Genetically Modified Seeds: Terminator Rejection - A Victory for the PeopleCURITIBA, Brazil - March 24 - A broad coalition of peasant farmers, indigenous peoples and civil society today celebrated the firm rejection of efforts to undermine the global moratorium on Terminator technologies - genetically engineered sterile seeds - at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Curitiba, Brazil.
"This is a momentous day for the 1.4 billion poor people worldwide, who depend on farmer saved seeds," said Francisca Rodriguez of Via Campesina, a world wide... (more)
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Sleep Deprivation: The Great American MythPeople who get only 6 to 7 hours a night have a lower death rate than those who get 8 hours of sleep. —From a six-year study of more than a million adults
Many Americans are sleep-deprived zombies, and a quarter of us now use some form of sleeping pill or aid at night.
Wake up, says psychiatry professor Daniel Kripke of the University of California, San Diego. The pill-taking is real but the refrain that Americans are sleep deprived originates la... (more)
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Northrop Grumman Selected by U.S. Department of Defense to Design First-Ever Supersonic 'Oblique Flying Wing' AircraftEL SEGUNDO, Calif., March 23, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) -- Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) has been selected by the U.S. Department of Defense to design the first-ever supersonic flying wing aircraft that can vary the sweep of its wing for the most efficient flight performance.
Illustrations accompanying this news release are available at: http://www.darpa.mil/body/news/current/Oblique_Flying_Wing.asp
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded... (more)
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Selling 'pandemic flu' through a language of fearAmericans consider the United States to be a country where debate flourishes. Yet with regard to avian flu, hyped sound bites predominate. When President Bush asked Congress for $7.1 billion toward "pandemic flu preparedness," even his critics replied "not enough." Meanwhile, public health officials seem obsessed with preparing for an impending crisis - even before they have established that doom is truly heading our way.
What is lacking in the overall discussion about pandemic fl... (more)
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London 'under water by 2100' as Antarctica crumbles into the seaDOZENS of the world’s cities, including London and New York, could be flooded by the end of the century, according to research which suggests that global warming will increase sea levels more rapidly than was previously thought.
The first study to combine computer models of rising temperatures with records of the ancient climate has indicated that sea levels could rise by up to 20ft (6m) by 2100, placing millions of people at risk.
The threat comes from meltin... (more)
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FCC Chief: AT&T Can Limit Net Bandwidth: FCC Chief supports "tiered" InternetFCC Chief Kevin Martin yesterday gave his support to AT&T and other telcos who want to be able to limit bandwidth to sites like Google, unless those sites pay extortion fees. Martin made it clear in a speech yesterday that he supports such a a "tiered" Internet.
Martin told attendees at the TelecomNext show that telcos should be allowed to charge web sites whatever they want if those sites want adequate bandwidth.
He threw in his lot with AT&T, Verizon, and the othe... (more)
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Research: Vaccine Ingredient Can Disrupt Immune System"This is important because it does add to our knowledge of the potential effects of thimerosal," said Cindy Lawler, a program administrator for the NIEHS in charge of the UC Davis research grant. "It provides a good clue for other studies that can be conducted in other animals or in biological samples from humans."
In a study sure to fuel the controversy about the role of childhood vaccines in autism, scientists at UC Davis have found that a preservative used in some vaccines can... (more)
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AOL's email tax row goes intergalacticThe wide-ranging coalition that objects to a tax on sending email has a new, and unexpected opponent. One that mere earthlings dare engage at their peril.
It's former "Net Queen", space cadet, and Register reader favorite Esther Dyson, whose latest transmission has been captured, decoded and published by the New York Times.
Esther thinks it's a great idea.
Why?
Well, as she explained in the Times on Friday, it unleashes the goodness of ... (more)
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We're Flying Without Wing Flaps And Without A PilotVision of the future - this is what the flapless, maintenance free, uninhabited air vehicle could be like.
A revolutionary model plane has been developed as part of a £6.2m programme, involving engineers from the University of Leicester, funded jointly by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and BAE Systems.
The five-year programme is called FLAVIIR - flapless air vehicle integrated industrial research - and involves teams from Leicest... (more)
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China to monitor bird flu with RFIDAn RFID tracking system designed to slow the spread of avian flu will be tested this month by China’s poultry industry, currently facing flagging demand and low prices following several outbreaks of the disease in different provinces.
The technology, developed by Canadian company Smart-tek Communications, was unveiled to government, academic and industry experts at a conference in Beijing last week.
"Everything is now in place to launch definitive testing in m... (more)
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Invention: Remote-controlled implantsFor over 30 years, Barry Fox has trawled through the world's weird and wonderful patent applications, uncovering the most exciting, bizarre or even terrifying new ideas. His column, Invention, is exclusively online. Scroll down for a roundup of previous Invention articles.
Remote-controlled implants
Remember Fantastic Voyage, the 1966 sci-fi movie in which a medical team is miniaturised and injected into the body of a dying man aboard a tiny submarine? No one... (more)
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Boffins produce plasma at two billion kelvinsScientists at the Sandia National Nuclear Security Administration laboratory have produced plasma at a sizzling two billion kelvins - hotter than a star's interior - although they're not quite sure how they did it.
The "unexpectedly hot output", as the Sandia blurb puts it, is the spawn of the mighty Z machine (seen firing below as "arcs and sparks formed at the water-air interface travel between metal conductors" - crikey). The beast is the world's most powerful X-ray generator t... (more)
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Daytime TV tied to poorer mental scores in elderlyNEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Older women who say talk shows and soap operas are their favorite TV programs tend to score more poorly on tests of memory, attention and other cognitive skills, researchers reported Monday.
That doesn't mean that daytime television is a brain drain, they say, since it's not clear that there's a direct relationship between the two.
But the findings do point to some association between TV choices and intellectual function, and that could p... (more)
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Life's diversity 'being depleted' Virtually all indicators of the likely future for the diversity of life on Earth are heading in the wrong direction, a major new report says.
The Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO) is published as national delegates gather in Brazil under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
The Convention commits governments to slow the decline in the richness of living systems by 2010.
The GBO says "unprecedented efforts" will be needed to achieve this aim.
... (more)
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How big business barged in on the bloggers: Companies once saw them as a nuisance. Now they are trying to get the bloggers onside, realising that they can reach consumers better than any PR company ever couldOnce dismissed as a forum for pedantic, pyjama-clad insomniacs, the blogosphere is now smashing down the barriers to information and achieving parity with the big guns of old media. At least, PR companies certainly think so. Bloggers have become a powerful conduit for stealthy, word-of-mouth marketing that can make or break the image of a company.
"The trick is not to try too hard to sell," says Hugh Macleod of gapingvoid.com. "You need to respect the people reading it, they're co... (more)
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Half a million sign representation to protest Terminator seed technologyHYDERABAD — About half a million farmers from Southern states of India have urged the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to protect country's agro biodiversity against the new and serious threat from the Terminator seeds technology.
The representation by the South Against Genetic Engineering, a coalition of 50 South Indian networks of farmers, civil society groups, consumer movements, scientists and academicians has been made at a time when the Convention on Biological Diversi... (more)
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Support for suicide seed alarms Australian GM opponentsThe Federal Government is pushing to weaken an international moratorium on so-called "terminator technology", a form of genetic engineering that makes harvested seeds sterile.
The technology - which prevents farmers from saving and reusing harvested seed, forcing them to buy new seeds every year - should be assessed case by case, Australian government officials told a United Nations meeting in Spain in January.
Such a move would open the door to commercial use of t... (more)
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Lifelong vaccine will end booster jab ordealBooster jabs could soon become obsolete following the discovery by a British scientist of the world's first effective way to control the speed at which vaccines are released in the body.
The breakthrough has the potential to save health services billions of pounds, eliminate dangers to children by removing the need for top-up injections and prevent the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in developing countries.
Scientists have demonstrated that the technique ... (more)
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Nasa to put man on far side of moonNASA, the American space agency, has unveiled plans for one of the largest rockets ever built to take a manned mission to the far side of the moon.
It will ferry a mother ship and lunar lander into Earth orbit to link up with a smaller rocket carrying the crew. Once united they will head for the moon where the larger ship will remain in orbit after launching the lunar lander and crew.
The design emerged during a space science conference in Houston, Texas, last week.... (more)
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'Now that we have a map, let's start colonizing outer space' - expertFor proof that man will soon live in outer space, you need only look at Christopher Columbus. Or so said space whiz and senior SETI astronomer Seth Shostak during a lecture last night at NASA Ames.
Shostak presented, for the first time, his ideas on the parallels between ocean going explorers and today's space pioneers. The explorers, he argued, moved from setting out on their first voyages to creating rather accurate maps of the continents in a span of about fifty years. From tha... (more)
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Spyware-for-hire couple plead guiltyAn Israeli couple faces prison after confessing to the development and sale of a spyware Trojan horse that helped private investigators snoop on their clients' business competitors.
Ruth Brier-Haephrati, 28, and Michael Haephrati, 44, have entered guilty pleas to industrial espionage charges over the Trojan horse case. Ruth was charged with a litany of offences including fraud, planting computer viruses, and conspiracy. Her husband, Michael, is charged with aiding and abetting tho... (more)
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Swedes plan to colonise MoonWe always knew the Swedes were a shifty bunch - softening hearts worldwide with a pleasing blend of inoffensive europop, cheap yet effortlessly stylish flat-pack furniture and fun-loving, pnemuatic blonde fillies - but now the horrible truth can now be revealed: they're planning to colonise the Moon thereby ensuring their own survival as the Earth's resources dwindle and lesser nations are returned to a primitive Stone-Age state enslaved to Sweden's galactic ambitions*.
The proof ... (more)
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Earth could seed Titan with lifeTerrestrial rocks blown into space by asteroid impacts on Earth could have taken life to Saturn's moon Titan, scientists have announced.
Earth microbes in these meteorites could have seeded the organic-rich world with life, scientists believe.
They think the impact on Earth that killed off the dinosaurs could have ejected enough material for some to reach far-off moons like Titan.
Details were unveiled at a major science conference in Houston, US.
... (more)
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Pentagon plans cyber-insect armyThe Pentagon's defence scientists want to create an army of cyber-insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions.
The idea is to insert micro-systems at the pupa stage, when the insects can integrate them into their body, so they can be remotely controlled later.
Experts told the BBC some ideas were feasible but others seemed "ludicrous".
A similar scheme aimed at manipulating wasps failed when they flew off to ... (more)
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GM Vaccines Recombine into Unpredictable HybridGenetically engineered pox viruses in cell cultures recombined with natural viruses to create new viruses with unpredictable and potentially dangerous characteristics.
In what may be the first experiment of its kind, scientists infected cell cultures with two related viruses. One was a genetically engineered poxvirus, (vaccinia virus (VIC) with a transgene from the influenza virus). The other was a naturally occurring relative of the first virus, isolated from Norwegian wildlife. ... (more)
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Swimming In A Deadly Sea: Awash In RadiationAlthough most of us are unaware of it, we are literally swimming in sea of radiation. Some of it is natural, like the cosmic rays that bombard our planet from space, trace amounts from elements that occur naturally in the ground, and even microwave radiation from sunspots and solar flares. But increasingly, the radiation we are subjected to comes from man-made sources, ranging from medical X-rays to leakage from appliances to cell phones. While much has been written about man-made radiation, mos... (more)
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God's scientist receives supreme award: Richest grant goes to cosmologist who says religion best explains laws of universeCambridge University cosmologist and mathematician John Barrow was awarded $1.6-million yesterday to do research into whether God is sitting at the control panel behind the Theory of Everything about the universe.
He won the 2006 Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities, the world's richest individual scholarly research grant. Its initiator, mutual-fund investor Sir John Templeton, specified that it be worth more than the Nobel Prize (w... (more)
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