Free Republic

Please don't delete this as vanity, I need advice and would like to move quickly on this. I need ones that kids can get down too. Please reply quickly.

Picture this: Fluorescent rocks It could be argued that New Jersey is the rock capital of the world - just ask any Springsteen fan.But did you know that the Garden State is also the fluorescent rock capital of the world, long regarded as the "Promised Land" of fluorescent minerals by rock collectors worldwide?Stuart Schneider has written a book about it called "Collecting Fluorescent Minerals." He has an extensive collection of fluorescent rocks, with more than 800 species from around the world, but mostly his rocks are New Jersey-grown.The photography darkroom in his basement has been converted into a mineral room,...

Zinc may be good for teenagers' brains, according to a paper presented last week at a meeting of the American Society of Nutritional Sciences. In a study led by James Penland of the Agricultural Research Service of the Department of Agriculture, 209 seventh-graders were randomly assigned to one of three groups. The first group received 4 ounces of fruit juice a day containing 20 milligrams of zinc, the second drank the same juice with 10 milligrams of zinc, and the third drank the juice alone with no zinc added. At the beginning and end of the 12-week study, students were...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The Moroccan mission to the United Nations has announced it arrested six U.N. peacekeeping soldiers in Congo accused of sexually abusing local girls and discharged the contingent's commander. Fred Eckhard, the U.N. secretary-general's spokesman, on Monday said the announcement over the weekend showed "the Morrocan authorities attach as much importance to eradicating sexual abuse within U.N. peacekeeping missions as does the U.N." "The mission hopes that the vigorous and public reaction of Morocco will serve as an example and that other troop contributing countries will follow," he added. There have been more than 150 allegations of...

LAW OF THE SEA TREATY UPDATE: We may be very close to victory on The Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). Our sources on the Hill tell us that Majority Leader Bill Frist is inclined to let LOST die an unceremonious death; saying, "the (conservative) 'base' does not want LOST." Thank you to all of you who have participated in this Blast Fax campaign... you are most definitely having an effect. For those of you who are still considering participating... NOW is a good time. We do not want to declare victory prematurely, but one final push may be all...

Your Right to Use Nutritional Supplements Is in Jeopardy Senators Push Regulatory Assault on Vitamins by Dr. Julian Whitaker Posted Sep 3, 2003 Text Size:  S   M   L printer-friendly email to a friend Government Ignores the True Cost of Medical Care    Pharmaceutical Firms Latest To Learn That No Good Deed Goes Unpunished    Hillary's Back!    Admitting Real Costs Could Have Killed Drug Bill    Medicare?s Insolvent Entitlement    We need to take action, and we need to take action now. There is a movement in Congress to push through legislation that would restrict your freedom to use nutritional supplements, and...

Herbal alternatives are under attack. Download and print flyers. The flyers urge consumers to tell their congressmen and senators to attend the JUNE 17th Herbal Alternatives Congressional Briefing to learn the truth about herbs & health. It is critical that Congress attends this briefing because: HERBAL ALTERNATIVES ARE UNDER ATTACK. News headlines misinform and mislead decision makers. Products you depend on for your health could soon be banned. MANY CAPITOL HILL STAFFERS AND POLICY MAKERS DO NOT UNDERSTAND NATURAL HEALTH INDUSTRY ISSUES. Since DSHEA was passed in 1994, about 50% of Congressmen and Senators and 80% of Congressional aides have...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.WASHINGTON, May 11 - About 20 percent of the mineral wealth of the American West is claimed by foreign companies, most of them Canadian, according to a new analysis and online database released Monday by an environmental organization. The report, produced by the Environmental Working Group, also shows that of all the uses of federal lands, hard-rock mining returns the least to the federal Treasury: 2.3 percent of sales, compared with 13.2 percent for oil and gas development, 14 percent for grazing and 66 percent for timber sales. "For as little as...

Mineral In Mars 'Berries' Adds To Water Story CAPTION This microscopic image, taken at the outcrop region dubbed "Berry Bowl" near the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's landing site, shows the sphere-like grains or "blueberries" that fill Berry Bowl. Of particular interest is the blueberry triplet, which indicates that these geologic features grew in pre-existing wet sediments. Other sphere-like grains that form in the air, such as impact spherules or ejected volcanic material called lapilli, are unlikely to fuse along a line and form triplets. This image was taken by the rover's microscopic imager on the 46th martian day, or sol,...

PASADENA, Calif. -- The Spirit rover’s first detailed look at the soil of Mars show it to be a complex jumble of surface materials, akin to that found at the Viking and Mars Pathfinder landing sites. Using Spirit-deployed science gear to study a select patch of Mars at Gusev Crater, silicon, sulfur, chlorine, calcium, iron, and nickel have been detected. One mineral, Olivine has also been found. That finding would seemingly cast doubt on the prevalence of water as a geological agent at Gusev Crater. Olivine is a suite of iron-magnesium silicate minerals known to crystallize, first from a magma,...

Quietly, State Dept. Turns Over American Islands to Russia, Others In recent years several U.S. islands have been ceded to Russia and other countries, without congressional approval or public debate. These islands, many uninhabited, are significant because they hold potential mineral, gas, oil and fishing rights – not to mention potential strategic military value. So where exactly are these disputed islands? The Arctic islands, which lie west of Alaska and north of Siberia, include the islands of Wrangell, Herald, Bennett, Jeannette and Henrietta. The islands in the Bering Sea make up the westernmost point in Alaska’s Aleutian chain and include...

Thu 9 Jan 2003 Pygmies being eaten by rebels in Congo's ongoing war, UN reveals JAMES ASTILL IN NAIROBI REBEL soldiers are massacring and eating pygmies in the dense forests of north-east Congo, UN investigators said yesterday. A UN team has spent the past week investigating allegations of cannibalism in remote Ituri province, where fresh fighting between several rebel groups has displaced around 150,000 people in the past month. Many of the displaced tell of rebel fighters capturing and butchering pygmies across the front-line, said Manoddje Mounoubai, a spokesman for the UN cease-fire monitoring mission in Congo yesterday. "The UN...

These are the Anti-Atlas Mountains, part of the Atlas Mountain range in southern Morocco, Africa. The region contains some of the world’s largest and most diverse mineral resources, most of which are still untouched. This image was acquired by Landsat 7’s Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) sensor on June 22, 2001. This is a false-color composite image made using shortwave infrared, infrared, and red wavelengths.