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New species clarifies bird-dinosaur link Field Museum paleontologist helps analyze fossil CHICAGO – The discovery and analysis of an early carnivorous dinosaur, Sinovenator changii, are clarifying the evolutionary relationship between dinosaurs and birds, according to a paper to be published in Nature Feb. 14, 2002. The small, relatively complete fossil was found in the rich Yixian Formation of western Liaoning in China, where scientists have recently discovered many groundbreaking fossils, including feathered dinosaurs. “This new dinosaur, which was probably feathered, is closely related to and almost the same age as the oldest known bird, Archaeopteryx,” says Peter Makovicky, PhD, ...

The World's No.1 Science & Technology News Service     UK court ruling means cloning not illegal   15:00   15  November  01 Andy Coghlan   Opponents of abortion have won a court victory in Britain that blows apart laws thought to control cloning. The High Court's ruling means there is now no law preventing someone attempting to create a person through cloning, or to create tissues for transplant through so-called "therapeutic cloning". "Now, there are no criminal offences or anything to stop someone cloning a human," says Bruno Quintavalle of the Pro-Life Alliance, which brought the case. "So if ...

Ancient fossils suggest fuse for Cambrian explosion   19:00   19  July  01 Nicola Jones   The oldest fossil crustaceans ever found are helping to prove that the evolutionary explosion of animals was not so explosive after all. The tiny, half-millimetre-long fossils were found in England and are about 511 million years old. This places them near the beginning of the Cambrian period, when the fossil record shows almost all the main types of life burst into existence. The record is usually interpreted to mean that life evolved from very simple forms, such as sponges, to complex organisms ,like snails, ...

Gay for GoodCan straight guys become happy homosexuals? By Jefferson Morley "Most mental-health organizations have passed resolutions discouraging the use of so-called reparative therapies intended to change homosexuals into heterosexuals, saying no scientific evidence exists to show they are effective."—New York Times, May 9, 2001 To people who say that psychotherapy cannot change a person's sexual orientation, Dr. Rafe Da Vinci of Miami Beach says, "Numbers aren't straight or queer, they're clear. And the numbers show that therapy can change orientation, especially among men." Da Vinci, a veteran psychiatrist with a booming practice in a Collins Avenue high-rise, is ...

Study Offers Insights Into Evolutionary Origins Of Life In some of the strongest evidence yet to support the RNA world—an era in early evolution when life forms depended on RNA—scientists at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research have created an RNA catalyst, or a ribozyme, that possesses some of the key properties needed to sustain life in such a world. The new ribozyme, generated by David Bartel and his colleagues at the Whitehead, can carry out a remarkably complicated and challenging reaction, especially given that it was not isolated from nature but created from scratch in the laboratory. This ribozyme ...

Cornell News: Protein evolution Natural selection drives rapid evolution of female (as well as male) reproductive proteins in mammals, Cornell study finds FOR RELEASE: March 6, 2001 Contact: Roger Segelken Office: 607-255-9736 E-Mail: hrs2@cornell.edu ITHACA, N.Y. -- Chemical signals at the most critical moment for new life in mammals -- when sperm meets egg and attempts fertilization -- evolve rapidly in a process driven by positive Darwinian selection, according to a Cornell University study. New statistical studies of sequence divergence among egg-surface and oviduct proteins, reported by Willie J. Swanson, Mariana F. Wolfner and Charles F. Aquadro of Cornell ...

Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have demonstrated, in a study of the songs and genetics of a series of interbreeding populations of warblers in central Asia, how one species can diverge into two. Their description of the intermediate forms of two reproductively isolated populations of songbirds that no longer interbreed is the "missing evidence" that Darwin had hoped to use to support his theory of natural selection, but was never able to find. One of the largest mysteries remaining in evolutionary biology is exactly how one species can gradually diverge into two," says Darren E. Irwin, a ...

by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. Washington -- It is the end of the Clinton era, and finally the Boy President has done something I approve of. He left the country. Now if he will just stay in Ireland I shall be happy and so will the entire country. The Independent Counsel will not have to indict. There will be less resentment in the land, and in Ireland Bill can discover that "Guinness Is Good For You." Actually the Boy President did another thing I approve of; though he acted for the wrong reasons, and he only went part way. ...

Here’s what Al’s been looking for. The answer to all those pesky voting machines in Florida. He just has to reprogram the counting machines. do { BushCount = 0; GoreCount = 0; for ( i = 0; i

Gore's Grades Belie Image of Studiousness His School Transcripts Are a Lot Like Bush's By David Maraniss and Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, March 19, 2000; Page A01 If Al Gore is commonly thought of as a grind, the sort of fellow who during his school days would take notes in precise Roman numeral outline, strive mightily to ingratiate himself with teachers, and bring sterling report cards home to his demanding parents, his academic transcripts go some way toward subverting that notion. From his lower school years at St. Albans to his incomplete effort at Vanderbilt law school, ...

On March 7, 2000, the imager on the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft acquired the first of several planned "flyover movies" of Eros. This one shows the "saddle" region from a range of 205 kilometers (127 miles). A flyover's purpose is to show a region of the asteroid during continually changing lighting conditions, with solar illumination coming from a variety of directions and elevations above the surface. With the Sun in different positions, features with different orientations become more evident. Also, with the Sun low to the surface, brightness variations are dominated by the shadows cast by landforms. In contrast, with ...

Madeline Albright Mistaken for a Troll   On the heals of an embarrassing incident where a group of Albanians understandably mistook Madeline Albright for a hotel cleaning lady, the U.S. Secretary of State has again been the victim of misidentification. While on a diplomatic mission to Finland, Madam Albright frightened a group of school children who mistook her for a troll. Trolls have a long history in Scandinavian folklore, and a reputation for being ugly, nasty and dangerous. In Finland, children are warned to behave themselves lest the trolls come and take them away. BSNN does not know if ...

NEAR image of the day for 2000 Feb 8 Eros image sequence reveals major landforms On February 4, the NEAR Multispectral Imager (MSI) took this image sequence as it approached within 4620 miles (7700 km) of Eros. The images were acquired every 15 degrees of rotation for one Eros "day", which is 5.27 hours long. Eros's overall shape has been compared to a boat, a shoe, a peanut, and a banana with a bite taken out of it. This sequence of images is the first to show the major geographic features of the northern and equatorial latitudes of Eros. ...

Wednesday, February 2 2:14 AM SGT US envisages sanctions against Austria US envisages sanctions against Austria WASHINGTON, Feb 1 (AFP) - The United States indicated Tuesday that it would join the European Union in seeking to isolate Austria if a far-right party was welcomed into the government.Austria's 14 partners in the European Union (EU) have threatened to cut off official bilateral contacts with Vienna if the far-right Freedom Party enters the government."We're concerned about the possibility of the Freedom Party entering the Austrian government," said White House spokeswoman Nandra Chitra."We share the concerns that motivated the action of the EU ...

Wednesday, February 2 2:00 AM SGT Cote d'Ivoire players detained after football flop Cote d'Ivoire players detained after football flop ABIDJAN, Feb 1 (AFP) - Members of Cote d'Ivoire's football team were being held in the capital Yamoussoukro Tuesday, following their elimination from the African Nations Cup, reliable sources told AFP.The players have been taken to a "military camp" and had their passports and portable phones seized, said Catherine Loiseau, a sports management consultant who spoke with the wife of Modibo Diallo who plays for Le Havre.A source close to the junta, led by General Robert Guei, told AFP that ...

KFOR forces arrest a member of LKCK and confiscate the newspaper "Çlirimi"   Prishtina, August 9, (Kosovapress) The general council of the Kosova Liberation Movement LKÇK has reacted strongly to the arrest in Gjilan of a member, Naim Demi. Mr. Demi was the council officer of Gjilan. In the written statement, it is claimed Mr. Demi was held for more than an hour and all the issues of the newspaper, Çlirimi, of number 77, were confiscated. The reason for its confiscation was given to be a reaction to the editorial written in that issue, entitled: "KFOR Tolarant with Serb Criminals ...

Lost pilots' kin say big hunt unfair By BETH FRERKING, MARY KANE and MILES BENSON Newshouse News Service When Patricia Delonnay first learned that John Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette, had disappeared in a small plane off the Massachusetts coast near Martha's Vineyard, she was devastated, and her heart went out to their families. She knew how they felt. Just over a year ago, her husband, Don Rodriguez, 57, disappeared in a small plane in Lake Michigan near Traverse City. But as the U.S. Coast Guard's "search and rescue" mission in the Kennedy/Bessette ...