tempel 1 has substantially strengthened their case. This week, at a meeting in London and in results published in Thursday's edition of Science Express, Deep Impact scientists say they have found high levels of organic chemicals beneath the surface of Tempel 1's core. They have yet to identify all of the chemicals present in the material, which was ejected on July 4, when the comet collided with a projectile the Deep Impact spacecraft released.But what they've seen so far makes it 'more likely' that comets seeded Earth with the chemical precursors for organic life, says Michael A'Hearn, a University of Maryland planetary scientist and the mission's lead researcher." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 12 September 2005
  "It's a scary thought, but scientists say the 40 percent of humanity living in South Asia and China could well be living with little drinking water within 50 years as global warming melts Himalayan glaciers, the region's main water source. The glaciers supply 303.6 million cubic feet every year to Asian rivers, including the Yangtze and Yellow rivers in China, the Ganga in India, the Indus in Pakistan, the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh and Burma's Irrawaddy. But as global warming increases, the glaciers have been rapidly retreating, with average temperatures in the Himalayas up 1 degree Celsius since the 1970s. A World Wide Fund report published in March said a quarter of the world's glaciers could disappear by 2050 and half by 2100." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 9 September 2005
  "A new strain of a wheat fungal disease that has emerged in East Africa may spread if steps are not taken to develop resistant wheat, researchers said on Thursday. As much as 10% of the world's wheat crops, with an estimated value of $9-billion, could fail if the disease is not tackled, said Masa Iwanaga, the director general of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, based in Mexico. A team of experts drawn from the centre, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute and other organisations wrote a report on the disease that was made public on Thursday. Iwanaga told journalists that it would cost about $3-million a year to develop wheat varieties resistant to this relatively new variant of a fungal disease called stem rust that eats away wheat from the stem up." Learn more in the Mail and Guardian Online.

• 8 September 2005
  "Microchips are like potato chips: More of them come out of the oven broken than whole. And of the chips - micro, not potato - that make it to market, many have built-in weaknesses that eventually cause them to fail. Most people don't care. The useful lifespan of an electronic device is only about three years, and it's hard to consume just one. By the time your cell phone's processor melts down, you've already bought a newer model. But if you're planning to send a computer on, say, a 10-year mission into deep space, then you need more staying power. The best option­ used to be to send lots of spare processors and cross your fingers. As your probe flew silently­ through the night, you would dream about chips that could fix themselves. It's not crazy. A type of processor called a field programmable gate array really can recover on the fly. Invented in 1984, FPGAs don't have hardwired patterns of circuits. Instead­, their wiring runs through program­mable intersections called logic blocks." Learn more in Wired News.

• 7 September 2005
  "Space entrepreneurs eyeing Mars as a hub of some future solar system economy launched a startup on Tuesday to mine the red planet for building materials. The new company, 4Frontiers, plans to mine Mars for building materials and energy sources, and export the planet's mineral wealth to forthcoming space stations on the moon and elsewhere. The company also wants to build the first permanent human settlement on Mars, using strictly Martian materials, as early as 2025. The idea is to make Mars a center for needs of the solar system economy, said Bruce Mackenzie, co-founder of 4Frontiers and the company's vice president and outreach director. 'Mars happens to be a good place for these crucial minerals,' said Mackenzie. 'You have them all in one spot.' 'Carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen are all scarce on the moon, but readily available on Mars,' said Joseph Palaia, 4Frontiers' other co-founder and vice president of operations and research and development. And while oxygen is available in both locations, 'it is easier to extract on Mars,' he said." Learn more in Wired News.

• 6 September 2005
  "The toxic brew of chemicals and human waste in the New Orleans floodwaters will have to be pumped into the Mississippi River or Lake Pontchartrain, raising the specter of an environmental disaster on the heels of Hurricane Katrina, experts say. The dire need to rid the drowned city of water could trigger fish kills and poison the delicate wetlands near New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Mississippi. State and federal agencies have just begun water quality testing but environmental experts say the vile, stagnant chemical soup that sits in the streets of the city known as The Big Easy will contain traces of everything imaginable. 'Go home and identify all the chemicals in your house. It's a very long list,' said Ivor van Heerden, head of a Louisiana State University center that studies the public health impacts of hurricanes." Learn more in Yahoo News.

• 5 September 2005
  "A new theory proposes that mad cow disease may have come from feeding British cattle meal contaminated with human remains infected with a variation of the disease. The hypothesis, outlined this week in The Lancet medical journal, suggests the infected cattle feed came from the Indian subcontinent, where bodies sometimes are ceremonially thrown into the Ganges River. Indian experts not connected with the research pointed out weaknesses in the theory but agreed it should be investigated. The cause of the original case or cases of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is unknown, but it belongs to a class of illnesses called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, or TSEs. All TSEs are fatal, untreatable and undiagnosable until after death. They are called spongiform encephalopathies because the diseases involve spongy degeneration of the brain." Learn more in USA Today.

• 2 September 2005
  "Scientists have created a 'miracle mouse' that can regenerate amputated limbs or badly damaged organs, making it able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals. The experimental animal is unique among mammals in its ability to regrow its heart, toes, joints and tail. The researchers have also found that when cells from the test mouse are injected into ordinary mice, they too acquire the ability to regenerate. The discoveries raise the prospect that humans could one day be given the ability to regenerate lost or damaged organs, opening up a new era in medicine. Details of the research will be presented next week at a scientific conference on ageing, Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, at Cambridge University." Learn more in the Times Online.

• 1 September 2005
  "Spy satellites have been called into service to help federal emergency officials cope with the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, officials said Wednesday. The little-known National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes satellite images for the espionage community and combat troops, has provided scores of images of hard-hit areas, including New Orleans, before and after the storm struck. The agency said one of its main aims is to survey damage to regional transportation for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which can then use the data to organize relief efforts. FEMA officials could not be reached for comment. 'NGA can determine the overall damage to a transportation network infrastructure--what bridges are out, what roads are flooded--which is critical for FEMA getting relief supplies into the disaster area,' said NGA spokesman Stephen Honda." Learn more at News.com.

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