Science & TechnologyS


Radar

US science teachers refuse climate DVDs


New Scientist
Thu, 07 Dec 2006 12:00 UTC
Psst! Want 50,000 free DVDs? The US National Science Teachers Association didn't, even though the DVDs in question were of An Inconvenient Truth, the climate change movie that is required viewing for all children in Norway and Sweden.

Why not? Because according to Laurie David, one of the film's producers, the NSTA has accepted millions of dollars from oil firms, including Exxon Mobil and Shell. The NSTA has even promoted oil companies' "special interests and implicit endorsements", David said in the The Washington Post on 26 November.
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Book

Peer-reviewed Journals in the Field of Parapsychology


Public Parapsychology
Mon, 11 Dec 2006 12:00 UTC
The following are the primary peer-reviewed journals in the field of parapsychology:

Australian Journal of Parapsychology
European Journal of Parapsychology
International Journal of Parapsychology
Journal of Near-Death Studies
Journal of Parapsychology
Journal of Scientific Exploration
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research

The following journals have published papers on parapsychological topics, including the psychology of anomalous experience and paranormal belief:
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Better Earth

The Pleistocene-Holocene Event: The Sixth Great Extinction

Dave Foreman
rewilding.org
Thu, 07 Dec 2006 12:00 UTC
"Soon a millennium will end. With it will pass four billion years of evolutionary exuberance. Yes, some species will survive, particularly the smaller, tenacious ones living in places far too dry and cold for us to farm or graze. Yet we must face the fact that the Cenozoic, the Age of Mammals which has been in retreat since the catastrophic extinctions of the late Pleistocene is over, and that the Anthropozoic or Catastrophozoic has begun." --Michael Soul� (1996)

[Extinction is the gravest conservation problem of our era. Indeed, it is the gravest problem humans face. The following discussion is adapted from Chapters 1, 2, and 4 of Dave Foreman's Rewilding North America.]

Click Here For Full PDF Report... or read Summary below...
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Camera

New photos hint at liquid water on Mars


CBC
Thu, 07 Dec 2006 12:00 UTC
Gulllies suggesting recent liquid water on Mars

This satellite file photo shows gullies on the walls of a meteor crater in the Newton Basin on Mars. Photos of other gullies on the planet suggest water may have flowed through them in the past decade.(NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratories/Associated Press)

A new study of photographs taken from orbit suggest water flowed on Mars as recently as a few years ago, raising the possibility the planet could support life.

The images, taken from aboard a satellite, don't show water, however. Instead, they show recent changes in surface features that might have been made from the flow of liquid water.
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Star

Bubbly meteor hints at seeds of life

Lucy Sherriff
The Register
Mon, 04 Dec 2006 12:00 UTC
Scientists have found evidence that the seeds of life may indeed have fallen from the sky.

Analysis of a meteorite that fell onto the frozen Tagish Lake in Canada in 2000 has shown the space rock to be riddled with organic material that is at least as old as the solar system itself. Researchers speculate that this kind of matter could have played a vital role in the development of early life on Earth.
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Star

Older than the sun, the meteorite scientists call 'the real time machine'

Ian Sample, science correspondent
The Guardian
Fri, 01 Dec 2006 12:00 UTC
- Rock which hit lake is oldest object ever found - Tests reveal fragment created before solar system

As lumps of rock go it looks much like any other, unexceptional despite the deep red of its cool, smooth surface. The pieces range in size from pea-sized lumps to larger fist-sized chunks. But today, scientists will announce this is no ordinary stone. Prised from a frozen lake in northern Canada, it has become a prime candidate for the oldest known object on Earth.
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Laptop

An Ancient Computer Surprises Scientists

John Noble Wilford
New York Times
Thu, 30 Nov 2006 12:00 UTC
A computer in antiquity would seem to be an anachronism, like Athena ordering takeout on her cellphone.

But a century ago, pieces of a strange mechanism with bronze gears and dials were recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece. Historians of science concluded that this was an instrument that calculated and illustrated astronomical information, particularly phases of the Moon and planetary motions, in the second century B.C.
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Saturn

Humans must colonize other planets: Hawking


Reuters
Thu, 30 Nov 2006 12:00 UTC
London- Humans must colonize planets in other solar systems traveling there using "Star Trek"-style propulsion or face extinction, renowned British cosmologist Stephen Hawking said on Thursday.

Referring to complex theories and the speed of light, Hawking, the wheel-chair bound Cambridge University physicist, told BBC radio that theoretical advances could revolutionize the velocity of space travel and make such colonies possible.

"Sooner or later disasters such as an asteroid collision or a nuclear war could wipe us all out," said Professor Hawking, who was crippled by a muscle disease at the age of 21 and who speaks through a computerized voice synthesizer.
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Cheeseburger

Still fancy industrial chicken?

Marlies van de Wiel
Observant.unimaas.nl
Wed, 29 Nov 2006 12:00 UTC
Why does India export grain to Switzerland while millions of people in India are starving? And why does Vienna waste enough bread every day to feed Austria's second city Graz in its entirety? Just a few examples of the many questions raised in an Austrian documentary We Feed the World. There are no quick and easy answers.
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Bug

Global Poultry Industry is the Root of the Bird Flu Crisis


Global Research
Wed, 29 Nov 2006 12:00 UTC
A new and extremely important report has come out today from GRAIN, about the mistaken policy analysis and debate surrounding the current Bird Flu crisis.

While panic in the media and at government levels is focused on the threat from migratory birds and small-scale free-range poultry operations, the real reason for the development and spread of the disease has been quietly ignored.

The GRAIN report shows that emergence of bird flu follows the global poultry industry's movements - and NOT migratory bird movements. The large-scale, confined, and frankly disgusting, factory farming conditions that characterise the global poultry industry are likely to be the real cause of the mutation of bird flu into its deadly form. The widespread movements of the industry's chickens and hatching eggs, are likely to be the cause of its spread.
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