Free Republic

The limitless promise of nanotechnology -- and the growing peril of a moratorium. "The best way I can describe it is if you close your eyes and dream. You could never be hungry, never be sick, have all the energy you need, all the water, all the food and no diseases. There is no aspect in the world economy or your personal life that is not assumed to be transformed by this new technology." The amazing development that is supposed to usher in this utopia is nanotechnology, the manipulation of matter at the molecular and atomic level. But the man...

Dec. 4 — The number of doctoral degrees awarded in U.S. science and engineering programs continues to drop, but women are earning a growing share of them, according to survey results published Thursday by the National Science Foundation. About 24,550 science and engineering doctorates were earned by students attending U.S. universities in 2002, down from slightly more than 25,500 in 2001, according to the NSF, a federal agency that supports science and engineering research. ... The number of doctoral degrees conferred in most other fields remained roughly the same last year, and has hovered around 15,400 annually since 1998, the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A growing percentage of scientists and engineers in the United States come from other countries, the National Science Board reported on Wednesday. While saying it was not necessarily alarming to have foreign-born scientists working in the United States, the Board said the government should look at ways to train more citizens in these fields. The board, appointed to advise the federal government, used National Science Foundation figures taken from Census estimates of foreign-born workers. It found that foreign-born workers with bachelor's degrees represented 17 percent of all science and engineering positions held by people with bachelor's degrees,...

Eight scientists and engineers have been named the 2002 National Medal of Science winners, and another eight people and one company have been named National Medal of Technology winners, President George W. Bush announced on Oct. 22. The science medals are going to John I. Brauman of Stanford University for chemistry; James E. Darnell Jr. of Rockefeller University and Evelyn M. Witkin of Rutgers University for biological sciences; Leo L. Beranek of BBN Technologies, Cambridge, Mass., for engineering; and James G. Glimm, of the State University of New York, Stony Brook, for mathematics. Other winners in the physical sciences are...

Teamwork Needed to Decipher Environmental Science ARLINGTON, Virginia, January 8, 2003 (ENS) - A new internal report calls on the National Science Foundation to embrace a more interdisciplinary approach to its work in order to provide the public and policymakers with the information and tools to address critical environmental challenges. Advances in science have expanded the horizons of what can be studied, the report's authors wrote, and have created the demand for collaborative teams of engineers and natural and social scientists to move beyond current disciplinary research and educational frameworks. The report, "Complex Environmental Systems: Synthesis for Earth, Life,...

Well, the world is going to end, yet again. And CNN will be the liars of choice to tell you all about it. C-18, another large break-off ice burg from the Ross Ice Shelf is free floating now. And would you believe that its obvious Ronald Reagans fault?? After all, it MUST be global warming that has caused this one and since it was Ronald Reagan that started to reverse the trend of fighting this global tyranny known as global warming he must be to blame for it. George Bush only causes it to get worse and Bill Clinton tried...