Politics

http://www.aip.org/pnu/2006/split/772-3.html?source=rsspnu "Sunlight on a Chip Light emitting diodes (LEDs) convert electricity into light very efficiently, and are increasingly the preferred design for niche applications... To really make an impression in the lighting world, however, a device must be able to produce ... a softer, whiter, more color balanced illumination. Scientists ... in Japan, have now achieved a highly efficient, tunable white light with an improved yellow-producing phosphor .... Their light yield is 55 lumens per watt, about twice as bright as commercially available products operating in the same degree of whiteness."

In 2001, a mysterious red rain fell over parts of India. Scientists still do not have a full explanation of the colour -- there have been suggestions ranging from alien life to parts of a comet, but a recent analysis shows that they are actually a strange type of cell. Researchers in England found that the particles contain DNA, although the DNA is different than any other they have analysed. The cells also have unusually thick walls and some contain "daughter" cells that are even more puzzling. Now it is up to scientists to work out if the cells are terrestrial, or possibly from space. http://www.newscientistspace.com/art...25453.100.html

Yet another piece in the great puzzle, the puzzle of evolution. We have found many of the intermediates predicted from evolution but were missing an important one; the link between fish and land animals. Paleontologists have now found a fossil that fills in that gap, the missing link is about 375 million years old and has been named Tiktaalik roseae. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/04/060406100543.htm - Ryan Jones

Are black holes the most destructive things in the universe? Yes they probably are but there may be a catch, the information that falls into the black hole its self may not be destroyed. Although anything that enters the black hole is condemned to remain in the hole (with the exception of Hawking radiation and escape via quantum tunnelling) the information may not actually be lost. Due to the effect known as quantum entanglement it could someday be possible to "program" a black hole says scientists. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/quantum-world/dn8836-black-holes-the-ultimate-quantum-computers.html - Ryan Jones

Nearly four million Americans - and perhaps one million more, illegally - take medications for ADHD, and the number is rising. But now doctors are worrying that ADHD is widely misdiagnosed, and several serious side effects of the medications are concerning them further. According to reports, several major ADHD drugs are causing hallucinations in up to 5% of children taking them, a substantial number. This worries the doctors, as the drugs are also being prescribed without major consultation - many family doctors prescribe them based on just a few minutes of discussion with the parents. It appears that ADHD diagnoses need a major reconsideration. http://www.new…

Fossils of a new species of bird-like dinosaur were found in Utah recently. This meat-eating dinosaur was seven feet tall, and could probably run up to 25 miles per hour. It had powerful arms, a strong toothless beak and threatening claws that fits the large dinosaur for being a predator. For an unknown reason, large feathers grew on its head. "It's quite different from modern birds," Lindsay Zanno, a doctoral student at the University of Utah, said. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060405/ap_on_sc/feathered_dinosaur

hi! I am new here. I am 13 year old from vietnam and wondering what are teh differences of democrat and republican?

Could the next level of computer technology be just over the horizon? An international research team think they have identified something that acts as a one way electrical valve, a diode... the only difference is that its a single molecule! Diodes are the logical "gates" that make a [acr=Central Processing Unit]CPU[/acr] work, if we can make these smaller then we can make the [acr=Central Processing Unit]CPU[/acr] its self much smaller. Could this lead to the next generation of ultra-fast and microscopic computers? Only time will tell. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/04/060403230648.htm - Ryan Jones

Watch as the laws of physics are seemingly broken infront of your eyes! Scientists have found a molecule that can spin without inducing friction, something that is defined as imposible by physics and could thus revolutionise our understanding of the behaviour of molecules in liquid states. http://www.livescience.com/technology/060330_frictionless_spinning.html - Ryan Jones

Fascinating editorial today by Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby. Mallaby is not a conservative -- he spent 13 years writing for The Economist, a British paper that follows economic news and which has been a frequent critic of the Bush and Blair administrations (as Mallaby has been). This is a guy who writes books about apartheid and the World Bank, folks, not Rush Limbaugh and Christian evangelism. He knows his stuff. His editorials make frequent appearances on liberal as well as conservative blogs. And he has written editorials that are extremely critical of the Bush administration, such as this one, criticizing his economic policies. He's seen by most a…

The Georgia Institute of technology may have found a new way to get rid of uranium contamination. Certain bacteria that live in the subsurface soils can convert uranium contamination into an insoluble form by releasing a phosphate compound. This bacteria has potential for cleaning up uranium contamination at nuclear power plants as well as threats from nuclear weapons, giving us a new way to keep nuclear power safer. http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20060330-18021100-bc-us-bacteria.xml

The skull of what may be the "missing link" between us humans and Homo Erectus may have been discovered in Ethiopia. The skull was a rare find, as it had almost all of its pieces. It is from a time that little is known about, the time where Homo Erectus made its transition into Homo Sapiens, some time around 250,000 years ago. Hopefully, the skull will tell us more about this time and how humans have evolved. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060327/ap_on_re_af/ethiopia_ancient_skull;_ylt=AnnG.29CXodh.7NcIlFvP_0PLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--

A new procedure dubbed "closed-heart" surgery is revolutionizing the way patients get new heart valves. Rather than cracking the rib cage open to insert the new valves, doctors are now simply making a two-inch incision and threading a new valve in by wire. The procedure can even be done while the heart is still beating, and allows patients to get out of the hospital faster. However, at this point, the procedure will only be used for those deemed too sick to receive traditional heart surgery, as it has only been performed on 150 patients and is not "proven" quite yet. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060401/ap_on_he_me/easier_heart_valves

Hands down, my favorite was Dukakis in the tank. I can still remember the squeaking sound of the tank as it rolled around with Dukakis looking like a complete nerd.

This promises to be an important tool in the quest not only to understand the operation of future computer circuit and data-storage elements as they shrink toward atomic dimensions buy allowing us to examine how magentism works and thus affects things on the atom size scales. Will this help us develop smaller and faster data-storage elements? Only time will tell. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060330191234.htm - Ryan Jones

A new discovery in the in astrophysics, the discovery of the strongest magnetic ever discovered. This huge magnetic field which is 1000 million million times larger than our Earth's own magnetic field is created by the collision of two neutron stars. Due to the amount of energy released from these events it is also suspected that they may play a part in gamma ray bursts. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060331153110.htm - Ryan Jones

http://www.climate%20data%20hint%20at%20irreversible%20rise%20in%20seas.com/ In the next 100 year, global average temperatures could be as much as four degrees higher, translating into a sea level rise of 13-20 feet. The rise would be caused by eroding polar ice caps the damage which, according to computer models, is irreversible. Such conditions haven't been seen on earth science 300 thousand years ago, when Earth was between to two ice ages. By not curbing our production of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses we are essentially endangering our coastlines, where some of the worlds largest cities are.

A DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST STATE I have been a Democrat all my life. It is the party that represents the people issues. The current chaotic economy of ours is the product of a corporate dollar mentality. We must restore this economy to a Constitutional peoples government as the Constitution dictates. The aversion of the conservatives to Democratic Socialism and replacing it with corporate socialism is a clear violation of our Constitution and its intent of serving the people. The most logical way to do this is by reforming the electoral system to get rid of the corrupting dollar influences that the wealthy and the corporations have used to get control of the politic…

Everyone remembers the [acr=Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome]SARS[/acr] virus from last year and there were fears of a global outbreak of the virus and there is still that risk that there could be one. Thankfully we may have the start of a cure in the form of an inhibitor. Scientists at The Scripps Research center have identified a group of enzymes that prevent the SARS virus from replicating, this may lead to the creation of a drug that can be used to treat people with the SARS virus and also may provide a base for preventing infection in the first place! http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060329084135.htm - Ryan Jones

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/03/08/port.security/index.html In a nutshell: The House Appropriations Committee voted 62-2 to block the Dubai Ports deal. The amendment was inserted into an emergency supplemental funding bill for military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill also includes disaster assistance for the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. So basically, if Bush wants to keep the UAE investors in the Carlyle Group happy by vetoing the bill (which would, of course, be his first veto ever!), he's going to f*ck over a lot of ordinary Americans in the process, in addition to the military. Well played, Congress!

Chilling, if true: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L30516921.htm http://washingtontimes.com/national/20060323-114842-5680r.htm http://www.theepochtimes.com/211,111,,1.html http://www.nationalreview.com/nordlinger/nordlinger200603300722.asp

Funny note. This only made A-5 at the Chronicle.

Could we be on the edge of the time where computers are intergrated directly with our brains? Well... not quite but this is a huge step towards such an achievement. Bio-organic processing is still in its early stages of development but is progressing with impressive speed as this new goal has been reached - researchers have actually managed to fuse brain cells with a computer chip. Sit back and watch as the computer-organism boundary becomes ever blurrier. http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/060327_neuro_chips.html Ryan Jones

Yes... we already knew this. But, new studies show that New Orleans in sinking due more to tectonic activity then any other cause, human related or otherwise. The results from the study are being criticised as being a too sweeping conclusion drawn based on a relatively small data set. The data set was taken from 50 years of surveyance from the Michoud region, an area with no oil drilling, water drilling or compactation of sediments. Yet, there is still sinking land mass in this region. http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/328/2

I don't expect there to be any grand social collapses, and alarmists tend to errantly and constantly spot them on the horizon, whether caused by oil shortages or no good teenagers. Still, I don't expect nuclear weapons to be used in any major world city, but it is a threat. Since social issues came up in another thread as a threat, it got me thinking and I think its worth a topic. Basically, modern civilization seems to be a strange mix of exceptionally adaptive intelligent individuals and at the same time a volitile act of mental focus that spans dozens of generations. We have many institutions in this country that are simply fixtures - part of its stable n…