Free Republic

Scientists have created a tadpole that can literally watch what it eats: The tadpole has an eye growing in its gut. Led by developmental biologist Michael Levin of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., the researchers manipulated cells in the tadpole’s gut to take on a specific electrical state. Those cells developed into a fully formed eye. Inducing just the right electrical state in cells can lead to eye growth anywhere on the body, the team reports online December 7 in Development. Bizarre as the experiment sounds, it is a major step toward regenerating complex organs and limbs. One day, Levin...

The Jerusalem Post reports today that the U.S. Army is considering the purchase of Israel’s Iron Dome short-range missile defense system to protect bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iron Dome was developed in response to persistent rocket attacks by the Palestinian Hamas terror group in Gaza, and the Hizbollah terror organization in southern Lebanon, both of which target Israeli civilians. The system was deployed in southern Israel earlier this year, and has been largely successful.

Palestinian terrorists are not happy. Last August, terrorist groups in Gaza thought they had come up with a way to get around the new Israeli Iron Dome anti-rocket system. They thought that all you had to do was fire at least seven rockets simultaneously at the same area being guarded by one Iron Dome battery. Islamic terrorists did this last August. One rocket got through, and killed an Israeli civilian. This “saturation� tactic is a problem with all air defense systems. But the saturation attacks turned out to be no more effective than firing many more rockets over an extended...

At least twelve rockets launched into Israel this morning; Beersheba school hit by Grad; three fired at Ashkelon, one at Beersheba are intercepted; southern Israel hit by nearly 100 Gazan rockets over the weekend. Rocket fire from the Gaza Strip that killed one man over the weekend continued Sunday morning as at least six Grad rockets were fired at Beersheba, one of which hit an empty school building. At least one other of the Grads was intercepted by the Iron Dome rocket defense system. Earlier Sunday morning, four mortar shells landed in the Eshkol Regional Council area and six Kassam...

Attacks continue after Grad rocket directly strikes home in Be'er Sheva on Saturday night, killing one person and seriously wounding four. The escalation in southern Israel continued Sunday morning when six rockets and a barrage of mortars hit near the city of Ashkelon. The Iron Dome system successfully shot down three rockets. Earlier, a Grad rocket directly struck a home in the southern city of Be'er Sheva on Saturday night, killing one person and seriously wounding four. 26 people are being treated for shock.

The Iron Dome defense system intercepted three Grad rockets aimed at Ashkelon Sunday morning as Israel debates how to react to Hamas’ war. The Iron Dome defense system intercepted three Grad rockets aimed at Ashkelon Sunday morning while Israel debates how to react to Hamas’ latest escalation in its war on the country. The new system has proved effective but is far from offering Israelis total protection from missile attacks.

Workers at the Metrodome have intentionally ruptured another panel in the building's damaged roof. Pat Milan, a spokesman for the commission that runs the Dome, says a shotgun slug was fired into the panel because the weight of ice was creating a safety issue. It's the fifth panel that has torn or been torn since a winter storm caused the roof to give way eight days ago.

youtube video showing roof collapsing under weight of snow. (Was Algore in town?)

BURAS, La.—BP PLC has started to lower the cofferdam containment dome that it hopes will capture oil leaking from a well at the seabed in the Gulf of Mexico and prevent it reaching the surface, a spokesman for the company said Friday. It will take some time for the device to reach the bottom and be connected to a vessel on the surface that will store the leaking oil, but BP hopes to have it up and running by Monday, he said. "It has never been done before at these depths," he added. BP technicians are also investigating the possibility...

I apologize for my inconsistency in posting the Geology Picture of the Week over the past few weeks. I will still be continuing, but my February is disrupted, so I probably won't do one next week. I'll try to return to normalcy in March. So I thought for this one I'd do a couple of quick-hitters. First is from the Montserrrat Volcano Observatory; they have a Flickr page. The Soufriere Hills volcano had a partial dome collapse on February 11. The picture shows the ash cloud and a pyroclastic flow. Montserrat Volcano Observatory Flickr page The second is a shot...

Israel's new rocket defense system has proven a hit-to-kill capability. Officials said Israel's Iron Dome has achieved the ability to strike incoming short-range missiles and rockets. They said the Iron Dome demonstrated this during its first live fire test in mid-2009. "They met head on," Defense Minister Ehud Barak said. In a Nov. 17 address to the International Aerospace Conference and Exhibition-Israel, Barak said Iron Dome exceeded all expectations. He said the assessment within the Defense Ministry and military had been that the interceptor would explode 10 meters from the incoming missile.

If a major disaster struck and you couldn't live in your home would you have a place to go? Don Kubley claims he has an answer. It's called the InterShelter™ and Kubley said it could provide safe shelter for everyone within two hours. The solar dome's President and inventor spoke before Congress and now FEMA is considering the InterShelter™ as the emergency shelter of choice across the nation. It can withstand winds up to 200 miles per hour and temperatures from 120 degress Fahrenheit down to 70 degrees below. All you need is a screwdriver, a wrench and a step...

The author suggests a cheap closed AB-Dome which protects the densely populated cities from nuclear, chemical, biological weapon (bombs) delivered by warheads, strategic missiles, rockets, and various incarnations of aviation technology. [snip] The hemispherical AB-Dome is the inflatable, thin transparent film, located at altitude up to as much as 15 km, which converts the city into a closed-loop system. The film may be armored the stones which destroy the rockets and nuclear warhead. AB-Dome protects the city in case the World nuclear war and total poisoning the Earth’s atmosphere by radioactive fallout (gases and dust). Construction of the AB-Dome is...

Defense Ministry Director-General Pinhas Buchris will travel to the US next week to try to interest the Pentagon in the Israeli-developed Iron Dome missile defense system and to explore procuring the Skyguard laser system to protect Sderot from Kassam rockets, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

Life-size sketch of giant dome uncovered By Malcolm Moore in Rome Last Updated: 2:35am GMT 13/12/2006 Archaeologists digging to reach the tomb of St Paul have stumbled across a life-size "sketch" of the dome of St Peter's produced by one of its architects in the 16th century. The excavation of St Paul's tomb at the church of St Paul's Outside-the-Walls in Rome is now complete, and the sarcophagus will be on view from the beginning of next year. However, three feet below the floor of the enormous church, which is the second-largest in the city, the project's team came across...

The al-Aksa mosque is mistakenly called, “Omar’s mosque” after the first Caliph of Jerusalem who captured the city in 638CE. This religious shrine was a hoax-gone-bad for Caliph Abd al-Wahd (705-715 CE). Wahd actually completed construction and named it al-Aksa so that it would sound like the one mentioned in the Koran. Wahd desired to draw prayer and, more importantly, attention to the place where he was then ruler, Jerusalem. This attempt failed since Mohammed had a stern restriction regarding Jerusalem. The site fell into disrepair and, up until this century, no Islamic monarch deemed the Dome or the mosque...

I saw a picture of this on VolcanoDiscovery, and went to the USGS site for pictures. To see more, go to the linked site, click "Current Eruption - Photo Archives". The pictures are "below the fold", and you can see the high-res BIG shots. They don't have the May 6 picture I saw on Volcano Discovery (go to Volcano News), but the May 4 pictures are still pretty impressive. The "Spine of Mount St. Helens" title is a historical reference to the big spine that appeared in the crater of Mt. Pelee after the pyroclastic flow eruption that wiped out...

Navy took Dome buses for family, panel told Stranded residents of New Orleans weren't the only ones trying to get out of Dodge after the floodwaters began overtaking large sections of the city. A Louisiana National Guard official said that Navy officials, pretending to be contractors, appropriated buses that were on their way to the Superdome the Thursday after Hurricane Katrina struck. The buses were used to rescue family members of Navy personnel hunkered down at the Fairmont Hotel. "The bus would come up to the checkpoints, these people, who weren't supposed to be taking the buses, come up and...

Partial transcript of the 11/28/05 edition of CNN's Larry King Live......KING: OK. Most fascinating means what did that person have to do? WALTERS: Something that was I guess original and a big accomplishment and done in the past year. KING: OK. WALTERS: So, I mean it's a fairly broad list. KING: Nobody infamous, so you won't do like "Time" magazine did Hitler as man of the year once? WALTERS: No, no. KING: Someone who had a profound effect. You wouldn't do Saddam Hussein? WALTERS: No. KING: But if he gave you the interview would you do him? WALTERS: Oh, I...

Click article link to see the article and explanation of how the images were obtained (also includes a true color image and a link to a high-resolution true-color image). At the very top of the high resolution image you can see the Visitor's Center where the VolcanoCam for Mt. St. Helens is located (literally at "the end of the road"). Direct link to the high-resolution IR image (only 1.5 MB, loads pretty easily): StHelens_TIR_MAS2004268_lrg.jpg

Al-Turki speaks of plots to remove al-Aqsa mosque Palestine-Regional, Politics, 8/23/2004 Secretary General of the Islamic World Association, Abdullah al-Turki, Sunday urged the international community to "put an end to the Zionist terrorist organizations which plot to destruct and remove the holy mosque of al-Aqsa in Jerusalem." In a statement commemorating the 35th anniversary of burning al-Aqsa at the hands of the Israeli extremists, al-Turki warned against "new Zionist plots to remove the holiest mosque in Islam." " Burning al-Aqsa at the hands of an extremist Zionist in Aug, 1969 was a reflection of a Zionist plan which aimed at...

(CBS) For years, CBS News Correspondent Sandra Hughes reports, scientists have tried to understand the dynamic nature of Yellowstone National Park. "It's beautiful up here, everybody should see this at one time or another," says one appreciative observer. Scientist Lisa Morgan may have unlocked one piece in the puzzle, deep below the park's biggest lake. "It is kind of the last unmapped frontier in Yellowstone National Park," says Morgan. What she found looks more like the surface of the moon. Using sonar she's identified a massive bulging dome the size of seven football fields. The only other underwater dome in...

Government Begins Work on CO2 Storage Project at Teapot Dome By Sarah Cooke, Associated Press Writer Published: Jan 28, 2004 CASPER, Wyo. (AP) - The government is trying to bury something at its Teapot Dome oil field again. Not secret oil leases, as it did during an infamous scandal of the 1920s, but carbon dioxide - lots of it. In hopes of developing a process that could slow global warming, the Energy Department wants to inject the greenhouse gas underground into depleted oil reservoirs after converting it into a liquid form. The Teapot Dome project, now in the planning stages,...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 April 27 Venus' Once Molten Surface Credit: E. De Jong et al. (JPL), MIPL, Magellan Team, NASA Explanation: If you could look at Venus with radar eyes - this is what you might see. This computer reconstruction of the surface of Venus was created from data from the Magellan spacecraft. Magellan orbited Venus and used radar to map our neighboring planet's surface between 1990 and 1994. Magellan...

Mobile/PDA | Books | Onion Merchandise & Subscriptions | National Distribution Personals | Media Kit | Employment | Copyright 29 May 2002         WASHINGTON, DC—Calling the current U.S. Capitol "inadequate and obsolete," Congress will relocate to Charlotte or Memphis if its demands for a new, state-of-the-art facility are not met, leaders announced Monday.   Above: An architectural firm's proposal for a new retractable-dome capitol. Inset: Hastert addresses reporters.       "Don't get us wrong: We love the drafty old building," Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL) said. "But the hard reality is, it's no...