Thursday, August 14, 2003post://106089297711178895/Scientists discover new dinosaur species in India thestar.com - Aug. 13, 2003. 04:55 PM MUMBAI, India (AP) — U.S. and Indian scientists said today that they have discovered a new dinosaur species in India after finding bones in the western part of the country. The new dinosaur species was named "Rajasaurus narmadensis" or ``Regal reptile from the Narmada," after the Narmada River region where the bones were found. The dinosaurs were between 8-10 metres long, had a horn above their skulls, were relatively heavy in weight and walked on two legs, scientists said. They preyed on long-necked herbivorous dinosaurs on the Indian subcontinent during the Cretaceous Period at the end of the dinosaur age, 65 million years ago. "It's fabulous to be able to see this dinosaur which lived as the age of dinosaurs came to a close," Paul Sereno, a paleontology at the University of Chicago, told reporters. "It was a significant predator that was related to species on continental Africa, Madagascar and South America." Working with Indian scientists, Sereno and paleontologist Jeff Wilson, of the University of Michigan, reconstructed the dinosaur skull in a project funded in part by the National Geographic Society. A model of the assembled skull was presented by the American scientists to their counterparts from the Punjab University in the northern India and the Geological Survey of India at a news conference in Mumbai on Wednesday. Scientists said they hope the discovery will throw light on the extinction of the dinosaurs and the shifting of the continents — how India separated from Africa, Madagascar, Australia and Antarctica and impacted Asia. The dinosaur bones were discovered over the past 18 years by Indian scientists Suresh Srivastava of the GSI and Ashok Sahni, a paleontologist at Punjab University. Sereno said that when the bones were examined, "we realized we had a partial skeleton of an undiscovered species." "The sediments in which these dinosaurs were found are closely associated with one of the biggest volcanic activities recorded in the last 500 million years on planet Earth," Sahni said. The scientists said they believe the Rajasaurus is part of a family of carnivorous dinosaurs, many of which had horns, and roamed the Southern Hemisphere land masses of present-day Madagascar, Africa and South America. "People don't realize dinosaurs are the only large-bodied animal that lived, evolved and died at a time when all continents were united," said Sereno. The reason behind the extinction of the dinosaur is still debated by scientists across the world. Sereno said the Rajasaurus discovery may provide crucial clues. India has seen quite a few paleontological discoveries recently. In 1997, villagers discovered about 300 fossilized dinosaur eggs in Pisdura, 700 kilometres northeast of Mumbai, that Indian scientists said were laid by four-legged, long-necked vegetarian dinosaurs. Indian scientists said the dinosaur embryos in the eggs may have suffocated during volcanic eruptions. posted @ 4:29 PM -x- Thursday, August 07, 2003post://106029788899981333/Laser Lights Renders Radioactive Waste Safe news.scotsman.com - August 6th, 2003 DANGERS associated with radioactive waste, and the problems and huge expense of its disposal could soon end after a Scottish researcher discovered how to neutralise its harmful effects using light. New research by a leading scientist at the University of Strathclyde could revolutionise the waning fortunes of the nuclear power industry - restoring both political and public faith in an energy source that was once hailed as the future of clean, green energy. Using a laser, Professor Ken Ledingham has successfully transformed one of the deadliest products of nuclear fission into inert matter in minutes. The Vulcan laser, housed at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, has enabled Prof Ledingham and his team to use nothing more than the focused energy contained in light to excite the nucleus of the iodine 129 isotope, with a radioactive half life of 15.7 million years. When hit with laser light the isotope becomes totally inert and safe to handle in less than an hour. If developed on a commercial scale the technology would transform nuclear power generation from a hazardous and prohibitively expensive means of power production by making it safer and cheaper, as well as opening a potentially huge lead for the UK. It is forecast that such lasers could achieve pulse powers greater than the electrical power generated by all the world’s power plants combined. Laser driven nuclear power means that radioactive material can be dealt with on site. Prof Ledingham said: "The question of transmutation of all radioactive waste is a long way down the track, probably ten to 20 years. The only way of doing this at present is by building huge accelerators. However, in the same time lasers will develop enormously and so there will be two players on the block." posted @ 7:11 PM
post://106029713590466937/ -x- Wednesday, July 09, 2003post://105778181972741054/Microbe gobbles toxic plastic waste Researchers see new approach to removing vinyl chloride MSNBC Online - July 2, 2003 Scientists have identified a microbe that gobbles up toxic waste deep underground, a potential remedy for hundreds of contaminated aquifers across the country near industrial and military sites. The bacterium, known as BAV1, was found in soil samples 20 feet deep at a contaminated site in Oscoda, Mich. MICROBIOLOGIST FRANK Loeffler of Georgia Tech University said it flourishes in the packed earth where there is no oxygen, feeding off toxic compounds commonly known for making plastic pipe and food wrap. Most importantly, it thrives underground on vinyl chloride, one of the most common and hazardous industrial chemicals that can linger in the soil for hundreds of years. Vinyl chloride is present at about a third of toxic “Superfund” sites listed by the Environmental Protection Agency. It usually accumulates as a deteriorated form of more complex organic compounds found in dry cleaning fluid and metal cleansers. Brief contact with vinyl chloride has been known to cause dizziness, drowsiness, and headaches. Long-term exposure will increase the risk of a rare form of liver cancer, according to the EPA. Loeffler has already tested the bacterium on vinyl chloride at the contaminated site in Michigan. Its ability to eat the toxic compound — rendering it harmless — was hastened in one test by adding plant fertilizer and other nutrients to the soil. In another trial, vinyl chloride was destroyed by injecting the soil with concentrated amounts of BAV1 developed in the lab. His work is presented in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature. “It’s pretty exciting stuff,” said David Freedman, an environmental engineering professor at Clemson University who wasn’t involved in the work. The way most cleanup crews now deal with vinyl chloride is to pump the contaminated water out of the ground and spray it into the atmosphere as a fine mist, letting sunlight break down the chemical naturally. “But through a very long and painful experience, we’ve learned that it’s not the best way to deal with the problem,” Freedman said. Hazardous chemicals have a way of sticking to the soil underground, so pumping out the aquifer never quite gets rid of all the contaminants, he explained. “It’s a waste of money,” Loeffler said. Scientists have long suspected that deep in the ground some type of microbe found vinyl chloride palatable. Loeffler spent four years searching for it, isolating BAV1 from a bustling community of microscopic organisms that included thousands of kinds of bacteria. James Gossett, a Cornell University researcher who identified a bacterium in 1997 that could eat organic chlorides but had problems with vinyl chloride, called BAV1 “another in a long list of discoveries or isolations” that will illuminate research into cleaning toxic waste with bacteria. Gossett said the discovery will help scientists determine which enzyme breaks down vinyl chloride. If the enzyme is found, Gossett said more robust bacteria that can survive in the presence of oxygen or eat faster than BAV1 could be genetically engineered to digest vinyl chloride. posted @ 4:16 PM
post://105778153738579093/ -x- Tuesday, May 27, 2003post://94961943/U.N. lifts sanctions against Iraq Breakthrough made possible by concessions from both sides MSNBC - http://www.msnbc.com/news/888057.asp UNITED NATIONS, May 22 — The U.N. Security Council approved a U.S.-backed resolution Thursday that lifts sanctions against Iraq and gives the United States and Britain extraordinary powers to run the country and its lucrative oil industry. Approval came after France, Germany and Russia backed a U.S. compromise that opened the door to a greater U.N. role in Iraqi reconstruction. THE RESOLUTION passed by a 14-0 vote; Syria was absent. The final resolution represented a compromise, but it left the underlying goal of the United States and its allies intact: Washington and London, as occupying powers, remain in control of Iraq and its oil wealth “until an internationally recognized, representative government is established.” About 8.3 million barrels of Iraqi oil stored at the Turkish port of Ceyhan can now be exported. “The oil is ready to flow. The tanks are full,” a council diplomat said. “I think you will find it will move quite quickly.” The United Nations has a stronger role in establishing a democratic government than initially envisioned, and the stature of a U.N. special representative in Iraq is increased. But the United Nations did not get the lead role that France, Russia and Germany would have liked. Nonetheless, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, standing beside his German and Russian counterparts Wednesday at a meeting in Paris, said the three countries decided to vote for the postwar resolution because it “opens the road” for a central U.N. role. The text “does not go as far as we had hoped,” but “the United Nations is back in the game,” he said. “We are convinced that the U.N. will tomorrow be the focus for international action, due to its legitimacy, experience and capabilities.” SYRIA SOUGHT MORE TIME Syria, the only Arab member on the council, had asked for a few more hours Thursday because the “the relevant structures of the Syrian government” needed to make the decision, said Syria’s deputy ambassador, Fayssal Mekdad. “But there was insistence to go on with the vote without us,” he told The Associated Press. Mekdad said later that, had he had enough time to consult with his government, he would have voted yes. He added that the decision “can in no manner be interpreted as a change of Syria’s position of rejecting the war on Iraq as an illegitimate war.” Many council members had complained that the resolution set no end to the U.S. and British occupation, and many wanted the council to have a significant role in monitoring the country’s reconstruction. U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte insisted that the United States would not accept any time limits on how long it could administer Iraq. In a key concession, however, the United States agreed to let the Security Council “review the implementation of this resolution within 12 months.” Indicating another U.S. concession, Britain’s U.N. ambassador, Jeremy Greenstock, told the BBC late Wednesday that the coalition saw “a role for the U.N. inspectors ... in confirming that Iraq is free of any threat in the area of weapons of mass destruction.” Sanctions imposed on President Saddam Hussein’s regime after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990 technically cannot be lifted until U.N. weapons inspectors declare it free of weapons of mass destruction. But the United States has refused to let them return. The resolution would lift economic sanctions without certification from U.N. inspectors, but it would reaffirm “that Iraq must meet its disarmament obligations” and said the council would discuss the mandates of the U.N. inspectors later. It gave no time frame. The Bush administration said this week that nuclear inspectors would be allowed to jointly inspect the looted nuclear research center at Tuwaitha. JOY, UNEASE IN IRAQ The end of sanctions met with a mixed reaction in Iraq, where some residents of Basra fired off AK-47s to celebrate while other Iraqis voiced suspicion that the move was part of a U.S. plan to control Iraq’s massive oil reserves. “The sanctions are over,” said a youth in Basra, standing with a Kalashnikov on a street corner. “God willing, things will be better now.” But in Baghdad, Waleed Yaser, a street vendor, said: “Before the U.S. invasion, Washington did not want to lift the sanctions. Now they are pressing for lifting them. What is this game all about?” “Because America wants to control Iraq’s wealth,” replied his brother Ali. HIGHLIGHTS OF RESOLUTION Key elements of the resolution are that it:
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. posted @ 7:21 PM -x- Wednesday, April 09, 2003post://92326493/Wild celebrations as Baghdad falls Sporadic fighting continues in city, but Iraqi regime is gone MSNBC - http://www.msnbc.com/news/870749.asp April 10 — Saddam Hussein was toppled symbolically and literally in Baghdad on Wednesday as U.S. forces helped Iraqi citizens tear down a 40-foot-tall statue of the dictator and declared that he no longer ruled the ancient capital. U.S. officials hailed what they called a “very good day” for Iraqis, but warned that U.S. troops were still encountering pockets of resistance in Baghdad and faced potentially tough battles to the north and in other cities and towns not yet under coalition control. Nonetheless, jubilant Iraqis treated the sudden disappearance of Saddam’s regime from Baghdad as the end of his 24-year rule, celebrating in the streets and looting government buildings and warehouses. AT A PENTAGON news briefing, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Baghdad was “in the process of being liberated,” referring to large sectors of the city not yet under U.S. control, and warned that “there are difficult and very dangerous days ahead and that the fighting will continue for some period.” But he also called the scene of Iraqi citizens and U.S. Marines toppling the statue of Saddam “breathtaking,” and added, “Certainly anyone seeing the faces of liberated Iraqis, freed Iraqis, has to say that this is a very good day.” Earlier, U.S. Central Command spokesman Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks told reporters in Doha, Qatar, that “the capital city ... has been added to the list of where the regime does not have control.” The city was quiet overnight, with only the occasional boom of tank and artillery fire breaking the stillness. Pentagon officials urged caution despite the collapse of the regime. They said U.S. forces controlled about 20 percent of Baghdad, and that clearly there would be more fighting before they had complete control. There were also potentially tough battles ahead in the northern city of Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown, where forces were seen being reinforced. Earlier, U.S. military officials, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said that fighting continued in parts of Baghdad, including a battle between U.S. Marines and Special Republican Guard troops just two to three miles from the fallen statue. There was heavy fighting around Baghdad University, located in a loop of the Tigris River south of the city center. In another incident at sunset, hundreds of Iraqis who’d been cheering American troops came under heavy fire from automatic weapons, apparently from Iraqi fighters. Women, children and men scattered into alleyways, and at least six people were killed in a car riddled by bullets. FILLING A VOID Still, the officials said American troops were quickly filling the void left by the disappearance of the Iraqi regime, with at least six brigades of soldiers and Marines arrayed in and around the city of 4.5 million residents. Saddam’s whereabouts — and whether he is alive — remained unclear. U.S. officials said they still didn’t know if he had escaped Monday’s bombing of a site in Baghdad’s Mansour neighborhood, where he and at least one of his sons reportedly were meeting with leaders of the ruling Baath Party. “He’s not been around; he’s not active,” Rumsfeld said. “Therefore he’s either dead, or he’s incapacitated or he’s healthy and cowering in a tunnel someplace trying to avoid being caught.” ATTACKS ON SYMBOLS With the regime’s feared security forces nowhere to be seen, Iraqis dared to cheer U.S. troops and attack the symbols of Saddam’s rule. When Iraqis and U.S. Marines toppled the 40-foot statue of Saddam in a main city square, hundreds swarmed over the hollow metal torso, tearing it to pieces and dragging the head down the street. Before bringing it down, the Marines briefly covered the statue’s face with an American flag, meeting silence, then replaced it with the red-black-and-white Iraqi flag, drawing cheers. “I’m 49, but I never lived a single day. Only now will I start living,” said Yussuf Abed Kazim, a preacher at a local mosque who bashed the statue with a sledgehammer as other Iraqis yelled, “Hit the eye! Hit the eye!” Citizens who didn’t flee the fighting also marked the occasion by sacking government buildings. Youths stripped tires off military vehicles. Men made off with a police car, pushing it down the street and waving its red-and-blue roof light in triumph. One man tottered down the street carrying an elaborate vase half his height. Others hauled ceiling fans, refrigerators, TV sets, computers, appliances, tires, bookshelves and tables from government buildings. Flames also rose from the finance ministry building in the city, underscoring the sense of anarchy. The only government official who could be found to comment on the day’s events was Mohammed Al-Douri, Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations. “The game is over, and I hope peace will prevail,” he told reporters outside his New York residence. Asked what he meant when he said “the game is over,” he replied, “The war.” CAUTIOUS STANCE The Bush administration was low-key in discussing the dramatic scenes playing out in Baghdad. Asked about President Bush’s reaction to the destruction of the statue, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the president had watched television coverage before and after a briefing by members of his National Security Council and a meeting with Slovakian President Rudolf Schuster. When the statue fell, Bush said simply, “They got it down,” Fleischer recounted. Fleischer also played down any expectation that the war was quickly drawing to a close. “As much as the president is pleased to see the progress of the military campaign and the Iraqi people finding freedom where they’re finding it, he remains very cautious because he knows there is great danger that could still lie ahead,” Fleischer said. The military officials told NBC News that U.S. forces were continuing to encircle the capital from both sides and were in control of key downtown bridges over the Tigris River. But they said that there were still large areas outside the city center that were not in U.S. control, including the pocket at the university where Special Republican Guard troops battled Marines working their way into the city from the east. To the west, the 101st Airborne and the 3rd Infantry were advancing methodically from the international airport about a mile and a half into the suburbs, meeting sporadic resistance, the officials said. The troops still had not entered at least a half dozen neighborhoods in the western reaches of the city where most members of the Iraqi elite and government officials are thought to be holed up, they said. BOMBING SITE STILL IN IRAQI HANDS Among the neighborhoods yet to be entered is Mansour, where a U.S. B-1B bomber dropped four “bunker buster” bombs on Monday in an attempt to eliminate Saddam. U.S. officials are eager to secure the site and begin a search for forensic evidence. In the absence of evidence of Saddam’s fate, his status was the subject of rampant rumors and reports. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two main Iraqi Kurdish groups, claimed Tuesday that Saddam already was hiding in Tikrit when the bombs fell on Baghdad. There were published reports that he was wounded in the airstrike and was en route to Syria, where he would be granted asylum, or was being sheltered in the Russian Embassy in Baghdad. U.S. officials told NBC News that they had no evidence to support the claims and denied the rumor that he was hiding in the Russian Embassy, as did Russian officials. EUPHORIA IN SADDAM CITY While coalition forces have received wary receptions in some Iraqi cities, they were warmly welcomed Wednesday in many areas of Baghdad. The loudest celebrations were heard in Saddam City, a poor, predominantly Shiite area that has long been considered a hotbed of anti-Saddam unrest where small bands of youths tore down portraits of Saddam and chanted, “Bush! Bush! Thank you!” Similar celebrations went on deep into the night in the parts of northern Iraq controlled by the Kurds. But not everyone rejoiced. “This is the destruction of Islam,” said Qassim al-Shamari, 50, a laborer wearing an Arab robe. “After all, Iraq is our country. And what about all the women and children who died in the bombing?” Meanwhile, U.S. commanders focused attention to the north — including on Tikrit, a city of 260,000 about 100 miles from Baghdad and Saddam’s birthplace — and on Mosul. Lt. Mark Kitchens, a Central Command spokesman, said U.S. forces were “actively engaging” Iraqi forces in both cities. The Central Command said coalition airstrikes were targeting the Republican Guard’s Adnan division in Tikrit, “shaping the battlefield” before ground forces move in. At the Pentagon, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said 10 or more relatively intact regular Iraqi army divisions remain in the north, in addition to the Republican Guard division. IRAQI MOUNTAIN POSITION OVERRUN Farther north, U.S. special operations forces and Kurdish fighters said that the seizure of the mountain outside Mosul could open the way for coalition forces to march on the city as well as the he major oil center of Kirkuk. The area called Maqloub, about 10 miles northeast of Mosul and heavily defended by Iraqi forces, was a hub for air defenses against coalition airstrikes as well as a munitions center. In southern Iraq, British officials were contacting local figures and tribal leaders in Basra in an effort to quell looting and preserve property. “We have asked them (the people of Basra) to chose their own leadership that will take them to the future,” said Group Capt. Al Lockwood, a British spokesman at Sayliyah. OTHER DEVELOPMENTS Other developments on the 21st day of the U.S.-led war in Iraq: The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Wednesday that it had temporarily suspended its humanitarian operations in Baghdad because the situation in the city was “chaotic and unpredictable.” The Geneva-based agency said a Canadian staff member had been killed in crossfire in Baghdad. The United Nations said about $720 million in relief supplies were on trucks and ships bound for Iraq, but that it still needs $2.2 billion in emergency funds for more wartime relief. NBC’s Carl Rochelle, Andrea Mitchell, Campbell Brown and Jim Miklaszewski in Washington, David Shuster in Qatar, Dana Lewis near Karbala and Chip Reid near Baghdad; MSNBC’s Bob Arnot in Baghdad; MSNBC.com’s Preston Mendenhall in northern Iraq; The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. posted @ 8:54 PM -x- Monday, November 18, 2002post://84725991/'Little' Big Bang stumps scientists CNN Online Smashing together atoms to produce conditions similar to those in the first cosmic moments, scientists came up with some startling results that could force them to reexamine their understanding of the universe. The atomic collision, as expected, produced temperatures tens of thousands of times hotter than the core of the hottest star, a thermodynamic pinnacle unmatched since microseconds after the Big Bang. But exotic particles streamed from the hot plasma soup in surprising patterns, leading the researchers to question collision models intended to shed light on the strong nuclear force, one of the fundamental forces acting on subatomic particles. "It's the things you weren't expecting that are really trying to tell you something," said Steven Manly of the University of Rochester in New York. Manly and colleagues conducted their experiment at the Relativity Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in Brookhaven, New York, sending separate beams of gold ions at nearly light-speed crashing into each other. The collision briefly produced a quark-gluon plasma, an exotic soup of staggeringly hot particles, offering physicists a glimpse into the interaction of energy, matter and the strong nuclear force, which helps bind atoms together. The aftermath of such atomic crash tests mimics what the universe might have looked like right after it began, according to RHIC scientists. Like people rushing from a crowded room, the subatomic particles streamed out of the plasma soup with considerable haste. But the manner in which they exited led the research team to question their models of the strong force, one of the fundamental forces of the universe. "We've been handed some new pieces of the puzzle and we're trying to figure out how this new picture fits together." Manly said. The mysterious data could help unlock some big cosmic secrets. Cooling plasma might be responsible for giving matter its mass, just as condensing steam produces water. The scientists, members of the PHOBOS project at RHIC, will publish their work in the November 25 edition of Physical Review Letters. The collider includes 1,600 miles of superconducting wire, a 2.4-mile circumference ring large enough to be seen from space and thousands of magnets bathed in liquid helium at a temperature only 4.5 degrees above Absolute Zero. posted @ 4:42 PM -x- Monday, November 04, 2002post://84012317/Man wounded in probe of U.S. diplomat's killing CNN Online AMMAN, Jordan -- Jordanian police shot and wounded a man Tuesday who was wanted for questioning in the shooting death of a U.S. diplomat, sources said. The envoy, Laurence Foley, 60, was gunned down Monday as he walked to his car outside his home in Amman, Jordan's capital. Jordanian police have issued no formal statement, but sources said police went to Ma'an, a fundamentalist area in southern Jordan, to question the man. They said he opened fire, hitting two police officers. Police fired back, wounding the man, whom they took to a hospital. It is unknown why police wanted to question the man about Foley's shooting. The career public servant was executive officer of the Amman mission of USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development. (Full story) Authorities hunting Foley's killer are investigating witness reports of a man near the scene of the shooting. Some construction workers at a nearby building project and other witnesses in the affluent neighborhood told police they saw a man with his face covered in the vicinity when the shooting occurred, Jordanian security officials told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Meanwhile, a group calling itself Shurafaa' al-Urdun, or the Honorables of Jordan, took responsibility for the killing. But Jordanian security officials discounted the claim, as they did when the group -- unknown before last year -- took responsibility for the killing of Israeli businessman Yitzhak Snir in Amman in August 2001. Jordanian officials said that they think Snir was killed for criminal, not political, reasons, and that intelligence gathered since the slaying casts doubt on whether the group even exists, the AP reported. In a statement sent to the London-based Arabic daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, the group said the killing was in protest against U.S. support for Israel. It also cited a reference to Jerusalem contained in a new U.S. law. The law requires that in federal documents listing countries and capitals, Jerusalem be referred to as Israel's capital. The group also cited the "bloodshed in Iraq and Afghanistan." After signing the bill into law, President Bush said that his administration was not legally bound to follow its provision on Jerusalem. "U.S. policy regarding Jerusalem has not changed," Bush said in a statement. U.S. officials said they have not ruled out terrorism. A U.S. counterterrorism team is assisting Jordanian authorities, Reuters reported. Edward Gnehm, the U.S. ambassador to Jordan, condemned the shooting as a "cowardly, criminal act." "We are closely working with the Jordanian authorities to apprehend the person or persons responsible for this crime, and we will not rest until they are found," Gnehm said. "Jordanians have made absolutely clear that they are taking extraordinary steps and precautions that include changing what they have done before." Jordan's information minister, Mohammed Affash Adwan, promised to "deal seriously with this horrible crime," which he called "an aggression on Jordan and its national security." "This incident if anything will make us more cooperative with the United States and the fight against terrorism," he said Monday. Roadblocks have been set up by police and paramilitary units on major roads in Amman, and there was heightened security at state institutions and ministries. The fortress-like U.S. Embassy in Amman was implementing new security measures as were other Western embassies. Gnehm denied that security had been lax outside the U.S. Embassy compound. He said there were no threats or warnings before the killing. The U.S. Embassy, closed for all but emergency business after the shooting, issued a statement warning Americans in Jordan to "exercise caution, be aware of their surroundings and vary travel routes and times." [more] posted @ 12:39 PM -x- Sunday, October 13, 2002post://82932800/Dino-mummy shows some skin Fossilized duckbill dinosaur provides rare clues about diet and appearance MSNBC Oct. 10 — A mummified dinosaur, unwrapped from the rocks of Montana, has revealed how the creature looked and how it lived 77 million years ago — down to the texture of its skin and the contents of its stomach, scientists say. THE DUCKBILL DINOSAUR, nicknamed Leonardo, was fossilized in an unusual way, its discoverers reported Thursday at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology’s annual meeting in Norman, Okla. Only a handful of such dinosaur mummies are known to exist, they said. Mummified fossils are by no means like the linen-wrapped Egyptian remains from mere thousands of years ago. Rather, the specimens have turned to minerals in such a way that they preserve the look of the skin and internal tissue. In the past, scientists have theorized that mummified dinosaur flesh was dried out before it became a fossil. But researchers at the Judith River Dinosaur Institute and Phillips County Museum in Malta, Mont., believe Leonardo took a different path to posterity. “We think that it was buried in wet river sand around 77 million years ago, and much of the flesh was intact when fossilization started,” said Dave Trexler, paleontologist with Timescale Adventures and a co-author of Leonardo’s technical description. “The pollen from its stomach also shows that the environment was too wet for much desiccation to take place before burial.” The other co-authors are Nate Murphy, curator of paleontology at the Phillips County Museum; and geologist Mark Thompson, a member of the discovery team who worked on preparing the specimen. “A very rare sequence of events was necessary for this type of preservation to occur,” Thompson said in a news release on the discovery. “It is a once-in-a-lifetime find.” The two-ton, 23-foot-long (7-meter-long) fossil was discovered in the summer of 2000 and went on display this summer, after thousands of hours of preparatory work. Paleontologists say Leonardo was a brachylophosaurus — a type of duckbill dinosaur, or hadrosaur — who died when it was about 3 years old. The fossil features a three-dimensional rock cast of the right shoulder muscle and throat tissue, along with traces of the skin, toenails, beak and internal organs. Within the fossilized stomach, researchers reportedly could make out shapes from Leonardo’s last lunch: ferns, conifers and a magnolia-type plant. The researchers said such details could shed new light on how such dinosaurs were built and how they moved. For example, the plant-eating species might have used its forelimbs more than previously thought, based on an analysis of the fossilized muscles. Even the stomach contents could provide insights into the flora of the Late Cretaceous period. Mummified dinosaur fossils have also been found over the years in Wyoming, and a tyrannosaur specimen found in Wyoming’s Lance Creek Fossil Area may have retained an impression of the meat-eating creature’s skin, University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno reported last year. [more] posted @ 4:57 PM -x- Tuesday, October 08, 2002post://82701254/Biggest object since Pluto found in solar system CNN Online A newly discovered body in the outer reaches of the solar system is larger than all the objects in the asteroid belt combined, astronomers announced Monday. The spherical planetoid, half the size of Pluto, is the biggest found in the solar system since astronomers detected the ninth planet in 1930. It orbits the sun from a distance of about 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers) in a nether region known as the Kuiper Belt, a ring of thousands of primordial icy, rocky chunks beyond the planets that date back to the origins of the solar system. The object, dubbed Quaoar, further strengthens the theory that Pluto is not a conventional planet but rather a Kuiper Belt object. "Quaoar definitely hurts the case for Pluto being a planet," said planetary scientist Mike Brown, co-discover of the new object. "If Pluto were discovered today, no one would even consider calling it a planet because it's clearly a Kuiper Belt object." The Kuiper Belt is home to many of the comets that periodically swing into the inner solar system. They and larger objects in the belt are pristine vestiges of the infant solar system, which could help explain how our space neighborhood formed. The new object is about 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) in diameter and circles the sun once every 288 years. Its orbit is stable and circular in comparison to Pluto. Pluto, usually the most distant planet, takes 248 years to complete a trip around the sun and orbits at an average distance of about 3.7 billion miles (5.8 billion kilometers). But the eccentric ice planet follows an extremely elliptical orbit and goes inside the circular path of Neptune from time to time. While traditionally classified as a planet, Pluto more likely is a Kuiper Belt object that was pushed into an erratic, Neptune-crossing orbit billions of years ago, according to astronomers. Like other Kuiper Belt objects, Quaoar is thought to contain rock, water ice and frozen organic compounds such as methane, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. The surface, slowly cooked over the eons by ultraviolet radiation from the sun, could be dark and similar in consistency to tar, Brown and co-discoverer Chad Trujillo said. The California Institute of Technology researchers presented their findings Monday at an American Astronomical Society meeting in Birmingham, Alabama. The scientific duo named the object Quaoar, pronounced KWAH-o-ar, after the creation god of the Tongva people, a Native American tribe in Southern California. As telescopes and high-tech search techniques improve in the coming years, astronomers said they expect to find many more Kuiper Belt objects, including increasingly larger specimens. "Right now, I'd say they get as big as Pluto," Brown said. [more] posted @ 3:17 PM -x- Monday, September 30, 2002post://82329797/U.S. Supplied Germs to Iraq in '80s Yahoo! News WASHINGTON (AP) - Iraq's bioweapons program that President Bush ( news - web sites) wants to eradicate got its start with help from Uncle Sam two decades ago, according to government records getting new scrutiny in light of the discussion of war against Iraq. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( news - web sites) sent samples directly to several Iraqi sites that U.N. weapons inspectors determined were part of Saddam Hussein ( news - web sites)'s biological weapons program, CDC and congressional records from the early 1990s show. Iraq had ordered the samples, claiming it needed them for legitimate medical research. The CDC and a biological sample company, the American Type Culture Collection, sent strains of all the germs Iraq used to make weapons, including anthrax, the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and the germs that cause gas gangrene, the records show. Iraq also got samples of other deadly pathogens, including the West Nile virus ( news - web sites). The transfers came in the 1980s, when the United States supported Iraq in its war against Iran. They were detailed in a 1994 Senate Banking Committee report and a 1995 follow-up letter from the CDC to the Senate. The exports were legal at the time and approved under a program administered by the Commerce Department ( news - web sites). "I don't think it would be accurate to say the United States government deliberately provided seed stocks to the Iraqis' biological weapons programs," said Jonathan Tucker, a former U.N. biological weapons inspector. "But they did deliver samples that Iraq said had a legitimate public health purpose, which I think was naive to believe, even at the time." The disclosures put the United States in the uncomfortable position of possibly having provided the key ingredients of the weapons America is considering waging war to destroy, said Sen. Robert Byrd ( news, bio, voting record), D-W.Va. Byrd entered the documents into the Congressional Record this month. Byrd asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about the germ transfers at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee ( news - web sites) hearing. Byrd noted that Rumsfeld met Saddam in 1983, when Rumsfeld was President Reagan's Middle East envoy. "Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?" Byrd asked Rumsfeld after reading parts of a Newsweek article on the transfers. "I have never heard anything like what you've read, I have no knowledge of it whatsoever, and I doubt it," Rumsfeld said. He later said he would ask the Defense Department and other government agencies to search their records for evidence of the transfers. Invoices included in the documents read like shopping lists for biological weapons programs. One 1986 shipment from the Virginia-based American Type Culture Collection included three strains of anthrax, six strains of the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and three strains of the bacteria that cause gas gangrene. Iraq later admitted to the United Nations ( news - web sites) that it had made weapons out of all three. The company sent the bacteria to the University of Baghdad, which U.N. inspectors concluded had been used as a front to acquire samples for Iraq's biological weapons program. The CDC, meanwhile, sent shipments of germs to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission and other agencies involved in Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. It sent samples in 1986 of botulinum toxin and botulinum toxiod — used to make vaccines against botulinum toxin — directly to the Iraqi chemical and biological weapons complex at al-Muthanna, the records show. Botulinum toxin is the paralyzing poison that causes botulism. Having a vaccine to the toxin would be useful for anyone working with it, such as biological weapons researchers or soldiers who might be exposed to the deadly poison, Tucker said. The CDC also sent samples of a strain of West Nile virus to an Iraqi microbiologist at a university in the southern city of Basra in 1985, the records show. ___ On the Net: The documents are available at: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_cr/s092002.html CDC: http://www.cdc.gov ATCC: http://www.atcc.org [more] posted @ 4:53 PM -x- Sunday, September 15, 2002post://81642496/Selling the World on War Bush rallied the U.N. to take on Iraq. How he got there—and what’s ahead MSN: NEWSWEEK Sept. 23 issue — The U.N. General Assembly is not a place where a Texas straight shooter, a man who cherishes his freedom of action, especially wants to be making his case. OFTEN RIDICULED in Washington, the so-called Parliament of Man sits in a cavernous hall where small nations can pretend they are equal to the powerful—where Zambia has the same vote as America—and the acoustics are so deadening that even former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke calls the room “anti-human.” But by last week George W. Bush had grown tired of being characterized in the media as “a go-it-alone cowboy” pursuing a personal agenda against Iraq, says an aide. Neither the world nor the American public seemed to be buying his administration’s efforts to demonize Saddam Hussein by hinting darkly at damning intelligence on his weapons programs. So at a meeting at his Crawford, Texas, ranch in mid-August with national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, the president, aides say, had a eureka moment. He seized—on an idea proposed by Secretary of State Colin Powell, the oft-slighted moderate of his foreign-policy team: let’s throw down the gauntlet to the United Nations. Cast Saddam as the unilateralist who is defying the international community—by spurning 11 years of U.N. resolutions calling on him to disarm—and the United States as the multilateralist that is defending the United Nations’ honor. Even Vice President Dick Cheney, a hawk who has dismissed U.N. arms inspections as all but useless, remarked, ” ‘That would be a strong argument: it’s not really the administration’s problem, it’s the U.N.’s problem’,” says a top Bush adviser. As paraphrased by a senior administration official, Bush exclaimed to Rice: “Wait a minute. It’s not just me! Does the U.N. really want to be irrelevant? You’ve got to be kidding me.” Secretary of State Colin Powell, Ambassador to the U.N. John Negroponte, and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice (from left) listen as Bush addresses the U.N. general assembly So it was that Bush proceeded to deliver, on the banks of New York’s East River, one of the most masterful coups of his presidency. After weeks of anti-American invective from many of the governments in that room—most angered by what appeared to be a U.S. rush into war—Bush instantly transformed the global debate about Iraq. In a 25-minute speech, rapping out his lines like a prosecutor, Bush recited a slew of U.S.-supported U.N. resolutions that Saddam has spurned in a “decade of defiance” since the gulf war. ULTIMATUM “Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence?” he demanded. Bush declared that Iraq is “exactly the kind of aggressive threat the United Nations was born to confront,” and he delivered an ultimatum both to Saddam and to the United Nations itself: act now or America will. “The Security Council resolutions will be enforced ... or action will be unavoidable, and a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power.” Bush later pledged that his timetable was “days or weeks, not months or years”—and he launched plans to move a 600-person command center to the compliant Persian Gulf state of Qatar by November. Join us for a Live Talk about Iraq at noon ET on Wednesday, Sept. 18, with Michael Hirsh on the possibility of war against Iraq—and its potential consequences. Despite its hard edge, Bush’s speech at the U.N. annual summit blunted the objections of the Europeans and Russians to an Iraq war and cowed both Democratic critics and Republican moderates on Capitol Hill. It was also the opening move in a broad new strategy to win worldwide support. Lacking substantial new intelligence on Saddam’s programs of weapons of mass destruction, the administration will counter with a global sales blitz coordinated largely out of the White House’s soon-to-be launched Office of Global Communications, NEWSWEEK has learned. To the Arab world’s media, the United States will send out news bites about “crime against Muslims.” Tabloids will get a dossier on Saddam’s personal excesses—like allegedly building 20 gold-plated statuettes to depict his life, and a man-made island in the shape of his footprint or thumb—to show that while the Iraqi people suffer, he lives lavishly. (Although even here, the administration continues to fight internally: the State Department is dismissing some of this material as unsourced Internet rumor.) Europe’s greens will hear how he dumped a half-billion gallons of oil in the Persian Gulf in 1991—”more than 25 times as much oil as was dumped by the Exxon Valdez,” said one White House official. “That sells in Europe.” He adds: “This is guerrilla communications. Warfare isn’t the only thing that’s changed.” Another administration official describes the rollout in the next few weeks as “several Cuban-missile-crisis moments,” like newly declassified photos of Kurds gassed by Saddam. “We’re working on trying to find good pictures,” one aide says. Yet even now Bush’s patience with the world body is limited. The endless vagaries of U.N. protocol—part of the consensus system so despised by Bush hawks—don’t help. Last week, as he waited to give the speech everyone wanted to hear, the planet’s most powerful leader had to sit sourly—in the wings while Brazil’s foreign minister delivered some instantly forgotten remarks. Greeted with applause as he stepped to the podium, Bush acted surprised, smirking in his trademark way. The president joked later that it was “like speaking to a wax museum” because, says an aide, the diplomats didn’t react to his words: he couldn’t feed off the crowd’s energy. Has the Bush administration done a good job of explaining U.S. policy toward Iraq? * 2302 responses Yes 38% No 57% I don't know 5% ‘NECESSARY RESOLUTIONS’ And, not surprisingly, almost up until the last minute of Bush’s speech, there was an internal struggle over just how multilateralist this in-your-face administration would get. A key line in the speech—Bush’s pledge to “work with the U.N. Security Council for the necessary resolutions” to authorize action—marked a major victory for Powell and Bush’s closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair. That promise of a new U.N. vote could make or break the new strategy, depending on whether the Bushies get balky powers like Russia and France onboard in negotiations this week. But the line was added only the night before the speech and was under discussion “right up to the end,” a senior State Department official told NEWSWEEK. Because of what was said to be a technical glitch, it didn’t even make it into the teleprompter. Not seeing the line on the screen but having rehearsed the speech, Bush added it back in himself. “He expected it to be in there, he wanted it to be in there,” says one White House official. (According to another source, Bush also added an “s,” making it “resolutions.” That may have been a concession to the French, who have called for a two-resolution process: one to demand that Saddam allow inspectors quickly back into the country, and a second authorizing force if he doesn’t.) Blair is believed to have played a key role on the U.N. resolution issue after flying to Camp David the weekend before the speech. While the administration “was already headed in that direction” over the summer, says a Downing Street source, the British P.M. pressed for new action by the U.N. Security Council (the real power at the United Nations; the General Assembly is mainly a forum for persuasion). Blair, who was in frequent contact with Bush throughout August, made it clear that his acquiescence on Iraq was a “yes, but.” Among his conditions: that Bush shift his focus from “regime change” to elimination of weapons of mass destruction. (British sources say they have no problem with taking out Saddam; they just don’t want to say it.) At stake was obtaining the unanimous support of the five permanent members of the Security Council—America, Russia, China, Britain and France—each of which has veto power. Pitted against Blair and Powell were the usual unilateralists: Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and their aides, who maintained it was enough to say that the United States would work with the Security Council. But Powell wanted maximum flexibility, and Blair “was pretty emphatic that [the line about a resolution] be included,” a U.S. aide said. ‘ZERO TOLERANCE’ So for now the moderate Powell is steering U.S. policy, and for the first time in a while the Bush team is speaking with one voice. In coming weeks, Powell will try to use the momentum from Bush’s speech to win at least one tough U.N. Security Council resolution giving Saddam an ultimatum—one that will likely set a deadline of no more than 30 days for admitting U.N. inspectors. But the administration will accept no negotiation, only a “zero tolerance” inspection regime. One reason the administration is willing to sanction a new U.N. resolution, says a senior Bush official, is that it wants to rid any ultimatum of previ—ous U.N.-sanctioned weaknesses—like exempting Saddam’s presidential palaces from inspection. “I am highly doubtful that he’ll meet our demands,” Bush himself said on Friday. “We expect quick resolution.” In fact, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon senior staff has already reached consensus on a war plan to seize Baghdad and paralyze Saddam’s forces. Still, said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, Bush continued to stress to other world leaders last week “that he hoped we did not have to have a military option.” Iraq said again it won’t permit new inspections. But the biggest fear is that Saddam will try to draw out the U.N. resolution game, eventually allowing inspectors back in while he plays for time. The trickiest question, says a Security Council source, will be “what will trigger the ‘or else’ ultimatum to Saddam: the first time he gives inspectors trouble, or later?” Bush still reserves the right to act unilaterally. But the new approach puts more pressure on him to win consent from his Security Council partners for the use of force. The key obstacle here may be Russia, which has long treasured its quiet commercial deals with Saddam’s regime. A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Boris Malakhov, says, “We agree with President Bush” on the need to fight resolutely against terrorism. The cost of Moscow’s compliance could be high: in recent days the Russian media have suggested that Washington and Moscow are contemplating a deal—known, in shorthand, as “Georgia for Iraq.” In return for a Russian vote on Iraq, in other words, Washington might be asked to quietly condone President Vladimir Putin’s threats to attack suspected Chechen terrorists across the border in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. The Russian leader, who has formed a close personal bond with Bush, now seems to be echoing his friend’s doctrine of “pre-emption,” declaring the unilateral right to intervene in terror-supporting states. IRAQ's TROUBLED TERRAIN The Bush administration wants global support for action against Iraq, but isn't willing to wait long. 'A Decade of Defiance'A Snapshot Last week President Bush enumerated the many ways Saddam has violated U.N. demands: Inspectors Iraq has refused to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors who--under numerous U.N. resolution--were supposed to be granted unfettered access to verify the country was destroying all weapons of mass destruction. Deadly Weapons In 1991, Iraq agreed to destroy and stop developing all WMD and long-range missiles. However, it's believed the regime still possesses stockpiles of biological and chemical agents and could be close to building a nuclear weapon. In addition, the country is thought to have in hand Scud-type missiles with ranges greater than 150 kilometers and is continuing to build more. Human Rights Saddam has also refused to comply with demands that he stop repressing the Iraqi people and free more than 600 prisoners taken during the gulf war. Terrorism Bush further charged that Iraq continues to shelter and support terrorist groups, including the Abu Nidal organization, despite its pledge to renounce all involvement with terrorism. Dubya played the Qaeda card--alleging that a gaggle of bin Laden's disciples are living in Iraq (its government openly lauded the 9-11 attacks). The 43d prez got personal, noting that, in 1993, Iraqi intel tried to assassinate the Emir of Kuwait and the 41st chief exec of the U.S.--a.k.a. his father. Once known as Mesopotamia, Iraq has been controlled by Saddam's totalitarian regime since 1979. A look at the land and the people: The Media - All news outlets are controlled by the government and therefore offer little reliable information. Movies - Most films are from Egypt, India and France and are censored to ensure they square with the party line. Television - Iraqis have few TV stations, most of which just play state-controlled news and other pro-Saddam programming. The most entertaining is Youth TV, which shows pirated Hollywood movies and is owned by Saddam's eldest son, Uday. Radio - The most popular radio station plays Western music and is also owned by Uday, who's thought to be trying to boost his popularity and take over for his father. Technology - Cell phones are illegal; faxes and copy machines require government approval. The first Internet cafe opened in July 2000; surfing is censored. Sports - Soccer is the national craze. The State Department has condemned Putin’s threats, but a senior administration official seemed to shift course last week, saying in Moscow that Putin has “a legitimate security argument.” The administration may need to cut all the corners it can, given the formidable selling job it still has. Bush’s No. 1 problem—and perhaps the real reason he has abruptly shifted tactics—is that evidence of Saddam’s terrorist connections and nuclear prospects is sketchy. Indeed, neighboring Syria and Iran may have more documentable terrorist links, intelligence sources say. And the evidence suggests that while Saddam certainly is still engaged in trying to rebuild his nuclear-weapons capability, he is a long way from building a bomb, perhaps many years. Even so, the administration has been cavalier about compiling a national intelligence estimate on the Iraq threat, with one senior official dismissing it as “a check-the-box thing.” SEARCHING FOR EVIDENCE In recent months, a major effort by the administration to comb through 10 years of evidence in Iraq has turned up little. After sifting through covert on-the-ground collection efforts, reanalyzing satellite imagery and voluminous archives of material collected through the 1990s by U.N. inspectors, and checking materials components and suppliers around the world, intelligence officials are still not sure what Saddam has been up to in the four years since he refused to readmit weapons inspectors. “As you would expect, we have found some things we didn’t know before,” said an authoritative source. “But nothing huge. No smoking gun.” Example: administration officials recently made much of Saddam’s alleged purchase of aluminum tubes, ostensibly for uranium enrichment. But according to experts inside and outside the government, if Saddam is only now trying to get the tubes, he may be years away from building a working apparatus to enrich uranium. Whichever way the administration goes, the selling campaign does amount to a concession that unilateralism only takes you so far. Bush’s new tack on Iraq, and his moving speech to the nation during last week’s 9-11 commemoration, bumped up —his approval rating back to 70 percent after a slide to the low 60s, the new NEWSWEEK Poll shows. But Americans continued to support, by nearly a two-thirds margin, the idea that Washington should attack only with support from European allies and the United Nations. In fact, the president’s U.N. speech may have boosted public support for an international force to remove Saddam (75 percent favor it now versus 69 percent in late August). As part of its sales pitch, the administration is carefully releasing material bit by bit because “it is easy to defeat one document,” says one official. “There are high expectations at an extremely high level for a high degree of coordination,” he says. What that suggests is that the Bush hawks will no longer be permitted to freelance (the White House, for example, recently canceled a hawkish Rumsfeld op-ed on Iraq before it was published in The Washington Post). “One thing this White House is good at,” says one aide hopefully, “is vividly telling a story.” As long as they’re all telling the same story. [more] posted @ 5:20 PM -x- Tuesday, August 20, 2002post://80492007/Sony scientist: Robots need culture MSN: ZDNet Luc Steels, a professor at the University of Brussels and director of Sony's Computer Science Laboratories in Paris, wants to make robots more like living things by teaching them how to express themselves. It is a concept that has met with resistance from some quarters. In Steels's view the breakthrough that will take robots beyond the Aibo stage will come from allowing them to interact, form their own languages and even "cultures" rather than focusing strictly on how individual machines behave. This is in contrast to those who see the path to robotic intelligence simply as a matter of constructing increasingly complex machines. If Steels's theories gain the upper hand it would mean a new direction for the robotics field. Today development tends to focus on machines that have increasingly complex behaviors and can learn new behaviors. Steels believes the next step is for robots to learn by forming concepts they can swap with other robots, thereby develop their own "minds", just as humans do. "We're not going to get very far with robots if we don't focus on social interactions," Steels said. He presented a recent paper on the subject: "Evolving and Sharing Representations through Situated Language Games", on Thursday at the conference "Biologically Inspired Robots" in Bristol. Steels' most ambitious projects to date have involved thousands of software agents (bits of code) transporting themselves across the Internet to control robots in different cities across the world. The agents could be "taught" which words to associate with the objects seen by the robots and then use these words to interact with other agents. The spread of words and meanings among the agents follows similar patterns to those found in human culture. Steels also works with Sony robots such as Aibo and an upcoming bipedal device, adding custom software to enable them to play word games. An alternative to Turing Steels' work deals with machine intelligence but it's a fundamentally different view from that embodied in the famous "Turing test". According to the Turing theory, a human-like intelligence has successfully been created when a human can't tell the difference between a conversation with the artificial intelligence and a real one. "I think the Turing test is a bad idea because it's completely fake," Steels said. "It's like saying you want to make a flying machine so you produce something that is indistinguishable from a bird. On the other hand, an airplane achieves flight but it doesn't need to flap its wings." Similarly Steels believes that machines can evolve intelligence through interaction with one another and with their ecology--but this synthetic intelligence it is unlikely to bear much superficial resemblance to human intelligence. In one sense, Steels joked, the Turing test has already been passed--by the Aibo. He demonstrated with a video clip where an Aibo approached a dog eating a piece of meat and was treated just like another dog--it was attacked. He noted that while entertainment robots can interact with humans--and particularly children--through the use of emotional signals, they don't have their own interior lives. "They are like actors that express emotions but don't have the emotion themselves," he said. However, Aibo-type machines can still be seen as the direct descendants of the wheeled "tortoises" developed by W. Grey Walter in the 1940s and 1950s. Steels built such robots using digital technology and Lego sets in the early 1990s, but in search of the next step turned to the linguistic concept of "representations". For example, a street can be blocked off physically with a roadblock but a "no entry" sign is a representation that carries the same weight. Representations are closely tied not only with social interaction but with the functions of the brain. Robotic resistance This notion has met with resistance on both theoretical and practical levels. Some scientists, such as Rodney Brooks of MIT, have argued that intelligent behavior doesn't need internal representations. And at this week's conference, others expressed disbelief that today's cameras and visual software make it impractical to carry out any real level of interaction with the world. Steels believes that technology is no constraint. "We don't need the full complexity of human vision, this can be built on any kind of sensory foundation," he said. As for the theoretical argument, he believes that sooner or later the field will have to stop modeling robots on an unrealistically limited view of humanity. "There is a danger in the field of viewing humans as machines, as automata, the way biology looks at humans as complex machines," he said. "Representation-making gives a rich view of people that is not covered by these behaviorist theories." [more] posted @ 5:14 PM -x- Thursday, August 15, 2002post://80292788/Study: Apes lack gene for speech Discovery helps explain why humans can talk the talk CNN Sci-Tech Online A couple of changes in one gene about 200,000 years ago may be the reason apes still pound the ground -- and humans can recite poetry to communicate. Scientists identified a gene last year called FOXP2, the first to be directly linked to language ability. Researchers then studied the gene and the protein it produces in humans, as well as in gorillas, chimps, orangutans and mice. They discovered a slight amino acid change in the human protein, which was not found in any of the other animals. That change may be a big reason humans developed the face and jaw structures, which make the profound capabilities of speech and language possible. Just how important is language to what makes us human? "It is perhaps the most important feature," said Wolfgang Enard, who detailed these findings in the online edition of the British journal Nature. "It makes culture possible. This ability to transfer knowledge has had the most impact on civilization," said Enard, who worked with Svante Paabo and others at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. While scientists worldwide labor to unlock the secrets of about 60,000 human genes, the case of FOXP2 includes a fascinating human element. Since 1990, a British family known only as "KE" has been the focus of intense study. Across three generations, about half of family members suffered from severe language and speech difficulties. Researchers found those KE family members with the drastic impairments did not have two normal copies of FOXP2. The one flawed copy, they believe, led to immobility of the lips, tongue, and mouth, which makes their speech garbled. They also have difficulty understanding language structure and grammar. FOXP2, like many genes, is a multi-tasker. It's not only important for speech, but has been shown crucial for lung development in mice, and is needed for brain development. Enard says the alteration of FOXP2 in humans likely became widespread between 120,000 and 200,000 years ago. It's during that time that anatomically "modern" humans developed. That suggests their growing language skills helped in the expansion and success of the human race. Different forms of communication Ancient speech and language didn't leave fossils, so there's a lot of speculation about how they progressed. As cooperation got more important, it's believed sign language developed, and was then replaced by speech as it became more flexible and efficient in communicating. Gorillas and other great apes have their own forms of verbal communication and physical gestures, says Dawn St. George, director of conservation education at the Zoologicial Society of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. "They have facial, hand, and verbal gestures to communicate danger, or the discovery of a food source," said St. George, an expert in the field of popular genetics in great apes. She says gorillas that interact with humans develop additional gestures, including hugs and other signs of affection. But without the same physical structures as humans in the face, mouth, and larynx, says St. George, no amount of brain power will enable our nearest living relatives to talk. There's still great debate about the sounds and "languages" of other species, from dolphins and whales to parrots or songbirds. Enard said geneticists will be taking a deeper look at FOXP2, to find out what human FOXP2 does differently from other FOXP2s. There are not that many differences between the DNA of a human and a chimp, or even between a human and a whale. But, as knowledge of FOXP2 is revealing, even a tiny number of DNA mutations -- can lead to hugely important physical differences. [more] posted @ 5:56 PM
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post://80292415/ -x- Monday, August 05, 2002post://79845404/A mysterious shift in Earth’s gravity Earth’s field is getting flatter, and scientists don’t know why Space.com Aug. 1 — Something strange has been going on under our feet for the past four years. Earth’s gravity field suddenly shifted gears and began getting flatter, reversing a course of centuries during which the planet and its gravity field grew rounder each year. THE SCIENTISTS who noticed the change and report it in Friday’s issue of the journal Science suspect Earth itself may be flattening out, with the oceans rising near the equator, but they aren’t sure. What they do know is that Earth has never been round. It has always bulged at the equator and is about 0.3 percent fatter there, partly a result of the planet’s rotation. GETTING ROUNDER Yet ever since the last Ice Age, the planet has been getting rounder as ground beneath the polar regions, relieved of the weight from ice that was miles thick in places, has been rebounding. In some parts of Scandinavia and Canada, the ground rises a quarter-inch (a centimeter) per year. Since the late 1970s, satellite measurements have shown that this post-glacial rebound, as it is called, generates a corresponding rounding of Earth’s gravity field. Suddenly the trend has reversed. “Sometime around 1998, something began to make the Earth’s gravity field flatter,” says Christopher Cox of Raytheon Information Technology and Scientific Services. “The result is it looks as if post-glacial rebound has reversed itself. But we do not have any reason to think that post-glacial rebound has in any way stopped or changed." In effect, Cox said in an interview, while post-glacial rebound continues to make the Earth rounder, some movement of mass on the surface of Earth must be making the gravity field flatter. It’s not a change anyone could notice; it’s only revealed by sensitive satellite measurements. The shift, however, is significant. “The effect is twice as large as post-glacial rebound in terms of effect on the gravity field, and it’s in the opposite direction,” Cox said. “Whatever it is, it’s big.” LIKE A RUBBER BALL Cox, who also works at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, described post-glacial rebound as similar to pushing a rubber ball in at the top and bottom with your fingers. “The sides come out, and the top and bottom go in. Take your fingers off that rubber ball, and the sides are going to go in and the top is going to come out again.” What does this have to do with Earth? “You have material moving inside,” Cox explained. The rubber is compressed, but air is also pushed around. Some of the post-glacial rebound is caused by the ground simply decompressing. But scientists have long known that to account for what they’ve measured, Earth’s physical shape must change. Material — ground, water or air — must be moved around. Though the planet’s shape and its gravity field are not directly correlated, they are related. Cox and his colleague, Benjamin Chao of Goddard, were at first baffled by the sudden reversal and flattening of the gravity field. They considered that ice melting at the poles and raising the overall sea level could be the culprit. Calculations showed, however, that “you would have to drop a 10-by-10-by-5-kilometer cube of it into the ocean every year for the past five years.” Separate measurements of sea surface height from NASA’s TOPEX/Poseidon mission don’t support this scenario. Material in Earth’s crust can’t be responsible — it couldn’t move so quickly from the poles to the equator. Molten rock oozing around in Earth’s core might be to blame, but data do not support such a scenario. Changes in the atmosphere might be involved, but no data supports that being the primary cause, either. SO WHAT IS IT? Instead, Cox said, long-term circulation patterns in the ocean seem to be the most likely cause. Shifts in huge ocean currents — similar to El Niño but on larger scales and moving in a north-south direction — might transport enough water toward the equator to account for the flattened gravity field. One such cycle is called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. “We have a strong suspicion that it’s in the ocean,” Cox said. “Whatever the cause, the results of Cox and Chao emphasize the importance of gravity variations as a barometer of integrated mass changes in the Earth system,” write scientists Anny Cazenave and R. Steven Nerem in an analysis of the research for Science. “Monitoring these variations with improved spatial and temporal resolution would provide an important tool for studying Earth system changes.” Since Cox and Chao submitted their paper to the journal, they’ve continued to look into the mystery and are more confident that the ocean is behind it all. “But we need more data,” Cox said. That data could come from NASA’s GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite mission, which will provide the most precise measurements ever made of Earth’s gravity field. GRACE launched in March. [more] posted @ 10:24 AM
post://79844961/ -x- Tuesday, July 30, 2002post://79606981/City Drag Racing WWLP 22News Online SPRINGFIELD, MA, July 29 - Springfield police had to disperse a crowd of over a thousand people around one this morning. People lined Main Street between Huntington and Waverly streets to watch drag racing. Police say the racers blocked Main Street and were directing traffic down side streets. The crowd eventually dispersed peacefully. There were no arrests. Trash, broken glass, and tire marks on the road are all that remains. [more] posted @ 3:37 PM -x- |