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MIT biochemists have identified a molecular mechanism behind fear, and successfully cured it in mice, according to an article in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Researchers from MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory hope that their work could lead to the first drug to treat the millions of adults who suffer each year from persistent, debilitating fears - including hundreds of soldiers returning from conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. Inhibiting a kinase, an enzyme that change proteins, called Cdk5 facilitates the extinction of fear learned in a particular context, Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain...

Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies. The great-great-grandson of Prince Otto, Germany's Iron Chancellor and architect of the modern German state, the young von Bismarck showed early promise as a brilliant scholar, but led an exotic life of gilded aimlessness that attracted the attention of the gossip columns from the moment he arrived in Oxford in 1983 and hosted a dinner at which the severed heads of...

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Rep. Barney Frank said Thursday he would start pushing to lift a U.S. ban on online gambling in the next few weeks, but said it was too early to make any concrete move to lift restrictions ruled illegal last month by the World Trade Organization. Frank, D-Mass., who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, told reporters that the online gambling bill passed last fall was "one of the stupidest things I ever saw." "I want to get it undone. I plan to file legislation," Barney said, explaining that he would lay out his plans in the next...

A spokesman for Swift & Co. says a lawsuit filed recently by eighteen former Swift & Co. employees is "completely without merit." The $23-million lawsuit alleges that the meat packing company conspired to manipulate and depress the labor market and wages by hiring illegal immigrants. The lawsuit, filed late Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, alleges that defendants including Swift and its owners, HM Capital Partners LLC in Dallas -- formerly Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst -- engaged in an "enterprise that grossly affected commerce through a pattern of racketeering activity" in violation of...

10) MARIJUANA USE HAS NO EFFECT ON MORTALITY: A massive study of California HMO members funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) found marijuana use caused no significant increase in mortality. Tobacco use was associated with increased risk of death. Sidney, S et al. Marijuana Use and Mortality. American Journal of Public Health. Vol. 87 No. 4, April 1997. p. 585-590. Sept. 2002. 9) HEAVY MARIJUANA USE AS A YOUNG ADULT WON’T RUIN YOUR LIFE: Veterans Affairs scientists looked at whether heavy marijuana use as a young adult caused long-term problems later, studying identical twins in which one...

In a meeting that will go down in internet history, the United States government last night conceded that it can no longer expect to maintain its position as the ultimate authority over the internet. Having been the internet's instigator and, since 1998, its voluntary taskmaster, the US government finally agreed to transition its control over not-for-profit internet overseeing organisation ICANN, making the organisation a more international body. However, assistant commerce secretary John Kneuer, the US official in charge of such matters, also made clear that the US was still determined to keep control of the net's root zone file -...

RANDOM SEARCH ON GOOGLE REVEALS SURPRISE TREASURE By Mike Cassidy Mercury News Tony Gellepis remembers the last time he saw his Navy-issue peacoat. More or less remembers. See, he'd had a drink. OK, a few. And it was 65 years ago. March 1941. Shore leave. San Francisco. ``San Francisco was a great liberty port,'' Gellepis, 85, says, sitting in his Santa Clara duplex. ``That called for hoisting a few. I mean, you didn't want to go to the library.''

What: International Airport Centers sues former employee, claiming use of a secure file deletion utility violated federal hacking laws. When: Decided March 8 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. Outcome: Federal hacking law applies, the court said in a 3-0 opinion written by Judge Richard Posner. What happened, according to the court: Jacob Citrin was once employed by International Airport Centers and given a laptop to use in his company's real estate related business. The work consisted of identifying "potential acquisition targets." At some point, Citrin quit IAC and decided to continue in the same business...

NAVY TAKES ON TERROR Unit expects to deploy sometime in '07 By SETH HETTENA Associated Press IMPERIAL BEACH - Six years after suicide bombers killed 17 sailors on the USS Cole in Yemen, the Navy on Thursday commissioned its first active-duty unit with the job of thwarting a repeat attack. Naval Coastal Warfare Squadron Five will protect shipping lanes and U.S. forces overseas, defend harbors and provide port security with small, fast gunboats not seen since Vietnam. The squadron, expanding to 325 men and women, is expected to make its first deployment in 2007 to either Kuwait, South Korea or...

SAN BERNARDINO (AP) - In a rare heresy trial, the local diocese has convicted and excommunicated a priest who joined a denomination that doubts papal infallibility and doesn't follow church teachings on homosexuality, abortion and ordination of women clergy. The Rev. Ned Reidy received a 30-page letter last week notifying him that a three-priest tribunal of the Diocese of San Bernardino had found him guilty of heresy and schism and that his authority to conduct priestly functions was revoked. The one-day trial was held Dec. 13. Reidy said he would not appeal the decision because he has not considered himself...

Congress chases terrorists, gets dealers By David C. Harper Congress is an interesting branch of the government. Talk to people. Nobody wants Congress sticking its fingers in their lives. I have never met a person who sincerely wanted Congress messing around in his life. People I have met want Congress messing around in other people’s lives. There is always some villain they think that Congress should be chasing, not the rest of us. Top of the list of congressional targets to chase are terrorists. Who better than terrorists for Congress to go after? Right? They are worst of the bad....

The Entertainment Software Association is planning to sue the State of California over the passage of AB1179, a bill that has outlawed the sale of violent video games to minors. President Douglas Lowenstein said that he "intends to file a lawsuit to strike this law down," and added that he is "confident that we will prevail." Is this a case of the ESA throwing respect for laws meant to protect children to the wind? When one peers below the surface of the headline, one sees a number of interesting facets to this development. For example, proponents of the law point...

A Minnesota appeals court has ruled that the presence of encryption software on a computer may be viewed as evidence of criminal intent. Ari David Levie, who was convicted of photographing a nude 9-year-old girl, argued on appeal that the PGP encryption utility on his computer was irrelevant and should not have been admitted as evidence during his trial. PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy and is sold by PGP Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif. But the Minnesota appeals court ruled 3-0 that the trial judge was correct to let that information be used when handing down a guilty verdict....

LOS ANGELES - When the Rev. Alan Meenan took over as senior pastor at the nationally prominent Hollywood First Presbyterian Church, it had been losing members for 20 years. Now, hundreds of new worshippers are flocking to an alternative service staged by the church at a nearby nightclub that offers live rock music and a casual atmosphere that doesn't frown on flip-flops and nose piercings. The service, called Contemporary Urban Experience, has bolstered membership at one of the most storied Presbyterian congregations in the country. But it has also created a deep rift between old and new members that threatens...

Astronomers have figured out why a series of small galaxies surrounding the Milky Way are distributed around it in the shape of a pancake. Theorists believed that the eleven dwarf galaxy companions should have a diffuse, spherical arrangement. But a University of Durham team used a supercomputer to show how the galaxies could take the pancake form without challenging cosmological theory. The results were presented at the UK National Astronomy Meeting. According to cosmological theory, soon after the Big Bang, cold dark matter formed the first large structures in the Universe, which then collapsed under their own weight to form...

Millions of wireless access points are spread across the US and the world. About 70% percent of these access points are unprotected—wide open to access by anyone who happens to drive by. The other 30% are protected by WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) and a small handful are protected by the new WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) standard. At a recent ISSA (Information Systems Security Association) meeting in Los Angeles, a team of FBI agents demonstrated current WEP-cracking techniques and broke a 128 bit WEP key in about three minutes. Special Agent Geoff Bickers ran the Powerpoint presentation and explained the attack,...

United Virtualities is offering online marketers and publishers technology that attempts to undermine the growing trend among consumers to delete cookies planted in their computers. The New York company on Thursday unveiled what it calls PIE, or persistent identification element, a technology that's uploaded to a browser and restores deleted cookies. In addition, PIE, which can't be easily removed, can also act as a cookie backup, since it contains the same information. Cookies are small files often uploaded to people's computers as they visit websites run by retailers, entertainment companies, newspapers and other businesses. The text files contain information that's...

LA MORITA, Mexico — Sergio Cruz almost made it. He had walked five days through the desert, was robbed at gunpoint, abandoned by his guide and now was within 20 yards of the border. That's when he saw the line of trucks and sport utility vehicles flying American flags just over the barbed-wire fence separating Mexico from the U.S. Frustrated, he and nine other travelers lay quietly in a ditch along the railroad tracks hoping the men would go away. Early Sunday, Enrique Enriquez stumbled across the migrants and broke the news. "Did anyone tell you about the Minutemen?" Enriquez,...

Lethal computer virus spreads in humans by David Quainton The first computer virus that passes from PCs to humans has been discovered in the wild. Leading anti-virus firms are putting users on high alert after Malwarlaria.B was spammed worldwide in the early hours of Friday morning. "We've had proof-of-concept examples of this for some months now," said Avril Poisson, principal analyst at industry watchers Willwisp. "But disinfection is hard to achieve because the virus mutates so quickly. This is truly a significant and worrying development." First discovered in the Far East in early 2004 Malwarlaria.A spread in cats and other...

WASHINGTON – Nearly two decades after a sweeping amnesty for illegal immigrants gave Gerardo Jimenez a ticket out of a San Diego County avocado orchard, he worries that the unyielding tide of low-wage workers from Latin America might pull the economic rug out from under his feet. "There are too many people coming," said Jimenez, who supervises a drywall crew that worked all winter remodeling an office building three blocks from the White House. Jimenez's concern reflects an ambivalence about immigration among established immigrants in America. It also challenges a key assumption of President Bush's proposal for a massive new...