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Experts aim to make technology and science relate more to everyday life. What Do You Say When Someone Says The Earth's Flat?How long does it take the Earth to orbit the sun? Half of U.S. adults don't know, according to a recent National Science Foundation survey. In fact, a 2001 NSF survey found that 42% of adults said they couldn't be bothered with science and technology issues--this at a time when literacy in both have enormous impact on the nation's health and economy.Joe Schwarcz, director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society in Montreal, says indifference and outright rejection...

Our body plan is being defined in the first few hours of life. Your world was shaped in the first 24 hours after conception. Where your head and feet would sprout, and which side would form your back and which your belly, were being defined in the minutes and hours after sperm and egg united. Just five years ago, this statement would have been heresy. Mammalian embryos were thought to spend their first few days as a featureless orb of cells. Only later, at about the time of implantation into the wall of the uterus, were cells thought to acquire...

Mysterious Shift in Earth's Gravity Suggests Equator is Bulging By Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer posted: 02:00 pm ET 01 August 2002 Something strange has been going on under our feet for the past four years. Earth's gravity field suddenly shifted gears and began getting flatter, reversing a course of centuries during which the planet and its gravity field grew rounder each year. The scientists who noticed the change and report it in the Aug. 2 issue of the journal Science suspect Earth itself may be flattening out, with the oceans rising near the equator, but they aren't...