Free Republic

Volume 7, Number 44: 3 November 2004 In our many reviews of recently-published studies that reveal the existence of a widespread millennial-scale oscillation of climate, we routinely draw attention to evidence for the worldwide occurrence of the Little Ice Age, Medieval Warm Period, Dark Ages Cold Period, Roman Warm Period, etc. We here continue in this vein in reviewing a study that identifies all of the above climatic intervals -- plus others -- in the Patagonian ice fields of South America. Glasser et al. (2004) describe a large body of evidence related to glacier fluctuations in the two major ice...

Tailored therapies to target a range of diseases, such as diabetes and breast cancer, may be a step closer after the final draft of the gene-rich part of the "human book of life" was published yesterday. The sequence provides a blueprint of the genes that make life possible and is accurate to only one error in 100,000 "letters" of code, an article in the journal Nature reveals. Analysis of the new data shows that the human genome, which is the entire genetic map of an organism, contains between 20,000 and 25,000 genes. Surprisingly, the number of genes is possibly...

Near-flawless silicon carbide crystals bring extreme electronics a step closer. A method to make virtually perfect crystals of silicon carbide could revolutionize the electronics industry. The technique may pave the way for tougher and more efficient circuits. Silicon carbide (SiC) is much better than silicon at carrying current in an electronic circuit, so it could potentially reduce the amount of energy wasted in every electronic device in the home or office. It can also operate at much higher temperatures, meaning that silicon carbide-based sensors could even monitor jet engines from the inside. Scientists have long recognized the potential of silicon...

Volume 7, Number 26: 30 June 2004 In one of the more intriguing aspects of his study of global climate change over the past three millennia - of which he amazingly makes no particular mention - Loehle (2004) presents a graph of the Sargasso Sea and South African temperature records of Keigwin (1996) and Holmgren et al. (1999, 2001) that reveals the existence of a major spike in surface air temperature that began sometime in the early 1400s.  This abrupt and anomalous warming pushed global air temperatures considerably above the peak warmth of the 20th century, after which they fell...

A team of astronomers have found a colossal black hole so ancient, they're not sure how it had enough time to grow to its current size, about 10 billion times the mass of the Sun. Sitting at the heart of a distant galaxy, the black hole appears to be about 12.7 billion years old, which means it formed just one billion years after the universe began and is one of the oldest supermassive black holes ever known. The black hole, researchers said, is big enough to hold 1,000 of our own Solar Systems and weighs about as much as...

Remote viewing possible A satellite using intelligent software has alerted boffins that a volcano in the Antarctic is erupting. Normally if Mt Erebus erupts, the only witnesses would be the penguins who don't tend to talk about it and scientists wouldn't be aware of it for months. However, since they jacked in the software into NASA's Earth Observing-1 spacecraft that can make its own scientific observations without being asked, scientists have snapped the event. The software was developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it scanned pictures an instrument highly sensitive to heat released from molten lava. After it detected heat...

FRIDAY, June 25 (HealthDayNews) -- Stroke patients left with impaired arm movement for an average of nine years made impressive gains after undergoing a new kind of physiotherapy, researchers report. What's more, the therapy, called bilateral repetitive rhythmic training intervention (BATRAC), appears to work by re-wiring the brain's motor control circuitry. "This is the first study to prove that BATRAC therapy also has a neuroscience basis," said German researcher Dr. Andreas R. Luft, of the University of Tubingen. "Being able to observe changes in brain biology that account for treatment effects brings BATRAC therapy out of the shade of non-scientific...

Environmental group given 48 hours to dismantle Forest Rescue Station GRANTS PASS — The Bureau of Land Management gave Greenpeace 48 hours to dismantle its summer encampment in Southern Oregon on Tuesday after the international environmental group tried to disrupt logging on a nearby timber sale. BLM had been reviewing a special recreation permit for Greenpeace to exceed the 14-day camping limit on federal land to conduct public education programs. But the agency revoked its preliminary authorization following a protest where a 20-foot steel shipping container was used to block loggers from the Soukow timber sale outside Glendale. "This...

Dietary restriction is known to increase lifespan in organisms ranging from yeast to mammals, presumably, in the words of Mair et al. (2003), "by slowing the accumulation of aging-related damage."  In stark contrast, however, their studies of Drosophila (the common fruit fly) indicate that "dietary restriction extends lifespan entirely by reducing the short-term risk of death."  So powerful is this phenomenon, in fact, they report that only "two days after the application of dietary restriction at any age for the first time, previously fully fed flies are no more likely to die than flies of the same age that have...

WASHINGTON - Hoping to learn more about undersea volcanoes, scientists sent a camera-equipped submarine down to take a look. They got more than they bargained for, witnessing a deep-sea eruption. "At first we really didn't understand what was going on," said Bob Embley, chief scientist on the mission, which involved nearly three dozen researchers. "We were seeing billowing clouds coming up and turning yellow. There was sulfur and rocks were flying out," said Embley, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. "We realized we were the first to witness a deep-sea volcano during...

Issue Sparks Heated Debate Among Residents POSTED: 9:13 am EDT April 21, 2004/ UPDATED: 9:21 am EDT April 22, 2004 Hamtramck residents will soon be hearing a Muslim call to prayer five times a day following a unanimous vote by the City Council Tuesday night. The issue of sending out the prayer on a loudspeaker in the city sparked a heated debate among residents. "If you guys think about it, the Muslim call to prayer is actually a beautiful thing," an unidentified man who supported the issue said during the City Council meeting. Some residents are opposed to the call...

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Maryland have created a new class of artificial proteins that can assemble themselves into a gel and encourage the growth of selected cell types. This biomaterial, which can be tailored to send different biological signals to cells, is expected to help scientists who are developing new ways to repair injured or diseased body parts. "We're trying to give an important new tool to tissue engineers to help them do their work more quickly and efficiently," said James L. Harden, whose lab team developed the new biomaterial. "We're the first to produce a self-assembling protein...

Two adults and a child suffered minor injuries today when a driver collided with a Metro train in the Medical Center about 2:30 p.m. today. Metro police officers said a woman ran a red light at Fannin and Binz, where lights in all four directions turn red when a train is passing. The driver, with an adult and child passenger, then stopped on the Metro tracks, police said, and was struck by a train. Police said no one on the train was injured. It is the 31st accident involving a Metro train since November.

METRORail Encounters 26th Accident, 1st Pedestrian-Involved Incident HOUSTON -- An ambulance transporting a pedestrian struck by a METRORail train near Reliant Park is involved in an accident as it transported the victim to a hospital Wednesday afternoon, News2Houston reported. News2Houston reported a man was struck by the light-rail train around 4:05 p.m. in the 8200 block of Fannin near Holly Hall. A crew with the Houston Fire Department treated the victim at the scene. The victim reportedly suffered a broken hand and some cuts. He was transported to a nearby hospital. However, as the ambulance was en route to...

After witnessing a weekend of self-congratulatory festivities marking the January 1st debut of Houston’s MetroRail transit system, the hometown newspaper’s editorial board could hardly contain its exuberance. “Viewed from any angle,” opined the Houston Chronicle, the kickoff celebrations were a sure “sign of good things to come.” To the board, itself a merciless campaigner for rail, the roughly 15,000 people in attendance suggested that a “large helping of crow” was in order for transit critics. Reports from Houston spread quickly causing the Arizona Republic’s editorial page to gloat “critics rail at light rail to no avail.” After all, what...

If there is life on other planets, an Australian team of astronomers has just found the region in our Milky Way galaxy where it is most likely to exist.. Unfortunately, technology does not yet exist to get man within reach of his nearest possible neighbours. According to Charles Lineweaver, writing in Science, there are four ingredients needed to create complex life: the presence of a host star (such as the Sun), enough heavy elements (carbon, oxygen and nitrogen) to form a planet, sufficient time for biological evolution (at least four billion years in the case of Earth) and the absence...

New studies are continually challenging the simplistic view of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that increases in the partial pressure of the air's CO2 content (pCO2) have a major, if not phenomenal, impact on earth's climate.  The most recent variant of one of these challenges is presented by Shaviv and Veizer (2003), who suggest that from two-thirds to three-fourths of the variance in earth's temperature (T) over the past 500 million years may be attributable to cosmic ray flux (CRF) variations due to solar system passages through the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy. After presenting...

Blacksburg, Va., September 18, 2003 -- Billions of years ago, there was a lot more greenhouse gas than today, and that was a good thing – else the Earth might be an icy ball. How much greenhouse gas was there in the ancient atmosphere? A 1993 model by Jim Kasting of Pennsylvania State University estimates that carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the Earth's early atmosphere must have been 10 times to as much as 10,000 times today's level, in order to compensate for the young (and fainter) sun. Now, a measurement of the fossil record using a new instrument...

OSLO (Reuters) - Homes on the Arctic tip of Norway started getting power from the moon on Saturday via a unique subsea power station driven by the rise and fall of the tide. A tidal current in a sea channel near the town of Hammerfest, caused by the gravitational tug of the moon on the earth, started turning the 10-meter (33 ft) blades of a turbine bolted to the seabed to generate electricity for the local grid. The prototype looks like an underwater windmill and is expected to generate about 700,000 kilowatt hours of non-polluting energy a year, or...

In a recent discussion published in the Russian journal Geomagnetizm i Aeronomiya (Vol. 43, pp. 132-135), two scientists from the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics of the Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences challenge the politically-correct global warming dogma that vexes the entire world.  Bashkirtsev and Mashnich (2003) say that "a number of publications report that the anthropogenic impact on the Earth's climate is an obvious and proven fact," when in actuality, in their opinion, "none of the investigations dealing with the anthropogenic impact on climate convincingly argues for such an impact." In the way of contrary evidence,...