Free Republic

This could be your oldest relative . . . April 29, 2006 By Anna Cox They lived more than two million years ago and almost 700 000 years apart. They belonged to the same species and they have finally been reunited at Maropeng at the Cradle of Humankind. In what has been described as an historic and important event by academics, the skull of Mrs, Mr or Ms Ples (the gender has not been agreed on) and the bones of the Taung child - a fossilised child's skull found in a quarry at Taung, in the North Western province -...

Fears that chicken farm's 'safe' bird flu virus could mutate By David Sapsted (Filed: 28/04/2006) As ministry vets prepared to gas 35,000 chickens to curb an outbreak of bird flu, a prominent virologist warned the government not to be sanguine over this supposedly "safe" strain of the disease. Prof Albert Osterhaus, a Dutch virologist, said that the H7 strain found in the flock just outside Dereham, Norfolk, had the potential to mutate into a form just as hazardous as the H5N1 strain, which has killed more than 100 people in Asia. The farm in Hockering, Norfolk, where 35,000 chickens are...

Iraq civil war could spread, say Saudis By Anton La Guardia in Riyadh (Filed: 20/04/2006) Saudi Arabia issued a stark warning yesterday that Iraq was in the grip of civil war which threatened to "suck in" neighbouring countries. On a day when at least 17 more people were killed across Iraq, Riyadh expressed alarm that events were spiralling out of control. Prince Saud al-Faisal:b at odds with Britain over Iraq "Civil war is a war between civilians and there is already war between civilians," Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said. "The threat of break-up in Iraq is a...

Horse antibodies could combat a bird flu outbreak 12:16 28 March 2006 NewScientist.com news service Debora MacKenzie An old-fashioned method may offer a cheap and quick way to protect against the H5N1 bird flu virus. Chinese scientists have produced antibodies in horses that are an effective treatment for bird flu – at least in mice. Jiahai Lu at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou and colleagues repeatedly inoculated horses with a chicken vaccine against H5N1 bird flu to make them produce antibodies. They then collected the horses’ blood, separated out the antibodies and split them to make them less likely to...

Before Scandinavia: These could be the first skiers By Robert Marquand | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor BEIJING – Move over Bode. You may have competition you don't know about - among a sturdy skiing clan in northwest China. They are central Asians, Mongols, and Kazaks, living in the remote Altay mountains of Xinjiang province, where some claim skiing was first conceived. Using curved planks whose design dates back 2,000 years, the Altaic peoples are formidable skiers. They might not win a medal on perfectly groomed Olympic trails. But they can break their own paths, track elk for...

Earth rocks could have taken life to Titan 18:08 17 March 2006 NewScientist.com news service Maggie McKee, Houston Titan may offer a 'soft' landing for life-carrying boulders blasted from Earth (Image: NASA/JPL)Related Boulders blasted away from the Earth's surface after a major impact could have travelled all the way to the outer solar system, new calculations reveal. The work suggests that terrestrial microbes on the rocks could in theory have landed on Saturn's giant moon, Titan. But whether they could have survived once there remains unclear. The fact that meteorites from the Moon and Mars have landed on Earth confirms...

Britain 'could be harbouring 20 more Abu Hamzas' By Philip Johnston and George Jones (Filed: 15/02/2006) Britain could be harbouring 20 more foreign radical imams like Abu Hamza, the Government's anti-terrorism watchdog said yesterday. Lord Carlile QC, who carried out an official review of counter-terrorism laws, said radicals such as Hamza had been able to operate because not enough had been done to check the credentials of people arriving from abroad. Hamza was jailed for seven years last week for inciting murder and preaching hatred. Lord Carlile, a Liberal Democrat peer, said he feared that other extremists were continuing to...

'Wrecking ball' could break the ice on Mars 11:58 26 January 2006 NewScientist.com news service MAggie McKee Orbital images show what appear to be glacier-like features in the mid-latitudes of Mars (Image: A Nahm/Brown University) A plan to drop a quarter-tonne copper ball through Mars's atmosphere and study the ejecta it blasts away from the planet's surface on impact is to be proposed to NASA. The mission, called THOR, would test models suggesting the planet's tilt – and therefore its climate – swings through extreme changes every 50,000 years. Robotic landers and rovers have previously visited the Red Planet's equatorial...

Iran 'could go nuclear within three years' By Con Coughlin, Defence and Security Editor (Filed: 16/01/2006) Iranian scientists are expected to start work this week on the highly technical task of enriching tons of uranium to a level where it could be used in the production of atomic weapons, say the latest reports received by western intelligence agencies. The work is to be undertaken at the top-secret Natanz uranium enrichment facility 90 miles north-east of the capital, Teheran. The very existence of the plant was concealed from the outside world until two years ago, when an Iranian exile group produced...

Week of Dec. 3, 2005 Vol. 168, No. 23 , p. 366 Pomegranate juice could fight Alzheimer's Christen Brownlee From Washington, D.C., at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience Drinking pomegranate juice has been linked to a host of positive health effects, such as reduced risks of heart disease and cancer. Researchers may soon add another benefit to drinking the deep-red drink: slowing progression of Alzheimer's disease. Richard Hartman of Loma Linda (Calif.) University and his colleagues worked with mice that were genetically predisposed to develop Alzheimer's-like symptoms, including buildups in the brain of a protein called beta-amyloid. The...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16, 2005 — On Dec. 22, 1941, 4,600 American soldiers marched off transport ships docked in Brisbane, their deployment to The Philippines having been diverted days earlier by rapid Japanese advances in the Pacific. Pearl Harbor had just been attacked. Darwin would be bombed three months later. Those servicemen disembarking in Brisbane were the first of some one million US troops who would pass through Australia over the next four years during World War II. As one woman wrote: "Suddenly the Yanks were here ... They all seemed to have big mouths and square teeth, and came from...

Envoy: Somalia Could Become Terror Haven Thursday November 10, 2005 1:16 AM By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press Writer UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Somalia could become a terrorist haven because it is a failed state where the number of extremist groups is growing, the top U.N. envoy for the country warned Wednesday. Francois Lonseny Fall said he told a closed meeting of the U.N. Security Council that ``extremist groups were growing not only in Mogadishu (the capital) but in the rest of the territory'' and were sometimes carrying out assassinations. ``This is a real threat not only for Somalia but...

Bird flu 'could cost $283bn'Mark Tran Thursday November 3, 2005 The economic cost of bird flu for Asian countries could rise to as much as $283bn (£159.6bn), the Asian Development Bank (ADB) warned today. The ADB gives two scenarios. In the less serious scenario, Asia could face an economic shock equivalent to $99bn in its 2006 GDP, the equivalent of 2.3 percentage points lost. In the second scenario, Asian consumers and investors would reduce their activity and the rest of the world would cut back on consumption. The estimated loss to the region could be $283bn, or around 6.5 percentage...

How the bird flu pandemic could spread (Filed: 18/10/2005) Worst-case scenarioFlu viruses mutate all the time and previous pandemics have originated in birds. It only takes a single virus to mutate into a deadly form. The H5N1 strain is one of the most virulent bird viruses ever seen. Half of all people infected directly from birds have died and many infections may not have been recorded. The new strain is most likely to emerge in Asia, where exposure to bird flu is greatest, possibly in rural areas away from the gaze of health officials. By the time the world realises...

High doses of vitamin C injected into the bloodstream may be effective at combating cancer, new research suggests. Scientists found that vitamin C in the form of ascorbate killed cancer cells in the laboratory. But the effective dose was so high it could only be delivered to patients by infusion into the bloodstream. The findings appear to contradict earlier studies showing no cancer benefit from vitamin C. However the researchers point out that those trials only investigated orally taken vitamins. Vitamin C kills cancer cells but leaves normal cells intact In the latest study a US team led by Dr...

Influenza pandemic 'could be avoided' By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 04/08/2005) A global influenza outbreak with the potential to kill millions could be stopped in its tracks with concerted action and enough antiviral drugs for three million people. Britain would be "overwhelmed" if a deadly strain was allowed to reach its shores, said an author of one of two international studies published today in the journals Nature and Science. The World Health Organisation has given warning that the current outbreak of bird flu in the Far East could seed a human pandemic.However, for the first time it appears to...

Unrest 'could double' oil price By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (Filed: 27/06/2005) A warning of a possible near doubling in the cost of oil was issued yesterday as UK prices rose to more than £4 a gallon and the AA Motoring Trust said the price of diesel was approaching £5 a gallon. Further rises were expected next week, it said. The price of crude oil could soon reach $100 a barrel, compared with the present historic high of $60, if there was further supply disruption in Russia or a political upset in Saudi Arabia, a leading German institute said. The IFW World...

Jones soda has a contest where you submit pics and if enough people vote for the pic then they pic it to put on a label for jones soda so I submitted a pic of my dog brutus for the contest so if you would like to see brutus and vote for his picture you can here http://www.jonessoda.com/gallery/view.php?ID=406982&offset=27 all votes would be greatly appriciated and i will let you know if my pic was selected for the label in here

Could Iran Checkmate America? Rachel Neuwirth, April 25, 2005 On March 29, 2005 the London Arab daily Al-Hayat published a report on Iran's current preparedness for an American or Israeli attack. The report was translated by www.memri.org (Middle East Media Research Institute). MEMRI introduced the report as follows: In recent months, commanders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and armed forces have announced their complete preparedness for a possible military attack on Iran's nuclear installations and other sensitive sites. Iranian spokesmen have declared that Iran's response would be formidable. The interview indicates the hostility, confidence, determination and intractability of the Iranian leadership....

Global Warming Could Worsen U.S. Pollution: Report Sat Feb 19, 3:57 PM ET Science - Reuters WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Global warming could stifle cleansing summer winds across parts of the northern United States over the next 50 years and worsen air pollution, U.S. researchers said on Saturday. Further warming of the atmosphere, as is happening now, would block cold fronts bringing cooler, cleaner air from Canada and allow stagnant air and ozone pollution to build up over cities in the Northeast and Midwest, they predicted. "The air just cooks," said Loretta Mickley of Harvard University's Division of Engineering and Applied...